Sitting of 9 March 1888

Preamble
The House met at Two of the clock.

MINUTES.
NEW WRIT ISSUED—For Merthyr Tydvil, v. Charles Herbert James, esquire, Manor of Northstead.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—.Resolutions [March 8] reported.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolutions in Committee—National Debt Acts; Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland [Salary, & c]—R. P.
Ordered—First Reading—Rating of Machinery*[163.]
Second Reading—East India (Purchase and Construction of Railways) * [143].

QUESTIONS.

  PIERS AND HARBOURS (IRELAND)—BALLYCOTTON PIER.
  DR. TANNERasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the Ballycotton Pier is about being handed over by the Board of Works, as completed, to the Grand Jury of County Cork; whether the portion of the old pier which ha s been so of ten complained of, and which it was promised should be removed, has not been touched, and still remains a source of impediment and danger to all fishing vessels entering the harbour; whether the rubble, which it was stipulated should be dredged, has been removed; what were the original specifications contracted for; and, whether the Board of Works are satisfied with the execution of the work? The hon. Gentleman also asked, Whether a competent engineer will be sent down to inspect the Ballycotton Pier; whether a request to that effect having been made by the local Catholic clergyman, the Rev. M. P. Norris, at the request of
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  the Ballycotton fishermen, to the Board of Works, an answer was given, saying that Mr. Keating would be sent down to inspect the work; whether Father Norris called attention to the fact that Mr. Keating was the engineer under whose superintendence the work was carried out, and, having regard to the unsatisfactory result, requested that an independent engineer might be sent, and whether the Board refused to accede to the request; whether it is a fact that five boats have already been aground on the rubble which has accumulated in the course of construction of the pier; and, whether, in consequence of the said accumulation, where there was formerly a sandy bottom next the pier, with from four to 10 feet of water, there is at present only from one to five?
  THE SECRETARY (Mr. JACKSON)(who replied) said: The Ballycotton Pier has been handed over to the Grand Jury for maintenance in the usual way. I am informed that the remains of the old pier have been removed to the full depth recommended by the Fishery Commissioners, and that almost all the rubble has been removed, and the rest will be so. The original specifications contracted for were the building of a pier and breakwater, with a beacon, and the removal, if required, of a part of the old pier. The Board of Works are satisfied with the execution of the works; but, in accordance with the request of Father Norris, the chief engineer of the Board will visit the place shortly, and will observe the exact state of the works. The Board have no information of any boats grounding; and as regards the depth along the pier, they state that for 245 feet out of 285 feet the depth at low water ordinary spring tides varies from four feet to 12 feet.

  FISHERY BOARD (SCOTLAND)—MUSSEL BEDS IN TIDAL WATERS.
  MR. ANDERSONasked the Lord Advocate, What inquiries have been made by the Scotch Fishery Board as to the existence and extent of private rights in mussel beds in the tidal waters of Scotland; what inquiries have been made as to the nature of such rights; what conclusions have been come to by the Fishery Board as to the best way of dealing with the mussel beds, and of enabling fishermen

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  to obtain bait at reasonable rates; and, what course does the Government intend to take this Session on the subject?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): In answer to the first and second Questions of the hon. Member, no inquiries have been made since the presentation to Parliament of the Report on this subject last Session. The Fishery Board have come to no such conclusions as are indicated in the third Question put by the hon. Member; but, as mentioned in their last Annual Report, they have issued Regulations for the guidance of persons wishing to cultivate oyster and mussel beds, and are affording them every assistance and encouragement. The Government are fully aware of the importance of this subject, and of the difficulties which surround it; but are not, as at present advised, prepared to take any immediate action in the matter.

  THE MAGISTRACY (IRELAND)—"MR. BALFOUR AND THE RESIDENT MAGISTRATES."
  MR. MAC NEILLasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been directed to a letter of Mr. W. T. Dennehy, which appeared in The Dublin Evening Telegraph of 3rd March, 1888, entitled "Mr. Balfour and the Resident Magistrates," and to which the writer appends four extracts from The Irish Times, dated respectively 16th September, 1887, 17th September, 1887, 19th October, 1887, and 22nd October, 1887, each giving accounts of interviews and consultations between the Chief Secretary and Irish Magistrates, and the last-mentioned extract stating that
  "Colonel Turner, Captain Walsh, Resident Magistrate, and Mr. Cecil Roche, Resident Magistrate, who have been in attendance on the Chief Secretary for the past two days at the Castle, have returned to their districts;"
  whether any Minutes of these attendances of the Irish magistrates on the Chief Secretary have been preserved; and, if so, whether he would have any objection to lay them upon the Table of the House; and, whether he adheres to his statement, that the Irish magistrates receive no orders from Dublin Castle, and act independently between the subject and the Crown?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I must adhere to what I have before said in answer to the hon. Gentleman—namely, that I do not feel called upon to give any account to the hon. Member of the interviews which in Dublin or elsewhere I may think it necessary to hold in the discharge of my duties as Chief Secretary. But I may inform him that I am always glad, so far as possible, to see any persons, magistrates or others, who are qualified to give me an accurate account of the state of the district in which they reside. If by his last paragraph he desires to imply that magistrates receive from me, directly or indirectly, communications respecting matters in which they have to act in a judicial capacity, I can only regret that he should have permitted himself to make such an imputation upon an honourable and upright body of men.
  MR. T. M. HEALY: As a matter of fact and history, will the right hon. Gentleman say whether these interviews took place or not?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I decline to add anything to what I have already said.

  SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (IRELAND) BILL—COUNCIL OF LAW REPORTING.
  MR. T. M. HEALYasked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, What annual saving would be effected by the Government Judicature Bill; is he aware of the strong feeling that exists as to the present defective state of legal reporting in Ireland; and, would there be any difficulty, out of the proposed saving, in finding funds to provide for some record of important Judgments, so that no ease of great public professional interest should be omitted from the Law Reports, or have its report indefinitely delayed?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN): The question of law reporting in Ireland is one in which I have taken a practical interest for many years. I am fully conscious of the fact that the funds at the disposal of the Council of Law Reporting did not enable us to maintain the Reports in the state of efficiency which we desired. Complaints, no doubt, have been made; but I do not think that they assumed the dimen-

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  sions suggested by the Question. I am happy to state that the funds of the Council are now in a more prosperous condition; and I believe that it will be found that few, if any, cases of importance are now omitted from the Reports. The ultimate annual saving proposed to be effected by the Supreme Court of Judicature (Ireland) Bill is estimated at over £11,000. There will, however, be no immediate saving; and I fear that there would be difficulty in giving practical effect to the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member. I should be exceedingly glad if a way were found.

  LAW AND JUSTICE (IRELAND)—COURT OF THE RECORDER OF DUBLIN.
  MR. T. M. HEALYasked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, Has his attention been called to a letter, written by the Right honourable the Recorder of Dublin to the papers, pressing for the necessity of some amendment in the law as to levying executions in his Court and the Court of Conscience, and pointing out the hardship to the poor of the present method of levying judgments for small debts, and will anything be done by Government to apply a legislative remedy to grievances thus judicially called attention to?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN): My attention has been called to the letter referred to written by the learned Recorder of Dublin. I observe that a Bill has been introduced this Session dealing with the subject of executions for small debts. As soon as the Bill has been circulated, the Government will carefully consider its provisions in connection with the entire question.

  METROPOLITAN POLICE—PENSION TO POLICE CONSTABLE 285 L.
  MR. GENT-DAVISasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether Police Constable 285 L, who was injured whilst on duty, on the day of Her Majesty's Jubilee, in such a way as to have rendered him unfit for further service, would have been entitled, after having served far a period of 16 years and three months, to a yearly pension of £24 19 s. 3d. if his case had been one of ordinary sickness; whether a Board of Superintendents sat to inquire into the
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  case, and recommended, after a careful inquiry, that he should receive a yearly pension of £40 11 s. 3d. under Paragraph 3 of the General Police Orders of 26th December, 1873, which says—
  "Injuries received in the execution of duty partially incapacitating after 15 years 25–50ths of salary; "
  whether such recommendation was ignored, after being endorsed by the Commissioners, and a pension of only £24 19 s. 3d. granted; and, whether he will re-consider the decision in the case, having regard to the special occasion on which the injuries were received, and to the fact that Her Majesty was graciously pleased to express Her thanks to the Metropolitan Police for their services on the day in question?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): The ordinary pension to which he would have been entitled is correctly stated. The constable was injured while on duty on Jubilee Day. But the injury was an accidental one, and arose from a horse treading on his foot, the great toe of which was already permanently enlarged by gout. It is the case that the recommendation of the Board of Superintendents on the case was not adopted; but the Board ignored the distinction between accidental injuries and not accidental injuries, and thus erroneously applied to the constable a Rule not applicable to his case. I was unable, therefore, to adopt the recommendation, though endorsed by the Commissioners. I awarded to the constable the pension mentioned, which, though coinciding with the ordinary pension, was the highest pension that could lawfully be awarded under the Rules of the Force. I must decline to re-consider the decision.
  MR. GENT-DAVISasked whether, the accident having taken place on an exceptional occasion, some other consideration ought not to have been given to the case?
  MR. MATTHEWSsaid, that the question of superannuation allowance was governed by Rules from which he was not able to depart.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES)—EASTER VOLUNTEER REVIEW AT ALDERSHOT.
  MR. ISAACSasked the Secretary of State for War,

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  If it is a fact that Volunteer officers ac-companying their regiments to Alder-shot at Easter have been refused officers' quarters there; and, if so, whether the necesary orders will be issued to prevent those officers having to find quarters in the town, at a considerable distance from their regimental parades?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. E. STANHOPE): There is every desire to accommodate the Volunteers at Easter, both at Alder-shot and in other districts; but it is not possible to allot to them officers' quarters unless there are quarters vacant. None which are available have been refused to them.

  TECHNICAL SCHOOLS (SCOTLAND) ACT—MEMORANDUM OF THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.
  MR. F. S. POWELL(for Sir RICHARD PAGET), asked the Lord Advocate, If he will be good enough to lay upon the Table of the House a copy of a recent Memorandum, by the Secretary to the Scotch Education Department, with reference to the Scotch Technical Education Act of last Session?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): The Memorandum was laid on the Table on Tuesday last.
  MR. F. S. POWELL: Will it soon be printed?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: It is printed.

  SCOTLAND—DISTURBANCES IN LEWIS—TRIAL OF THE PRISONERS.
  DR. CAMERONasked the Lord Advocate, If he will inform the House of the amount of expense incurred in bringing to Edinburgh for trial the four Lewis crofters declared not guilty of the charges against them in the Court of Justiciary on Monday last; whether any assistance was given by the Crown to enable the prisoners to bring up witnesses for the defence; and, what sum has been paid them to defray the cost of their journey home?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): The expenses of the four Lewis crofters referred to
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  were allowed coming to Edinburgh and returning home, and the expenses of the witnesses for the defence were also allowed. If the hon. Member wishes to know the amount, I will tell him privately; but it is not desirable to state it publicly.
  DR. CAMERONasked a further Question with respect to the truth of a newspaper paragraph to the effect that one of the Crown witnesses, who had been brought to Edinburgh, had gone out of his mind in consequence of having been plied with drink by the person in charge of him?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: I have no information upon the matter, except what I saw in a paragraph in the newspapers; but I will inquire.

  ANNUAL FINANCE ACCOUNTS—PENSIONS FROM THE CONSOLIDATED FUND.
  MR. HANBURYasked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether it is the fact that, in the case of pensions and other items entered in the Annual Finance Accounts and charged on the Consolidated Fund, no account is published showing whether or not any particular pension or other item has actually been paid from the Consolidated Fund; whether it is the fact that the unexpended balance is stated in one sum without specifying the items of such balance, making it difficult to ascertain whether any particular pension has or has not been paid; and, whether he proposes to alter the existing system, with a view to affording public proof that the moneys charged upon the Consolidated Fund for a particular object are actually expended upon that object?
  THE SECRETARY (Mr. JACKSON): It is true that the Finance Accounts, as published, do not show whether any particular pension or other item charged on the Consolidated Fund has actually been paid. The unexpended balance is stated in one sum in the Comptroller and Auditor General's Report on the abstract account of the Consolidated Fund. I think it would be desirable to give details of the items which make up the amount surrendered to the Exchequer in respect of over issues from the Consolidated Fund; and will see if it is possible to do this in the next issue of the Finance Accounts.

  THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL (ENGLAND AND WALES)—THE METROPOLIS.
  MR. BAUMANNasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether the Local Government Bill will in any way affect the Metropolis; and, if so, how?
  THE PRESIDENT (Mr. RITCHIE): I am afraid I must ask my hon. Friend to allow me to answer the Question when I introduce the Bill.

  BURGH POLICE AND HEALTH (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  DR. CAMERON(for Mr. J. W. BARCLAY)asked the Lord Advocate, Whether the Burgh Police and Health (Scotland) Bill is applicable to all burghs of 4,000 population?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): My hon. Friend will find the particulars of the application of the Bill to burghs in Scotland in Schedule 5, and in Schedule 2 the burghs as to which existing local Police Acts or parts of them are saved by the Bill.

  LOTTERIES—THE GLADSTONE RADICAL CLUB.
  MR. KELLYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to an announcement that a number of prizes will be drawn for on the 27th of March, at the Gladstone Radical Club, Baroness Road, Hackney Road, and that all persons purchasing tickets for two concerts to be given there for the benefit of Mr. W. C. Kilbey, the Vice President, will have the right to draw for such prizes; whether this distribution of prizes is illegal; and, if so, whether he will take steps to prevent it; and, whether, having regard to the fact that three of the prizes consist of a box of cigars, half a-dozen cigars, and a packet of cigars respectively, he will cause inquiries to be made as to whether the persons responsible for the conduct of the Gladstone Radical Club are in the habit of selling cigars to persons not being members thereof, without having taken out any licence for the purpose?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): Yes, Sir; my attention has been called to this matter, and I have brought the announcement of the proposed lottery to the notice of the Public Prosecutor. With regard to the last paragraph of the Question, I have called the attention of the Board of Inland Revenue to the matter.

  POST OFFICE—BRITISH AND FOREIGN POSTAGE RATES FROM SHANGHAI.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATONasked the Postmaster General, How the German and French Post Offices can carry letters from Shanghai to London for 2½d., while it does not pay the British Post Office to do so for less than 5d.; has he inquired what proportion the British trade bears to the French and German trade with Shanghai; would it be possible to get a Return of the cost of the maintenance of each Post Office, and the amount paid in postage at Shanghai at the British, the French, and the German Post Offices; and, if not, can he give the amount received for stamps at the English Post Office at Shanghai, and the salary paid to the staff there?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES), in reply, said, he had fully answered this Question some time ago. The French and German Post Offices had the option of levying, or not levying, additional postage on sea-borne letters. He did not see what useful purpose would be served by inquiring as to the latter part of the Question.

  THE NATIONAL DEBT—CONVERSION OF THE THREE PER CENTS.
  MR. HENRY H. FOWLERasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the option to exchange the existing Three Per Cents for an equivalent amount of Local Loans Stock was open to all fund-holders; and, if not, to whom was such option given?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSOHEN), in reply, said, that he proposed, either when he made his Financial Statement, or on another opportunity, to explain fully the manner in which the Local Loans Stock had been dealt with.

  IRELAND—DESTITUTION IN THE ARRAN ISLANDS.
  MR. J. E. ELLISasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to a letter in The Freeman's Journal of the 8th of March from the Rev. M. O'Donohue, parish priest, with respect to the great destitution in the Arran Isles; and, what steps are the Government taking with a view of relieving the exceptional distress there?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I know nothing about the letter to which the hon. Member refers; but I have taken care to make myself acquainted with the condition of the Arran Islands. The duty of relieving destitution rests with the Local Authorities, and not with the Government; nor should it be undertaken under any circumstances by the Government, except with the greatest caution. I propose, however, to supply, under careful supervision, seed potatoes to those who really require it in the Islands; and as this, if done at all, must be done without delay, I have ventured, with the sanction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to anticipate the approval of Parliament. I trust that the course will not be of ultimate injury to the Islanders; although anyone who studios the history of destitution in the West of Ireland may well doubt whether the charity, public or private, by which it has been sought to relieve it, has produced, on the whole, a balance of good or of evil.
  MR. T. M. HEALYasked, if the Chief Secretary would inform the House, when applying for this money, as to how many thousands of pounds in rent those people on the Arran Islands had paid within the last five years?
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he had not as yet consulted with his right hon. Friend as to the exact form in which Parliament would be asked for this grant. He did not think the information required was necessary.
  DR. CAMERONasked, if the right hon. Gentleman would apply the same principle to the destitution of the people of the Western Hebrides? Perhaps the right hon.
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  Gentleman would consult with the Lord Advocate upon the point.
  [No reply.]

  SALE OF LIQUORS ON SUNDAY (IRELAND) BILL.
  In reply to Mr. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.),
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR)said, the nomination of the Select Committee on this subject had been postponed at the request of hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite, no had not consulted those hon. Gentlemen as to when it would be convenient to nominate the Committee; but he hoped to do so in a few days.

  THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH): I think it right, Sir, to inform the House that Her Majesty's Government have received a despatch from Her Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin, announcing the death of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Germany. I make this announcement, Sir, to the House, feeling that it is one which deeply interests this House; and I am sure, Sir, the House and the country will join in the sorrow which has afflicted the whole people of Germany—our allies and our friends.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: In the absence, Sir, of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian, I have only to express the entire concurrence of this side of the House in the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Gentleman.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  NATIONAL DEBT ACTS.

    COMMITTEE.
    Considered in the Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN): Mr. Courtney, I can assure this Committee that it is no common expression of Parliamentary tradition when I say I rise to submit certain

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    Resolutions under a grave sense of responsibility. Whether we look at the magnitude of the interests involved or the effect upon the credit of the country of the failure or success of any attempts to deal with the National Debt—everyone who makes proposals with regard to the Debt must feel that he must make out a strong case for the action he proposes to take before he is justified in disturbing the markets or credit of the country. I feel sure that I shall be able in the present case to prove that Her Majesty's Government have scarcely any option, but that they are compelled to take the course I am about to take. I believe that the measures we propose, if we are successful in passing them through this House, will tend materially to lighten the burdens of the country, to raise its credit, and to increase its resources. By a strange historical coincidence, if it had been possible to make this Motion yesterday, it would have been the exact day—namely, the 8th of March—when Mr. Goulburn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer under Sir Robert Peel, proposed a large and most successful scheme of conversion 44 years ago. He proposed that conversion on the 8th of March, and on the 22nd of March his proposals received the final assent of the Legislature. I presume there is no one in this House, except the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), who was at the time a Member of Sir Robert Peel's Government, who has a personal recollection of that great measure Any hon. Member who wishes to master these matters should not fail to road the speech which Mr. Goulburn made on that occasion. If I did no more than repeat the speech almost verbatim to this House, I should make out the case for the course I propose to ask the Committee to follow. Mr. Goulburn rested the expediency of conversion upon the following four considerations—(1) the general expectation of the country; (2) the amount of capital seeking investment and the general fall in the rate of interest; (3) the strong position of the Revenue; and (4) the manageable proportions of the Floating Debt. If I could follow his reasoning through every one of these motives, I should prove to the Committee that if the motives for a large measure of conversion existed
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    then, they are equally strong, if not stronger, at the present moment. I have said that Mr. Goulburn rested his proposals, in the first place, on the general expectations of the people. I do not know, and I have no means of ascertaining, how far the general expectations of the public now correspond to the expectations entertained in 1844, but I may look to the facts to see how far general expectations have been translated into the operations of the market; If I may say it, no one can have observed the general tone of public opinion without noticing that there is a universal feeling that the time for a scheme of conversion, and a bold scheme of conversion, has arrived. There is no better test of general expectation with regard to a scheme of conversion than the contrast which may be presented in the prices of Stock equal in security, but different as regards the terms under which they are redeemable. Take Stocks of equal value. It will always be found that in proportion as such Stocks stand in danger of being redeemed at par they enjoy a lower rate of interest. If you contrast at any time the value of the Stocks which are redeemable with those that are not redeemable, you will find a certain test of the expectation of the public with regard to the conversion of the former class of securities. Now, in Mr. Goulburn's time the irredeemable Consols had risen from 91½ in 1836 to 98½ on the 8th of March, 1844. At the same time' Three-and-a-Halfs, which were redeemable, had risen only from 99 to 101⅜ Precisely the same contrast, only more marked, is observable to-day between the great rise in irredeemable and the comparatively small rise in redeemable Stocks. In 1880 Two-and-a-Half per Cents stood at 80, and in 1888 (8th of March) they stood at 96, arise of 16 per cent. Consols in 1880 stood at 97⅝, and rose to 102 in 1888, a rise of only 4⅜ per cent. Thus irredeemable Stock has risen 16 per cent, while the other has risen no more than 4⅜ per cent. The second ground upon which Mr. Goulburn relied was the large amount of capital seeking investment and the high price of sound securities. When I look around me now, I would invite hon. Members to consider if we are not also in a position to say that there is an immense amount of

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    capital seeking investment, and that the price of sound securities has risen to an extreme extent. Other sound securities have been passing Government securities in the race, because Government securities have ever hanging over them the fear that they may be converted at any moment, while other securities enjoy an immunity from this danger. And the country has been in this position—that we have neither been able to gain the advantage of a reduction in the rate of interest, nor, on the other hand, have we been able to enjoy the benefit of a rise in the price of Consols because of the fear of conversion—a fear which has continued from year to year without coming to anything, to the detriment of the taxpayers of the country. If the opportunities for investment are more numerous now than they were in Mr. Goulburn's time, at the same time the amount of capital seeking investment is also far vaster at the present day. I call the attention of the Committee to some figures which will give evidence—conclusive evidence—of the rise in the price of the best Stocks. I will take 10 years. Metropolitan Three and a-Half per Cent Debenture Stock stood in March, 1879, at 102; in March, 1888, it stands at 112—a rise of 10 per cent. Great Western Four per Cent Debentures in the same period has risen from 105 to 129, or 24 per cent; North-Western Four per Cent Debentures have risen from 107 to 130, or 23 percent; Midland from 105 to 129, or 24 per cent. It will be seen that the debentures of these three great Railway Companies have risen in 10 years 24, 23, and 24 per cent respectively, showing a greater demand for safe investments. What during that time has been the fate of Consols, which represent the credit of the country? They have risen from 96⅜ to 102⅜—only 6 per cent. The country, therefore, has not had an equal advantage from the increase of capital seeking investment, and the general reduction of interest which has taken place. What was the third joint on which Mr. Goulburn insisted? He pointed to the low rate of interest on the Floating Debt. Mr. Goulburn's case was extremely strong when he spoke. Exchequer Bills wore giving to the holders only £2 4s. 0d. per cent. I am now able to borrow for the nation on
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    Treasury Bills for six months at the rate of £1 12 s. 7d. per annum—an extremely low rate of interest. With regard, then, to the Floating Debt, if in Mr. Goulbum's time he thought it manageable, it is still more manageable now. We have to deal with, even more favourable conditions at the present time, and also with more manageable amounts. In his time the Floating Debt, represented by Exchequer Bills, stood at £18,500,000. Our Floating Debt, represented by Exchequer and Treasury Bills, is under £ 14,000,000 at the present moment. So we stand in a better position than did Sir Robert Peel's Government in 1844. Sir. Goulburn spoke, further, of the position of the Revenue at that time, pointing out how it had increased and showed a more satisfactory condition than had existed for some years before. Again, I am able to say, though I will certainly not anticipate any declarations which it may be my duty to make when I have the honour to propose the Budget, that there is every evidence that our Revenue certainly stands, relatively to our Expenditure, in as good if not a better position than when Mr. Goulburn proposed his successful conversion, and with regard to the balances at our command they will, I trust, prove extremely strong. Every indication I have at present shows that the balances with which we shall be able to face any financial operation which may be necessary will be such as will be creditable to the resources of the country, and form a firm foundation for carrying out the proposals which I shall have the honour to submit. In one respect I will admit that I am not so favourably situated now as was the Government of Sir Robert Peel in 1844. No doubt there is not now the same serenity in the political atmosphere of the foreign world; there is not the same confidence in the continued absence of disturbing causes. But, on the other hand, I think that if in these days we were to wait until causes of apprehension wore entirely removed, until universal disarmament had lulled us into an absolute sense of confidence in prolonged and certain peace, it would be long before any Government could try to lighten the burden which the interest of the Debt imposes

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    on this country. I am weighing every word. I say. I have no fear that the success of my plan will be compromised by any foreign complications; and I believe the Government ought to feel loss anxiety on this score at the present moment than might have been the case a mouth or two ago. And now, Sir, having explained the conditions which I believe to be favourable to conversion, I feel relieved, as Mr. Goulbum felt relieved, from dwelling upon the duty of the Government to deal with the matter if the conditions are favourable. We cannot be content to see the credit of the country, as expressed in the price of its securities, kept down by that fear of conversion to which I have alluded. Surely, we ought to endeavour to see whether we cannot remove this incubus on the credit of the country and let our Stocks rise in the same manner in which the Stocks of other countries have risen. It will be seen—and I can quote figures to that effect—that while Consols, the historical Stock of this country, the champion Stock of the world, if I may use the phrase, used to have a proud pro-eminence over all other Stocks, they have been severely pressed in competition by the Stocks of other countries, from, the fact that the latter were not in the position in which we have been—namely, hampered by enormous difficulties in dealing with their Stocks. We have seen that these Stocks have risen in an infinitely greater proportion than the Stocks of the richest country in the world, whose credit ought certainly to progress proportionately to that of any other country. Here are some figures as regards other States. An investor in the Stocks of the United States—which is, I, however, frankly admit, an entirely abnormal case—in 1867, 20 years ago, used to receive £8 12 s. 8d. interest on his capital. In 1887 he received £3 1s. 6d. Now I take the case of an investor in the Stocks of steady-going, peaceful, and consistently solvent States. Twenty years ago, an investor in Dutch Stock received £4 11 s. per cent for his money; in 1887 he received £3 8s., a fall in interest of £1 3s. An investor in Swedish Stock received 20 years ago £5 3s. He now receives £3 17 s., a difference of £1 6s. An investor in Consols, on the
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    other hand, received 20 years ago £3 4s. He now receives £2 19 s., a fall of only about 5s. I merely dwell on these figures to show that we have not had the advantage of the reduction in the rate of interest which has been enjoyed by almost all other States. Our Colonies and Dependencies have had greatly the better of us in this respect. In Indian Stocks the fall during the last 20 years has been 17 s. An investor in Canadian Stock used to receive £5 17 s. 8d. Last year he received £3 14 s. 7d., a fall of £2 3s. 1d. An investor in New South Wales Stock received formerly £5 10 s. He now receives £3 13 s 9 d., a fall of £1 16 s. 3d. I will not press this argument any further; but what I wish to point out is this—and here I trust I may have the assent of the Committee—that the investors in almost every kind of security have had to accept the fact that the rate of interest is falling, and must now be content with a smaller income from their capital than they enjoyed before. They have had to bow to the inexorable logic of facts, and if now the Government propose to reduce the income of the holders of Government securities, they are simply giving effect to natural causes which, have operated on every other kind of security. They are only putting the holders of Consols in the same position as the holders of other securities. In consequence of capital ceasing to command the same rate of interest which it used to command, investors in Consols have to make a certain sacrifice of income—a sacrifice which the State is bound to claim, as other States have done in the interest of the taxpayers of the country, and in the interest of those who wish to see the burdens of the people lightened. Mr. Courtney, I have endeavoured to prove that it is the duty of the Government to tackle this question, and I have endeavoured to prove the favourable circumstances which surround us for carrying out that which we believe to be our duty. And now I wish to call the attention of the Committee to the precedents which we have in this matter, and, technical as the subject is, I trust that I shall not weary the Committee if I point out to them what our forefathers have done in this direction, and what

    713
    we may learn from the examples which they have set us. There have been, I think, four or five successful conversions in the history of the last 60 years. In 1822 Mr. Vansittart, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, converted Navy and other Five per Cents, amounting on the whole—I call the attention of the Committee to the magnitude of the sums dealt with in those days—to £152,000,000. And hero we have the first example of a very interesting point, that in this conversion Mr. Vansittart did not ask the holders to assent; but Parliament enacted that those who did not dissent should be assumed to have assented to the terms proposed. I would call the attention of the Committee to this course, which has been followed on every occasion when a successful conversion has taken place. Mr. Vansittart allowed one fortnight to holders to notify their dissent, and a longer period to residents abroad. Holders not dissenting wore deemed to agree. A fortnight in those days represented a much shorter time than a fortnight would at the present day, owing to the difficulty of travelling and the absence of telegraphs; yet the House will observe that in 1822 it was thought right by Parliament to give a fortnight's notice to the holders of a given Stock to say whether they assented, and to enact that if within that limit they did not signify dissent they should be held to have assented to the conversion. It was not assumed that all would assent, and the question arose as to what was to be done with the dissentients. [A laugh.] Well, I it was very simple; and I am not sorry that this should be emphasized, because it is upon this point that a great part of my case will rest. There has been a general impression that all holders of Government securities, whether Consols or Reduced, or Now Three per Cents, are entitled to be all paid off on a certain day in full unless they; assent to the terms of conversion offered, and that dissent implies immediate payment, and the consequence is that fund holders are tempted to offer a kind of passive resistance to the State. They say—"we hold some £500,000,000 Stock; and no Government can pay off that sum on a given day; we smile at you; we defy you; you will never be able to deal
    714
    with us; we know that you cannot touch us." Those who have studied the history of previous conversions will have discovered the great and serious error which fund holders labour under in that respect, and it is in order to dispel that error that I have to trouble the House with the precedents which show that our forefathers certainly did not deem it necessary to proceed in that fashion. Dissentients in the case I have been quoting were to be paid off in the order of the receipt of their notices of dissent. Such payment was to begin four months from the commencement of the time allowed for the notice, and I call the attention of the House to the words "to be continued at such periods and in such manner as Parliament may direct "—that is to say, Parliament then kept in its hands, as it has done in all successful conversions, and as I shall ask it to keep in its hands on the present occasion, on which I hope also to make a successful conversion, the power to pay off the dissentients "at such periods and in such manner as Parliament may direct." Mr. Vansittart proposed to convert £152,000,000, a large order; and what was the amount of dissentients? The amount was under £3,000,000 sterling, and he paid them off. I come now to the next conversion. In 1824 Mr. Robinson had to deal with a somewhat smaller sum. He had to deal with £75,000,000, which he proposed to reduce from 4 to 3½ per cent. In this case six months' notice was necessary. Nevertheless, the non-expression of dissent was here again deemed to signify assent. Six weeks from the 23rd of April wore allowed for dissents to come in, and again, it will be asked, what did Mr. Robinson propose to do with those who dissented? Did he propose to pay them all off on a certain day? Not at all. He undertook to pay off one-third of the holding of dissentients on the 10th of October, and the remaining two-thirds wore liable to be paid off "at such time or times, and either in one sum or in such proportion or proportions as might be fixed by the Treasury," provided six months' notice was given, and not less than one-tenth part of the remaining amount was paid off at one time. Again it will there be seen that the same principle was acted upon. Parliament did

    715
    not require the Treasury to pay off the I whole of the dissentients on a given day, but it left great elasticity in order to regulate the time of repayment according to the amount held by dissentients; and I particularly wish to point out that having enacted that not less than one-tenth part should be paid off at one time, Parliament evidently meant that the Chancellor of the Exchequer might pay off one-tenth at one time. The dissentients at that time held Stock to the amount of £7,000,000, and they were all paid off in full at once. The next case was Mr. Goulburn's conversion of the New Four Per Cents, amounting to £154,000,000, into an equal amount of Three-and-a-half per Cents, guaranteed for 10 years. This was in 1830. Again assent was presumed unless dissent was signified between the 26th of March and the 24th of April. Less than a month was thus given for dissent; and again dissentients were to be paid off at such periods and in such manner as Parliament might direct, and in the order of the receipt of their notices. I entreat the Committee not to think that I am performing an unnecessary task in citing all these precedents, because they bear very directly on the proposals that the Government are about to make. I wish to prove that the proposals which the Government, on their responsibility, are about to submit to the Committee are entirely in harmony with the precedents that have been set to us, and I shall endeavour to establish that we are proposing to follow those successful conversions on parallel lines; and I shall appeal to this House of Commons to do what previous Houses of Commons have done on similar occasions—to give us similar powers in order that we may have the hope of securing a similar success. What happened under Mr. Goulburn's Act of 1830? The dissentients were only £3,000,000 out of £154,000,000. Remember that in all these cases these eminent men faced the same problem that you have to face now. They faced gigantic sums; they took great powers, and the result was successful, notwithstanding the largeness of the sums. There was a smaller conversion in 1834. Lord Althorp in that year converted Four per Cents, amounting to £10,600,000, into an equal amount
    716
    of Three-and-a-Half per Cents, guaranteed for six years; and there, again, assent was presumed unless dissent was signified between May 8 and May 28, about three weeks being given for the dissentients to come in. On that occasion there was a much larger proportion of dissentients—namely, £4,000,000, and they were paid off at once by the Savings' Bank money in the hands of the National Debt Commissioners. That was a smaller operation than any I have yet alluded to. Now I come to the great and very successful operation of Mr. Goulburn in 1844, and, as it is mainly on the lines of that precedent that I ask the House to act on this occasion, I wish to call the special attention of the House to its features. It was a gigantic operation—namely, the conversion of £249,000,000 of Three-and-a-Half per Cents into an equal amount of Three-and-a-Quarter per Cents, guaranteed for 10 years, and then falling automatically to Three per Cents, guaranteed for 20 years. There are the existing New Threes as they are called. And with regard to all this Stock, with the exception of £10,000,000 which stood upon a special footing, assent was presumed unless dissent was signified between March 11 and 23. Notices of dissent were to be numbered as received, and dissentients were to be paid off in such order, at such period, and in such manner as Parliament might direct. Again, you find this great power entrusted by Parliament to the Executive Government to pay off dissentients in such order and manner as Parliament might direct. The powers given were strong, the terms offered were fair, and what was the result? Out of £249,000,000, there were only £103,000 of dissentients. I now come to the case of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), who in 1853 attempted a similar task. He had to face greater difficulties than had been encountered by his Predecessors, and greater difficulties than those which exist at the present moment. That large sum of which I have just spoken, and which had now become the New Threes, but which, though large, were a manageable amount—at that time, I think, some £200,000,000 could not be touched,

    717
    under the terms of Mr. Goulburn's conversion, until the year 1874. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman could only deal with the tremendous sum of Consols and Reduced which, I think, amounted at that time to fully £500,000,000; and they stood in this favourable position, that he could not, as previous Chancellors of the Exchequer had done, act suddenly with regard to them; he could not impose the short notice which previous Chancellors of the Exchequer had been able to give, and which had in great part facilitated their success. Consols and Reduced were entitled to a year's notice, and, consequently, the right hon. Gentleman was quite unable to apply that principle of non-dissent signifying assent which characterized all previous conversions. I need not add, because it is in the memory of those who have studied the subject, that the right hon. Gentleman had other difficulties—that, unfortunately, he fell upon evil times, and that before his conversion could be sufficiently tested there were foreign troubles which disturbed the Money Market, and threw down the price of Consols; and thus the scheme which he so carefully elaborated was beaten partly by the state of the Money Market produced by the course of foreign events, and partly by the special difficulty of his position in not being able to give a short notice. The scheme of the right hon. Gentleman was of necessity purely optional, and the consequence was that there was great difficulty in his carrying it out under the circumstances of the year 1853. The right hon. Gentleman at that time spoke of the immense obstacles to approaching those Three per Cents—the great phalanx of Consols as I think he called them—and he pointed out the disadvantage at which any Chancellor of the Exchequer would be placed in tackling Consols. But at the present moment the amount of that gigantic Stock has been considerably reduced, and there exists a Stock which did not exist in his time—namely, the New Three per Cents; or rather they existed in his time, but it was impossible for him to operate upon them; but now they are a Stock which it is possible for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to operate upon. It will be Been that what I wish to suggest to
    718
    the Committee is this—that the comparative failure of the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman was not due to the inherent difficulties of conversion, but to special circumstances. It was due to the particular circumstances of the time, and to the fact that the very success of the previous conversion had postponed the powers of redemption in the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the more manageable portion of the public funds. I now come to the last attempt at conversion—that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Childers), who again adopted the optional principle. My right hon. Friend did not say that compulsion should never be tried, but he said that he desired to make the first attempt one of agreement rather than of compulsion. After all the criticisms that had been passed on the right hon. Gentleman, I may yet say this with confidence—that the step he took then, though it had at the time only a partial success, has, nevertheless, paved the way to the possibility of a larger conversion now. It has enabled us to test the relative value of other kinds of Stock, and has proved most valuable in preparing the ground. No one who examines those indicators of the resent value of Government securities, the Two-and-Three-Quarters and Two-and-a-Half per Cents, will say that the creation of those testing machines of public credit in this country has not been extremely useful, and enabled us to go forward with a confidence which otherwise it would have been exceedingly difficult for us to feel. The terms given by my right hon. Friend were these—he gave £102 of Two-and-Three-Quarters, or £108 of Two-and-a-Halfs (both irredeemable till 1905) for £100 Three per Cents, which was a guarantee of about 20 years from the date of conversion, He further gave holders six weeks in which to decide what course to pursue. Just my right hon. Friend did not give this option at once, but some time after the Act was passed; he gave it from September 7th till October 17th, while his Budget speech was made on April 24th. Thus the Stockholders had practically six months in which to reflect, and when we recollect the powerful interests arrayed against my right hon. Friend—and everyone knows the enor-

    719
    mous powers that may be exorcised by the fundholders—with all this strength arrayed against him, with so long an option and without any compulsory powers behind him, it is not surprising that he did not succeed to the extent which he could have wished. Nevertheless, he succeeded in converting £4,600,000 into Two-and-Three-Quarters, and £19,200,000 into Two-and-a-Halfs, and this Two-and-a-Half per cent Stock which my right hon. Friend created has been most valuable to us. I do not speak of the price of Two-and-a-Half Stock during the last two or three days, when the imminence of conversion may have had some effect; but this Stock had previously shown that the credit of the country was better than a 3 per cent credit, and therefore the Government were bound to see whether they could not utilize in some way or other that bettor credit, in order to secure some advantage for the taxpayer of the country. Now, I wish to ask the Committee what is the moral of the precedents with which I have troubled them at such length? It appears to me that they show us that the conditions of successful conversion on a large scale are, that assent should be presumed in the absence of an expression of dissent, that the time allowed for the expression of dissent should be strictly limited, and that power should be taken to pay off the dissentients in such manner as Parliament may direct. This latter power may be taken either in the same Bill that fixes the terms of conversion, or, as has been more frequently the case, in a separate and subsequent Bill. The first Bill usually states that the dissentients shall be paid off in such manner as Parliament may direct, and a second Bill is then afterwards introduced determining the mode of payment, Parliament being thus guided in the stops it may take for redemption by the amount of the dissentients. Two other lessons are to be learnt—that there has existed in nearly all these cases a strong objection to add to the capital of the Debt, and that the greatest success has attended these operations where the rate of interest has been reduced, by gradual steps, the interest of each stage being guaranteed for a certain number of years. Mr. Courtney, having now dealt with the precedents, I come to the
    720
    proposals which it is my duty to submit. I would wish, in the first place, to state the position of the three kinds of Stock at the present time. Those who have given study to the subject are thoroughly aware of the difference in these Stocks, but there is a kind of popular idea that Consols mean Three per Cents generally. Technically the term Consols mean Consols proper, and not the New Three per Cents or the Reduced Three per Cents. Strictly speaking the great bulk of the Stocks are called in the Market Consols, while there are smaller amounts called the New Three per Cents and the Reduced, different conditions attaching to each of those different Stocks, the present figures are as follows:—the New Threes amount to £166,000,000, the Reduced to £69,000,000, and Consols to £323,000,000. I may now point out in passing that the Committee will observe how greatly the operations of previous Chancellors of the Exchequer in reducing the National Debt have succeeded in bringing these figures into much more manageable proportions than they had some 30 years ago, when it was infinitely more difficult to attempt such a scheme as the Government are about to propose to-day. And I wish to call particular attention to thi3 fact—that of the three Stocks I have named, while Consols and Reduced can only be paid off after a year's notice, and in sums of not less than £500,000 at a time, the New Threes, on the other hand, which have survived for 14 years the period when their guarantee against redemption came to an end, can be paid off without notice and in any amounts. This Stock represents and really is the same Stock as that which endured conversion at the hands of Mr. Goulburn in 1844, and the time for which it was guaranteed against redemption and reduction of interest expired in 1874. It is most important to remember that by the terms of its creation this Stock was liable and subject to redemption aft or 1874. There is no other provision bearing upon its redemption, yet it has been contended that it can only be paid off en bloc at one time. Whether that contention is accurate or not depends upon the reading of the words, "subject and liable to redemption after the year 1874." Anything further is inference, and it appears

    721
    to me that inference is all the other way, and that all the precedents up to this time go to show that Parliament would be able to pay off the Stock in any manner it pleased. The whole dealing of Parliament with these matters has gone to show that Parliament will not allow the Government to be reduced to an extremity, and to be forced to pay off every holder of a particular Stock by a given day. There has been a desire to deal with the holder fairly and equitably, but, at the same time, in a manner compatible with the interests of the State. I reject entirely the theory that the New Threes must be paid off at one moment and in one mass. Certainly equity must be observed in their payment. It is the duty of a great State and it rests with those who are responsible for its acts, and who represent it for the time being, to see that every possible justice and equity is shown to the creditors of the State. The equity in this case is, that they are liable to be redeemed after a certain date. But they are not entitled to the year's notice which attaches to Consols and Reduced. They are precisely in the same position to-day as the bulk of Three-and-a-Halfs were at the time of Mr. Goulburn's conversion. The present Government will deal with the New Threes as Mr. Goulburn dealt with the Three-and-a-Halfs in 1844, with certain modifications, which I will explain to the Committee, and they will follow the same lines, mutatis mutandis, as were followed by Mr. Goulburn in 1844. And now we have next to ask ourselves in what manner we ought to proceed—that is to say, if we are going to convert, what is the best system of conversion; and what are the terms we are going to give? Four courses are possible. We could convert into Two-and-a-Halfs, or into Two-and-Three-Quarters, or into a Two and-Three-Quarters Stock falling after a certain number of years to 2½, or we could give an option to take two different kinds of Stock. With regard to the latter alternative—that of giving an option to take two different classes of Stock—history teaches that simplicity is one of the best secrets of success; and it is better not to confuse the mind of the investor by offering him several alternatives. It is far better to rely upon some simple and equitable proposal which he can easily and thoroughly
    722
    understand. Therefore I reject the idea of giving an option. Let me call attention here to a matter to which I must again allude before I sit down. It has been represented to me from different quarters, both by the representatives of trustees and by the representatives of the great banking interests, that if it can be done, it is far preferable and more to the interest of all parties concerned that there should be one large Stock. I propose to follow, generally, that principle, and that principle will have effect given to it if the holders of Consols and the holders of Reduced are willing in any considerable numbers to accept the same terms, with such modifications as I shall point out, as will be given to the holders of the Now Threes with which I propose to deal on the lines laid down by Mr. Goulburn. There is no reason why the three kinds of Three per Cents should not be amalgamated into one Stock, with great and evident convenience and advantage to the holders of each of them. To that end it is desirable to establish a system of quarterly instead of half-yearly dividends, which will be more advantageous for the State, and more convenient for the investors themselves. Having thus rejected the idea of offering to the investor a number of alternatives, I also reject another suggestion—namely, that of establishing a Two-and-Three-Quarters per Cent Stock, which does not go down automatically to Two and a Half. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Edinburgh (Mr. Childers) was right, in making his optional proposal, not to go too far, or attempt too much; but dealing, as I think the Committee will, compulsorily with the matter, and requiring the investor either to accept the terms offered or to be paid off, I do not think that I should secure the advantage to which the State is entitled if I were simply to convert into a Two-and-Three-Quarters per Cent Stock. We ought, I think, to reduce the Stock to 2¾ for a term of years, and then to let it descend automatically without any further action of Parliament to 2½ percent, precisely in the same manner as the Three-and-a-Half per Cents descended automatically, first to 3¼ and ultimately to 3 per cent. You will see from what I have said that I also reject the proposal that the Stock should be im-

    723
    mediately reduced to 2½ per cent. I do not deny that strong arguments have been urged upon me in that direction. The interest, however, of the investing public and that of the great banking community in this matter is not entirely identical. I am not sure but that the banking community would prefer a Stock of 2½ per cent, at once settling the question as regards interest, and leaving room for an increase in the capital of the Debt. But, on the other hand, the interest of annuitants and of
    the community at large seem to lie in a different direction. The investing public do not care as much as the banking community do for a rise in the price of Stock, because a great many of them have only an interest in the revenue derived from Consols and other Stock for a given time, and not in the body of the Stock. It is useless to say to the annuitant that the price of his Stock will rise from £95 to par, in the course of a few years, if in the meantime the interest is to be cut down to 2½ per cent instead of 2¾. I think Mr. Goulburn was right in adopting the principle of breaking the fall to the annuitant, and that it will be better to go down by degrees than at once to make ½ per cent difference in the rate of interest. If you go by very large stops at a time you will make the case of the present annuitant harder than was the case of the old annuitant, because taking ½ per cent off 3 per cent will be felt by the annuitant more than taking ½per cent off 3½ per cent. Looking, therefore, to the general interest of the community, the Government have decided not to follow the course of reducing the rate to 2½ per cent immediately. Another chief reason for not taking that course is, that we do not wish to add, as we should be compelled to add if we proceeded on that basis, to the capital of the Debt. You may say that you can establish a Sinking Fund, and so adjust the matter that there would be really no difference. Nevertheless, there is a strong objection to the system of offering a considerable bonus to the holders of existing Stock to induce them to convert it into Stock of a lower denomination. We have, therefore, accepted the principle of a Two and Three Quarters per Cent Stock, descending automatically to 2½, and after the most careful
    724
    examination of the prices of the different Stocks representing the credit of the State, of the Local Loans Stock, of the 2½, the 2¾, and of the Three per Cent Stock, we have thought that a middle term, that would at once secure equity to the State and to the fund-holders, would be to give a term of 15 years at 2¾, descending automatically to 2½ for 20 years. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh proposed a scheme by which 2¾ would be given for 20 years, and £102 of the new Stock for each £100 of old. The advance, however, of what I may term the credit of the country and the experience we have gained of the Stock created by the right hon. Gentleman have indicated that it is desirable to shorten the number of years, and we should not be entitled to adopt his scheme without injustice to the taxpayers, or to give a larger number of years at 2¾ than I have stated. But I ought to mention one further modification which we propose. I have said that we offer 15 years of 2¾, but we are anxious that the terms we offer to the holders of the New Three per Cents should be also accepted by the holders of Consols and Reduced Stock, with certain modifications. The holders of those Stocks are entitled anyhow to continue to receive 3 per cent for one year longer. As, therefore, we wish to give the same Stock for the sake of simplicity to the holders of every kind of Three per Cents, and at the same time to insure the large Stock I have alluded to, we propose to make this further modification—that instead of the New Threes continuing only a half year at their present interest of 3 per cent, we shall give them one year at 3 per cent and 14 years at 2¾. This will give trustees time to turn round, and annuitants time to adjust themselves to the new terms. The holders of New Threes would in any case be entitled to continue at the same rate of interest from April to October next, but we propose to let them continue at the same rate of interest from April next to the following April. I am bound to say that in making this proposal I have consulted the general interest rather than my own, if I may say, so as Chancellor of the Exchequer, because in postponing the relief to the taxpayer for a whole year I am destroying the advantage which.

    725
    personally I might have derived from a reduction of interest that would have made an important difference in the Budget for the year over which I shall have control. A year of grace in which they can turn round and accommodate their expenditure to their incomes will be, I believe, an immense been to small investors. I have stated that dividends should be paid quarterly. Assent will be presumed unless dissent is expressed by March 29.
    LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: Will that apply to the case of all Stocks?
    MR. GOSCHEN: I am obliged to the noble Lord for his interruption. My answer is—No, only to the New Three per Cents. I will refer to the case of the other Stocks presently. In making this proposal I shall, of course, have to appeal, I hope not in vain, to the House and to hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to facilitate the passage of this Bill, so that it may pass this House before March 29, because they will see, by what has gone before, that upon the rapidity with which such a measure is parsed, and upon the decision and determination of the House to support the Government, its success must ultimately depend. I trust, therefore, that if the principle of the Bill is opposed by right hon. Gentlemen opposite, they will fight fairly, so that if it is supported by the majority of the House it may be passed within a reasonable time. I also trust that right hon. Gentlemen opposite will think that this is a fair notice to give, and that the time could not have been extended without danger to the measure, and without departing from substantial precedents which have resulted in success. As regards trustees, I am anxious that they should have every possible opportunity afforded them to remove their Trust Funds to other securities if they should think fit to do so, and we, therefore, propose that the time for trustees to express their dissent should be extended to April 12. There are frequently difficulties in the case of the trustees of charities and of public property, and I am not anxious, and I am sure that the House of Commons is not anxious, that trustees should be taken at a disadvantage. I may further say that clauses will be introduced into the measure to relieve trustees from any responsibility connected with the pro-
    726
    posed conversion of the Stock held by them, and, under the circumstances of the case, to make their action easier. Provision will also be make in regard to powers of attorney and other matters, so that the scheme may work smoothly, as, in fact, similar schemes have done on previous occasions. I now come to the question of Consols and Reduced. Here we must bear in mind, first, the expediency of amalgamating all the Stocks into one great Stock; and, secondly, the privilege enjoyed by holders of Consols and Reduced that they cannot be paid off without a year's notice—that is to say, they have an option against the State. If we were to give notice to-morrow that Consols and Reduced should be redeemable after the lapse of a year, the holders would be able to wait and to take advantage of any events which might happen and which might tell against the Government, and the Government might be placed in the position of wanting funds, not, indeed, to pay them all off, which would not be necessary, but to deal substantially with the Stock. It will be an immense advantage if the holders of Consols and Reduced can be induced to forego their right of notice for one year, and to accept at once the same Stock which is offered to the holders of the New Threes. What I offer, therefore, the holders of Consols and Reduced is this—that, in consideration of their foregoing the right of notice for a year, they should have the advantage of ¼per cent; in fact, that they should receive £100 of the new Stock and 5s. in place of every £100, the 5s, to be paid in cash on conversion, so that they may take identically the same Stock as is offered to the holders of the New Threes. I do not know whether I have made myself distinctly understood. I wish to be very clear on this point, and the Committee will allow me to repeat the statement. In consideration of the holders of Consols and Reduced assenting to come in now within a given date—that is to say, before the 12th of April—and thus relieving the Government of the difficulties it might encounter, not insuperable difficulties, in giving the notice I have spoken of, they will be entitled to 5s advantage per £100 over the New Threes. I may further add that in the case of the New Three per Cents, where conversion is automatic—that is, where we presume assent unless.

    727
    dissent is expressed—in fact, in the compulsory part of the scheme, a commission to agents, solicitors, or brokers would seem out of place, and I do not propose to offer it. But in the case of Consols and Reduced, where the initiative rests with the holders, and where a large portion of the trustees and investors most probably consult their agents—whether they are bankers, solicitors, or brokers—and where proceedings must be taken at the Bank of England for giving effect to the option, if exercised, I propose to authorize the Bank of England to pay a small agency commission of 1s. 6d. per £100 to authorized agents, so that the holders of such Stock may not have to sacrifice any part of the ¼ per cent which is given them in consideration of their foregoing their year's notice in any expenses attendant on the conversion. And now I wish to state, both with regard to the New Threes, where the compulsory process is employed, and with regard to Consols and Reduced, what are the arguments to be urged why holders should accept the terms of conversion. I wish to point out to them in what position they would stand if they did not accept the terms which we give them within the time which we offer. And, first, as to the New Threes, let me point out to the Committee the position in which they stand. The holders might, perhaps, use two arguments. One is to say to the Government—"You cannot pay us off; we hold £166,000,000, and we defy you to be able to pay off that amount." The other argument they might use is to say—" We do not mind if you do pay us off." Now, with regard to the first argument, I have pointed out to the Committee that Mr. Goulburn risked paying off in 1830 £150,000,000, and in 1844 £250,000,000. But the Exchequer at the present moment is infinitely stronger than it was in 1844. Consider for a moment the immense resources at the disposal of the Government. In 1844 there wore under £30,000,000 in the hands of the Savings Banks Commissioners; but I ask the Committee to remember that that fund, which is at the disposal of the Government for assisting them in transactions of this kind, at the present time, instead of being £30,000,000, is £60,000,000, immediately available to be utilized, if Parliament thinks fit, and safely utilized, in paying off dissentients. Then there
    728
    is the cheapness of capital at the present moment and the resource of drawing on Exchequer bonds and bills. I will not trouble the Committee by reading the precedents; but in all the cases where Acts have been passed to make payment to dissentients, the widest powers have been entrusted to the Treasury in order to deal with them. I notice that in the debate of 1844—perhaps the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian may remember it—not a single question was asked of Mr. Goulburn as to the measures he would take for paying off dissentients; and in 1830, when one or two Members raised the point, Mr. Goulburn declined, I think very wisely, to state the process by which he would pay them off. I do not know whether it will be thought that I should be pressed to state the precise methods by which dissentients would be paid off. I should strongly deprecate such a course; I should strongly deprecate being placed at a disadvantage compared with previous Chancellors of the Exchequer, who have been allowed great latitude on this point; and I hope right hon. Gentlemen opposite may see their way in this respect also to follow the precedents which have been set. All I ask is that the Government may be given the power which has always been given hitherto—namely, the power of paying off the dissentients in such manner, and in such order, and at such periods, as Parliament may direct. If this be done, I do not think it possible that we should be driven into a corner. The resources at our disposal are extremely great. Personally, I do not anticipate any large number of dissents, for reasons which I think will command themselves to the Committee; but if there are a considerable number, I make no doubt we shall have ample power, with the assistance of Parliament, to take such measures as will promptly discharge their claims. Now I come to the second possible argument—"We do not mind if you do pay us off. We will take the money at par and reinvest it in other securities." I will assume, but I will not grant, that the new Stock will not be above par. But this is the point to which I invite the attention of the Committee—in what manner are the holders going to invest those millions which they say they will take from the Exchequer? Where will

    729
    they find the investments? To what markets will they go with the sovereigns in which they will be paid off? Where will they find safe Stocks in which to invest in the circumstances? I say they could not find such Stocks; and I can prophesy what would happen. They would have to come and buy the very securities which we should put on the Market in order to pay them off, and to take them at a lower interest than the Stocks they now own. I trust I have made that clear. My argument is this. Supposing £50,000,000 were to be paid off; it will be raised by Exchequer Bills, by the issue of new Stock, or it will be taken from the Saving Bank Funds. There will be no new securities of the highest character in which the money so paid could be invested except those new securities which we shall offer. Or, again, supposing they did buy other securities, those who sold those securities to the buyers would be the persons who would be compelled to invest in the Stock which we put on the Market. I do not, therefore, apprehend that there will be any large number of dissentients among holders of New Threes. But I now ask why Consols and Reduced should come in, protected as they are by a year's notice? Consols are less than £330,000,000 now, and of Reduced there are not more than £60,000,000 worth in the hands of the public. If we were to give notice to Consols and Reduced now, they would be very much in the same position next year which New Threes are in to-day, only that they would have to be paid off in amounts of £500,000 or more. But it would not be necessary to pay off in such small amounts. We have resources now which our Predecessors did not enjoy. We have £10,000,000 a-year which has to be invested in Government Funds; and looking to the fact that it was clearly not the intention of Parliament to pay off Consol-holders in a day, it seems to me to be clear that we should be able and would determine to deal with Consol-holders, if they do not see their way to come in on the optional terms, not indeed in an arbitrary, but in a very decisive manner. We cannot endure this state of things to continue, that they should at once enjoy the rights of 3 per cent interest, when the national credit justifies a lower rate, and should be paid off not at par, but at 2 or 3 per cent above par. There-
    730
    fore, it is obvious that it will be necessary to make arrangements, after first giving a year's notice to Consols and Reduced, in order to begin the process of the gradual redemption of those Stocks. But I trust that such a process will not be necessary. If they come in now they gain terms which I think the Committee will feel are fair terms. We offer them 5s. down, which represents the difference between 2¾ per cent and 3 per cent for one year; and they will have what I know they value, a single large Stock, an object which might be defeated if Consol-holders in large and overwhelming numbers should refuse to come in; and surely it would also be to the interest of the Consol-holders wore the Market in the largest sense to be relieved from that constant apprehension which we felt if there is a likelihood of their being paid off by degrees, and from that uncertainty which has so long prevailed. I trust, therefore, that, taking a prudent view of their own interests, at least a large number of them will take the new Stock on the terms which we propose. I trust that I have made our proposals sufficiently clear to the Committee, considering their extremely technical character. I need only add this with regard to Consols, in case a difficulty should be raised about the dividends being payable on the 5th of January and the 5th of July, that if the holders come in they will be paid at once the accrued interest, which is f per cent on the 5th of April, and will thon receive the same Stock as all the others—a Stock bearing a quarterly dividend, of which the first quarter will be paid on the 5th July next. It remains for me to show, what I trust will be of interest to the Committee—namely, the saving to the Revenue which will result from these proposals. If the New Threes alone are converted, there will arise an advantage to the Revenue from April, 1889, of £410,000 a-year; and from April, 1903, of £820,000; but if the conversion should be thoroughly successful, if Consols and Reduced should come in, if our hopes in that respect be realized, then from April, 1889, there would be in round figures a saving of £1,400,000 a-year, and after 14 years more a saving of £2,800,000 a-year. I have put these figures before the Committee, and the

    731
    Committee will judge whether they are a sufficient inducement to engage this House upon the great work to which I invite then in the measure which I have announced. We know how greatly we touch some vast interests in this matter; but these interests are not vaster than those which have been tackled successfully before by other Chancellors of the Exchequer. The country is as strong to deal with a problem of this sort as it has been in previous times, and I firmly believe that if Parliament should see its way to support the present Government in this matter, as previous Parliaments have supported other Governments, we shall be able to give this great relief to the taxpayers of the country, while at the same time offering what I regard as most fair and equitable terms to the holders of the public funds. Mr. Goulburn, in the speech to which I have so often alluded, repeatedly spoke of the duty of the Government, as servants of the public, to make the best terms possible for the public, but also to show sufficient tenderness in dealing with the creditors of the State, so as not to injure that great engine of credit upon which all States must rely in times of trouble. It would be a great disaster if any proposals of this kind, though they might relieve us from a certain burden, affected in any way the reputation of the country, either for honesty or for power. I believe that our present proposals are conceived in a sense of equity both to the creditors of the State, and to the taxpayers. We place large proposals before the Committee, and appeal to the House of Commons to pass them rapidly into law, if hon. Members see that they can countenance the principles which we have embodied in them.
    Motion made and Question proposed,
    "That it is expedient to authorise the conversion of the New Three Per Cent. Annuities, the Consolidated Three Per Cent. Annuities, and the
    Reduced Three Per Cent. Annuities into certain other Annuities, and to
    provide for the redemption of the New Three Per Cent. Annuities."—(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
    MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: It is with great satisfaction that I rise to discharge a debt, which I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer has laid upon us, by making the acknowledgments which his
    732
    statement deserves. It is quite plain to me, apart from the merits of his plan, that the project he has laid before us is the result of laborious, careful, and thorough examination, which has been conducted in a wise spirit of regard for a long course of precedents which have afforded him material help and guidance in considering his proposals; and likewise that his mind is fully alive to the principle which ought to govern his conduct, and to the great objects which he ought to have in view in seeking economy for the benefit of the State and the nation; but at the same time bearing in mind that economy can never be safely sought or satisfactorily attained if there be any forgetfulness of the principles of equity in the case of those with whom we deal as public creditors, and also bearing in mind the most fatal of all errors undoubtedly which a Finance Minister or Parliament could commit—namely, the taking of any steps which would have the effect of lowering the standard of public credit in this country, or producing any uncertainty in the public mind as to the position which Parliament has maintained. So far I have very great satisfaction in congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon the plan which he has laid before us, and upon the manner in which he has addressed himself to a very arduous labour. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the midst of the vast subject before him, not unnaturally, did not mention to us on what day he proposes to bring this subject under the consideration of the House with a view to a definitive vote being taken upon it. I take it for granted that he has no intention of asking the House on this occasion for any vote which will in the slightest degree commit the House or fetter the freedom of its judgment. One word on the subject, and it is that, having a recollection of what has passed on previous occasions, I am quite sure there is no way in which we could more seriously injure the great public interests involved in this question than by making any undue demand upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer for a lengthened time, with a view to the consideration of this matter. Of all things to be desired, and what I am sure I may expect my hon. Friends near me to keep in view and to impress on our minds is, that it is of the highest

    733
    importance that we should proceed to give a definitive judgment upon this question at the very earliest moment consistent with the largeness of some of the points and the necessary complexity of the subject. Therefore, whatever reasonable demand the Chancellor of the Exchequer may make in that respect undoubtedly will have our support. I think, without prejudice to the freedom of judgment of the House, I may fairly say that the prospect which the right hon. Gentleman has laid before us inspires us with the hope that much public benefit may be extracted from the plan which he has propounded. I will not say whether it is to operate upon the largest scale which the most sanguine man may hope for, or whether it will operate only upon a more limited scale which the Chancellor of the Exchequer regards as being more absolutely within his reach; but I will confine myself to the general observation that much good, I feel satisfied, will be extracted from it. No doubt, the question of the precise amount of time to be allowed for giving assent is a question of considerable delicacy and difficulty. I do not think it right that we should be more severe on the present occasion than the latest precedent warrants. But, on the other hand, it is right that we should take into view that within the last 30 or 40 years, and since the latest of the greater operations, the means of communication have been very greatly facilitated and expedited, and something may be allowed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that very account. There was one point on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer made an appeal to us, and which I am very desirous to answer. He said that he hoped that there would be no undue disposition to press him for a disclosure of the terms and particulars at the present moment, or at any early stage, as to the mode in which repayment is to be effected in those cases in which it is necessary. With regard to this subject, the Chancellor of the Exchequer undoubtedly made out a very strong case from references to former examples, showing that it has been the practice of Parliament, founded upon wise principles of consideration for the public interest, to reserve to itself great discretion, either to be exercised by itself or by the Executive Government, and it has not been the practice to make
    734
    premature engagements which might have the effect of causing considerable embarrassment at later stages with respect to the details of the manner in which, in the event of refusal to accept these terms, repayment to the public creditor would be made. Then I wish to refer to another point mentioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and undoubtedly it is a point which the public creditor will justly and wisely take into his consideration. I speak here from a long experience of these matters, and having felt most severely the comparative impotence of the Exchequer as it stood 40 or 50 years ago, with respect to the amount resting in its hands and available at its own discretion for making good its position in the Money Market in the event of a great monetary operation upon the National Debt. I think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has in no degree overstated the immense improvement in the position of the Exchequer. I may even say that, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not understated it, yet the statement he made is one which would not of itself, I think, give the full measure of that improvement. In one portion of his speech he said that at the time of Mr. Goulburn's operation the Government had nothing in their hands excepting £30,000,000 of Savings Banks' deposits, which, however, might be regarded as a fund intended to assist them in carrying through an operation of this kind. He then went on to say that there is now a capital of £60,000,000 instead of £30,000,000 at the command of the Government. Now I venture to make two remarks upon that subject, both of them tending not to weaken, but rather to enhance, the effect which it may be calculated to produce. First of all with regard to the £30,000,000. At the time when Mr. Goulburn had to effect his operation we had not yet reached to the full acknowledgment of what I take to be undeniably the sound and true doctrine that, with regard to Savings Banks' deposits, the State or the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a banker and not a trustee. The old doctrine which the trustees of Savings Banks were then disposed to promote was that he was only a trustee, and had no more discretion in the use of those funds than a trustee possesses. A banker does, at his own

    735
    risk, as he thinks proper with the funds at his command. The Chancellor of the Exchequer does what he thinks proper, or what Parliament has thought proper to enable him to do. It was only in a long course of years that that doctrine came thoroughly to be understood. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in another portion of his speech, stated what is most important—namely, that if you take the capital value of the deposits now in the hands of the State, they are far more than £60,000,000. I believe they have distinctly reached £100,000,000; but for convenience, and even the enhancement of the power of the Government, a large portion of these deposits has been converted into Annuities now rapidly repayable, which consequently places a large amount month by month, or certainly quarter by quarter, at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This I venture to say, because I think it is material, that it should be understood that if, on the one side, he is endeavouring to deal with a very large amount of the Public Debt, on the other hand, he is in a position of strength which has been gradually in course of expansion, and which I hope Parliament will enable him to use to the public advantage. I will not detain the House with further observations, except on this occasion to give my congratulations and the expression to him of my hearty good wishes for the careful and candid and, as far as possible, favourable consideration of these proposals, which evidently have been elaborated with so much care by my right hon. Friend, and the expression of my own full conviction that no motives connected with the organization of Party or difference of opinion on any other subject, will prevent the House, or any portion or section of the House, from giving to this subject and to these proposals an entirely and absolutely candid and impartial consideration.
    MR. GOSCHEN: In reply to the question put by my right hon. Friend I have to say that I shall bring in a Bill founded on the Report of these Resolutions on Monday. The Bill, I hope, will be in the hands of hon. Members on Tuesday, and we propose to take the second reading on Friday at a Morning Sitting at 2 o'clock. I would add the expression of my most cordial thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for the manner in which he has received these
    736
    proposals, and say how deeply gratified I am to have, I will not say the countenance, for I do not wish to commit my right hon. Friend, but the general sense of approval of my right hon. Friend, who was in the Government of Sir Robert Peel in 1841, when Mr. Goulburn's second great and successful conversion took place.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I understand that the second reading of the Bill will be taken on the 16th of March?
    MR. GOSCHEN: Yes.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Then what will be the exact day on which notices will be given. I understand it will be on the 29th of March?
    MR. GOSCHEN: In the case of the Act of 1844 Mr. Goulburn proposed Resolutions on the 8th of March; the Royal Assent was given on the 22nd of March, and the time for expression of dissent expired on the 23rd of March. In this case the time for such expression is prolonged beyond what it was in the days of Mr. Goulburn—namely, to the 29th March; but we shall press forward the Bill if there is a general feeling in favour of it in the House. After it has passed the second reading on Friday we shall proceed immediately to take the Committee stage, and then the remaining stages as fast as possible. I should hope, if there is a general assent to the broad principles of the Bill, that it may become law on the 23rd or 24th of March.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The right hon. Gentleman will excuse me, I am sure, for asking one other question. On what date are we to understand that notices will issue?
    MR. GOSCHEN: No individual notices have been given in this case.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I am speaking of Gazette notices.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Of course, every opportunity will be taken to give the utmost publicity. I have not examined all the precedents on this point; but every means will be taken to ventilate the subject so that holders generally will know what is going on; and I shall be most careful to see that every one has proper notice.
    MR. BARTLEYasked if this would affect the interest on the Savings Bank Accounts. Would this be dealt with in the Bill?
    MR. GOSCHEN: No, it is not touched in the Bill. No doubt it is a question which, will arise at a future date.
    MR. W. E. GLADSTONE: I may point out to the hon. Gentleman that this is an entirely separate and distinct arrangement. The position with regard to the Savings Bank Trustees is a mere coincidence.
    SIR JULIAN GOLDSMIDasked how the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would ascertain who were the trustees, seeing that the Bank of England did not recognize trustees in their books.
    MR. GOSCHEN: If the hon. Gentleman puts this question at another time, I will explain what the clauses will be with regard to trustees. The point is one that will not fail to be noticed.
    SIR ROBERT FOWLERsaid, he would point out that obviously the statement of his right hon. Friend would go all over the country in the papers of that evening, and therefore no one would have reason to complain of want of notice.
    MR. MURDOCHasked when the bonus of ¼ per cent to the consenting holders of Consols was to be paid—whether or not it would be paid with the first dividend.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Yes, Sir; it will he paid with the first quarterly dividend, if not before.
    MR. BARTLEYsaid, that he understood that until there was fresh legislation the Savings Bank system would remain as at present.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Yes Sir.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    The following Resolutions were also agreed to:—
    (2.) That the sums required in connection with such conversion and redemption be raised by the creation of now stock, or by the issue of Exchequer Bonds, Exchequer Bills, or Treasury Bills, or by temporary loans, and that the principal moneys so borrowed, and all interest from time to time due thereon, be charged on the Consolidated Fund.
    (3.) That such new stock be created, bearing interest for the year ending on the 5th day of April 1889 at the rate of three pounds per cent, and thereafter until the 5th day of April 1903, at the rate of two pounds fifteen shillings per cent, and thereafter at the rate of two pounds ten shillings per cent, and that the dividends thereon be paid quarterly.
    738
    (4.) That all sums for defraying expenses incurred in carrying out such conversion and redemption, including such sums as may be required for facilitating such conversion, and additional remuneration to the Banks of England and Ireland, be charged on the Consolidated Fund.
    (5.) That provision be made for carrying out the arrangements necessary for such conversion of stocks and redemption of annuities.
    Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next.

  EAST INDIA (PURCHASE AND CONSTRUCTION OF RAILWAYS) BILL.

    SECOND READING. [ADJOURNED DEBATE.]
    Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [5th March], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
    Question again proposed.
    Debate resumed.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed for Thursday next.

  PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SECRETARY TO THE LORD LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND. [SALARY, &c]

    COMMITTEE.
    Considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH)said, he wished to make an appeal to hon. Members below the Gangway opposite not to oppose this Resolution. He was aware that those hon. Member strongly objected to the Bill; but he would undertake that full opportunity for discussion should be afforded on the second reading. It would be quite unusual to oppose the measure at this stage.
    Motion made, and Question proposed.
    "That it is expedient to authorize the payment, out of moneys to he provided by Parliament, of a Salary to the Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland."—(Mr. William Henry Smith.)
    MR. DILLONsaid, he objected to this Bill ab initio, because it created a now office. It was all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to tell them that they would have an opportunity of discussing the details of the Bill, but he claimed before the Bill was introduced, or oven this stage taken

    739
    that some explanation should be given lay the Government of the principle that justified them in introducing it at all. It was monstrous, in view of the denunciations which had been launched against the system of Government practiced in Dublin Castle, by both Parties in that House, that any measure should be introduced for the purpose of creating a now Office, no matter what might be the salary in connection with the Castle. The Bill was the more extraordinary because they had been favoured beforehand with experience of what they might expect; they knew already the value of the Gentleman to whom they were now asked to give this salary. He also understood from reports that had been spread that the right hon. Gentleman was to receive payment for his past work. Speaking from their experience the action of the Government had been neither more nor loss than a device of extreme ingenuity to make the condition of things at Dublin Castle worse than it was before; because, whereas at least they had in the past one official on whom they could come in that House and upon whom they could cast the responsibility of the Dublin Castle system, they had now the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Colonel King-Harman) opposed as a buffer between the responsibility of the Irish Government and the Irish Members in the House, It was recognized by the whole country that the duty and business of the right hon. Gentleman was to refuse all information to Irish Members and to answer their Questions as an irresponsible official. They know that the right hon. Gentleman had no more power over the Government Department than any one of themselves, and it was, therefore, monstrous that the only official who now answered Questions on Irish affairs should be an official without any responsibility whatever. They had been subjected to this method for nearly a year, and its object was thoroughly understood by them. They had noticed that although the Irish Secretary entered the House, all the hard work was done by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet, who protected the Government from being called to account for the proceedings of the Irish Administration. He con-
    740
    sidered it an extremely unwise proceeding on the part of the Government to attach to the Irish Department this well-known favourite at the Castle in. Dublin. The system at Dublin Castle had not only been denounced by the Party in that House denominated Home Rulers, but denunciation equally strong had come from the noble Marquess the Member for Rossendale, and other Members of the Unionist Party. It was not many years ago that he had read in a speech of the noble Marquess that the system pursued in Dublin Castle could not continue long, and yet the Government were about to add another vested interest to the mass of corruption with which the House would be called upon very shortly to deal, and they were to have another right hon. Gentleman connected with the system at a salary of £1,500 or £2,000 a-year who would eventually have to be bought out. He believed that in view of this consensus of opinion the whole system of Government in Ireland would have to be altered before long, either in the direction in which the Unionist Party or the Home Rule Party wanted to go. Everyone admitted that the change must be sweeping and radical, and that it must come soon. Not a single reason had been vouchsafed by the Government to the House for this deliberate creation of a now officer whose vested interest he had already said would have to be bought out hereafter at an enormous cost to the taxpayers of the country. He said that Irish Members before allowing this Bill to go any further were entitled to a statement on the part of the Irish Government as to why this new Office was necessary. Before sitting down he should once more protest in the name of the Irish Members against that method of putting up the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet to answer Questions on Irish matters. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman had stated some time ago on a certain occasion, when he visited his constituents in the Isle of Thanet, that since he became Under Secretary for Ireland he had laboured 14 hours a-day, and had not received a shilling for his labour. He (Mr. Dillon) regretted that he had laboured 14 hours a-day at his work, because he was truly at a loss to know at what he had been labouring. But if the right hon. and gallant

    741
    Gentleman wanted some relief from his labour all he could say was that Irish Members would gladly spare him from the House of Commons at Question Time. The power of questioning Ministers was one of the most important rights that could be possessed by Members of Parliament, but the power of questioning Ministers had become for Irish Members nothing more than a farce, because they were not allowed to question anyone who was responsible for the Government of Ireland, but a lay figure, a most imposing one he admitted, had been put before the Chief Secretary to answer their Questions, and they might just as well set up an automaton for the purpose so far as the Government of Ireland was concerned. It was a perfect mockery to put up a man of this kind to answer Questions with regard to one of the most important Departments of Government, and for that reason he contended that Irish Members had every reason and wore entitled to struggle with all their power against the first stage of this proposal.
    MR. JOHN MORLEYsaid, he was very reluctant not to be able to comply with the request of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, that the Opposition should allow the present stage to be taken without discussion. The circumstances under which the Motion was made were not quite of an ordinary kind. On the 14th of April last the Chief Secretary for Ireland said, in answer to a Question of his, that no salary was to be attached to this Office. Not satisfied to leave the matter there, he put a Question to the First Lord of the Treasury, and the First Lord of the Treasury made a very distinct announcement indeed—
    "No document will be laid before Parliament describing the nature and duties of the Office, or the conditions under which it is held; but it is right to state distinctly that no salary or profit is attached to this Oflice."—(3 Hansard [313] 1003).
    When it turned out that, after all, a salary was to be attached to it, surely they had a right, at the present stage, to ask an explanation from the Government. The Chief Secretary for Ireland the other night alleged some sort of necessity for such an Office on the ground that he had difficult Bills to conduct through Parliament, and that he needed this assistance to answer
    742
    Questions. But his Predecessors in the same Office—the late Mr. Forster and the Member for the Bridgeton Division—were quite as much bombarded with Questions as the right hon. Gentleman was, and the measures they had in charge were not less onerous in their character. When he was Chief Secretary, although he did not hold the Office long, there was no Irish officer in the House but himself. He should like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman what was the case to be made out for the creation of this Office.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR)said, of course, the Government had ample power to create this Office without salary; but also, of course, when it became an office of emolument, it was necessary to get an Act. When last year he stated that no salary was attached to the Office, no salary was actually payable; but they never pretended that they were going to ask any Gentleman to permanently undertake the onerous and responsible duties of this Office without pay. They were of opinion that oven an Irish Under Secretary was worthy of his hire. He was not there to deny that Mr. Forster's duties were severe; but even Mr. Forster never had so much responsible work to do as he had in the last Session of Parliament. Mr. Forster was not responsible for the Land Act; he had the conduct of the Coercion Act of 1881. Then as to the right hon. Member for the Bridgeton Division of Glasgow (Sir George Trevelyan), he was not in the Cabinet; the chief burden fell on Lord Spencer, and the carrying of the Act of 1882 fell mainly on the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt). As to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle, he had not during his term of Office had arrayed against him the phalanx of Nationalist Members, who, whatever might be said against them, were not deficient in Parliamentary tact. They were pastmasters in the art of giving Ministers of the Crown plenty of work to do. He anticipated from his right hon. and gallant Friend the Under Secretary great assistance; in fact, he had already given great assistance, particularly in connection with the Local Government Board. But, in his opinion, it would conduce to the proper administration of business in

    743
    Ireland that there should be a Gentleman with a distinct official position on the Local Government Board of that country. The Chief Secretary would still be President of that Board, which, unfortunately, he was not able to attend. But next to him in authority would be the Under Secretary, whose duty it would be to go into the vast mass of important details, and who would be responsible, at the same time, to Parliament and to the Chief Secretary. This change alone ought to secure the general acceptance of the Bill.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he must strongly protest against the creation of this new Office. The House of Commons always looked with jealousy on a proceeding of this kind.
    MR. A. J. BALFOURexplained that he ought to have stated that the Local Government in Ireland permanently consisted of three Members. It was proposed to abolish one of these offices when a vacancy occurred, which would make a saving of £1,200 a-year.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he thought it singular that at a time when the Chief Secretary truly said he was heavily burdened with work in fighting the Coercion Bill through the House of Commons an unpaid Under Secretary was appointed. Now, when it was the great claim of the Government on the country that there was to be a Session without Irish legislation, a paid Under Secretary was to be appointed. This was not a position which would commend itself to one's common sense. The Government had done what was called inserting the thin end of the wedge last Session. That was a curious phrase, for he never heard of inserting the thick end of the wedge. It was very like the system which he thought had disappeared from the administrative system of this country. In former times unpaid attachés used to be appointed on the ground that they were not good for much, and so did not get any pay. After a time it was said that those gentlemen had done good work and ought to be paid. The Government had pledged themselves to the eyes that they would not appoint a paid Under Secretary, and certainly if one was not wanted last year he was not wanted now. The right hon. Member for Newcastle said that quite as much work had to be done in his time.
    744
    He did not want to make invidious comparisons; but from 1880 to 1885 the work was at least as heavy as it was now. In Mr. Forster's time, when an Arms Bill had to be carried, no new Office was created; but a Cabinet Minister, who happened to be himself, took charge of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the activity of the National League Members; but the Government of 1880 had to face all that and more. They had to face the opposition of hon. Members now sitting below the Gangway and that of the noble Lord the Member for Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), who gave the Bill what he called "a parting kick." Thus the right hon. Gentleman had no case whatever for going contrary to the pledge of last Session. But the right hon. Gentleman said that he was going to make this Gentleman the second in command over the Local Government Board in Ireland. They had hoard a great deal about local self-government for Ireland. The people who were not Home Rulers were all for local self-government—similar, and to use the phrase of the noble Lord opposite, "similar and simultaneous," institutions in Ireland. The Unionists were all for local self-government. The plan of the Government for carrying out this policy was the appointment of the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet, who was an Irishman by birth; but had been unable to find an Irish constituency to return him. A more complete mockery of the promise of local self-government could not be imagined, and he, for one, protested strongly against the Bill now before the House.
    MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury had got up immediately the Chairman left the Chair, and on the ground that the course was unusual, asked Irish Members not to oppose this stage of the Bill. They had already given the Government one stage of the Bill when pressed to do so; but what happened when a Bill similar to this was introduced in the case of the Secretary for Scotland? That Bill was opposed by Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, now of Teheran and elsewhere, in conjunction with the noble Lord the Member for Paddington, the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for India (Sir John Gorst) and other Con-

    745
    servatives. The House attended at a morning sitting to-day for the purpose of considering the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the conversion of Consols, and that business having been practically unopposed, the Government had taken advantage of there being no other Business on the Paper to suggest that the present Bill should be allowed to pass without protest. He wondered the right hon. Gentleman had not moved the Closure of the debate, but there being no other measure on the Paper, bad that been done, hon. Members would have gone to the Heading or Dining Room, and there would have been an interval until 9 o'clock. When the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland got up he had expected that he would have begun his statement with an explanation with regard to the question of non-resignation. It was understood last year that if the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet received a salary he would have to resign his seat, but it did not suit the Government that he should resign, and so it was stated that he was to receive no salary. The Act of Anne provided that no now Office or place of profit under the Crown should be created without the resignation followed of the Member appointed to it. And it was the argument last year of the late Attorney General the Member for Hackney (Sir Charles Russell), that even the acceptance of Office by the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet without salary vacated the seat. Although there might be a question or controversy on that point he (Mr. T. M. Healy) submitted that the practice and precedent of Parliament had always been that, even in the case of an unsalaried Office, there should be resignation. That was the case with the Member for Leeds (Mr. H. Gladstone) who vacated his seat on acceptance of the Office of a Lord of the Treasury. But the Office of the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, which was an absolutely new Office created last year, they were told, did not vacate the seat of the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet, who was to receive a salary of £1,000 a-year. Since the Union there had been no such thing as a Parliamentary Under Secretary for Ireland. The
    746
    right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley) had read from Hansard the statement of the First Lord of the Treasury that the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet would get no salary; and not only was that the impression on the minds of Irish Members and Members on that side of the House, but it was the impression on the mind of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet himself, who had announced to an assembly of Licensed Victuallers at Margate, that the Irish Members were living on the savings of the Irish servant girls, and that he, an Irish gentleman, was doing the whole work of Under Secretary for nothing. He had shown that it was the construction placed on the arrangement by the First Lord of the Treasury and the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet himself, that there was to be no salary attached to the Office, and they were therefore now met by a complete change of front on the part of the Government. From the Union to the present time no one had dreamt that an Under Secretary was required, or that the Chief Secretary could not do the work of his Office without a coadjutor; but it seemed now that the Chief Secretary required assistance; and who was the coadjutor that had been chosen? He could have understood the selection of a man who was in some sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people, or of one who would be on friendly terms with Irish Members, because although it had not been the case for some years in that House, previous Governments had been able to find judicial officers connected with the administration in Ireland who had been on such terms with them and the vast body of the Irish people. This had been the case with Mr. Law and Mr. Johnston, and even under a Conservative Government Irish Members had not been on unfriendly terms with Mr. Gibson or with the present Solicitor General for Ireland. When there was so large a choice, it was unfortunate that a gentleman so obnoxious and so repugnant to the Irish people should have been appointed. But above all things, the Irish people hated a turncoat, and the best evidence of the fact that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was a turncoat was to be found in a letter which

    747
    he wrote in the year 1870 to The Nation newspaper, in which he said—
    "Mr. O'Neill Daunt, in his letter in your last issue, has well described my position. He repeats what I stated in a speech made during my canvass, which speech was, of course, unknown to him, and an argument that I used in proof of my sincerity—namely, that by throwing myself into the ranks of repeal, (not of local government or Home Rule)—by throwing myself into the ranks of repeal I had cut myself adrift from all English parties—Whig or Tory, Conservative or Radical, as no English Government could think of offering place or pension, were I disposed to accept it, of any kind, or to a man who had publicly proclaimed himself in favour of Irish Home Rule as opposed to English misgovernment."
    He thought the Government might have found, if they had been willing to go to the North of Ireland, some Gentleman who would not have been personally offensive and obnoxious to Gentlemen below the Gangway on that side. He did not think even the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) had ever called the Representatives of Ireland "the scum of the swill-tub of Ireland," which was one of the flowers of rhetoric of which the Under Secretary was the sole inventor. He said, therefore, that the Government had made this appointment as offensive and obnoxious to the people of Ireland as it was possible to make it. The Government had on former occasions refused to appoint Members for the North of Ireland to some offices, because, as they said, they would at once be met with the argument that those Members were Orangemen. But he asked if that objection did not lie against the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet? Not only was the right hon. and gallant Gentleman an Orangeman, but he had boasted in a public speech that he had gone down to the County of Roscommon and founded a lodge there, and that he had introduced Orange principles into the county. Then, again, the Government might say they could not appoint a Member for Ulster because it would be said at once that he was a landlord and a rack-renter. But was there anyone who had so black a reputation on this ground as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman? They were told by the First Lord of the Treasury that they were to have an opportunity of discussing the life and adventures of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman at a later stage. He was
    748
    glad of that. In the meantime he pointed out that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman having been taunted with joining the Nationalist Party, and had his platforms stormed by the Whigs in Dublin, went down to Longford and put forward his claim on the popular party there; then he wont to Roscommon, where he issued an address which was not sufficient; and Patrick Egan, the Treasurer of the Land League, went to him and wrote for him a second address, which was posted on every wall of Roscommon, and it was never denied that Egan paid the expense for printing and posting the bills. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman then went to Sligo, where he was proposed by the Very Rev. Canon McDermot, and so strong were the pledges he gave to the Nationalists, that he was returned for Sligo unopposed. After this, the first thing he did was to go into retirement for a couple of months, and although he had pledged himself to his Sligo constituents to remain independent of English parties, yet when he came into the House of Commons, to which he was introduced by two Tory Members, one of whom was Lord Claud Hamilton, he took his seat at once upon the Tory Benches. There he had seconded Mr. Butt's Home Rule Motion in 1877, but immediately ratted from his Party, although he had been Secretary to the Home Rule Conference of 1873. The Government had, therefore, selected a man for Under Secretary to whom might be applied, with a slight variation, the words of Moore with regard to Sheridan—namely, that "he had run through each mood of the lyre, and was master of all;"—"Lyre," of course, spelt with a "y." This was the gentleman who had been adopted as the spokesman in that House of the Irish Government. He had touched on the political record of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to some extent, but not as fully as they should do later on when they had the opportunity for examination and inquiry which the First Lord was so anxious to afford; but, he asked, was there ever the record of any gentleman being appointed Privy Councillor with such antecedents as those of the present Under Secretary for Ireland? He did not see why they, who had been denounced by him as "the scum of the swill-tub of Ireland" and the receivers of the dollars of Irish

    749
    servant girls, and the dupers of the Irish people, should go at the right hon. and gallant Gentleman with gloves off. The right hon. Gentleman's (Mr. John Morley's) plea for an "amnesty" for past utterances of Irish Nationalists had been ridiculed by the Tories, and why should they expect more delicate handling when they gave no quarter themselves? Irish Members had been in prison under the Coercion Act; he forgot what he had been put in for, but he know it was for something not very clearly defined; and several of his hon. Friends, among them the Member for Clare (Mr. Cox) and the ex-Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. T. D. Sullivan) had been imprisoned for offences in connection with speeches or under the Press Clauses of the Act; but was there any Irish Members clown to the gentleman who bad boon sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, who could be charged with a single thing of which he need be ashamed? The Government had searched every incident of their lives, but what had they been able to cite against them? What, however, was the case with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet, who last year declared in the House that if he had mot Mr. Weldon he would have had the first shot at him, and who had been sentenced by a London Magistrate for acts in connection with a place which was happily no more—namely, the Cremorne Gardens? It was the purist Conservative Party who appointed this Gentleman, and yet their supporters and the right hon. Member for Central Birmingham (Mr. John Bright) declared that any connection which Irish Members might have with the Irish Government would be an insult and outrage to the Queen. This Gentleman was first made by Her Majesty Lord Lieutenant of a county in Ireland; he was then made a magistrate then a Privy Councillor, and, finally, he had been placed over the destinies of Ireland as Under Secretary for Ireland and President of the Local Government Board. Under the circumstances he asked the House whether it was not natural that Irish Members should protest against the appointment of a gentleman of this character to deal with Irish affairs. They found that in every relation of life the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had proved false to the poli-
    750
    tical principles which he had avowed, and as a landlord he had been branded by Court after Court as a rack-renter and extortionist. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman was Lord Lieutenant of the County of Roscommon; he had the appointment of magistrates in that county, and one of the magistrates there was his own agent. The Irish Members had been told that Questions in that House did not need the supervision of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, but that they might be safely relegated to his coadjutor. It was a remarkable fact that the first Question put to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was not answered by him. He (Mr. T. M. Healy) had put that Question, and it was replied to by the Chief Secretary, and the reason was that it concerned one of the tenants of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, a poor man named Thomas Kevill. This man asserted that he had a right to cut turf in the bog adjoining his holding, and the right hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Thanet, with his packed bench, fined him for exercising the right of cutting turf. The solicitor to the defence raised the question of title, and it was the A B C of Law that when the question of title was raised the matter was beyond the jurisdiction of the magistrates. The bench would not raise the fine so as to give the right of appeal; they fined the man an amount under which no appeal would lie, and he accordingly went to the Court of Queen's Bench, on certiorari, where the prosecution was dismissed and the fine reversed. The landlord, the present Under Secretary, was told by the Court that he should bring an action of trespass against the tenant. That action had never been brought, but Thomas Kevill incurred £18 costs in order to reverse that fine of 2s. 6d. or 5s. The £18 was put on the miserable resources of this unfortunate occupier, who would have been practically beggared unless a fund had been made up for him. On Monday next he intended to put a Question to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, and he was anxious to see whether the right hon. and gallant Gentleman would answer it or leave it to be dealt with, by the Chief Secretary. The Question concerned the case of a widow on the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's estate in County Longford. The right hon. and

    751
    gallant Gentleman was to be the Under Secretary for Ireland, he was to have the manipulation of Local Government, and he had at the present moment the manipulation of all the Sub-Commissions in the country, and had practically the fixture of all rents in the country—[Cries of "Oh, oh !"]—well, he had through his nominees. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman was to be the sympathetic bosom into whom they were to pour their souls on the question of arrears of rack rents. Referring to the case of widow Flood, of Forthill, County Longford, The Westmeath Examiner of the 21st of January said—
    "A tenant, whose rent was reduced last October from £15 8s. to £7 was sued for the rack-rent, which drew from the Judge the observation, ' Is it possible, Mr. Bole, that you are going on for the old rent after the Land Commissioners reducing it over 60 per cent. Surely, you do not expect to recover these arrears from poor people.' Mr. Bole's reply was that he had no authority from his employer to wipe out any arrears."
    The Judge was the son of Lord Fitzgerald, a, Unionist Peer, and Mr. Bole was Colonel King-Harman's agent in County Longford. Mr. Bole had no authority from his employer to wipe out any arrears. The Government wanted to give the right hon. and gallant Gentleman £1,000 a-year by way, he (Mr. T. M. Healy) supposed, of compensation for having had his rents cut down to the extent of 50 and 60 percent. Under these circumstances he asked English Members—
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR)rose to Order. He wished to ask whether it was in Order to discuss the private affairs of a Gentleman who was to be appointed to an Office, when the question before the Committee was the propriety of having the Office at all.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is no doubt making a very large survey of the case, but I cannot say that he is out of Order. He is discussing the qualifications for the Office of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who is already discharging the duties of the Office.
    MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, be was sorry that his remarks were so painful to the right hon. Gentleman, and he should have been glad if he could have thrown a veil over the matter. He was quite willing to take advantage of the sug-
    752
    gestion that perhaps this matter might be entered into more at large upon a later stage. But when the right hon. Gentleman was so extremely solicitious on questions of Order, might he remind him that upon the Amendment to the Address of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), which dealt with the question of arrears, the right hon. Gentleman's speech was taken up, not with reference to the arrears question, but in dealing with the proceedings of the Blunt trial and with the murders committed in 1881. The right hon. Gentleman managed to make the murders of 1881—
    THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! The hon. and learned Gentleman must address himself to the question at issue.
    MR. T. M. HEALYsaid, he recognized to the full the protection the Chairman had afforded him in making his statement, and he thought the best way in which he could mark his sense of the way in which the Chairman's ruling had been given would be, in a very few words, more to strictly confine himself to what he might call the principles governing the creation of this Office, leaving the personal appointment and personal reflections to what they were told by the First Lord of the Treasury would be a more suitable stage. Therefore, he thought he had best ask the Unionist Members above the Gangway, and the Conservative Members opposite, to put to themselves this question—Under all the circumstances of the ease, is the opposition to this measure a reasonable or legitimate opposition, or one that should be met by brute force in the application of the Closure Rule? He asked if he and his hon. Friends had not made out a reasonable case of objection, not so much to the particular Office as to the incumbent of the Office? Large Constitutional questions arose on the creation of the Office. A large Constitutional question might arise as to whether the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was right or wrong in not resigning his seat last year when he accepted the position. But all these matters were only of historical interest; they were not of that burning interest as to the particular incumbent of the Office. The question he put to English Members was this—when they had a

    753
    Gentleman of this kind, whose history, for the moment, they would leave where it stood—when a Gentleman of this character was appointed to answer interrogatories in the House, and to deal with things appertaining to local government in Ireland, what chance had Irish Nationalist Representatives of getting anything like fair or decent justice? The argument of the Government was that they wanted extra help, because they desired to do the work of the Irish Office better. The Irish Office, they said, was undermanned, and they had made this appointment because they desired that Irish Questions should be more thoroughly dealt with. That was a fair proposition for debate; but its bonâ fides could only be tested by having regard to the character of the Gentleman appointed. Was it reasonable to suppose that if he put a Question with regard to arrears, with regard to the working of the Land Act, with regard to rack-renting, with regard to evictions, with regard to any one of these things which formed, to a large extent, from an agrarian point of view, the core of the Irish Question, he would get a proper reply from such a man as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman? He saw sitting opposite one of the largest landowners in the South of Ireland, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Huntingdonshire (Mr. SmithBarry), a Gentleman who had never had any difference with his tenants, and a Gentleman against whom no personal accusations had been made. There were dozens of English Gentlemen with Irish experience who might have been appointed to the Office, and who might have been supposed to throw themselves sympathetically into this work. But what had the Government done? Whereas for centuries Irish Secretaries had been Englishmen or Scotchmen, the first infusion of Hiberian blood into the Irish Office took the shape of the appointment of the most obnoxious Irishman existing in the four Provinces of Ireland. He had never joined in the complaint that Irishmen had not been appointed to the Office of Irish Secretary. If they had to carry on government in Ireland by English prejudices, it really made very little difference whether they had Englishmen, Scotchmen, Welshmen, or even Hindoos in the official positions; they would be equally unsympa-
    754
    thetic and equally ignorant. The Irish Secretary (Mr. A. J. Balfour) came over to Ireland with nothing against him but Tory prejudices—the prejudices of his birth, training, and education. He had not the native virus; but the Gentleman appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary was a man who had boxed the compass of Irish politics, who had tacked and sailed under every political flag, and who, in addition, was the most obnoxious man connected with Irish affairs at the present day. Could the Irish Members be expected to submit tamely to conditions such as these? In conclusion, he invited English Members to test the working of the Crimes Act and of the Land Act, to test the working of Irish Local Government by the appointment of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet. He asked them if they could go to their constituents and say they were working Ireland thoroughly and squarely and working it in the interests of the Irish people, and feel in their hearts at the same time they were uttering sentiments which were true. He ventured to say that if they took a ballot amongst the Nationalist Party as to who was the most obnoxious politician in Ireland, 999 out of every 1,000 votes would be recorded for the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for North Armagh (Colonel Saunderson) had humour, and if there was anything Irishmen were fond of it was a little fun. When they were attacked by the hon. and gallant Gentleman they could always laugh at his jokes, although those jokes might hurt some of them. But whoever heard of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet making a joke? From every conceivable point of view the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's appointment was hostile to every feeling and fibre of the Irish nature. Looked at in any way they liked he offered to this measure the strongest opposition that it was possible for a man to offer. He thought the Government might have acted reasonably if they required additional support and power. They did not require additional support and power, but they wanted to add one more brand to the burning that was crackling under the Irish pot; they

    755
    wanted to add one more thorn to those in the Irish side; they wanted to add one more aggravation to the aggravations the Irish people had to bear, and they had succeeded in this by the appointment of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid, he did not propose to detain the Committee at any length. He only wished to say that he had made up his mind to vote against this Bill at every stage. In half-a-dozen sentences he would explain to the Committee the reasons which influenced him. He positively objected to reinforce the ranks of Dublin Castle officialism in this way. Land Commissioners had been appointed and others were about to be appointed. What were the tenants to think when they found the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King-Harman) with his hands on the springs of the machinery of Dublin Castle? He said deliberately on behalf of his constituents that they viewed this appointment as an open declaration of war, and as their Representative he should oppose it.
    MR. HUNTERsaid, he desired to offer one or two suggestions which would relieve the Government of their difficulty and the House of the consumption of a large amount of time, to say nothing of the charge upon the public purse. He was astonished to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland say that the work in Ireland was too much for him alone, because he had noticed of late an increasing tendency on the part of the right hon. Gentleman not only to manage the affairs of Ireland, but to manage the affairs of Scotland also. They had at least two hon. and learned Gentlemen sitting on the Government Bench who were well able to take care of the affairs of Scotland, and who were paid for doing so, and he suggested as one means of getting out of this difficulty that the Irish Secretary should attend to Irish Business and that the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland should attend to Scotch Business. It was a most remarkable fact that although they had a very able hon. and learned Gentleman in the Solicitor General for Scotland, he (Mr. Hunter) did not think he had ever heard that hon. and learned
    756
    Gentleman speak upon Scotch matters, of which he, no doubt, knew a great deal, but he had heard him speak upon Irish affairs about which he, no doubt, knew nothing. There was another way in which this difficulty might be got over. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary said, and of course he could not contradict him, that he was not able to discharge the duties of his Office alone as all previous Chief Secretaries had been able to do. That must arise either from a want of capacity or a want of industry. He thought he would have the assent of the right hon. Gentleman when he said that he was at least as capable as any of his Predecessors, and he was not sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not agree with him if he went further and said that he was even more able than any of his Predecessors. If, therefore, considering that there had been no enlargement of the duties of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that they were precisely the same duties as those discharged by other Chief Secretaries, the right hon. Gentleman found himself unable to do the work, it must be from a lack of industry. He had great sympathy with lazy men, but he was bound to remember, in the interests of the taxpayers, that the right hon. Gentleman received £4,500 a year, and a residence in Ireland, which was maintained by the public for his sole enjoyment. What he submitted was this, that if the right hon. Gentleman found it necessary to employ an assistant, his object might be gained by a devolution of his salary which should be in exact proportion to the amount given to the assistant. He protested in the interest of the taxpayers against this additional sum being cast upon them upon grounds that were totally insufficient.
    MR. PICTONsaid, he rose merely for the purpose of asking seriously whether they were not to have any reply whatever from the Government Bench to the exceedingly grave charges that had been made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy)? He thought that, apart altogether from the indisputable humour and brilliancy of the invective of the hon. and learned Member, the hon. and learned Member had established, on very good evidence, charges which ought to be answered before they proceeded any further with this

    757
    business. Why was not the right hon. and gallant Member (Colonel King-Harman), who was most concerned, present to answer for himself? If he had so little confidence in the justice of his own claims as to shirk the answer necessary to the charges which he must have known in his conscience would be made against him in this House, why did not his patron and protector answer for him, or why did not some other Member of the Government answer for him? The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary rose to protest against the introduction into the discussion of what he called the "private affairs" of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman his assistant. Private affairs! which concerned the cruel treatment of a poor tenant of a bit of bog in Ireland. Private affairs touched the springs of all public affairs in Ireland. Private affairs had been the secret of all public misery in Ireland. He did not feel competent to enter into the details of the question, and did not rise for the purpose of doing so; but he earnestly hoped that some reply would be made to the charges which had been levelled against the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King-Harman). Right hon. Gentlemen upon the Government Bench very much deceived themselves if they supposed that no effect was produced by appeals to the English people such as had been made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford. The English people were slow; but little by little an impression was being made upon the hearts and consciences of the people of England, which would result in the throwing off altogether of the yoke of injustice, which would become more intolerable to them than it was to the Irish people. It was nothing less than a scandal that an appointment like this should have been made by the Government. The appointment revolted against all the best feelings, not of the Irish people only, but of the English, Scotch, and Welsh people as well, and the Government would find it out. It was monstrous that they should be called upon to go to a vote in this matter without any reply whatever from the Government Bench.
    MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton) asked why the Government made no reply to the speech delivered
    758
    by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy), a speech which for quality and style of Parliamentary eloquence appeared to commend itself to the hon. Gentleman. He (Mr. A. J. Balfour) did not think he had ever heard a speech in the House of Commons which was a greater violation of every canon of good taste than the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman, and that was the reason why he had not risen to reply to what the hon. and learned Gentleman had said. The hon. Member for Leicester had asked why the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Colonel King-Harman) was not in his place to reply to the charges which had been levelled against him. He (Mr. A. J. Balfour) did not send out to his right hon. and gallant Friend to tell him that there was a personal attack being made upon him, because he thought that the attack was wholly unworthy of any notice. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for North Longford made a speech which he (Mr. A. J. Balfour) understood, from the ruling of the Chairman, was perfectly in Order. Though it was perfectly in Order, it was, by the admission of the hon. and learned Gentleman himself, in no sense relevant to the creation of the new Office, which was the subject which principally concerned the Committee at the present moment, but simply related to the merits or demerits of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman who would perform the duties of the Office. The personal attack, the character of which he had sufficiently described to the Committee, consisted, so far as he could recollect the details, of accusations against the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet, not made for the first time, but which had been over and over again refuted. It had pleased the hon. and learned Gentleman to rake up every story, true or false, every accusation which malignance had been able to invent during the last 20 years, to throw at the head of one of the most honourable and distinguished Gentlemen who ornamented this House. It would be wholly unworthy of the debates in the House of Commons that any more detailed, any more prolonged or serious reply should be given to those accusations than he had now made.
    MR. J. E. ELLISsaid, he had no doubt that hon. Members on that side of the House would agree that no sort of reply had been made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the very strong case made out by the hon. and learned Member for North Longford (Mr. T. M. Healy). The hon. and learned Gentleman did not rake up every story told during the last 20 years against the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet. Had he done so, his speech would have occupied a considerably longer time. He (Mr. J. E. Ellis) noticed that the First Lord of the Treasury had just returned to his place. He might perhaps be allowed to express the hope that in this very serious matter—namely, the appointment of an Assistant to the Chief Secretary at a cost to the taxpayers of £1,000 per annum, the right hon. Gentleman would allow the Committee free discussion and not resort to the force of the closure. He would not detain the Committee, but only say, speaking as an English Member of Parliament and as one who probably passed more days in Ireland during 1887 than the Chief Secretary for Ireland himself, that he endorsed all that was said by the hon. and learned Member for Longford as to the manner in which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanot was viewed by his fellow-countrymen. One could not go into County Roscommon or into the district about Boyle without knowing what the people thought of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. It was a scandal and a reproach to Her Majesty's Government that they should propose to the House of Commons the appointment of such a man.
    MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONsaid, it was a singular fact that the Chief Secretary for Ireland had acknowledged to-night that his Deputy, the man who stood between him and the administration of local government in Ireland, was the very man who, in this House in 1886, took upon himself the task of moving the rejection of the Poor Law Guardians Bill, a Bill which was to amend the law relating to a certain system of local government in Ireland. The ground on which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman op-
    760
    posed that Bill was that he desired to see the power possessed by ex officio Guardians in Ireland preserved intact. When such was the view of the one who was put forward as the figure-head of the future local administration in Ireland, the Irish people saw plainly that Her Majesty's Government had not even the pretence of sincerity in their profession of a desire to administer fairly local government in Ireland. It was said that this Office was being created with the view of a better discharge of the duties of the Chief Secretary. If the appointment of an Assistant would tend to a more faithful discharge of the right hon. Gentleman's duties, no one would venture to oppose the creation of the Office; but, as a matter of fact, they were in such a position that they had to deal with the incumbent of the Office. They knew already the article they had to deal with. They knew what they were to pay for, and who, in Heaven's name, could grumble at their opposition when they found that the article was spurious? The right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King- Harman) represented to them the Grand Jury system, of Ireland in its most odious form; he represented the present magisterial system and the present monopoly of power by ex officio Guardians. In addition to this, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman was notorious for his rack-renting capabilities. It was, therefore, absurd for the Government to think they would in any way ease the friction in Ireland by the appointment of this Gentleman to an onerous post in the House of Commons, which carried with it practically the Presidency of the Local Government Board in Ireland. Furthermore, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman would occupy a prominent position in connection with the Prisons Board. Were they to have a rack-renter of the tenants of Ireland answering Questions put in the House concerning the grievances of those tenants? Was the same man to be not only their political opponent in the House, paid for his position, but possibly their defamer in the country, and also their gaoler when they asserted the rights of the people? The Chief Secretary for Ireland certainly had very important duties to perform if he would perform them. What was alleged in Ireland was that the right hon. Gentle-

    761
    man performed only the vicious part of his duties, leaving the useful part of them undone. It was believed in Ireland that it was the right hon. Gentleman's presence at the only meeting of the Local Government Board he ever attended which caused the dismissal of the doctor who was imprisoned under the Coercion Act. There was a singular fact in regard to Dr. Hayes, of Tralee. An hon. Member of the House was prosecuted under the Crimes Act for certain proceedings on Dr. Hayes' estate, and the doctor was asked by the Local District Inspector to give evidence that he was intimidated. Dr. Hayes refused to do this; and upon his refusal the prosecution was abandoned, until the Government thought fit to revive it, when the doctor swore that he was never intimidated; that, so far as he knew, none of his people were intimidated, and that he was quite willing to leave to the hon. Gentleman prosecuted the settlement of the whole question, A few days afterwards application was made for the sanction of the Local Government Board to the appointment of Dr. Hayes to a certain position; but the Board, who had never in its history refused an increase in the salary of a medical officer, refused it in the case of Dr. Hayes. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary was the Head of the Local Government Board, and he was present at the meeting at which the application was refused. If the statement was true that the work last Session was too heavy for the right hon. Gentleman, what was the answer to it? They were over the work now. It had been ostentatiously proclaimed from the Front Bench that there was to be an un-Irish or a non-Irish Session. When they wanted help on the Irish Question they got it very readidly. In the great debate on the introduction of the Crimes Act one of the most eloquent and effective speeches delivered was that delivered by the Solicitor General for Scotland (Mr. J. P. B. Robertson), who was believed to have nothing to do but to lend a loyal hand on the Irish Question. Then, there was the Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett), who had been able to find time to go to Ireland to enlighten the people upon questions which concerned themselves. Surely, the Civil Lord could be called in to lend a hand occasionally to the
    762
    Government; it would not be a great strain on him, even in conjunction with his own duties, to do so. The Government, on their own showing, had no need of further help. Certainly, it was most odious to the Irish Members that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King - Harman) should read out to them the answers to their Questions. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman had no personal knowledge on the Questions put to him; and, owing to the character he enjoyed, it was impossible the tenants of Ireland could place any reliance on the answers or even the promises which he gave. He and his hon. Friends not only objected to the creation of the Office of Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, but they objected, and they had shown very good reasons why, to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman being chosen to fill the Office. Reference had been made to their feelings towards hon. Gentlemen opposite; but he believed there was no one who sat upon the Ministeral Benches whose appointment could be so offensive to them as that of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet. Why did the Government not choose, if they were bound to appoint someone, a Conservative Gentleman representing an Irish constituency? What was their idea with regard to future administration in Ireland? Were hon. Members to judge it by the appointment that had virtually been announced to-night? Having made this appointment, would the Government go to the country with the profession on their lips that the people of Ireland and England were to be governed by the same laws? In one sense he was not sorry the Government had put up the most hideous figure-head they could possibly get, because their action would show to the people of England how just and reasonable was the protest of the Irish Members against the system of administration in Ireland. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman was a magistrate—
    MR. WILLIAM HENRY SMITHrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
    Question put accordingly, "That the Question be now put:"—
    The House divided:—Ayes 190; Noes 130: Majority 60.—(Div. List, No. 34.)
    Question put,
    "That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, of a Salary to the Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland."
    The House divided:—Ayes 182; Noes 132: Majority 50—(Div. List, No. 35.)
    It being after ten minutes to Seven o'clock the Chairman left the Chair to report Progress.
    The House suspended its Sitting at Seven of the clock.
    The House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.

ORDER OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY.—COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

  HOUSE OF LORDS.—RESOLUTION.
  MR. LABOUCHERE, in rising to move—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, it is contrary to the true principles of representative government and injurious to their efficiency that any person should be a Member of one House of the Legislature by right of birth, and it is, therefore, desirable to put an end to any such existing rights,"
  said, it had been pointed out to him that these words might include Her Majesty, which, of course, was not intended; and he should, therefore, instead of "a Member of the Legislature," say "of one House of the Legislature." They had been engaged in democratizing as far as they could the Commons branch of the Legislature; but all their efforts would be abortive, all their efforts at Parliamentary reform would be illusory, if they allowed side by side with that House a Legislative Assembly to exist which in its nature was aristocratic, and which had a right to tamper with and veto the decisions of the nation which were registered by the House of Commons. He (Mr. Labouchere) would not enter into the question whether it was desirable to have one House or two Houses; but if it was desirable to have an Upper Chamber Members of that Upper Chamber should be composed of men who were responsible for what they
  764
  did to the country. The functions of this Upper House should be limited to altering any little error of detail the Commons had made, or throwing out a Bill on some fundamental Constitutional question on which the country had not been consulted, or which it might be fairly imagined the country did not approve of. Did it limit itself to these functions? Was it entirely free from Party and personal motives? All would agree this was not the case. How was the House of Lords composed? Members of the House of Lords were neither elected nor selected for their merits. They sat by the merits of their ancestors who were rotting in their graves; and if we looked into the merits of some of those ancestors we should agree that the less said about them the better. The House of Lords consisted of a class most dangerous to the community—the class of rich men, the greater part of whose fortunes was in land. It was asserted of them that the House of Lords was recruited from the wisest and best of the country—that the House was so wise and so good that in some mysterious way they were able to transmit their virtues to future generations in sœcula sœculorum. The practice in the selection of those Gentlemen was not quite in accordance with this theory. They consisted generally of two classes—of those who were comparatively unsuccessful politicians and of those who were undoubtedly successful money-grubbers. He would take a few examples, and as he did not wish to be inviduous he would take them from both sides of the House. They all knew and appreciated Sir R. Assheton Cross, Mr. Sclater-Booth, Sir Thomas Brassey, and Mr. Knatch-bull-Hugessen. What did they think of these Gentlemen? As Members of this House everybody respected and liked them; but they were looked upon merely as decent sort of mediocrities of the ordinary quality which was converted in course of time into administrative Ministers. Take another class. Why were brewers selected as Peers? Simply because
  they of late had accumulated very great fortunes by the sale of intoxicating liquors, and for no other reason. The names of Guinness, Bass, and Allsopp had been for long household words in every public-house in the country, but who ever heard of them as politicians? Yes; these

  765
  Gentlemen were considered to be the very best men in the country to be converted into hereditary Peers. Another class who made money were the financists. Lord Rothschild inherited a large fortune, and had increased that fortune, and no doubt spent his money in the most honourable way; but Lord Rothschild did not in the House of Commons in any way distinguish himself. With brewers, when one was made a Peer, another must be made a Peer for advertisement. So with financial houses; when a Rothschild was made a Poor, it was necessary to fish up some one of the name of Baring, and one Baring was converted into Lord Revelstoke—a Gentleman who, though probably eminent in City circles, was hardly known to anybody in that House, and who had never taken part in politics. So much for the composition of the House of Lords. Most Members sat there by right of birth. These were made hereditary Peers on the extraordinary ground that where a man had looked so well after himself he would look after others—a doctrine which experience was against. Of those who were either pensioners themselves, or derived their incomes from accumulations of pensions, or had been placemen—themselves or their wives—there were 189. In any other Assembly such a number of placemen never existed on the face of the globe. Most of these Gentlemen selected courtly employment, which required neither intellect nor learning, because it was well known that any well-trained ape could do the same. He had always thought it most unfair to throw on Her Majesty the onus of these appointments, because when the Civil List was settled a certain portion was allocated for the purpose—should he say—of subsidising these Peers. Therefore, their salaries did not appear in the Estimates, or the House would know how to deal with them. Deducting Representative Peers from Scotland and Ireland, and deducting Members of the Royal Family, and deducting Bishops and Archbishops, he found 470 Peers sitting as hereditary Peers in the House of Lords. He found those Peers had annually distributed among them £389,163, amounting on an average to £820 each—these rich men who would with one accord protest against the payment of Members
  766
  of that House. These were the rich men who were found at public meetings denouncing Members from Ireland as a wretched crew, because, being mainly poor men, they received enough to enable them to live from their constituents. The Peers were almost as careful of their relations as of themselves. In a valuable publication he saw it put down that from 1874 to 1886 no fewer than 7,000 relatives of Peers had had places of emolument under the Government. Take even 5,000—was it to be supposed that if the Peers were not legislators and able to vote, 5,000 of their relations would be on the country? But they were not satisfied with cash. They were to be pampered with honours to keep the Peerage sweet. In the other House there were 120 Privy Councillors, of whom he ventured to say the majority in that House never heard. Orders had to be found for those Gentlemen. Almost every one of them had a decoration. There were three decorations which were absolutely made for Peers and for no other body—the Garter, the Order of St. Patrick, and the Thistle. Walpole declined a decoration, "because" said he, "why bribe myself?" Lord Melbourne said of the Garter that its pleasing feature was that there was "no nonsense of merit about it." An impression existed that Private Bill legislation was more independent in the House of Lords than in that House. He did not think it was. A great deal depended on railway matters, and Sir S. Laing had pointed out the other day that the landed aristocracy had obtained for land sold to railroads, £50,000,000 more than it was worth. He (Mr. Labouchere) found that there were far more Railway Directors in the House of Lords than in the House of Commons, and why? Because railway legislation came before the House of Lords, and the great magnates of railroads thought it desirable that as many as possible should be encouraged to be on their side. So much for the personal independence of
  the House of Lords. No men looked better after the class interests of those to whom they belonged than the Peers. They were great landowners; 16,000,000 acres belonged to them. Yet our land laws were a disgrace to the country, and were tainted at the present day with feudalism. They were in favour of the

  767
  great owners of land, not the tenants or labourers. Why was there, let him ask, a difference made between real and personal estate? Why should the Death Dues be 3 per cent on personal, and only 1⅞ per cent on real property? He suspected that would be the case be long as the House of Lords existed. In 1880 a Liberal Government brought in a Bill to give compensation for disturbance in Ireland. The majority against the Bill in the House of Lords was 232. He went into the House of Lords to see the scene. Generally—as they all knew—when an important question affecting the country at large was under discussion, the House of Lords was empty. At this time Peers unknown to the doorkeepers came up in order to vote against the Bill—against anything that appealed to their personal or class interests. Through the injustice done to the tenants by this action of landlords the Liberal Government was obliged to adopt a pernicious coercive policy. Was the House of Lords in harmony with the people on general questions—in, say, religious legislation? Most of the Peers were members of the Church of England; they desired that the Church of England should be absolutely supreme, and that any other Church should be treated with intolerance. In 1832 they opposed a Bill to throw open the Universities to Dissenters; in 1834 they threw out a Bill to allow 20 persons to worship in a private house. In 1837 they threw out a Bill to give religious and civil liberty to the Jews. They turned their attention to Church rates, and from 1858 to 1869 threw out Bills to do away with those rates. When at last live Dissenters got their rights, they turned their intolerance to dead Dissenters. In 1873, 1876, and 1879 they threw out Bills for the burial of Dissenters, which were intended to give them the same rights as members of the Church of England. When, four years ago, the hon. and learned Member for East Denbighshire (Mr. Osborne Morgan) brought in his Burials Bill, he (Mr. Labouchere) and others protested against this clause of the Bill What, said the hon. Member, was the good of altering those clauses, because if he did the House of Lords would throw it out. The right hon. and learned Gentleman emasculated the Bill, and when it went up to the House of Lords they proceeded further to castrate it. They voted
  768
  against the Ballot, against Municipal and Parliamentary reform, and they did their best against a free and cheap Press by throwing out the reduction of the duty on paper. All these were now by common consent esteemed good measures. Whenever they had appealed to the people against the House of Commons they had invariably been wrong and the country pronounced against them. The House of Lords were far too shrewd to make these appeals too often. They crippled with pernicious Amendments all Liberal Bills. No Liberal Bill passed through the House of Lords as a Liberal Cabinet would have it, so that the Cabinet had to consider, not only whether a Bill would pass the Commons, but whether it would pass the Lords. It was admitted that the Peers were, as a body, Conservative. They were mostly partizans of one Party. They were the servile and submissive instruments of the Tory Leaders, and this was thoroughly understood—that if an obnoxious Bill passed the Commons it would be rejected in the Lords. This had been openly avowed in the case of a Bill of his own. In 1885 when a Bill passed through the House of Commons to throw the expense of Parliamentary Elections on the rates clauses which he inserted were attacked by the Conservatives and talked out on successive nights until he told them that he should continue until 6 o'clock in the morning, and then they saw the cogency of the reasoning. An hon. Member of the Front Bench suggested they should yield because the Lords would throw it out. In The Times of October 21, 1887, the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill), at Sunderland, is reported to have said—
  "If Mr. Gladstone has a majority he will find it has taken up a great deal of time to get the House of Commons to agree to a new Constitution for Ireland. But the Bill has to go to the House of Lords, and I do not think we need have the smallest doubt, as reasonable people making reasonable calculations, but that the House of Lords would throw out the Bill. They would insist on remitting the question, the plan in all its details, to the judgment of the country. Very well, then the Session of 1889 is closed. Then we come to the autumn of 1889. Now, Mr. Gladstone has always contended that no action of the House of Lords need be final. He would call Parliament together in the winter of 1889, and he would send up the Bill again: and again we must calculate as reasonable people that the House of Lords would stick to their guns and throw the Bill out."—

  769
  And here one of those voices which sometimes conveyed a good deal of wisdom called out in the meeting—
  "And that will go on to the millenium."
  The Leaders of the Conservative Party did more than this; they absolutely told their followers in this House that they might vote for a Bill which would do them harm, because while that measure would be sure to crush the Liberals in this House, the House of Lords would not use it to crush Conservatism. At the recent Conservative gathering at Oxford, Lard Salisbury said—
  "I have no doubt that the result of a considerable amendment in the Rules of the House of Commons will be to send up from time to time when there are bad Houses of Commons a considerable number of objectionable measures to the House of Lords, and I hope that the House of Lords will not shrink from acting upon its conscientious convictions."
  Generally, the main argument in favour of the House as it existed was that it saved the House of Commons from acting ultra vires beyond the mandate of the constituencies. No doubt that would be so if the Liberals were in power; but he never heard of the House of Lords applying the same principle to the Conservatives. The control was entirely on one side. The noble Lord opposite had said what would be done if a Home Rule Bill were passed. He said that the House of Lords would throw it out. But a Bill was passed last Session, the Coercion Act, which the Liberals contended was ultra vires. The Liberals were of opinion that the Conservatives had got in by assuring the constituencies that they would not pass a Coercion Bill if they had a majority in this House. They did not, because the House of Lords was in confederacy with the Conservative Party in the House of Commons. He had stated how the Conservatives acted as legislators. He had much extenuated and set down nought in malice. This House of Lords was not collectively worse than any 600 men would be. They were ex necessitate a Tory House and a house of partizans. The assertion that they subordinated public interests to their private class and Party interests was merely tantamount to saying that they were human beings. A House of artizans would act on similar principles. There had been many proposals for a reform of the House of Lords. The
  770
  hon. Member for the Southport Division of Lancashire (Mr. Curzon) had an Amendment on the Paper. If he had known the Forms of the House he would have known that he could not put it. He (Mr. Labouchere) had read an article recently on the House of Lords in which it was said that all reforms must come from the Conservatives. That showed that the reform was intended not to weaken but to strengthen it as a barrier against the democracy. The Tories professed to place confidence in the people. They called themselves Tory Democrats. But that confidence only lasted so long as the people acted in accordance with their wishes. The Tories were greatly in a minority in this country. They were in a minority now. The Tories wanted the House of Lords to control this foolish people, yet there were Liberals who were ready to whitewash this Tory sepulchre of Liberal measures. The hon. Member for the Arfon Division of Canarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone) had put an Amendment on the Paper of this nature. He proposed to maintain but reduce the hereditary element in the House of Lords and to add some elective Members. He objected to this method of giving weight in a race, to use a sporting metaphor. If a Liberal measure were accepted by the elected Members of the House of Lords, it would still be thrown out by the hereditary contingent. At present a Liberal Ministry could force their Bills through the House of Lords by a threat of a creation of new peers to swamp the Upper Chamber, as was done at the time of the first Reform Bill. He had read an article in The Times in which the hope was expressed
  "That the Ministry will give some intimation that they are willing to consider a policy which may deprive destructive Radicals of a dangerous weapon."
  That was the excellent advice which his hon. Friend seemed anxious to follow. The avowed object of such plans was to render nugatory the wishes of the Radical masses of this country. The same article said—
  "It would be improper in either House to take the initiative in calling for organic changes in the other."
  This claim for the divine right of hereditary legislators far exceeded anything that was ever put forward in favour of the divine right of Kings. The House of Commons had as much right to abolish

  771
  hereditary legislators as it had to do away with the representation of towns which used to return Members to that House. It was said, however, that the House of Lords would not assent, and that a revolution would be necessary. Nothing was a greater mistake. There was a Constitutional means of meeting this difficulty by the creation of now peers, and the threat of this course was sufficient in 1830 to bring a strong man like the Duke of Wellington to accept the popular verdict. By the Constitution Her Majesty could act and speak only on the advice of her Ministers, and a few days ago he should have said that it would have surprised him if Her Majesty-had ventured to express au adverse opinion on anything her Ministers had done. The objection that it would be necessary to have a revolution to pat an end to hereditary rights of legislation was, of course, absurd. As to the further objection that if they did not sit in the House of Lords they would sit in the House of Commons, why should they not do so, if the people chose them? He would like to see the best men of all classes on each side in the House of Commons; and he would much prefer to listen to the Marquess of Salisbury in the House of Commons; indeed, it would be better that he should, as Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, sit in that House than that he should, be obliged to answer for himself through the mouth of another; and the Representatives of the people would have more control over him. He (Mr. Labouchere) should resist all schemes for reforming the House of Lords which involved the maintenance of the hereditary principle, the mixing up of the hereditary and elective principle in one Chamber, or the selection by the Lords of their best men to form an hereditary assembly. In all these proposals he scented the snake in the grass, because their object was not to weaken, but to strengthen the House of Lords as a Conservative body rampart against the democracy of this country. Speaking on this subject at Oxford, the Marquess of Salisbury said he was sceptical as to any reform of the House of Lords being carried, because there was only a certain amount of political power, of which the House of Commons had five-sixths, and if the house of Lords were reformed, it would compete more thoroughly with the House of Commons.
  772
  The House of Commons was quite acute enough to see this, and therefore no essential change was likely to be made. Those observations he commended to the attention of the followers of the noble Lord. His Amendment went to the root of the evil. He at first thought of including Bishops; but he struck them out, on the principle of de minimis non cured lex. If the hereditary principle were done away with, what the right hon. Member for Birmingham called the incestuous union between the spiritual and the political would cease of itself. His Amendment did not prejudice the question whether there ought to be two Chambers or one only. Personally he was in favour of one, but those who voted with him need not necessarily support him on that particular point. Other countries which had two had simply followed our example, and it was a more result of chance that we happened to have two. If they agreed, the second was useless; if they disagreed the second was pernicious. If the functions of an Upper Chamber were to be properly fulfilled by those who soared above class and Party interest, we must not look for its Members in this world, but we must bring down angels from Heaven; but as that would be difficult, there was only one other alternative. We should also require alternating Chambers—a Tory Upper House to control a Radical Lower House, and a Radical house of Lords to control a Conservative House of Commons. An Upper Chamber was needless in our system; and it was cumbersome as a Court of Revision, whose functions could be discharged by a committee of experts. A second Chamber was not necessary as a means of appealing to the people. He challenged any one to name an instance in which the Liberal Party had passed a measure in which the country did not concur. There had been no case in which it had been necessary for the House of Lords to step in in order to make an appeal to the country. The Liberal Party was in touch with the constituencies, and would not force a measure through the House against the wishes of the electors. He would challenge the Liberal Members who wanted to preserve the hereditary principle to submit the matter to their constituents. No question was deemed more important by Radicals than this of abolishing

  773
  hereditary legislators. They perceive that the antagonism between class government and national government was becoming more acute every day, and they judged of what the Lords would do by what they had already done. While ready to accept a defeat at the poll they objected—when the verdict of the constituencies was in their favour—to being cheated out of the victory by 500 or 600 hereditary Gentlemen who claimed the right to set aside the will of the Nation. The Tory hereditary House gave to the Conservative Party the same advantage that an ace up the sleeve gave to a gambler, and the Liberals were determined to shake the ace out of the Tory sleeve. The Liberals who favoured the maintenance of the hereditary principle were in reality not Liberals. They gave only lip-service to their principles. These half-hearted Liberals must realize that sham Liberalism was out of date, for the constituencies would not be humbugged any longer. They must realize that the centre of gravity had shifted of late on the side of the House which they eat upon. The Liberal Party had become a Radical Party, one of whose strongest doctrines was the abolition of hereditary legislators. This was illustrated recently in the Dundee Election. There was a competitive examination for candidates. His hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Firth) and Sir Horace Davey were competitors. They were asked whether they would abolish the hereditary principle in the Legislature. The hon. and learned Member's answers were satisfactory. Sir Horace Davey's were not. What happened? That eminent lawyer, excellent man, and good Liberal, was left out in the cold, and his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Firth) was chosen. He trusted that would be the case with every constituency where Liberals had to choose between a candidate in favour of hereditary legislators being abolished and a candidate opposed to that. He would, moreover, impress upon Liberal constituencies being firm in insisting upon their candidates being very specific in their pledges upon this point, and not to be satisfied with vague generalities with regard to it. The question that such constituencies should put to their candidates was, "Are you in favour of abolishing hereditary legislators, root and branch?" And any man who failed to answer that question distinctly ought
  774
  to be discarded as a Liberal candidate. We had at the present moment an Irish Question, and the Radicals intended to give the Irish Home Rule. The Irish Question meant that local self-government should be given to Ireland, and Liberals intended to do their best to give local self-government to Ireland. We want local self-government not only for Ireland but for Great Britain. What the Castle and the nephew were to Ireland, the uncle and the House of Lards were to England. No proper local self-government could exist in this country so long as an Assembly of hereditary legislators, of rich men, of men belonging to one class, had the right, whenever the country sent to the House of Commons a Liberal majority, to hamper and block legislation. The Conservatives at their meetings always shouted, "Thank God we have a House of Lords." Radicals had no intention to remain any longer supinely like toads under the harrow of the House of Lords. They intended to agitate until they could say, "Thank God we have not a hereditary House of Lords."
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "that" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is contrary to the true principles of Representative Government, and injurious to their efficiency, that any person should be a Member of one House of the Legislature by right of birth, and it is therefore desirable to put. in end to any such existing rights,"—(Mr. Labouchere,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. RATHBONEsaid, the only complaint he had to find with the hon. Gentleman who moved the Resolution (Mr. Labouchere) was, that he had answered his (Mr. Rathbone's) arguments before he had heard them. He had not the slightest intention of trying to whitewash what the hon. Member called "that whited sepulchre, the House of Lords." All Radicals and all Liberals would agree, and he fancied all Conservatives would also agree, that hitherto the House of Lords had too much dammed up public opinion and discontent in quiet times—that in such times it had opposed legislation in accordance with national feeling

  775
  only to break down its barriers, and allow a flood of hasty legislation to pour forth in times of excitement. It had been anything but a truly Conservative part of our Constitution, and he should be the last to wish to strengthen it as an opponent to the House of Commons and a barrier to the deliberate wishes of the nation. On the contrary, he thought the reform of the House of Lords was necessary, and that the continued existence of that Chamber was impossible unless it could be made to represent, as the House of Commons did, the deliberate will of the nation. If it were Representative, it might be made to strengthen the House of Commons very materially, not that he supposed it would ever enjoy the same kind of power as that House. His hon. Friend (Mr. Labouchere) treated everybody as a bad Liberal who did not insist on nothing less than the abolition of the House of Lords; but he (Mr. Rathbone) would remind the hon. Gentleman of the story of the Irishman who said there were 15 reasons why he did not eat his breakfast, and the first of them was because he could not get a breakfast to eat. That was a good reason in the case of the Irishman, and a similar kind of reason might be used in regard to the abolition of the House of Lords. He did not think they would be able to get abolition, at any rate within any reasonable period. His object in rising was to move as an Amendment to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton to leave out all the words after "in," in line 1, and insert—
  "Order to improve the legislative efficiency of the House of Lords, it is desirable that it should not rest solely on right of birth, and not be responsible to or in sufficient touch with the people; and that a combination of the hereditary and representative principle would preserve what is valuable in, and increase the usefulness of, that branch of the legislature."
  Few men, he presumed, would be found to argue that, granting that a Second Chamber was necessary, they would, if they had to begin again, select in these days the hereditary principle as that on which to found it. But, in the Motion which the hon. Member for Northampton had brought forward, he (Mr. Rathbone) thought he had hardly taken account of the very strong characteristics of the British nation. The British people seldom tried to destroy an insti-
  776
  tution which had long existed, and to which in times past they had owed considerable benefits, without first trying to amend it; and he did not think the hon. Member would persuade them in the present day to act on any different principle as regarded the House of Lords. Therefore, as they were all agreed that their Legislative Constitution had not worked as efficiently as it ought to do in order to meet modern requirements, he would ask the House to consider whether it would not be well to try promptly to reform the House of Lords and make it, as he believed it might be made, a very useful and efficient part of the Constitution. Few countries had thought it desirable to proceed without a Second Chamber; and, oven after they had altered the Rules of Procedure in the House of Commons as proposed, he could not see much chance of their having too much legislative power to meet all the complicated wants of modern civilization. They knew that there was in the House of Lords considerable legislative talent which received its education in the House of Commons. There was a strong feeling, moreover, in the country in favour of the hereditary principle, founded on the services which such families as the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Howards had rendered as popular leaders; and he thought it would be most practical to see whether we could not in some way use this talent, and avoid arousing against us a strong popular sentiment, and try to carry the House of Lords with us in their own reform. Lord Salisbury himself had used words respecting the American Senate, showing that he coveted for England a Second Chamber as powerful and efficient, and we might with advantage see whether the principle which had been so successful there could not be adapted and applied to the improvement of the House of Lords. He presumed that what they wanted a Second Chamber for was, in the first place, to help efficiently in the practical work of legislation, so that laws might be more carefully and promptly considered than they were now; and, in the next place, that it should represent the mature and permanent opinions of the country, and give time for reflection in periods of great excitement and violent agitation. That was what the Senate of the United States had done

  777
  very successfully. It was purer from corrupt influences, move powerful and more useful than the House of Representatives, and still more so than the State Legislatures which selected it. Now, could not they in some way use the principles which had produced that result, and, while retaining what was useful and noble in the House of Lords, make that Assembly still more useful, and therefore still more truly noble, in the best sense than it was now, by providing for it division of labour, increased means of political information, and increased sense of responsibility? He thought anyone who had really studied the question why the House of Lords had not hitherto been made more useful than it had been, would have come to the conclusion that it was from the want of these advantages that its comparative uselessness had arisen, and that it had become merely a drag on the House of Commons, and a Court to register its decrees. To bring that home to anyone who had watched with anxious interest the course of legislation it was only necessary to follow the stages of a Bill in the two Houses, and to see why, with all the legislative capacity which the Upper House contained in many of its Members, its legislative work had to be done all over again when brought to the House of Commons. No Bill came in a practicable and workable shape from the minds of its promoters or hands of its draftsman. It was printed, debated in the face of the public, sent down by hon. Members to those of their constituents who were interested in the question, and Members received in reply all the practical information that practical men interested in the subject possessed, and with the aid of such information the Bill was amended and thrown into practical shape. This was what happened to a Bill in the House of Commons; but Members of the House of Lords had not volunteered to undertake the duties of legislation, and some of them had neither taste nor fitness for the work. They were responsible to no electors. No individual lay Peer was directly connected with the inhabitants of a locality, or with those interested in any trade, manufacture, or profession in a way to authorize and induce them to communicate with him as to the defects of any Bill, or the best mode of making it more complete
  778
  He was not in any effective manner responsible to or in touch with those for whom he was legislating. Hence the Lords rarely debated openly in detail any of the ordinary measures brought before them; the Committee stage of a measure was usually settled by a conversation across the Table; and the Bill, not having received that consideration and consequent amendment by suggestions from the experience of the country at large to make it practically workable, the whole work necessary to bring it into practical shape had to be done over again in the House of Commons. Consider for a moment what powers and qualifications the House of Lords possessed, in what respect it was deficient, and what was necessary to make it the most powerful and efficient and useful Second Chamber in the world, as the Senate of the United States is, he believed, in the opinion of those who had most studied the subject, including the Prime Minister himself. The House of Lords possessed enormous historical dignity, and, in spite of its blunders of late years, still had a strong hold on the feelings, or if they liked on the prejudices of the English nation; and it contained now a minority certainly, but still a considerable number of men of great ability and trained to political life who might be made very useful as legislators; but, moreover, a large number of men who, having no taste and no faculty for legislation, were nevertheless very useful in their own localities as Chairmen of Quarter Sessions and of Boards of Guardians, and partakers in county and local administration generally. What they wanted was division of labour in the House of Lords, leaving to Peers their rank and dignity, but providing that, when sitting as a Legislative Assembly, only those Peers should vote who possessed the necessary qualifications to enable them to legislate usefully and with effect as Members of a Second Chamber. This division of labour was already in practice adopted as regarded the legal or judicial Business of the House of Lords; for the general Rule that no one but Law Lords voted in judicial cages had never been deviated from for more than a century; but something more than custom would be required to make such a Rule effective in relation to the legislative portion of the work of that House. To enable and induce the

  779
  Lords to be an effective part of the Legislature they ought to feel practically responsible to the country for the due performance of the work for which they had been selected and which they had agreed to undertake. They ought to represent the matured opinion of the country so as to provide against hasty, unwise legislation during periods of excessive excitement. They ought to bring the House of Lords into connection and touch with the different parts of the country. He assumed, what he believed to be the case, that the country, as a whole, was not prepared to do without a Second Chamber. But they wanted a Second Chamber somewhat in accord with the gradual, steady, irrevocable movement of national sentiment and thought. Would not those objects be attained by allowing the Peerage to retain all that it now enjoyed of rank and precedence, but appropriating to its diverse functions the diverse abilities of its members; by leaving them free, if they so preferred, not to undertake the duty of making laws; by providing that all Peerages of the United Kingdom, as did then Peerages of the Scotch and Irish Kingdoms, should confer, not a seat in the House of Lords, but the capacity of filling such a seat; by providing that the House of Commons should elect those Peers who should actually vote, but not elect them all at once or in the ordinary manner, but each successive House of Commons electing by the cumulative vote one-third of their total number, say 50 Peers, who should sit during three Parliaments, a period, on the average, of 15 years? Power might be reserved to the Ministers to nominate a limited number of eminent Civil and Military Servants of the Crown to sit in the Upper House, either for life or for a term of three Parliaments. The present Law Lords would, of course retain their seats. And, finally, in order to connect the House of Lords with the nation and its whole system of local government, the Chairman of the New County Boards, when these last should have been established, might be added to the number of the Members of the Upper House. As the United Kingdom contained 114 counties, of which some might be grouped and others divided for purposes of administration, they might compute the number of Chairmen as about equal to the num-
  780
  ber of counties. Adding these to the 150 elected Peers, and making a moderate allowance for life Peers and for Law Lords, we obtained a total of about 300 Members. More numerous a Second Chamber could scarcely with advantage be; and if the nominal Upper House of that day exceeded that figure, its working numbers fell far below. By this mode he believed they would retain every Member of the House of Lords who really took any practical interest in legislation in the present day; and, either as elected by the House of Commons, or as Chairmen of County Boards, they would have undertaken the work of their House, and would feel responsible for its performance. The House of Lords would represent the deliberate opinion of the nation spread over three Parliaments. The hereditary Peers would still be in the majority; but they would be Peers who had sought election, and voluntarily assumed the responsibility of the work; while the Upper House would be brought into connection and communication and touch with the localities through the Chairmen of County Boards. On this system they would have adopted what was valuable in the constitution of the House of Lords itself, in the House of Commons, and in the Senate of the United States. They would have a Body representing the deliberate opinion of the country, and not open to be influenced by gusts of passion. The only objection that he had heard to his plan was that it would make the House of Lords too powerful, and that they might fear clashing with the House of Commons. His answer to that was, he thought, simple and conclusive. The Senate of the United States had been made more powerful than the House of Representatives, yet there was no clashing there. The Senate had been not only by far the most powerful, but the wisest and most useful part of the Constitution of the United States; and if the power of the House of Lords should overshadow that of the House of Commons—which he did not believe would ever be the case—it would be because, like the Senate of the United States, it had been more useful and wiser than the more popular Assembly; and power arising from beneficent action and wisdom was that which they ought not to fear, but rather to covet; and, after all, it could only be because the

  781
  House of Commons ceased to be in the future what it had been in the past—the first Legislative Assembly in the world—and it could only by remaining so degraded for some considerable time lose the tremendous hold that it had upon the affections and confidence of the country. He was not wedded to any particular part of the scheme he had laid before the House. He had suggested it as one way in which he thought the defects of the House of Lords might be remedied, and that Chamber made a powerful and beneficent Legislative Body. Some had proposed that the selection of the legislative part of the House of Lords should be left to the House of Lords itself. That would, no doubt, be a great improvement upon the present House, brought up to vote on most important issues, which a great many of its Members had not taken the trouble either to understand or debate. The most valuable part of his suggestion was that it would bring the Chairmen of County Boards into the House of Lords, elected for, say, seven or ten years; as that really would do something towards bringing the House of Lords, into connection and touch with the country, and would, moreover, have the most beneficial effect in dignifying our whole system of local administration, by making the head of the local government of each county a dignified Member of the Legislature.
  MR. CURZON, who had an Amendment on the Paper, to leave out all the words after "opinion of this House," in line 1, and insert—
  "The strengthening of the Legislature is to be sought, not in the abolition, but in the reform and modification of the hereditary principle in the composition of the Upper House of Parliament,"
  said, that he was not able to compete with either of the two hon. Members who had spoken before him that night, because the first of them was a conscious and the second was an unconscious humourist. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) was a man of facetious and fanciful temperament, and no institution was safe from his quips or his satire. There was nothing that he touched which he was not capable of turning into laughter, and they had an admirable illustration of that in his speech that night. The
  782
  want of seriousness on the hon. Member's part was but the reflex of wha were his real feelings on the matter. Would it be believed that less than two years ago the hon. Member for Northampton, that arch-democrat, actually contemplated without alarm the contingency of becoming a Peer himself?
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I must protest against what the hon. Gentleman says. I never for a moment contemplated so horrible a contingency.
  MR. CURZONsaid, he was very glad to hear that disclaimer, because he had derived his information on the point from a quarter of unquestioned veracity—a journal called Truth. The hon. Gentleman stated, in. the autumn of 1886, writing in that paper, that he would almost consent to become a Peer himself if only to gaze on a picture by Mr. Herbert, which hung in one of the ante-chambers of the House of Lords. He (Mr. Curzon) confessed that he was a little surprised at that admission of weakness on the hon. Gentleman's part, and he could not understand how an hon. Gentleman like him could contemplates becoming a Member of an Assembly where the exploded principles of order and decorum still prevailed, and it was only when he himself went and examined the picture in question that he was able to account for the hon. Gentleman's curious remark, because he found that the subject of the picture was that of Moses breaking the tables of the law. The present Motion of the hon. Member was, he must observe, one of a very restricted application. It applied by its terms only to those Members of the House of Lords who were legislators by right of birth, and the hon. Gentleman who spoke last appeared to fancy, judging from the terms of his Amendment, that the House of Lords consisted entirely of such Members. Now, he (Mr. Curzon) denied the hon. Member's assertion that the House of Lords rested solely on the right of birth. There were many Members of the other House to whom the terms both of the Motion and of the Amendment did not apply. First, there were the Archbishops and the Bishops, 27 in number, who sat, not by right of birth, but because they represented their dioceses. Then there were three Law Lords, who sat not by right of birth, but by the terms of an Act passed in 1876. Then,

  783
  there were the 16 Scotch and the 28 Irish Representative Peers, who sat in virtue of their election by their Peers, and who were in the strictest sense of the term Representative and not Hereditary Peers. Further, there were in the House of Lords no fewer than 70 Peers who had been ennobled themselves and who sat there, not by right of birth, but by right of the patents granted to them for services they had rendered to the State. The whole of these classes, amounting in all to 144 persons, were excluded from the terms of the Motion of the hon. Member for Northampton, which only dealt with the remaining proportion, or about three-fourths of the House of Lords; so that they arrived at this ridiculous conclusion—that if that Motion were adopted, and the forms of the Constitution permitted it to be carried into effect—which, fortunately, they did not—they would abolish three-fourths of the existing House of Lords, but would still have a body of over 140 Members, the composition or the political complexion of which would not be more satisfactory to the hon. Member than those of the present Upper Chamber. The first and main argument of the hon. Member for Northampton was that the House of Lords was not a representative institution, and that it was contrary to the principles of representative government that an institution so composed should exist. Now, he took leave to point out that representative government was not a complete or an exhaustive account of the Constitution under which we lived. We had representative institutions, but all our institutions were not representative. Some of them were based on a directly opposite principle. There was the Throne, which was not filled on the Representative principle., but on the principle which the hon. Member for Northampton had so severely condemned, the hereditary principle. And if the hon. Member levelled a blow at the hereditary principle in the House of Lords, he (Mr. Curzon) wanted to know why he did not also strike at the hereditary principle in the Throne. Then there was the Cabinet, which might be described as the ruling body in this country. It was not framed on the representative principle; it was nominated by one man, the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister himself was not selected on the Representative principle,
  784
  but was nominated by the Sovereign. Finally, they had the Judges, who were not elected, but nominated, and were not responsible nor removable. To return to the direct charge that the House of Lords was not a Representative body. The hon. Member himself said it was exclusively representative of one class only, that of the land. Well, he conceived that the possession of landed estates, and the stake in the welfare of the country which that possession involved, were no mean guarantees for the possession of the qualities of independence and patriotism so essential in a Second Chamber. The hon. Member had drawn a somewhat fantastic picture of the House of Lords, sketched in a highly sensational and imperfect style of art. He had described it as being composed for the most part of unsuccessful politicians and of successful money - grubbers. [Mr. LABOUCHERE: The recent additions.] Now, in its actual composition it contained 23 Cabinet Ministers, 4 Viceroys of India and 6 of Ireland, 4 Governors General of Canada, 8 Governors Principal or Colonial Governors, and 6 Ambassadors or ex-Ambassadors. In addition to these there were in the House of Lords two ex-Speakers of the House of Commons, eight Judges, 78 officials who had held posts under the Government exclusive of the Royal Household, 120 Privy Councillors, 157 Peers who had served in the Army or Navy, excluding Yeomanry, Volunteers, and Militia; and, lastly, there were 194 Peers who had satisfied even the stringent rule laid down by the hon. Member for Northampton himself, inasmuch as they had submitted to the ordeal of public election and had passed through the House of Commons. To contend that a House so composed was not a Representative Chamber and was not representative of many and varied interests was an abuse of language; but, at the same time, he felt that the House of Lords might be made much more representative than it was. There were interests which at the present moment were excluded from representation in that House and which might be admitted, and there were interests which were imperfectly represented, and whose representation might be enlarged. There were three classes to whom these remarks mainly applied. First of all, there were the great Dissenting denomi-

  785
  nations which filled so large a place in the public life of the country, and which at the present moment were almost without representation there. Then there were the Public Services, which trained and turned out a staff of public servants unequalled for efficiency in the world, and whose abilities and experience after they had retired from their professions might be continued in the service of the State. Lastly, there were the Colonists, who were absolutely without representation in the Imperial Parliament. If the House of Lords could be made more representative of these classes and interests he believed that the community at large would approve of such a step being taken. The hon. Member for Northampton complained that there was a permanent Conservative majority in the other House. That was a necessary feature of a Second Chamber. ["Oh !"] There never had been a Second Chamber in the history of the world which did not contain a Conservative as against a Radical majority. They might have representatives of whatever element they pleased in a Second Chamber; but it would be found that a Radical majority if temporarily secured could not be permanently retained, and that the Conservatives would in the long run have the preponderance. There had been 300 creations to the Peerage in the present Reign, and over 200 of these had been the creations of Liberal Prime Ministers. Notwithstanding that the Conservative majority in the House of Lords was stronger than ever. Of the 200 creations, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) was responsible for nearly 80; and yet he (Mr. Curzon) would not hesitate to say that one-half of that number, if not more, would without a qualm of compunction go into the lobby against him. The hon. Member for Northampton was in favour of a single Chamber, because, as he said, we could not possibly get a satisfactory Second Chamber. By a satisfactory Second Chamber, the hon. Member meant a Second Chamber composed of men of his own political complexion. That was not an argument against Second Chambers per se, but rather an argument against Radicalism per se, and the very fact of the impossibility of keeping a Radical majority alive in a Second Chamber, tend and
  786
  water it as they pleased, was a proof, not of the unhealthiness of the atmosphere, but rather of the inherent sickliness and decrepitude of the plant. Then the hon. Member trotted out the old and familiar argument which he might describe as the "Financial Reform Almanack Argument," and which was this, that because the Peers received so much annual income in rental, in pensions, or in pay, therefore they must be regarded with suspicion as legislators. He retaliated by regarding the figures of the hon. Member with the greatest possible suspicion. In November, 1884, the hon. Member complained that a certain number of hereditary Peers were owners of 14,000,000 acres with a rental of £9,000,000; while in March, 1886, he stated that the same number of Peers owned the same number of acres at a rental of £12,000,000. The astonishing thing was that this increase was said to have taken place in little more than a year, when every man of sense knew perfectly well that rents had fallen from 15 to 30 per cent. The figures of the hon. Gentleman were totally and hopelessly inaccurate. The hon. Member also referred to the matter of salaries paid to Peers. He (Mr. Curzon) would point out that salaries were paid to Cabinet Ministers even if they were Members of the House of Commons, and the salaries included those paid to Viceroys and Ambassadors and others in the service of the State in different parts of the world. He fearlessly asserted the principle that the labourer was worthy of his hire, whether Peer or peasant. A Peer was as much entitled to a salary if he happened to be in the service of the State as the doctor or the barrister to his fee, or the hon. Member for Northampton to the sixpence which a gullible public paid for a copy of Truth. The House of Lords did real service in saving the country from the two greatest curses which could befall a nation having a titled order and great commercial wealth—namely, the curse of an aristocracy framed upon narrow lines of caste, and the curse of a plutocracy or moneyed order uplifted and sustained by wealth. While the nobility of other countries had, under the blighting influence of caste, shrivelled into a dry and sapless trunk, the nobility of England had struck new roots into the soil, and recruited itself by fresh impulses from the

  787
  source whence it sprung; and while other countries had suffered from making money and not birth the test of rank, we had been free from the degrading taint of Mammon worship is England. In its Constitutional aspect the House of Lords acted as a counterpoise to the unbalanced weight of a democratic and Representative Chamber, and that that counterpoise was needed had been admitted by all save the section represented by the hon. Member for Northampton. The House of Lords was also a means of referring hastily conceived and premature measures to the people, and as such it had been a democratic rather than an aristocratic agent. Then it was said that the House of Lords had never done any good thing; that it had only indulged in massacre and mutilation. His estimate of good and evil no doubt differed materially from that of the hon. Member; but if the hon. Member asked what good the House of Lords had done, he asked in return what evil had it not prevented being done? How often, had not the House of Lords taken imperfect measures and lopped them into shape? How often had it not stood between the country and the impetuous amateur legislation in which Gentlemen like the hon. Member were apt to indulge? The hon. Member appealed to recent history. He (Mr. Curzon) remembered the Session of 1886, after the Home Rule Bill had been thrown out, when most Members had gone to their constituents, and there remained in the House only a small band of faithful Radicals under the lead of the right hon. Members for Edinburgh and Stirling, At that time a number of hasty and ill-considered measures were hurried through the House of Commons, and, but for the House of Lords, they would have now been the law of the land, and the reputation of hon. Members opposite as legislators would have been even lower than it was. The hon. Member spoke of the selfishness of the House of Lords. Was it no proof of self-abnegation and the preference of patriotism to Party interests that a body like the House of Lords, composed almost entirely of Protestants and Churchmen, should have passed a measure like the disestablishment of the Irish Church, or that a House composed, as the hon. Member complained, of landlords should have passed with so little friction the
  788
  Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, and a measure like Lord Ashbourne's Land Purchase Act? If nothing but evil had come out of the House of Lords, how was it that so many great and good measures were inscribed on the Statute Book? We had heard a great deal of fifty years of Liberal progress. Surely the House of Lords deserved some share of credit for contributing to that progress by the measures it had passed? But on that side of the House they did not argue that the House was free from blemish, otherwise they would not have put on the Paper proposals for its reform. There were bad points is the House of Lords, but they were points which the hon. Member had to a great extent overlooked. The House of Lords was not sufficiently Representative, and might be made more Representative than it was. The Prerogative of the creation of Members of the House of Lords was one of the highest which was vested in the hands of the First Minister of the Crown. It was a Prerogative which ought to be exercised with discretion and restraint, but these qualities had not been uniformly displayed, for promotion had not always been in recognition of services rendered to the country, but had too often been the reward of purely political services. Then the hereditary system prevailing is the House of Lords was compulsory, not permissive. The eldest son of an hereditary Peer succeeded to his title, and was bound to take it, whether he was willing or not. There might be a man more fit, but the man less fit could not be relieved of his duties. There were evils in the House of Lords, but there was a growing desire in both Houses to remedy those evils, and therefore he had ventured to put on the Paper an Amendment which anyone could understand, and that was more than could be said of the hon. Member's Amendment. The Amendment which he had put on the Paper asked the House to assent only to the reform and modification of the hereditary principle in the composition of the House of Lords. We ought to be content with small and tentative measures to begin with, but without some modification of the hereditary principle you could not proceed any distance in the direction of reform. Impulse might be communicated from without, but the action must come from within.

  789
  No help could be expected from members below the Gangway, as the House had heard from the hon. Member. He hoped, however, that among other sections of the House, both Conservative and Liberal, a more moderate and statesmanlike spirit prevailed, because if there was one attitude which was likely to be more fatal than what he might call the unblushing nihilism of hon. Members opposite, it would be a stubborn opposition to reform such as might have been expected from the Conservative Party in old times, but was not to be expected from them now. In process of time there might be a combination of all Parties and of both Houses of Parliament to carry out this reform. But whatever might be done in the direction of reform, he (Mr. Curzon) hoped that an institution which had existed in this country so long, and on the whole had justified itself to the sound judgment of the nation, would not be hastily and hurriedly swept away in obedience to a mandate from Northampton.
  MR. FIRTHsaid, he did not propose to detain the House at any length; but there was one question propounded by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Curzon) which he desired to answer. He would not follow the hon. Member in his suggestion that the action of the House of Lords in 1868 in regard to the Irish Church Act, and in regard to the Land Act of 1870—three vital clauses of which they struck out, necessitating the Act of 1880—was patriotic. Neither did he propose to combat the hon. Gentleman's proposition that the House of Lords was the embodiment of the religious life of country. The one question he wished to answer was why the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) did not include in his Motion the Crown as being one of the hereditary institutions of the country. He apprehended that the reason why his hon. Friend did not include the Crown was that that institution did not, in matters of legislation, present itself to the country in the same position as the House of Lords. Although, technically, the Crown possessed the right of veto, they did not find it exercised that right. On the other hand, they did find the House of Lords constantly dissenting from measures passed by the Representative body of the people. It seemed to him that the Crown presented an example which, if the
  790
  House of Lords were to follow it, would offer the readiest and easiest solution of the question they were now considering. His hon. Friend had pointed out that the peculiar characteristic of our Constitution was its adaptability to the circumstances of the time. If the House of Lords were to adapt itself to the growing democratic spirit of the age by following the notable example the Crown had set, the difficult problem they had before them might easily be settled. During the Tudor and Stuart dynasties, the Crown exercised direct control, and direct control was exercised by William III. There came a time in the reign of the House of Hanover, when the King could not speak English, and his first Minister could not speak French, and the control had to be exercised through the medium of conversation in Latin. The control became, in consequence, less and less. To-day, the Crown was supposed to be the embodiment of the Executive. To-day the Crown was supposed to have the nomination of all officers of the Army and Navy, and to have the control of many affairs, but, as a matter of fact, such rights were not exercised. If the House of Lords followed the example of the Crown and curtailed the control over Bills sent up from this House which it claimed to exercise, the result might be a happy euthanasia for that House, and the House might be preserved from attacks to which it was now subject. It had gone to a certain extent in that direction. It had, in the first place, ceased to meet as a body as a Court of Supreme Appeal on questions of law, though it was entitled to do so if it thought fit. It had also ceased to make the claim, although it had never specifically abandoned it, of originating measures of Supply. If it were to go on and cease to dissent to the measures passed by this House on important questions like those affecting the franchise of the people, and so forth, it might still have a long life; but if it persisted in opposing the will of the people, its life might come to a more speedy end than some hon. Gentlemen opposite imagined. It seemed to him that this was the answer to the question, How it came to pass that the Crown was not included in this proposition? He hoped the House would accept the proposition of his hon. Friend (Mr. Labouchere). The time might

  791
  come when it would be necessary to embody the proposition in an Act of Parliament. He supposed that that was the only way, short of a devolution, in which the proposition of his hon. Friend could be carried into practical effect. Of course, it would be necessary for the House of Lords to assent to such an Act; and, whether that assent would be obtained except by the method which was adopted in 1831, when, as they knew, two Ministers of the Crown wont to Windsor with 80 creations of Peers in their pockets, he was not prepared to say. Very probably there would be an Act of Parliament of that kind unless the House of Lords accepted the suggestion, which had been made in all good faith, that they should gradually let go those prerogatives which, technically, they possessed, whenever they conflicted with the will of the people as expressed in this House.
  MR. BARTLEYsaid, that after the admirable speech of the hon. Member for the Southport Division of South-West Lancashire (Mr. Curzon), it was unnecessary for him to say a word as to the importance of the House of Lords. He desired, however, to say a few words upon the Amendment he had placed upon the Paper, but which, he understood, it was impossible for him to move. His Amendment was as follows:—
  "It is desirable, with a view to the maintenance of that respect and confidence in which both Houses of Parliament have hitherto been held by the country, that hereditary Members of Parliament who have been convicted of crime, or who have been bankrupt, or whose conduct is of such a nature as in the judgment of their Peers to cause public scandal, should cease ever again to sit or vote or take part in the proceedings of Parliament."
  He need hardly say he approached this subject as a strong supporter of the Second Chamber, as a believer in the hereditary system to a certain extent. He agreed fully with his hon. Friend (Mr. Curzon) that it was necessary at the present time to consider the reform of the House of Lords in its representative character—to incorporate within it certain Life Members or certain Members who had been not only hereditary Peers, but would sit there as a reward for public services, and who would form a large addition and a great strength to that Blouse. They had listened to a
  792
  remarkable speech from the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), who, in his usual flippant manner, would get rid of the House of Lords and our great Constitution under which the Empire had attained its present great dimensions. Those hon. Members who believed in the principles of legislation could not suppose that the hon. Gentleman's proposition was really seriously meant. The hereditary body was, without doubt, a body which might be proud of its present position; for learning, for patriotism, and for morality, the House of Lords, the hereditary Chamber, could hold its own. In spite of the fierce light under which it lived, in spite of the fashion which now existed to do the utmost to pervert everything that everybody in any important position did, in spite of the writings of scurrilous newspapers which fastened upon everything that could be made to look bad—which, if they could not make truthful statements which suited their purpose, did not hesitate to invent them—in spite of all those who envied the House of Lords, and who pandered to it, and then scandalized it behind its back, the House of Lords could hold its own for all the quality of greatness. He asserted that there were very few who could throw stones at the House of Lords; certainly it was not this House which could do so. But while he said this, he fully agreed that this was not enough, and the Amendment which he would have moved, had he been able to, bore upon the subject. If there was one bad man in a body of men immense injury was done to the whole body. The public fixed upon the one individual and the prestige of the body was degraded and their influence seriously impaired, There was no doubt that cases of scandal influenced and damaged the position of the whole House. It might be true that Society very easily forgot scandal. It might be true that men who had behaved in a disgraceful way were again received into Society. Such men might be permitted to enter political clubs, but there was no doubt that through their scandalous acts they did permanently injure the position of the House to which they happened to belong. There had been cases of great scandal which affected the position of the hereditary Chamber. Members of that House had become

  793
  bankrupt, and after they had been whitewashed, or whatever the technical term was, had resumed their position in the House. Members of that House had been convicted of serious offences, and after undergoing the punishment inflicted upon them had resumed their seats in the House. Other Members of that House had disgraced themselves by acts which nobody could excuse; but still they continued to sit in the House. It had been said by some papers which had commented upon his Amendment that the House of Commons was not free from scandal. He knew that was so, but it must be remembered that no Member of this House was elected for life. Men were only elected to the House of Commons for a Parliament, and it might be taken for granted that a man who was the subject of a gross scandal was never re-elected. This circumstance was a hopeful sign of the times, for when constituences re-elected Members who had had their characters blasted, the sun of England's greatness would certainly have set. He did not wish to mention any name, but they all knew perfectly well that there was a case some time ago in which an hon. Gentleman, no longer a Member of this House, who had risen to a high position, and who was at the very portal of the very highest place an Englishman could wish to fill, was involved. Every one of every section in the House was very much grieved at the event. What was the result? The constituency for whom the hon. Gentleman had done so much, and whom he had served so long and so well, refused to re-elect him; they preferred to elect a young unknown man. That showed that the House of Commons had the means of purging itself of those who disgraced it in any way; and he had no hesitation in saying that no one would ever be re-elected to the House who had disgraced himself in an open and flagrant manner. If it was the case that constituencies refused to return such men to the House of Commons, how long would the country allow men who had blasted their names to continue to sit in the House of Lords? Let him take the very simplest case—namely, that of bankruptcy. There were cases, no doubt, in which men had become bankrupt through misfortune; but such cases were very rare with Peers. Members of the House of Lards who had
  794
  become bankrupt had generally become so through circumstances which were not creditable. Could it be contended for a moment that men who had become bankrupt should continue to sit in the House of Peers? It was certain that no hereditary Chamber could possibly last for any great period which possessed such Members, and therefore it was clear that those who really believed in the advisability of extending and strengthening the House of Lords should do their best to lop off its rotten and decayed branches. But there had been cases in which serious crime had been committed by Members of the Upper House. It certainly required no argument to prove that men who had been guilty of criminal offences of this sort should not have the right by birth and for life to continue to exercise the functions of Members of Parliament. He now came to the last class of cases, which was quite as important, but probably the most difficult to deal with—he referred to the men who had been guilty of some act which was disgraceful, but which did not come within the Criminal Code. Surely, men who had been guilty of open and flagrant acts of immorality, and who had been adjudged to be guilty of those acts by their Peers, ought not to be allowed to sit and act as legislators for life simply by right of birth. Was it reasonable to suppose that a man who had figured conspicuously in the Divorce Court should be allowed by right of birth to claim the privilege of sitting and voting in the House of Lords? And was it reasonable that a man who had so misbehaved himself that if he appeared on Newmarket Heath he would be kicked off, should sit and vote in the House of Lords merely by the right of birth? It was monstrous that in the case of urgent Divisions such men should be whipped up by the Party Whips in order to take part in the decision or settlement of some momentous affair of the nation—possibly the question of the Establishment or Disestablishment of the Church. It was often said, "though these men are bad, yet there are many quite as bad in all classes of society;" and, "the only offence of many men is being found out." He did not believe this was so; but even if it were, it did not affect the argument. With what a man was in his private capacity public

  795
  opinion had nothing to do; his sins when not publicly known were between himself and his conscience; but those men who defiantly outraged all laws of morality clearly should, not be allowed to remain for life, by right of birth, Members of the Legislature. Such cases were very few; but that fact made it all the more easy to deal with them; and it was the more necessary, for a few cases were remarked upon and became known to everyone. He would even go beyond the terms of his Amendment. To his mind, any man who had disgraced himself should not only be cut off from taking part in all legislative proceedings, but just as a clergyman was unfrocked and a military officer lost his commission, so he would have such a man uncoronetted. He saw no reason why men who succeeded to the name and position earned by the great deeds of their ancestors should not, when they disgraced their position, be cut off from taking part in the legislature of the country. A man was made a Peer and a hereditary legislator for some great deed; but if he, or any of his descendants, disgraced themselves, there was no reason why the privilege should not be withdrawn from the man who had shown himself unworthy of it. It might be said such a course would be hard on the children of Peers; but it was harder on the country to be obliged to retain men in their position of privilege in spite of any misconduct. It was impossible to suppose that children would be brought up in principles of nobleness and virtue by parents, who openly set at defiance all rules of morality. The only way to keep a hereditary Chamber really in touch and in sympathy with the masses of the people was to lop off these evil members. The maintenance of the House of Lords was of immense importance to the country, and, he believed, that the character of individual members largely affected the character of legislation. Those who studied history knew that the decadence of people had developed from the decadence of individuals, and was most rapid where the disease entered the senate. He hoped that in what he had said he had not wounded any susceptibilities. Example in high places was of great importance. The influence of a hereditary Chamber was very great, and he had no doubt whatever that the fact that a man whose offences were
  796
  publicly known had, simply by right of birth—regardless of what he might have done—the right for life to the position of legislator, was doing great mischief in the country. He was sure there was nobody who believed in a hereditary Chamber being necessary to the Constitution that did not agree with him. The time had come when legislation should stop these public scandals, and he believed the work could be undertaken by the present Government; and he appealed to the Front Bench to support the proposition that a man who had brought disgrace upon himself by his conduct should not solely by right of birth remain for life a Member of the Legislature, working and making the laws of the country to which he be-longed,
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH): I think that there is a general desire in the House that this debate should not be continued at any great length. The speech of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) appeared to me to be hardly fresh. Although the hon. Member has the gift of brightening his speeches with well-worn jokes and stories which are not now to the House, I felt, while he was speaking, that I was listening to observations which I had heard him make before. The view which the hon. Member takes is that there is really no necessity for a Second Chamber at all. With the frankness which always distinguishes his remarks, he said that he thought a Second Chamber useless; and he implied that the legislative centre of gravity ought to be sought for in himself and the Party with which he is intimately associated. For my part, I think that there are very few persons in this country who seriously believe, having regard to the enormous powers that are vested in the Legislature, that there ought to be no Second Chamber, and that it should be in the power of this Assembly, however representative it be, to institute and carry out by its own vote, in a single Session of Parliament, changes of a vast and overwhelming character affecting the interests of this great nation. The hon. Member's suggestion that a Second Chamber is useless, the centre of gravity being in this House, indicates with sufficient clearness what stop he would

  797
  take if he had the power. The hon. Member's real object is to convert this House into a Convention which would have the right to pass such measures as might be thought expedient by a temporary majority. Nobody, however Radical, excepting the hon. Member himself, will, I think, seriously suggest that the important interests of this country should be intrusted to such an Assembly as that. The hon. Member proposes that the Second Chamber, if retained, should deal with mere matters of detail. He would also, in certain circumstances, allow the reference of greater questions. [Mr. LABOUCHERE dissented.] Then the House of Commons is itself to dispose of every great question as it arises, perhaps under the influence of popular passion or blind impulse. I think it is hardly necessary to appeal to hon. Members not to support a Resolution of so revolutionary a character, which would shake the very foundations of the Constitution. As to the figures quoted by the hon. Member from The Financial Reform Almanack, they have been proved by my hon. Friend the Member for the Southport Division of Lancashire (Mr. Curzon) in his remarkably able speech, to be utterly fallacious. Now, Sir, the charge against the House of Lords is that it is a House of partizans. But the House of Lords has been hitherto used to contain a considerable proportion of the Liberal Party, and any Second Chamber would, according to the hon. Gentleman's argument, share the same fate and need to be abolished. The check against ill considered and violent legislation which is secured by a Second Chamber exists in the interests of the country at large, and if it is not so fairly representative as in the view of some of my hon. Friends it might be made, I say that no Second Chamber can long remain deaf to the public opinion of this country, but must advance towards it if that public opinion is consistent with the interests of the country. The remark made by the hon. Member for Southport that the reform of the House of Lords must come from the Conservative Party and from the House of Lords I accept. The assertion has great value, and I earnestly trust will meet a full consideration. It is obvious that any reform must strengthen the hold which I
  798
  believe the House of Lords has on the affections and sympathies of the great mass of the people of this country, but it must be sent down to us from the House of Lords itself for our consideration. The hon. Member opposite has observed that any reform of the House of Lords would be objectionable, because it would strengthen the position of the House of Lords in the country. I do not speak for the sake of the House of Lords itself, but regarding it solely as a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature with ourselves, I would gladly welcome any reforms which would render that House more fit to fulfil the duties that attach to it as a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature in protecting the interests of the people at large. It is a calumny to say that the House of Lords exists for the protection of certain classes only. The work which the House of Lords has done from time to time
  affords evidence that that is not the case. A vast amount of domestic legislation with regard to factories, affecting the poor and affecting land, has been done by it, and shows that it has studied the interests of the people at large, and not of the class of which it is composed. The Settled Land Act of Lord Cairns which was passed by him when sitting on the Opposition Benches, was sent down to this House, was accepted by all the lawyers in the House, and passed, I believe, absolutely without debate. I refer to that to dispose of the allegation that the House of Lords is not capable of constructive legislation. The hon. Member for North Islington (Mr. Bartley) referred to some circumstances connected with Members of the House of Lords, but I will remind him that there is no body of men among whom some black sheep cannot be found; there is scarcely a family among whom some black sheep may not be found. It can hardly be said, Sir, that the same observation does not apply to other bodies and other associations of men. I should like to refer, Sir, to some observations that fell from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) on the last occasion when he had to meet the Motion of the hon. Member for Northampton. In March, 1836, he said—
  "This great question ought not to be prejudiced by premature discussion. You ought to

  799
  leave the whole field open, and you ought not to narrow or restrict the means of future action by laying down beforehand a limited condition that whatever you do you will totally abolish the hereditary principle. I am not going to ask the House to affirm anything about the hereditary principle. I am not myself entirely inclined to its total abolition…. But do not let the hon. Member suppose that when he talks of abolishing the hereditary principle he is propounding an opinion which it will be as easy to give effect to as it is undoubtedly popular and musical to the ears of men.… But I think the House will do well, while reserving this great subject for a time when its whole power, its whole attention, and its whole freedom can be concentrated upon it—and I am quite certain that when that time does arrive all your means and all your resources will be required in order to deal with it worthily—the House will do well to decline to deal with it in a manner which I think would not be worthy either of the dignity or of the high character of this House, or of the greatness of the subject itself, by laying down a particular opinion in respect of a particular point in the future—perhaps distant—discussion of a great public subject as to which we might find ‥‥ that such a declaration had fettered us in our freedom of action and made still more difficult a practical solution of the question."—(3 Hansard, [303] 48,49.)
  In a Manifesto issued in September, 1885, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian said—
  "I certainly cannot deny that there is a case sufficient to justify important change. Those who hold with Mr. Burke, as I do, that knowledge and virtue alone have an intrinsic right to govern, might desire to constitute a Second Chamber, strictly on this basis. But we cannot in the nature of things exclude the action of other influences, especially the permanent growing and highly agressive power of wealth. Among these secondary influences, as a force congenial to the character and habits of the people, and as a check on other and yet more mixed agencies, I hope that in the reconstitution of the House of Lords, when it arrives, a reasonable share of power may be allowed under wise conditions to the principle of birth."
  I recommend these opinions to the consideration of the hon. Member for Northampton. I quote the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman as to the value of the principle of birth, and I find that in his judgment it is valuable as a means of guarding against other influences and other dangers. The right hon. Gentleman referred then to the growing dangers to which even a body situated as this is is open and exposed. He referred to the dangers of the power of wealth in influencing bodies of men even in our democratic Constitution. But there is another danger in which money plays an important part, and that is in political combinations influencing the
  800
  return of Members to this House, not directly, but by agencies which play on the passions of the people. Those are the dangers against which a Second Chamber, and perhaps a hereditary Chamber, is a safeguard. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that, however strong the House of Commons may be, there are dangers to be guarded against in the passionate appeals made to the constituencies of the United Kingdom by caucuses and by the associations which direct those bodies, and it is against these dangers that the existence of a Second Chamber largely assists us. I earnestly hope that the House will by a large majority reject the Amendment of the hon. Member for Northampton. With regard to the other hon. Members who by the Forms of the House have only had an opportunity of stating their views on this subject, I think I may claim the assistance of the hon. Member for the Arfon Division of Carnarvon (Mr. Rathbone). He admitted that the system requires amending, but wishes to improve its practical efficiency. I quite agree that that should be the object in view. I desire that the House of Lords should be as practically useful, as safe, and as powerful as it ought to be, in the interests of the country, and it is on that ground that I appeal to the House to reject this Amendment.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: I think, Sir, that we have heard from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) an announcement which will be felt, even on his own side of the House, to be deeply disappointing and inadequate. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that Her Majesty's Government are as anxious as anybody else in the State for such a change in the House of Lords as will promote its real efficiency and strengthen its stability; but that we must look to the declaration of Lord Salisbury as the test and measure of the extent to which Her Majesty's Government are willing to go.
  MR. W. H. SMITH: I said "indication."
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: As the indication then; I withdraw the words test and measure. Now, Sir, we have abundant means of knowing Lord Salisbury's point of view on this most important question. The hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere)

  801
  quoted one passage; but there are some words which I should like to read again. Lord Salisbury at Oxford said—" I am very sceptical if any such reform will be discovered "—that is to say, any reform which would not be unwelcome to the mass of the Conservative Party. Then he explained to his followers why he was sceptical as to any satisfactory reform—
  "The reason is that any change in the House of Lords which increases its power and influence in the country, if such a change can be discovered, must do be at the cost of the power and influence of the House of Commons, and you may be sure, therefore, that no such proposed change would ever pass."
  That does not show any very brilliant opening for those who desire to see the position of the House of Lords in the State modified or improved. But we have other means of knowing Lord Salisbury's mind with regard to this question, because in a debate in "another place," in answer to a most eloquent, brilliant, and forcible speech from Lord Rosebery, Lord Salisbury expressly declared how far he was then willing to go. He said that he would not go beyond a strictly limited power of creating Life Peers. The absolute number might be limited, or the number to be created in any single year: any other course would be fatal to the independence of the House of Lords. I know Lord Salisbury is apt to move very rapidly: but I believe he still stands at that limit. Lord Salisbury showed the utmost extent to which Her Majesty's Government were likely to go in the path of reform of the House of Lords. I submit that his views as to the extension of Life Peerages will be found extremely inadequate even by his own followers. It amounts to a definite non possumus. We know that Lord Salisbury is not in the least degree likely to raise this question. His attitude with regard to the request of Lord Rosebery for a Select Committees made that perfectly clear. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Member for the Southport Division of Lancashire (Mr. Curzon), who made a very ingenious speech, will vote with us, because that vote is the only way of raising the question of reform or change in the House of Lords. I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House has not stated very fairly what the effect of this vote
  802
  will be. The right hon. Gentleman says that to vote for the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton is to vote for the abolition of a Second Chamber. [Mr. W. H. SMITH: Hear, hear !] No such implication is convoyed in that vote. The form of my hon. Friend's Motion does not raise the question of a bicameral or a unicameral system.
  MR. W. H. SMITH: The hon. Member was frank enough to say that that was his view.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I said that my Motion did not in any way prejudice the question of two Chambers.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: We have nothing to do with my hon. Friend's pious opinions. By voting for the Motion we are not commuting ourselves to the question whether or not the government of the country should be entrusted to one single Representative Chamber. That question is not raised, and will not be settled by our votes. In voting against the Motion that the Speaker leave the Chair, what I, at least, vote is this—that the time has arrived for the discussion of the whole question. I do not vote, myself, either for or against any of the four proposals on the Notice Paper. They must be considered each on its own merits, and on none of them will this Division be a test of the opinion of the House. The right hon. Gentleman seems to overlook the fact that the right hon. Baronet now sitting next him (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) made, not many weeks ago, a very important, interesting, and, as I thought, from our point of view, a not wholly unsatisfactory declaration of his view, that the present state of things in the House of Lords could not continue; and he used language which goes much further than any declaration that Lord Salisbury has made, and much further than those words of Lord Salisbury which I have just read to the House. I hope that the right hon. Baronet will, at all events, not forget what he said, and that he will use his influence to enlarge Lord Salisbury's hopefulness, and to diminish Lord Salisbury's scepticism.
  Now, on the other side, it has been attempted to be shown that the House of Lords is a truly Representative Body, and that, on the whole, the country is indebted to it for a great

  803
  number of beneficent reforms. Well, I am not going into that old story of "50 years of legislation by the House of Lords." I should be quite prepared, if the time allowed, to go through, the legislative performances of that House, and I think it would tell a very different tale from that with which the right hon. Gentleman has favoured us. But that is not the point at the present moment. The point which we have to consider now is, whether the House of Lords is in such a condition, and does its work in such a way, as to satisfy even those who believe in the expediency and the necessity of a Second Chamber? I submit that the most firm believers in a Second Chamber are exactly those who ought to dislike most the present state of the House of Lords, because, in its present position, the House of Lords performs none of those functions which a Second Chamber ought to discharge. It is not a Senate. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think it was. It is not a Senate; it is a privileged interest. It has no effect on the fate of Governments. It cannot force an appeal to the country. Its Divisions excite no curiosity, because they are a foregone conclusion. Even its debates, remarkable for dignity and decorum, are only interesting as to the academic exercise of individual effort: they give no collective weight. What is the difference between having one Chamber only and having two Chambers, one of which is so utterly weak for the purpose for which it exists? Lord Salisbury said truly that a ricketty parapet on the edge of a precipice was more dangerous than no parapet at all, because you lean against it where leaning means destruction. The House of Lords is not a bridle upon democracy, as the hon. Member for the Southport Division of Lancashire scorned to think. It does not form a centre of resistance to the predominant power in the Constitution. More than that, the House of Lords does not do even the more humble work it might well do. I will give the House an illustration of that from what took place this week. There was before the House of Lords a Bill called the County Courts Consolidation Bill. I am told by those well qualified to speak on it that that Bill is of the greatest importance—that the accuracy of the drafting of that Bill will affect private interests in the most serious
  804
  way. What happened? In the "other place," where they had nothing else to do, they might have examined the Bill, and brought the minds of many competent men to bear on its provisions. What happened? The Bill was passed through Committee, as far as I can make out, without one single criticism or word on a single clause. That is important as showing that the Second Chamber performs neither the humbler nor the higher functions for which it is upheld. Great changes have been made in this House. It has been three times reformed in 55 years. This extension of the representative principle brings into more direct contrast a Chamber in which there is no direct elective element. In the second place, we have this week completed a change in our own Procedure which is pregnant with momentous consequences. The effect of the change is what? To strengthen the power of majorities in this House. That will bring into still more conspicuous light the absurdity of a system which allows an Hereditary Chamber to deprive the majority of this House, for which you have just been taking new and enlarged securities, of its legislative power. Lord Salisbury has announced, with what I must describe as an excess of rashness even for him, his intention to use the power of the House of Lords for the purpose of overriding the will of this House. ["No, no !"] I hear some Gentlemen say "No." I will read Lord Salisbury's words at Oxford with reference to these very Rules. He was endeavouring to soothe the alarmed minds of his followers, lest, in a phrase used below the Gangway the other night, they might be making a rope tighter round their own necks—
  "I have no doubt the result of a considerable amendment in the Rules of the House of Commons will be to send up from time to time, when there is a bad House of Commons"—that is, a House in which there is, a Liberal majority—"a considerable number of objectionable measures to the House of Lords"—objectionable, that is, to the House of Lords—"I hope the House of Lords will not shrink from acting on its conscientious convictions."
  The noble Lord himself—I am not sure whether in the same speech—compared his own position and that of his Party to that of a man on a toboggan. I cannot see how you can reconcile that adherence to conscientious convictions with coming down on a slide. Let Gentlemen

  805
  not deny that Lord Salisbury—and this is my answer to the First Lord for blaming my hon. Friend for raising the question here, instead of waiting until the House of Lords raised it—has forewarned us that when there is a Liberal majority in this House, in spite of all the pains we have taken to make the House the reflex of public opinion, to give the majority of the House power over its own time and proceedings, all that shall be as naught, and that a Liberal House of Commons shall be overridden. That is a digression, but not irrelevant. The third reason why the substantial limits of power in the House of Lords are undergoing change is, that you are on the very point of extending and strengthening the representative and elective principle in local government. We are moving away in every direction and in every quarter from privilege and from the hereditary principle. I say that weakens the whole foundation on which the power of the House of Lords rests. It is cracking and crumbling in every direction. There is another element of their power which is failing. The basis upon which it has hitherto rested is the territorial basis. They have acquired their power not in a small degree as possessors of the soil. It is certain both from the decline in the value of land, and from the increased facility of alienation, that the territorial basis is disappearing from the other House, and this must contribute to the weakening process which is going on. This weakening of the power of the other House is not due to direct attack from without; it is not due to the spread of democratic or Liberal principles; it is due to changes with which outside influences have little to do. The Amendments to that of the hon. Member for Northampton do not appear to be helpful or satisfactory. One contains an extraordinary proposal which it was hardly worth while raising in a grave Constitutional debate. It is that of the hon. Member for North Islington (Mr. Bartley) to this effect—
  "Hereditary Members of Parliament who have been convicted of crime, or who have been bankrupt, or whose conduct is of such a nature as in the judgment of their Peers to cause pub be scandal should cease ever again to sit or vote or take part in the proceedings of Parliament."
  This is to give to a tribunal of Peers the
  806
  right to take away from a Peer, who, after all, is a citizen, rights which the law of the land now gives him; a close, packed, special tribunal is to override the law of the land. I am against treating Peers better than other people. I should be sorry to vote for an Amendment that treats Peers worse than other people. As to the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Arfon Division of Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone), as it stands, I do not very clearly perceive how it would work. He said he wanted to make the Second Chamber like the American Senate. But the Upper House cannot be made parallel to the American Senate. That Senate has peculiar and large powers conferred upon it. For example, no Treaty is valid until it is ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate; and the diplomatic, executive, and administrative officers of the United States Government are appointed subject to confirmation by the Senate. Now, if my hon. Friend knows all that, does he gravely suppose that we are going to pass a Bill which will confer upon noble Lords in "another place" such powers as those? I cannot conceive any House of Commons consenting to any proposals of that kind. The Amendment of the hon. Member for the Southport Division of Lancashire (Mr. Curzon) reads well enough; but I listened in vain with the greatest interest for some suggestion as to how he intends to give effect to his object. He gave us no inkling of his plan. I am not going to detain the House any longer. I have fully explained what we mean by voting that the Speaker do not leave the Chair. By doing that we mean to express our
  opinion that the hereditary principle has become a question which ought no longer to be neglected by this House. We do not support the proposition of the hon. Member for Northampton out of any childish or dangerous taste for Constitution-mongering. We are not moved by any theoretical or abstract logic; we are moved by the logic of actual experience and of events. We are not arguing in advance of the facts by a single day. Experience shows that along whichever path we may ultimately choose to move in dealing either with the position or the composition of the House of Lords, the first step that we have to take in that direction is to affirm that the accident of birth no longer confers the right to

  807
  make laws for a free and self-governing people.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I shall only trespass for a very short time upon the indulgence of the House, and I should not have risen to intervene in the debate at all, had it not been for the very now and somewhat astounding doctrine and Unexpected attitude which has been taken up by the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley) from this Bench. ["Hear, hear !"] Whatever may be the meaning of the cheers of hon. Members around me, I believe I shall not be misrepresenting the state of the case when I say that I understand that the speech which has just been delivered by the right hon. Gentleman is to be regarded as the official utterance of the official Opposition. [Cheers and counter cheers.] Whether that is a fact to be received with cheers or not, I must say distinctly that it is worthy of note as a distinct change of attitude on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. I feel bound to remind the House, in connection with that change of attitude, that a Motion almost similar to that which has now been moved by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) was brought forward about two years ago, when it was strongly opposed by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone), who was then Prime Minister, and by the great body of his Party, and was not supported, as far as I know, by the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Before the debate concludes, therefore, it is worth while to take notice of this change of attitude, and to endeavour to ascertain, if we can, what it moans, or whether it means anything at all. The right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne says—"We understand the Motion as assorting the fact that the time has arrived when it is necessary to deal with the hereditary principle in our legislative system." But ray right hon. Friend has not advanced very far in the elucidation of the subject, and has only given us to understand that he does not commit himself to the Motion of the hon. Member for Northampton. He has also still more distinctly given us to understand that he does not approve of any one of the Amendments placed on the Paper. My right hon. Friend has taken Lord Salis-
  808
  bury to task for the attitude which he has taken up in regard to this question. He has described the length to which Lord Salisbury is prepared to go, and he says that Lard Salisbury's attitude practically amounts to a non possumus. But I want to know whether my right hon. Friend has given us any assistance in the solution of this question? Can any hon. Gentleman, after listening to the speech of my right hon. Friend, deduce anything from it, or say whether, in the opinion of my right hon. Friend, there ought to be a Second Chamber at all, or whether, if there is a Second Chamber, it ought to be solely hereditary, or partly hereditary in its constitution? My right hon. Friend has not given us the slightest indication of his opinion on any one of those points, and in these circumstances it seems to me that it is hardly fair on his part to taunt Lord Salisbury for the position of non possumus which he alleges he has taken up. My right hon. Friend found fault with the composition of the House of Lords and with the action of the House of Lords in a great many respects; but I venture to ask whether he has given to the House the slightest indication or guidance as to the action which ought to be taken by the country and by the Legislature in regard to the composition of that Chamber; whether he himself tended to the opinion that the House of Lords ought to be abolished altogether, or whether some and what reform ought to be instituted in the composition of the Second Chamber? I have risen, chiefly in consequence of his absence, for the purpose of attempting to defend my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian from the false position in which he is unfortunately placed by his Friends here. I had not had, until a short time ago, the slightest conception that it was the intention of my right hon. Friends sitting near me to alter the course which they took two years ago. I have only just had time to refer cursorily to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lothian on that occasion. It seems to me that his arguments were couched in an extremely moderate tone, and were amply sufficient to justify the vote be then gave. I believe the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) has referred to the attitude of the right hon. Member for

  809
  Mid Lothian. My right hon. Friend on that occasion said he opposed the Motion
  "On the ground that he had never in Iris knowledge voted upon a question of importance upon a declaration of abstract opinions in regard to a matter involving deeply the public interest unless he was able to follow up that Resolution by action."
  It is true that my right hon. Friend on that occasion drew a distinction between the position of Members of the Government and independent Members, and he allowed that, owing to the peculiar and difficult position in which independent Members were often placed, it might be necessary for them to resort to the method of abstract Resolution. Entirely adopting the principle of the right hon. Gentleman, I am disposed to press it somewhat further than he did on that occasion, and I am inclined to contend rather more strongly than he did for the responsibility which rests on the action of every individual Member of Parliament, whether he be in Office or in an independent position. It appears to me impossible for any Member of this House to give his vote on such, a question as this without considering what is the course which he would take himself if he were placed at some future period in power, or if those with whom he is politically connected were placed in power. And I want to know whether, in the speeches which have been delivered to-night, we have had the slightest indication to show what course those who are disposed to support this Motion would be prepared to take if they or their Friends were placed in power? The right hon. Gentleman did not rest his opposition on those grounds alone. He brought forward other, and, as I thought, adequate and sufficient reasons for voting against the proposition. He said that he did not rest his opposition to the Motion on account of the past legislative action of the House of Lords; on the contrary, he took two years ago, as he would probably take to-day, a very unfavourable view of the past legislative action of the House of Lords. He did not deny the possibility or the desirability of the reform of the House of Lords; but he said that such, a Motion as this should not pass for those reasons, and that a great question ought not to be prejudiced by premature discussion. The House of Commons, he
  810
  said, ought to have the whole field before it; it ought not to narrow or restrict its means of future action by laying down beforehand a limit in the sense that, whatever they might do in regard to the Second Chamber, they intended to abolish the hereditary principle. My right hon. Friend said that he was not in favour of abolishing altogether the hereditary principle; and, further, he pointed out that the hon. Member for Northampton, even if he could induce the House of Commons to assent to his theoretic condemnation of the hereditary principle, might find it a much more difficult thing to carry into practice than to lay down in a theoretic manner. I say that, in my opinion, those reasons given two years ago by my right hon. Friend against a similar Motion are absolutely sufficient to justify its rejection on this occasion; and I submit that, with all respect for the ability of the speech of the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he has not answered one of the arguments adduced two years ago by his present Chief. But I may venture to add that it seems to me, in approaching this subject as we are invited to do by the hon. Member for Northampton, we are not commencing at the beginning. Before the House of Commons passes such a Resolution as this, it ought to discuss the question first whether it desires to retain in our legislative system a Second Chamber or not. If there is any Member or if there are many Members in this House who do not desire to have a Second Chamber at all, no doubt they will support the abolition of the hereditary principle. But if there are many other Members of the House who are going to vote against the Speaker leaving the Chair to-night, and. who still think that there ought to be a Second Chamber, but that it ought to be differently composed, then I think it is incumbent upon them, before they condemn the hereditary system, to consider in what way that system is to be replaced, and how the Second Chamber they desire to retain ought to be composed. It is a doubtful question whether there are any Members on this side of the House who desire to reconstitute the Second Chamber in a manner which may have the effect of making it a very much more powerful Assembly than it now is. For all these reasons,

  811
  it seems to me that we ought, at all events, to reject the Motion of the hon. Member for Northampton. The Motion has been placed in a very inconvenient form before the House. It would be perfectly possible for anyone to resist the Motion that you, Sir, do leave the Chair who intended to support such opposite propositions as those put forward by the hon. Member for Northampton, the hon. Member for the Arfon Division of Carnarvonshire (Mr. Rathbone), the hon. Member for the South-port Division of Lancashire (Mr. Curzon), and the hon. Member for North Islington (Mr. Bartley). All those will vote against the Speaker leaving the Chair in the hope that the Motions may be reached. But the House is aware that it is impossible for us, on the present occasion, and probably impossible during the present Session, to discuss adequately the relative merits of these Amendments. The only effect of the rejection of the Motion to leave the Chair will be that a sort of assent will be given to the Motion of the hon. Member for Northampton, and that a very incorrect view of the state of feeling in the House of Commons will be given to the country. Under these circumstances, I think that hon. Members will be well advised if they follow the advice given to the House on a similar occasion by the Leader of the Opposition—who then occupied the position of Prime Minister—and until there is some definite idea as to the reform which the House desires to see introduced in the other branch of the Legislature, to resist the Amendment, which cannot have the effect of leading to any practical reform in the constitution of the House of Lords, but which will prejudge the consideration of the question.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I will not stand for many minutes between the House and a Division. My noble Friend (the Marquess of Harrington), who has just spoken, has asked what is the meaning of this Amendment, and what is the meaning of the vote which we are going to give. My right hon. Friend the Member for New-castle-upon-Tyne (Mr. John Morley) expressed clearly the view of those who sit on these Benches. The declaration which is to be given by this vote is, whether Members are or are not in favour of a reform in the House of
  812
  Lords, which reform is to be based upon dealing with the hereditary principle. It is that principle which is challenged in the Amendment, and it is upon that that we vote. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne complained of the non possumus of the First Lord of the Treasury; but there is a much stronger non possumus than that of the First Lord of the Treasury. There is the influence which always emphasizes the non possumus of the Conservative Party, and that is the influence of my noble Friend. He does not think the non possumus of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House strong enough, for there was a weakness about it; there was an indication of an intention in some circumstances of entering into a reform of the House of Lords. There was no such intention in the speech of my noble Friend in any circumstance. His was a non possumus pure and simple of reform of the House of Lords under any conditions and any circumstances. How does my noble Friend argue the question? He goes back two years. [Ministerial cheers.] Yes; my noble Friend's progress is always backward. It is a sort of crustacean progress, and my noble Friend represents that element in. the Party of progress. Why, the Conservative Party have made great progress in this matter in the last two years, and he is jealous of us, because we have made some progress. There is only one man who will allow no progress, no reform, and I should not be surprised if my noble Friend was to go back half-a-century. That is my answer to my noble Friend. He says we are not even to discuss this question—that men placed in power are not to make declarations, unless they are prepared to give effect to them.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I did not lay down any doctrine of the sort. I only repeated what had been said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothiaz.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: If my noble Friend wishes to impress that doctrine upon us who are not in Office, will he not impress it still more upon his right hon. Friend opposite, because the First Lord of the Treasury said tonight that there ought to be a reform which ought to originate in the House of Lords. But what is that but making

  813
  declarations without being prepared to give effect to them? Is the right hon. Gentleman who leads this House prepared to give a pledge on the lines of action laid down on the part of the Marquess of Salisbury that he will initiate in the House of Lords those reforms which the Conservative Party has declared they are prepared to carry out? If not, what becomes of the declaration which the right hon. Gentleman made to pacify the conscience of his followers? We have now got a very clear issue before us. In spite of all these non possumus evasions, from whatever source or from whatever quarter of the House they come, we have brought this matter to an issue on which a vote can and will be taken upon it. The question will be determined by this vote whether you are prepared to enter upon practical measures for the reform of the House of Lords in dealing with the hereditary principle. Upon that issue we are perfectly ready to stand and to meet you, who, having a majority in this House, and a majority in the House of Lords, have got the power to give effect to your declarations. So long as you continue to take the course of making those declarations, and of giving no effect to them, I think the country will judge of the value of them. We, at all events, are perfectly prepared to declare in this Division our views and intentions with reference to this matter.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 223; Noes 162: Majority 61.

  AYES.

  Ainslie, W. G.

  Bethell, Commander G. R.

  Aird, J.

  Ambrose, W.

  Bigwood, J.

  Anstruther, H. T.

  Birkbeck, Sir E.

  Ashmead-Bartlett, E.

  Blundell, Col. H. B. H.

  Baden-Powell, Sir G. S.

  Bond, G. H.

  Bonsor, H. C. O.

  Baird, J. G. A.

  Boord, T. W.

  Balfour, rt. hon. A. J.

  Borthwick, Sir A.

  Baring, Viscount

  Bridgeman, Col. hon. F. C.

  Barry, A. H. Smith-

  Bartley, G. C. T.

  Bristowe, T. L.

  Barttelot, Sir W. B.

  Brodrick, hon. W. St. J. F.

  Bates, Sir E.

  Baumann, A. A.

  Brookfield, A. M.

  Beach, right hon. Sir M. E. Hicks-

  Brooks, Sir W. C.

  Bruce, Lord H.

  Beckett, W.

  Burghley, Lord

  Bentinck, Lord H. C.

  Campbell, J. A.

  Bentinck, W. G. C.

  Carmarthen, Marq. of

  Beresford, Lord C. W. De la Poer

  Cavendish, Lord E.

  Chaplin, right hon. H.

  814

  Charrington, S.

  Hamilton, Lord E.

  Clarke, Sir E. G.

  Hanbury, R. W.

  Cochrane-Baillie, hon. C. W. A. N.

  Hankey, F. A.

  Hardcastle, F.

  Coddington, W.

  Hartington, Marq. of

  Colomb, Capt, J. C. R.

  Heath, A. R.

  Commerell, Adml. Sir J. E.

  Heathcote, Capt. J. H. Ed ards-

  Compton, F.

  Heaton, J. H.

  Corbett, J.

  Herbert, hon. S.

  Corry, Sir J. P.

  Hermon-Hodge, R. T.

  Cotton, Capt. E. T. D.

  Hill, right hon. Lord A. W.

  Cross, H. S.

  Curzon, Viscount

  Hill, Colonel E. S.

  Curzon, hon. G. N.

  Hoare, E. B.

  Darling, C. J.

  Hoare, S.

  Davenport, W. B.

  Holloway, G.

  Dawnay, Colonel hon. L. P.

  Houldsworth, Sir W. H.

  Howard, J.

  De Cobain, E. S. W.

  Howorth, H. H.

  De Lisle, E. J. L. M. P.

  Hubbard, E.

  Hulse, E. H.

  De Worms, Baron H.

  Hunt, F. S.

  Dixon-Hartland, F. D.

  Hunter, Sir W. G.

  Dorington, Sir J. E.

  Isaacson, F. W.

  Dugdale, J. S.

  Jackson, W. L.

  Duncombe, A.

  James, rt. hon. Sir H.

  Dyke, right hon. Sir W. H.

  Jarvis, A. W.

  Johnston, W.

  Edwards-Moss, T. C.

  Kelly, J. R.

  Egerton, hon. A. de T.

  Kerans, F. H.

  Elcho, Lord

  Kimber, H.

  Elliot, hon. A. R. D.

  King, H. S.

  Elton, C. I.

  Knowles, L.

  Eyre, Colonel H.

  Kynoch, G.

  Feilden, Lieut.-Gen. R. J.

  Lafone, A.

  Lambert, C.

  Fergusson, right hon. Sir J.

  Lawrance, J. C.

  Lawrence, Sir J. J. T.

  Field, Admiral E.

  Lawrence, W. F.

  Fielden, T.

  Lechmere, Sir E. A. H.

  Finlay, R. B.

  Legh, T. W.

  Fisher, W. H.

  Leighton, S.

  Fitzgerald, R. U. P.

  Lewisham, right hon. Viscount

  Fitzwilliam, hon. W. H. W.

  Llewellyn, E. H.

  Fitz-Wygram, General Sir F. W.

  Long, W. H.

  Low, M.

  Folkestone, right hon. Viscount

  Lowther, hon. W.

  Macartney, W. G. E.

  Forwood, A. B.

  Macdonald, right hon. J. H. A.

  Fowler, Sir R. N.

  Fraser, General C. C.

  Maclean, F. W.

  Fulton, J. F.

  Maclure, J. W.

  Gathorne-Hardy, hon. A. E.

  Madden, D. H.

  Making, Colonel W. T.

  Gedge, S.

  Malcolm, Col. J. W.

  Gent-Davis, R.

  Mallock, R.

  Giles, A.

  Maple, J. B.

  Gilliat, J. S.

  Marriott, right hon. W. T.

  Goldsworthy, Major-General W. T.

  Matthews, right hon. G. J.

  Gorst, Sir J. E.

  Goschen, right hon. G. J.

  Mattinson, M. W.

  Maxwell, Sir H. E.

  Grimston, Viscount

  Mayne, Admiral R. C.

  Gurdon, R. T.

  Mills, hon. C. W.

  Hall, A. W.

  More, R. J.

  Hall, C.

  Morrison, W.

  Halsey, T. F.

  Moss, R.

  Hambro, Col. C. J. T.

  Mount, W. G.

  Hamilton, right hon. Lord G. F.

  Mowbray, rt. hon. Sir J. R.

  815

  Mowbray, R. G. C.

  Sidebotham, J. W.

  Mulholland, H. L.

  Sinclair, W. P.

  Muncaster, Lord

  Smith, rt. hon. W. H.

  Muntz, P. A.

  Smith, A.

  Murdoch, C. T.

  Spencer, J. E.

  Newark, Viscount

  Stanhope, rt. hon. E.

  Noble, W.

  Stanley, E. J.

  Norris, E. S.

  Stephens, H. C.

  Northcote, hon. Sir H. S.

  Stewart, M. J.

  Sykes, C.

  Norton, R.

  Talbot, J. G.

  O'Neill, hon. R. T.

  Temple, Sir R.

  Parker, hon. F.

  Tollemache, H. J.

  Pearce, Sir W.

  Tyler, Sir H. W.

  Pelly, Sir L.

  Vincent, C. E. H.

  Penton, Captain F. T.

  Waring, Colonel T.

  Plunket, right hon. D. R.

  Watson, J.

  Webster, Sir R. E.

  Powell, F. S.

  Webster, R. G.

  Raikes, rt. hon. H. C.

  Weymouth, Viscount

  Richardson, T.

  Wharton, J. L.

  Ritchie, right hon. C. T.

  White, J. B.

  Whitley, E.

  Robertson, Sir W. T.

  Whitmore, C. A.

  Robinson, B.

  Winn, hon. R.

  Rollit, Sir A. K.

  Wodehouse, E. R.

  Round, J.

  Wood, N.

  Salt, T.

  Wortley, C. B. Stuart-

  Sandys, Lieut-Col. T. M.

  Wright, H. S.

  Young, C. E. B.

  Saunderson, Colonel E. J.

  TELLERS.

  Selwyn, Capt. C. W.

  Douglas, A. Akers-

  Seton-Karr, H.

  Walrond, Col. W. H.

  Shaw-Stewart, M. H.

  NOES.

  Abraham, W. (Limerick, W.)

  Clancy, J. J.

  Clark, Dr. G. B.

  Acland, A. H. D.

  Coleridge, hon. B.

  Anderson, C. H.

  Colman, J. J.

  Asher, A.

  Conway, M.

  Balfour, rt. hon. J. B.

  Cossham, H.

  Ballantine, W. H. W.

  Cox, J. R.

  Barbour, W. B.

  Cozens-Hardy, H. H.

  Barclay, J. W.

  Craig, J.

  Barran, J.

  Crawford, D.

  Beaumont, W. B.

  Cremer, W. R.

  Biggar, J. G.

  Crilly, D.

  Blane, A.

  Crossley, E.

  Bolton, J. C.

  Crossman, Gen. Sir W.

  Bolton, T. D.

  Deasy, J.

  Bradlaugh, C.

  Dillon, J.

  Brown, A. H.

  Duff, R. W.

  Bruce, hon. R. P.

  Ellis, J.

  Brunner, J. T.

  Ellis, J. E.

  Bryce, J.

  Ellis, T. E.

  Buchanan, T. R.

  Esslemont, P.

  Burt, T.

  Farquharson, Dr. R.

  Buxton, S. C.

  Fenwick, C.

  Caine, W. S.

  Ferguson, R. C. Munro-

  Caldwell, J.

  Finucane, J.

  Cameron, C.

  Firth, J. F. B.

  Campbell, Sir G.

  Forster, Sir C.

  Campbell, H.

  Fowler, rt. hon. H. H.

  Campbell -Bannerman, right hon. H.

  Gane, J. L.

  Gardner, H.

  Carew, J. L.

  Gaskell, C. G. Milnes-

  Causton, R. K.

  Gill, T. P.

  Chamberlain, R.

  Gladstone, H. J.

  Channing, F. A.

  Grey, Sir E.

  Guilders, right hon. H. C. E.

  Grove, Sir T. F.

  Gully, W. C.

  816

  Haldane, R. B.

  O'Connor, T. P.

  Harcourt, rt. hn. Sir W. G. V. V.

  O'Kelly, J.

  Paulton, J. M.

  Harrington, E.

  Pease, A. E.

  Harris, M.

  Pickersgill, E. H.

  Hayden, L. P.

  Picton, J. A.

  Hayne, C. Seale-

  Pinkerton, J.

  Healy, T. M.

  Plowden, Sir W. C.

  Hingley, B.

  Potter, T. B.

  Holden, I.

  Power, P. J.

  Hooper, J.

  Price, T. P.

  Howell, G.

  Priestley, B.

  Hoyle, I.

  Quinn, T.

  Hunter, W. A.

  Rathbone, W.

  Jacoby, J. A.

  Redmond, W. H. K.

  Joicey, J.

  Reid, R. T.

  Kay-Shuttleworth, rt. hon. Sir U. J.

  Roberts, J.

  Roberts, J. B.

  Kennedy, E. J.

  Roe, T.

  Kenny, C. S.

  Roscoe, Sir H. E.

  Kilbride, D.

  Rowlands, J.

  Lawson, Sir W.

  Russell, Sir C.

  Lawson, H. L. W.

  Samuelson, G. B.

  Leake, R.

  Schwann, C. E.

  Lefevre, right hon. G. J. S.

  Sheehan, J. D.

  Simon, Sir J.

  Lewis, T. P.

  Smith, S.

  Lockwood, F.

  Spencer, hon. C. R.

  Mac Neill, J. G. S.

  Stanhope, hon. P, J.

  M'Arthur, A.

  Stevenson, F. S.

  M'Arthur, W. A.

  Stewart, H.

  M'Carthy, J.

  Stuart, J.

  M'Donald, Dr. R.

  Sullivan, D.

  M'Ewan, W.

  Sullivan, T, D.

  M'Laren, W. S. B.

  Summers, W.

  Mahony, P.

  Swinburne, Sir J.

  Menzies, R. S.

  Trevelyan, right hon. Sir G. O.

  Morgan, right hon. G. O.

  Tuite, J.

  Morley, rt. hon. J.

  Warmington, C. M.

  Morley, A.

  Watt, H.

  Mundella, right hon. A. J.

  Wayman, T.

  Will, J. S.

  Murphy, W. M.

  Williams, A. J.

  Newnes, G.

  Williamson, S.

  Nolan, Colonel J. P.

  Wilson, H. J.

  Nolan, J.

  Woodhead, J.

  O'Brien, J. F. X.

  Wright, C.

  O'Brien, P.

  O'Brien, P. J.

  TELLERS.

  O'Connor, A.

  Cameron, J. M.

  O'Connor, J.

  Labouchere, H.

  Main Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  SUPPLY.—Committee upon Monday next.
  And it being One of the Clock, Mr. Speaker left the Chair without Question put.

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Debates and Proceedings in Parliament, appointed.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Statute Law Revision * (35).
Second Reading—Pluralities Acts Amendment Act, 1885, Amendment * (26).
Committee—Lunacy Acts Amendment (22).
Third Reading—County Courts Consolidation*(5), and passed.

HITCHIN FREE SCHOOL.

  MOTION FOR, AN ADDRESS.
  EARL BEAUCHAMP, in rising to move—
  "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying Her Majesty to withhold her assent from a scheme of the Charity Commissioners, laid before this House on February 20, relating to the Hitchin Free School,"
  said, that their Lordships on more than one occasion had agreed to Addresses praying Her Majesty to withhold her consent from schemes of the Charity

  687
  Commissioners, and the scheme to which he was about to call their Lordships' attention equalled in objectionable matter if it did not exceed some of the schemes which had been withdrawn. It was a scheme for transforming an endowed free school at Hitchin into a grammar school for the middle classes, and he contended that in doing so the Charity Commissioners, if they were not exceeding their legal powers, were at least departing from the instructions given to them by Parliament. The powers of the Charity Commissioners in these matters were regulated by Acts of Parliament passed in 1869 and 1873, by which it was provided that in dealing with charities of this kind the Commissioners were to have due regard for the interests of the class of persons for the benefit of whom the charity was endowed. This school was founded in 1639, and received farther subsequent endowments from other sources, and continued in that foundation until 1828. In the original endowment no limitation was made to the children of the poor; but to contemporary endowment given by friends of the founder, an express reservation was attached that the benefit of them should be given to the children of the poor. In 1828 the trustees appeared to have taken a very singular course. They made an order dismissing all the free boys from the school, and that no boy should be admitted on the foundation who was not the son of a respectable tradesman in Hitchin or in a similar rank of life. By this order the trustees admitted that up to that time the benefit of the school had been retained by the poor. There was no doubt that that action of the trustees was indefensible. If it were justifiable there would have been no necessity for him to address their Lordships. It might be said that the word "poor" was a word of art, and meant something more than was conveyed by the ordinary acceptation of the term, but no artificial meaning could be given to the word in this case, seeing that poor people in the ordinary acceptation of the term had enjoyed the benefits of this school from its foundation. If the endowments had been given subsequently to the action of the trustees in 1828, the action of the Charity Commissioners would be justified. It was sometimes said that the Act of 1870 rendered endowments of
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  this kind unnecessary for the education of the poor, and that therefore they might be turned to any useful purpose that Parliament might approve; but the contention of those who were favourable to the passing of the Act of 1870 was that their object was not in any way to supplant, but to supplement, the educational system. Again, it might be said, and said with truth, that Hitchin was sufficiently provided with schools for the children of the poor, seeing that there were voluntary schools for no less than 1,900 children, and that the average attendance was 1,229. This scheme was decidedly unpopular. In May, 1885, a public meeting was held, at which it was proposed by one of the trustees, and carried unanimously, that the trustees should be requested to reopen the free school as soon as practicable, and that the course of instruction should be arranged to suit the requirements of the times. Was this scheme suited to the requirements of the times? He thought that if their Lordships would look carefully into it they would come to the conclusion that it was not. By section 40 of the scheme the endowment was to be converted into an institution where boys were to be boarded whose parents could pay £45 a-year for board, together with fees of from £6 to £12 a-year for tuition. Could it be contended that such fees could be within the reach of the poor? The curriculum might mean anything or nothing, but it appeared to be quite unsuited to the education of the children of the poor. He was not disposed to deny to the children of any class the fullest access to a higher education, and he should be glad to see some scheme by which clever boys could gradually rise from one school to another, and if they distinguished themselves, could go to a University and enter the learned professions. But he did think it extremely inadvisable to give to the children of the poor generally an education which was wholly unsuited to assist them in their after life. It would not help them in the least to gain their own livelihood; but would merely add to the number of boys whose highest ambition it was to become clerks instead of devoting themselves to more useful occupations. Hitherto too much attention had been paid to the literary branch of education instead of to that training

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  which would fit boys for their subsequent trades and pursuits. One-half of this endowment was to go for the benefit of girls; but there was already in Hitchin a considerable foundation for the benefit of girls. This scheme really made no provision for the poor, gave by the creation of a few scholarships and the provision of a few free admissions to the grammar school. It was, however, an exceedingly costly scheme; and for the purpose of making up the necessary funds it was intended to obtain assistance from the charity known as that of John Rand. The evidence taken before the Commission on Elementary Education emphasized two points—namely, the great want of evening schools and of education in handicraft and agricultural industry. Such education would be of immense value to the children of the poor in after life. The object of the founder of John Band's charity was that boys and girls should be fitted out for trade and service. Why not respect that object, and provide a school for technical education; or why not establish continuation schools, where the knowledge acquired in the elementary schools might be developed? The art of agriculture, including all matters appertaining to the dairy, might be taught with much advantage; and it was worth noting that there were premises ready to hand, the trustees of the Hitchin charity having kept their buildings in repair. He might be told that it was now too late to interfere with the proposed scheme, others of a similar nature having already been adopted. He admitted that it was possible that some objectionable schemes had been overlooked by their Lordships; but the fact that in the past they had neglected to examine schemes as rigorously as they ought surely afforded no excuse for fresh negligence. He therefore asked their Lordships to send the scheme back, and ask the Commissioners to provide another and more suitable to the wants of the children of Hitchin, and more in accordance with the wishes of the founder. He concluded by moving the Resolution which stood in his name.
  Moved, "That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty praying Her Majesty to withhold her assent from a scheme of the Charity Commissioners laid before this House on 20th February relating to the Hitchin Free School."—(The Earl Beauchamp.)
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Viscount CRANBROOK)said, that his noble Friend had stated much which he did not dispute, but omitted much which was material to the issue, and as to the education to be given he had omitted to state that the governors under the scheme, to whom much was left to be done, would be able to do what the locality might require. The noble Earl was opposed apparently to the whole system recommended by the Endowed School Commissioners and the Charity Commissioners, and approved by the Committee of the House of Commons, which made an exhaustive inquiry and reported last year. He might quote largely from that report, but it expressed the opinion that the mode adopted by the Charity Commissioners for giving to the poor through scholarships and exhibitions a higher education than they could otherwise attain was beneficial to the poor. At Hitchin there were admirable elementary schools which had been rivals of the school to which the noble Earl had drawn attention, and so severely did that school suffer from the competition that it did not fulfil its object, pupils failed, and in 1876 it was found necessary to close it. The school was originally founded for the use of the children of the people of Hitchin, not one word being said as to its being a foundation for the poor. Indeed, the character of the education prescribed was not at all adapted to the poor. The terms used implied a Grammar School. Subsequent benefactors, it was true, had said that poor children were to have the benefit of their endowments; but such stipulations could not alter the nature of the original foundation. The school did not prosper; in 1828 a great change was made in connection with it, not a proper one in itself, but under that scheme scholars dwindled away, and at one time there were only seven, at another 13, and in 1876 it was finally closed, the schoolmaster being pensioned off. Something had been said as to the excellence of the buildings; but there was only one small school room without a separate class-room, and the master's house had been reported upon by the Inspector as wholly unfit for its purpose. It might be supposed that the people of Hitchin were in a state of alarm at the prospect of the scheme coming into operation, whereas they had subscribed

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  £3,000 in order to start the proposed school on the foundation. He was glad they were relieved of the religious question in this controversy, but still it was behind much of the opposition to the schemes. In Holwell there were only 187 persons, and the arrangements proposed by the schemes had the approval of the Governors of the Charity, as was shown by a letter approving all but the religious portion of the scheme which could not be changed. Measures could be taken under the scheme to promote technical education if that course was found to be desirable. As to the education of girls, one foundation was for "children," which would mean both boys and girls, and in the other both were mentioned. Elementary education was amply provided for; and as these schemes supplied other requirements in a manner agreeable to the population, he hoped their Lordships would not support the Motion.
  THE MARQUESS OF RIPONsaid, that he had been asked to present a Petition from the inhabitants of Hitchin in favour of the scheme. Hitchin was a town with a population of 9,000, and, therefore, it had a claim to be provided with good secondary education. The foundation was not a large one—not enough to establish an efficient grammar school, and, therefore, money had been subscribed to carry out the proposed scheme, but might not be forthcoming for any other plan. Trinity College, Cambridge, which was the patron of the living, had subscribed £300. According to his experience in similar cases, scholarships such as were proposed in this scheme formed a valuable link between the elementary and secondary schools and were of great valve to the working classes.
  On Question, resolved in the negative,

LUNACY ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
(The Lord Chancellor.)
LUNACY ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.

  (NO. 22.) COMMITTEE.
  House in Committee (according to Order).
  Clauses 1 to 19 inclusive, agreed to.
  Clause 20 (Lunatics in workhouses. 48 & 49 Vict. c. 52. Form 10).
  LORD DORMER, in moving an Amendment for the purpose of compel-
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  ling the workhouse authorities to provide sufficient and proper accommodation for pauper lunatics, said, the borough and county asylums in England and Wales were practically full, and as the number of lunatics was increasing at the average rate of 1,300 per year, it was proposed to send harmless cases which were now in the asylums to the workhouses, and his object in moving the Amendment was to save the inhabitants of the workhouses the discomfort and degradation of having to live in association with lunatics.
  Amendment moved, in page 12, line 26, leave out from ("lunatics,") to the end of Sub-section (c).—(The Lord Dormer.)
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HALSBURY)said, he thought the Amendment was unnecessary, and therefore opposed it.
  Amendment negatived.
  Clause agreed to.
  Clauses 21 to 33 inclusive, agreed to.
  On the Motion of The Lord HERSCHELL, the following Clause was agreed to, and inserted after Clause 33:—
  "33A. The notice by section nineteen of the Lunacy Act, 1853, required to be sent upon the recovery of a patient, shall state that unless the patient is removed within seven days from the date of the notice he will be discharged. If the patient is not removed within seven days from the date of the notice he shall be forthwith discharged without further order."
  Clauses 84 to 57, inclusive, agreed to.
  Clause 58 (Power to enlarge asylums in order to provide accommodation for private patients).
  LORD DORMERmoved an Amendment with the object of giving to the Local Authority power to build a hospital or asylum for private patients, and restricting the powers of enlarging, granted by this clause, to those asylums which have not accommodation for more than 400 patients.
  Amendment moved,
  In page 35, line 2, after ("Secretary of State") insert ("may erect an asylum or hospital for private patients, or if the county or borough asylum does not contain accommodation for ore than four hundred patients "); and in line 6, after ("all") insert (" new buildings or.")—(The Lord Dormer.)
  LORD HALSBURYsaid, he could not accept the Amendment.
  Amendment negatived.
  Clause agreed to.
  Remaining Clauses and Schedules agreed to.
  The Report of the Amendments to be received on Tuesday next.

VIVISECTION.

  MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS.
  VISCOUNT SIDMOUTH, in moving—
  "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for Correspondence between the Home Office and the Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection in reference to two recent instances of infringements of the law,"
  asked, Whether it would in future be a portion of the duties of the authorities at the Home Office to cause legal proceedings to be instituted in similar cases? He had brought these cases before the House a few days ago, when the noble Lord who represented the Home Office was, unfortunately, not in his place. In one case the operation was performed on a rabbit, but without anæsthetics; and in the other case a number of animals were inoculated in the presence of a number of persons, and without anæsthetics. The law had been distinctly contravened; but upon the attention of the Home Secretary being drawn to the oases, he replied, in the one case, that the licence would be withdrawn, and in the other that so long a time had elapsed since the infringement of the law that he did not feel justified in instituting proceedings. Under these circumstances he desired to know, whether in future, in cases brought to the attention of the Home Office, it would be deemed its duty to institute proceedings.
  Moved, "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for Correspondence between the Home Office and the Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection in reference to two recent instances of infringements of the law."—(The Viscount Sidmouth.)
  EARL BROWNLOWsaid, it certainly was a portion of the duties of the authorities at the Home Office to cause proceedings to be instituted in cases where the Vivisection Act had been infringed, and that duty had in the past been carefully discharged. This matter was brought before the House a short time ago by
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  the noble Viscount, when he himself was not in his place, and the Prime Minister then pointed out that no answer could be given as the Home Office did not know to what cases the noble Viscount referred. Since then the noble Viscount had privately informed him upon this point; and it appeared that the oases to which he referred were those of Dr. Hine and Professor Pemberley. Dr. Hine had a certificate, but clearly exceeded the powers granted by the certificate; and the Home Secretary, on having his attention called to the matter, withdrew the licence. Mr. Pemberley had not a certificate, and his explanation was that he was acting as the assistant of Dr. Robertson, who had. However, the infringement of the law was not discovered until the time of limitation had passed. There were extenuating circumstances in both cases. Cases could be dealt with by the Home Office according to their circumstances, and it was not necessary on every occasion to take legal proceedings. The Government had no objection to lay the Correspondence asked for upon the Table.
  Motion agreed to.

  STATUTE LAW REVISION BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for further promoting the revision of the Statute Law by repealing superfluous expresssions of enactment, and enactments which, have ceased to be in force or have become un-necessarry—Was presented by The Lord Chancellor; read 1a. (No. 35.)

  SWEATING SYSTEM.
  Select Committee on; The Lords following were named of the Committee:—

  L. Abp. Canterbury.

  L. Wigan, (E. Crawford and Balcarres).

  E. Derby.

  E. Onslow.

  V. Gordon, (E. Aberdeen).

  L. Kenry, (E. Dunraven and Mount-Earl).

  L. Clinton.

  L. Clifford of Chudleigh.

  L. Sandhurst.

  L. Rothschild.

  L. Foxford, (E. Limerick).

  L, Monkswell.

  L. Thring.

  The Committee to appoint their own Chairman.

  DEBATES AND PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT.
  Message of the House of Commons of Yesterday on the subject of the publication of Debates and Proceedings in Parliament, considered (according to order).
  Then it was moved, "That a Committee be appointed, to consist of Six Lords, to join with the Committee of the House of Commons as mentioned in the said Message, to inquire and report as to the cost and method of the publica-

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  tion of the Debates and Proceedings in Parliament."—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
  The same was agreed to.>
  A message sent to the Commons in answer to their message of Yesterday to inform them that this House has appointed a Committee to consist of Six Lords to join with the Committee of the Commons.
  House adjourned at a quarter past Six o'clock, till Monday next, a quarter before Eleven o'clock.