Sitting of 17 May 1888

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEES—First Report—East India (Hyderabad Deccan Mining Company) [No 177].
Special Report—Committee of Selection (Standing Committees).
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES; CLASS I.—PUBLIC WORKS AND BUILDINGS; CLASS II.—SALARIES AND EXPENSES OF CIVIL DEPARTMENTS; CLASS III.—LAW AND JUSTICE; CLASS IV.—EDUCATION, SCIENCE, AND ART; CLASS V.—FOREIGN AND COLONIAL SERVICES; CLASS VI—NON-EFFECTIVE AND CHARITABLE SERVICES; CLASS VII.—MISCELLANEOUS; REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, VOTE ON ACCOUNT, No. 2.
PRIVATE BILL (by Order)—Third Reading—Folkestone, Sandgate, and Hythe Tramways, and passed.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—Court of Session and Bill Chamber (Scotland) (Clerks) * [269]; Technical Instruction.* [270].
Second Reading—Employers' Liability for Injuries to Workmen [145], debate adjourned; National Debt (Supplemental) [264], debate adjourned.
PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL—Third Reading—
Metropolitan Commons (Chislehurst and St. Paul's Cray) * [193].

MR. SPEAKER'S INDISPOSITION.
The House being met, the Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, owing to the continuance of his indisposition:—
Whereupon Mr. Courtney, the Chairman of Ways and Means, proceeded to the Table; and, after Prayers, took the Chair as Deputy Speaker, pursuant to the Standing Order.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  EAST INDIA (HYDERABAD DECCAN MINING COMPANY) (FIRST REPORT).
  SIR HENRY JAMESreported from the Select Committee on East India (Hyderabad Deccan Mining Company), That they had made progress in the matter to them referred, and had come to a Resolution, which they had directed him to report to the House, and the Resolution of the Committee is as followeth:— That the Committee having received applications from the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Hyderabad Deccan Mining Company, the Sirdar Diler Jung, Mr. Witham Clarence Watson, Mr. Henry Parkinson Sharp, and Mr. James Graham. Stewart to be represented by Counsel before the Committee, the Committee are of opinion that it will be advisable to allow Counsel to represent the said Applicants for the purpose of assisting the Committee to

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  such extent and purposes as the Committee may from time to time direct.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 177.]
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That the Select Committee on East India (Hyderabad Deccan Mining Company) have leave to hear Counsel (to such extent as they shall think fit) upon the matters referred to them."—(Sir Henry James.)
  SIR EDWARD WATKINasked, whether it was intended by the Resolution which had been moved by the right hon. and learned Gentleman to impose any restriction upon the most searching inquiry?
  SIR HENRY JAMESsaid, there was no intention of putting any limitation upon the inquiry. It was, however, intended to impose a limit upon the action of Counsel in matters which the Committee did not think it necessary to inquire into. They thought it was necessary to assert their right to control Counsel.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Ordered, That the Select Committee on East India (Hyderabad Deccan Mining Company) have leave to hear Counsel (to such extent as they shall think fit) upon the matters referred to them.

QUESTIONS.

  ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY—IRISH SUNDAY CLOSING ACT—A.E.FLEURY, DISTRICT INSPECTOR OF LISBURN.
  MR. P. M'DONALDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether A. E. Fleury, reported in The Lisburn Standard, of April 14 last, as having been appointed incumbent's churchwarden, at a meeting of the annual Easter Vestry of the parish of Christ Church, Lisburn, held on the 4th of April last, the Rev. Arthur J. Moore, M.A., in the chair, is the Constabulary District Inspector of Lisburn; and, whether Mr. Fleury was present at said meeting, when a Resolution in favour of the continuance of the Irish Sunday Closing Act and its extension to the five cities now exempted was passed unanimously; and, if so, whether it is in conformity with the Regulations of the Service for a member of the Constabulary Force to accept or hold any such appointment, or to support, or to assist in the passing of a Resolution at any
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  meeting condemnatory of any Act of Parliament which it is his duty to enforce?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The Inspector General of Constabulary reports that it is the case that District Inspector Fleury was appointed incumbent's churchwarden at Lisburn. A meeting was held at which a Resolution in favour of the Irish Sunday Closing Act was passed. As a matter of fact, Mr. Fleury took no part in the discussion, nor was he, as far as I am aware, present. There is no Rule providing that men in the position of District Inspector should not occupy such a position as that of churchwarden; but the Inspector General recommends the Force not to join Local Bodies.
  MR. P. M'DONALD: Do I understand that Mr. Fleury was not present when the Resolution was passed?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: He was not present, as I understand.

  VENEZUELA—INSULTING NEWS- PAPER ARTICLES.
  MR. WATTasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether his attention has been called to recent articles published in The Port of Spain Gazette, with reference to the articles which appeared in a Spanish paper called El Venezolano, published in Trinidad, and containing language insulting to Great Britain; whether he is aware if the paper in question is the property of General Guzman Blanco; and, whether the Government is prepared to take any steps to prevent the publication in one of Her Majesty's neighbouring Possessions of articles openly inciting the Venezuelans to attack Her Majesty's Colony of British Guiana?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Sir JOHN GORST)(who replied) said: The attention of the Secretary of State has been called by a letter from the hon. Member to an article of the nature referred to. The Secretary of State has no information as to the ownership of El Venezolano; and, as this newspaper is stated to circulate in Trinidad only among a few Venezuelans, Her Majesty's Government do not think it necessary to take steps to prevent the publication in it of such articles.

  SCOTLAND—ORDNANCE SURVEY.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL (, &c.)asked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether the most highly cultivated counties of Scotland, Fife and the Lothians, are to have no better Ordnance Survey than the old 6-inch scale, since the last Report says nothing of any new survey on the larger scale?
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER (Mr. PLUNKET), in reply, said, it was intended to take up the revision of the Ordnance Survey of Scotland as soon as the re-survey of Lancashire and Yorkshire had been completed. That would be in about four years. It could not be done sooner.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLasked, if it could be done on a larger scale than the present?
  MR. PLUNKET: Yes; when the resurvey is made.

  COAL MINES REGULATION ACT, 1887 —THE BANK HALL AND OTHER COLLIERIES.
  MR. BRADLAUGHasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he is aware that no attempt has yet been made to comply with Section 12 of "The Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1887," at the Bank Hall Colliery, Burnley, the Townley Collieries, or the Cliviger Colliery, respectively; on what date, or dates, since the 1st of January last, the said collieries were respectively inspected by the District Inspector of Mines; and, whether he reported the total absence of weighing machines at each of the above-named collieries; and, if so, what steps he proposes to take in the matter?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): The reason that no attempt has been made at these collieries to comply with Section 12 of the Act of 1887 is that they have been working in accordance with exemptions granted under the Act of 1872. It is a legal question whether these exemptions are now in force; and I informed the House some days ago that steps are being taken to have this question settled by a prosecution in a Court of Law. The Bank Hall Colliery was visited on January 25 and 26; the Townley Collieries on February 11 and
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  April 23 and 24; and the Cliviger Colliery on January 28 and March 24. The Absence of weighing machines was brought to my notice shortly afterwards.

  LAW AND POLICE (IRELAND)—CLERK OF PETTY SESSIONS, BALLYMENA.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON(for Mr. PINKERTON) (Galway) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that Mr. James Giffin, merchant, Ballymena, on the 7th of May last, ordered a summons from the Clerk of Petty Sessions against Constable Haughny, for abusive language; whether the Clerk filled the summons, and handed it to Alexander Bell, summons server, to have it signed by a magistrate; whether Bell went to the Hon. John Young, J.P., D.L., and requested him to sign the summons; whether Mr. Young, after refusing to sign it, tore the summons into pieces, threw them at his feet, and said to the process server—"You can report me, if you like;" and, whether, under these circumstances, the attention of the Lord Chancellor will be called to the matter?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): It is the case that the magistrate referred to refused to sign the document presented to him, requiring that the case should be proceeded with by civil summons. An application for a civil summons was a few days afterwards made at the Court of Petty Sessions, at the suggestion of Mr. Young, before the magistrates, who were unanimous in refusing it, thus showing that the magistrate had exercised a proper discretion. I do not think that, under these circumstances, it was necessary that the attention of the Lord Chancellor should be called to it.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONasked that he might be allowed to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to what appeared to him to be the gravamen of the matter—namely, that Mr. Young, J.P., D.L., tore up the information and threw it at his feet and said—" You can report me if you like."
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, Mr. Young was not at home, and he could not answer the Question contained in the last paragraph but one.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)—DEFALCA- TIONS IN BALLYMENA UNION.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON(for Mr. PINKERTON) (Galway) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether he is aware of defalcations in connection with Ballymena Union, through the acts of the late clerk, F. A. Mathews, to the amount of £1,700; whether, before his appointment as clerk of the Union, he had been found guilty of dishonesty in his previous clerkships; whether the auditor (Major Studdart) always certified the accounts as being correct, and bonds of relieving officers as being produced, when, in point of fact, some of the sureties were dead; whether he is aware that a section of the Board are opposed to any inquiry, while other Guardians are in favour of an inquiry being held; whether the Local Government Board have been memorialized to grant a sworn investigation, and if he can state their reason for refusing to grant it; whether he is also aware that Mr. F. A. Mathews was High Constable, and that the office has since been filled by another nominee of the Grand Jury, without due notice, and without competition; and, whether, under the circumstances, he will order the Local Government Board to grant a sworn inquiry?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A J. BALFOUR): The reply to the first paragraph is in the affirmative. Mr. Mathews held the office of clerk of Ballymena Union for a period of 42 years, having been elected in 1846. I have no information as to the alleged dishonesty on his part before his election. The accounts of the Union have been certified by Colonel Studdart, auditor, as correct down to the time he discovered the defalcations. At each audit of the accounts the bonds of the relieving officers were produced. Colonel Studdart is not aware that any of the sureties are dead. I have no knowledge as to a section of the Board of Guardians being opposed to any inquiry. The Guardians did adopt a Resolution asking for the holding of a sworn inquiry as to the entire business of the Union. The Local Government Board replied that if specific charges were preferred against any responsible officers they would consider the propriety of in-
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  stituting an inquiry. Mr. Mathews's defalcations are under investigation by a committee of the Guardians, assisted by the Local Government Board Inspector. If charges affecting any of the remaining officers of the Union are submitted to the Local Government Board the propriety of ordering a sworn inquiry will be considered.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONasked the Chief Secretary, how it was that the Local Government Board were so reluctant to take action in a case of this kind; whereas in the case of the Listowel Union they had of their own initiative taken action and held an inquiry? He asked, whether the difference in politics made any difference in the action of the Local Government Board?
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, the difference in politics made no difference in the action of the Board. He saw no sign of reluctance on the part of the Board to take necessary action.

  NATIONAL SCHOOL TEACHERS (IRE- LAND)—THOMAS SWEENEY.
  MR. D. SULLIVAN(for Mr. LEAHY) (Kildare, S.) asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether Thomas Sweeney, the National School teacher, of Ballyroe Leinster Lodge, County Kildare, whose health has broken down with chronic bronchitis and asthma, has been ordered by the doctors to go to a warm climate, and to enable him to do so he has applied to the Commissioners of Education for a retiring gratuity instead of a pension, which application has been backed by the Reverend James Doyle, P.P., who knows the peculiar state of the case; whether, he being over 55 years of age, a Treasury Rule operates against this course; and, if he will take into consideration the necessity of relaxing this Rule, so as to grant him a sum sufficient to enable him to follow the doctor's advice, and the only way they think of saving his life?
  THE SECRETARY (Mr. JACKSON): I am sorry that nothing can be done by the Treasury to meet this distressing case; but the Teachers Pension Act of 1879 does not allow the grant of gratuities to male teachers retiring at 55 years of age and upwards; and the Treasury has no power to

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  alter the Rules laid down by that Act in favour of a particular teacher.

  LAW AND JUSTICE—CONFESSION OF MURDER—THE KIDBROOKE LANE MURDER (1871).
  MR. BOORDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to a report published in the Sydney newspapers of 13th and 14th of March, to the effect that a labourer named Michael Carroll had on the previous Sunday (11th March) confessed to the murder of Jane Maria Clousen in Kidbrooke Lane on the 25th of April, 1871, giving at the same time particulars sufficient to show that he was well acquainted with the locality and the circumstances connected with the commission of the crime, and stating that he had served in the British Army, from whence he had twice deserted; whether it is true that Carroll was discharged from custody on receipt of a telegraphic message from the Police Authorities in London that there was "not the slightest ground for his confession," and that he was "not the murderer;" and, if so, whether he can say by what means the London police were enabled to arrive at so prompt and definite a conclusion without having seen the prisoner, or having received fuller particulars than could be given in a telegraphic communication; and, whether he will inquire into the circumstances of the case, considering that the late Lord Chief Justice Bovill rebuked the police for withholding important evidence which conflicted with their theory of the murder?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): I have seen a newspaper report of the confession of Carroll on March 11. In reply to telegram from the Sydney police, asking whether the man should be detained, the Scotland Yard Authorities replied that they did not consider this man to be Clousen's murderer, and that he might be liberated after his statement had been recorded, and they asked that the statement might be forwarded. This statement has been since received, and in the opinion of the police is not reliable. The police were not aware of any evidence or suspicion which would have warranted the detention of Carroll. With regard to the strictures passed on the police concerned in the
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  case by the late Lord Chief Justice Bovill, I must refer my hon. Friend to a statement made in this House by Mr. Secretary Bruce on July 31, 1871.

  RIOTS AND DISTURBANCES(IRELAND) —TENT SERVICES OF THE IRISH EVANGELIZATION SOCIETY.
  MR. LEAasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If tent services held at Gortnessy, County Londonderry, under the auspices of the Irish Evangelization Society, have been disturbed by Nationalists for several nights, the tent wrecked and the services stopped; whether the population in the district is chiefly Presbyterian, and if they have suffered from attacks of stone throwing by parties of Roman Catholics on their way to or from the services; and, if he will take steps to protect this community in the exercise of their religious privileges?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The local Constabulary Authorities report that it is the case that the tent services in question have been on several evenings disturbed by the lower class Roman Catholics of the district, and that attempts have been made to wreck the tent. The better class Roman Catholics, however, have expressed their intention to use their influence to prevent these proceedings. The population in the district is mainly Presbyterian. It is alleged that on one evening stones were thrown at the congregation when returning home. The police have adopted full precautions to prevent a recurrence of this disgraceful behaviour.

  TORQUAY IMPROVEMENT ACT— STREET PROCESSIONS.
  MR. HENRY H. FOWLERasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, What is the number of persons who have been imprisoned for violation of the provisions of the Torquay Improvement Act with respect to street processions?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): Thirty-three persons have been committed to prison in default of sufficient distress and payment of the penalties imposed for offences under the 38th section of the Torquay Improvement Act.
  MR. HENRY H. FOWLERasked whether, having regard to the fact that 33 persons had been sent to prison for violation of a clause inserted in a Private Bill, against the views of the Government of the day, and without the knowledge of the House being called to it, he would introduce a Bill to repeal the clause?
  MR. MATTHEWSsaid, he was afraid he must take time to consider that matter.
  MR. HENRY H. FOWLERgave Notice that if the Home Secretary did not bring in such a Bill he (Mr. Henry H. Fowler), at the earliest opportunity after Whitsuntide would ask leave to bring in a Bill with that object.
  MR. SCHWANNasked the Home Secretary, whether the Government would be prepared to bring in a short Bill to repeal the clause interpolated into the Torquay Harbour Act of last year, and so put an end to this question?
  MR. WINTERBOTHAMasked whether, in view of the pledge given to the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton to bring in a Bill to the effect stated, the Home Secretary had the power, and would use it, to represent to the Torquay magistrates, his intention to do so, and thus induce them to postpone any further action under the clause of the Torque Act?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I have no intention of the kind stated by hon. Members opposite, nor could I properly interfere with any further action of the magistrates under the law they administer.
  MR. CONYBEAREasked the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he would consider the possibility of introducing into Provisional Order Bill now before the House, by which the Local Authorities of Torquay sought fresh powers, a clause repealing the clause of the existing Act dealing with street processions?
  THE FIRST LORD (Mr. W. H SMITH)said, it was obvious he could come under no such obligation without full consideration and full notice of the desire of the House.
  MR. CONYBEAREgave Notice that he would move the rejection of the Provisional Order Bill.

  INLAND REVENUE—LAND COMMISSION OFFICE—STAMP DISTRIBUTOR.
  MR. D. SULLIVAN(for Mr. M'CARTAN) (Down, S.) asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether he is aware that there is no stamp distributor attached to the Land Commission Office at Dublin, and that persons requiring copies of orders or other documents there are obliged to pay the fees in stamps, and cannot obtain any stamps at the Land Commission Office; and, whether, considering the inconvenience and delay involved thereby, he will take into consideration the appointment of a stamp distributor at that Office?
  THE SECRETARY (Mr. JACKSON): It is the fact that there is no stamp distributor at the Land Commission Office; but the necessary stamps can be obtained at the post office about 100 yards distant. This being so, I cannot believe that any serious inconvenience can arise; and as there are serious objections to the appointment of a stamp distributor within the office, I can hold out no hope that the suggestion of the hon. Member will be adopted.

  IRISH BOARD OF WORKS—ADVANCES TO THE MACGILLYCUDDY OF THE REEKS.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR(for Mr. KILBRIDE) (Kerry, S.) asked the Secretary to the Treasury, How much money has been advanced to The MacGillycuddy or the Reeks by the Board of Works since the year 1879; what is the Poor Law valuation of the property on which this money is chargeable; how much, if any, of this loan has been paid back into the Treasury; who inspected the works for which this money was advanced; and, what provision is made to satisfy the Board of Works that money advanced for drainage purposes is so expended?
  THE SECRETARY (Mr. JACKSON): A total amount of £7,625 has been advanced for the improvement of land since 1879 on this estate, the annual valuation of which is £1,353. Of this amount £150 has at present been repaid. The works were inspected by two of the Inspectors appointed for such purposes. Issues on account of such loans are only made upon certificates of

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  the Board of Works Inspectors as to the amount expended on the works.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked, if the hon. Gentleman could state the character of the inspection in cases of this kind; and, whether the Treasury had any assurance as to the nature of the improvement effected by means of the loans?
  MR. JACKSONsaid, he did not know whether the Treasury had any direct concern with the inspections while they were being made; but when he himself had been in Dublin at the end of last year he made some inquiry into this question, and he understood that the first inspection which was made before the loan was sanctioned was an inspection as to the value which would accrue to the property supposing the works to be carried out. He was informed also that as the works progressed, and before each instalment was paid, there was an inspection of the works which had been done up to the time. Therefore, it was clear that there was an inspection for the purpose of satisfying the requirements that the loan should be made, and also that the instalments were only paid after other inspections.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: Does the Inspector see the receipt for the money expended?
  MR. JACKSONsaid, he was afraid he could not say that. Besides, he was not sure whether the Inspector would rely upon the receipts; because he (Mr. Jackson) could conceive cases where a receipt might be produced for an amount in excess of what the Inspector deemed to be the value of the work. Therefore, he took it that the Inspector judged by his expert knowledge as to the actual value of the work performed.

  SCOTLAND—CROWN LANDS OR BISHOPRIC REVENUES OF ORKNEY
  MR. MACDONALD CAMERON (, &c.)asked the Lord Advocate, What amount of money was received by the Government for the sale of the Crown Lands or Bishopric Revenues of Orkney; and, to what purpose was the money so received devoted?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): The amount of money received for the sale of Crown Lands or Bishopric Revenues of Orkney is £50,465 17 s. 9d. It was not received
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  by the Government, but by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, as part of the capital of the Land Revenues of the Crown, and applied in accordance with the Land Revenue Acts of Parliament to the purchase of real estate for the Crown, or to extinguish charges on other property of the Crown Land Revenues.
  MR. MACDONALD CAMERONasked, whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman could state what portion of this money was devoted to the extension of public parks in London?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: I am quite unable to answer that Question.

  RAILWAY ACCIDENTS—FATAL ACCI- DENT AT NEW MILFORD STATION.
  MR. CHANNINGasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether his attention has been called to the statement of Colonel Rich, one of the Inspectors of the Board, after an inquiry held in July, 1887, as to a fatal accident to a boy named Reeves while working at the fish stage at New Milford Station, that the railway and station yard were most dangerous, and had been so for many years, and to the recommendation—
  "That the Company be required to fence their property at once, and the Company should be urged to build a foot-bridge across their railway for the safety of their own servants and of the numerous labourers that are employed;"
  whether about 600 men and boys are employed in and about the fish traffic and similar duties at New Milford Station; whether the Board of Trade has made any subsequent representations to the Railway Company; whether the Railway Company have as yet done anything to carry out Colonel Rich's recommendations; and, whether he will include cases of this nature of defective traffic accommodation among the matters for which he will ask for extended powers for the Board of Trade in the Bill recently foreshadowed?
  THE PRESIDENT (Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH): Yes, Sir; Colonel Rich's Report on the accident in question has been before me, and the circumstances are practically as stated in the Question. A copy of the Report was sent to the Railway Company; but the Board of Trade have no power to compel the erection of a bridge. Negotia-

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  tions, however, are pending, which the Board of Trade hope will result in the erection of a bridge; but I may add that had a bridge been in existence at the time the accident would not have been prevented. The case seems to be one of those as to which I indicated that, in my opinion, further legislation would be possible.

  LOTTERIES—THE CASTLETON-BY- ROCHDALE LIBERAL ASSOCIATION.
  MR. KNOWLESasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to a lottery, promoted by the Castleton-by-Rochdale Liberal Association, to be drawn on the 7th of July, in which the value of the prizes is stated to be £50, application for tickets being invited by the Secretary, Draw Committee, Liberal Club, Castleton; and, whether, if this is the case, he will communicate with the local police, with the view to such proceedings being taken as, under the circumstances, may be necessary?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): Yes, Sir; my attention has been drawn to this lottery, and I am now in communication with the local police.

  WAR OFFICE—TRANSPORT OF SUP- PLIES TO NAVAL COAL DEPOTS ABROAD.
  CAPTAIN COLOMB (, &c.)asked the Secretary of State for War, with reference to his reply to a Question on the 13th of September last, Whether he has found it practicable to give the House information as to the approximate total annual charges for the transport of troops, for the supply and conveyance of purely military stores, and for the maintenance of garrisons at each of the naval coal depots abroad; and, if so, when he proposes to give that information?
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY, WAR DEPARTMENT (Mr. BRODRICK)(who replied) said: The time of the War Department has been so much over-occupied since the Question of my hon. Friend in September last that it has not been practicable to get together the information he asks for. I hope, however, to be able to furnish it at no distant date; but some very important questions affecting coaling stations are now under consideration
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  by a small Inter-Departmental Committee, and it may be well to reserve the answer until their Report has been received.

  ADMIRALTY—THE RUSSIAN SQUAD- RON IN THE PACIFIC.
  CAPTAIN COLOMB (, &c.)asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether the statement, that the Russian Squadron in the Pacific consists of one iron-clad and five cruisers, is founded upon authoritative information; from what source such information was obtained; and, what are the names, armaments, and speed of the vessels composing that Squadron?
  THE FIRST LORD (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON): The statement I made with regard to the strength of the Russian Squadron in the Pacific is correct in every detail. It is not desirable to communicate the sources from which such information was received. The Squadron in question is composed of one belted frigate, two corvettes, three clippers of small tonnage, and seven gun vessels, of which four are practically condemned. I am not prepared to give, on the authority of the Admiralty, the further particulars asked for.

  METROPOLITAN STREET TRAFFIC— BLOCK AT HYDE PARK CORNER.
  MR. COCHRANE-BAILLIEasked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether he will consider the desirability of having another entrance made into Hyde Park between Knightsbridge Barracks and Albert Gate owing to the continually increasing block of traffic at the latter place?
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER (Mr. PLUNKET), in reply, said, he was not quite sure that, as far as the traffic inside the Gate was concerned, the change suggested would be an improvement. He had nothing to do with the outside of the Park; but if any representations were made to him by the Local Authorities in the sense of the Question of his hon. Friend it would be very carefully considered.

  COMPANIES, &c. ACT, 1862—LIQUIDA- TION OF COMPANIES.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAINasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether he is now in a position to state anything as to the Return asked

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  for in reference to the liquidation of Companies under the Act of 1862; and whether, if the production of the full Return asked for would be difficult or expensive, he would undertake to give a Return for two years, 1866 and 1867, as an example, showing the time occupied by and cost of liquidations under this Act?
  THE PRESIDENT (Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH): I have ascertained that a Return can be given showing the names of Companies in liquidation since 1862, and of the solicitors and liquidators, with the dates of commencement and closing of liquidation, but not including the costs of liquidation, or the amounts realized and distributed amongst the creditors. But the Lord Chancellor has directed inquiry to be made as to the reasonable practicability of giving the complete Return for two years, as suggested by the right hon. Gentleman.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL—THE COUNTY OF LONDON—DIVISION INTO TWO COUNTIES.
  MR. SYDNEY GEDGEasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether, having regard to the vast population within the district of the Metropolitan Board of Works (the proposed limits of the County of London), he would object to that area being divided into two counties, one for the north side of the River Thames, and another for the south side; or whether he would consent to the business, both civil and criminal, arising on the north side of the River Thames and that on the south side of the River being transacted by separate authorities and officials?
  THE PRESIDENT (Mr. RITCHIE): Her Majesty's Government would not be prepared to assent to any proposal that the Metropolis should be divided into two counties, or that the business of the County Council of London arising on the north and south sides of the Thames should be transacted by separate Authorities.

  EXCISE DUTIES (LOCAL PURPOSES) BILL—THE VAN AND WHEEL TAXES —MILITARY TOLL GATES.
  MR. BROOKFIELDasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether, in view of the fact that Van
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  and Wheel Taxes are about to come into force, he will consider the justice and expediency of causing the military toll gates in the neighbourhood of Rye and elsewhere to be removed?
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY, WAR DEPARTMENT (Mr. BRODRICK)(who replied) said: The tolls received for the military road are used in aid of the maintenance of the road. If the County Board will undertake to maintain the road there will be no objection to the abolition of the tolls.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL—RATES ON GOVERN- MENT PROPERTY.
  SIR EDWARD WATKINasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether, under the Local Government Bill, the Treasury will continue to contribute to Local Authorities money in lieu of rates on Government property?
  THE PRESIDENT (Mr. RITCHIE): The arrangement under which the Treasury make contributions to Local Authorities in lieu of rates on Government property will not be affected by the provisions of the Local Government Bill.

  INDIA—ESTABLISHMENT OF WOOLLEN INDUSTRIES IN BRITISH INDIA.
  SIR ROPER LETHBRIDGEasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether Her Majesty's Government has received any information from the Government of India relating to the import of wool into British India from Thibet, and the prospect of the profitable establishment of woollen factories within British territory in India?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JOHN GORST): No special Reports have been received; but the Trade Report shows that last year 3,464 cwt. of wool were imported into British India from Thibet. The factories established on the Baree Doab Canal and elsewhere are said to be doing fairly well.

  THE PARKS (METROPOLIS)—GRANT OF LAND IN RICHMOND PARK FOR VICARAGE.
  MR. BRYCEasked the First Commissioner of Works, "Whether an application has recently been

  533
  made to the Office of Works, or to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, to grant a piece of land in Richmond Park or in Petersham Park for the erection of a Vicarage; and, if so, whether any, and what, answer has been returned to such application?
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER (Mr. PLUNKET), in reply, said, a Memorial was presented through the Home Office last February to this effect, and the usual preliminary inquiry was made. Information, especially as to the position of the desired site for the vicarage, was requested by letter from the Vestry Clerk on the 16th of April, but no reply had yet been received; and, pending the receipt of this information, the consideration of the Memorial is necessarily postponed.
  MR. BRYCEasked, whether the House might understand that no definite action would be taken in the matter until there had been an opportunity of ascertaining its opinion?
  MR. PLUNKETsaid, he could not answer for the action which the Office of Woods might take.
  MR. BRYCEgave Notice that he would address further Questions on the subject to the Secretary to the Treasury.

  IRISH LAND COMMISSION—SUB-COM- MISSION, CO. DUBLIN,
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON(for Mr. CRILLY) (Mayo, N.) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If any date has been as yet fixed for the next sitting of the Land Sub-Commission Court in the County Dublin; and, if so, would he name the date fixed upon?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A, J. BALFOUR): The Land Commissioners inform me that no date has yet been fixed.

  PRISON REGULATIONS (IRELAND)— DERRY GAOL—FATHER M'FADDEN.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether a book, containing a copy of the Prison Rules, was excluded from a selection allowed in to Father M'Fadden, in Derry Gaol; and, if so, can he explain for what reason?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The General Board inform me that the Governor of the gaol declined to give the book referred to to the rev. gentleman, inasmuch as it was not one of those sanctioned by the Visiting Justices. The Visiting Justices had previously pointed out that all the Rules were hung up in his cell.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONasked, was the right hon. Gentleman aware that there was any other matter objectionable in the book except the Prison Rules; and, whether there would be any objection in the case of a first-class misdemeanant obtaining these Rules?
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that was a question which lay with the Visiting Justices, and not with himself.

  THE MAGISTRACY (IRELAND)—THE CORK POLICE COURT—MR. J. C. GARDINER, R.M.
  DR. TANNERasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether any, and if so what, steps will be taken to insure the attendance of a paid magistrate at the Cork Police Court in the event of Mr. J. C. Gardiner, R.M, at present Stipendiary Magistrate in Cork, being employed out of the City of Cork to assist in forming a Court under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): Mr. Gardiner, while engaged in his other duties, experiences no difficulty in securing the attendance of local magistrates at the police court; and, if necessary, the attendance of another Resident Magistrate is arranged for.
  DR. TANNERasked how it happened, then, that the Court had had to be adjourned altogether on last Thursday week, in consequence of the absence of Mr. Gardiner, and of any of the other friends and employés of the right hon. Gentleman?
  MR. A. J. BALFOURasked for Notice of the Question.
  DR. TANNERasked if he had not last year addressed a Question to the right hon. Gentleman on the subject; and if the right hon. Gentleman was not then obliged to acknowledge that,

  535
  owing to the absence of the Resident Magistrate and the inaptitude of the local magistrates, the business of the Court was completely and absolutely stopped?
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he was afraid that this and many other Questions addressed to him by the hon. Gentleman had escaped his memory.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)—CHAPLAIN TO THE SKIBBEREEN UNION.
  DR. TANNERasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If it is a fact that the Protestant chaplain to the Skibbereen Union receives a yearly salary of £20; and, if it is true that there are at present, and have been for a considerable time, only two Protestant inmates of the Union?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I am not able to answer the Question fully at present; I will give fuller particulars later. This salary of £20 has been given to the Protestant chaplain since his appointment in 1868. I believe there are at present three Protestant inmates in Skibbereen Workhouse; that does not, of course, include casuals.

  THE MAGISTRACY (IRELAND)—SEN- TENCE AT THE NEW MARKET PETTY SESSIONS.
  DR. TANNERasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been directed to a sentence imposed at New market Petty Sessions on last Friday, by Mr. O'Neill Segrave, R.M., and W. Monan, Esquire, upon a man named Daniel Pigott, of six months' imprisonment with hard labour; and, whether the statement made by Sergeant Walton, of the Royal Irish Constabulary, that the man was said to be of unsound mind, and was some time previously to have been sent to a lunatic asylum, will procure a medical investigation of the man's mental condition prior to the carrying out of the sentence?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. A. BALFOUR): I am afraid I cannot give the hon. Member any information on the subject at the present moment.
  DR. TANNER: When will it be convenient to the right hon. Gentleman to answer? [No reply.]
  DR. TANNER (appealing to the Deputy Speaker): Mr. Courtney, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to be courteous enough to give me an answer?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Member is the last person in the House I should desire to be discourteous to. I cannot give any answer at present, as I have not got the requisite materials by me.
  Subsequently, Dr. TANNER repeated the Question.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: This case was heard before Captain Segrave, R.M., and a local Justice of the Peace, Mr. Langford. Pigott was charged with having committed a most dangerous assault on his wife with a spade, causing serious injuries to her head. Sergeant Walton stated that the man had once been examined by a medical man, who refused to certify that he was not of sound mind, but that he (the sergeant) thought he was not always in his right senses. There does not appear to have been any evidence that he had been in a lunatic asylum. The sentence was as stated in the Question. Should the Prison Authorities have any reason to doubt the man's sanity, they will, of course, take such steps as they may deem necessary in his case.

  REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE (IRELAND) ACT—SERVICE OF REQUI- SITION FORMS.
  MR. D. SULLIVAN(for Mr. H. CAMPBELL) (Fermanagh, S.) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If he can now state the result of his inquiries as to the practice adopted by the Poor Law Unions in Ireland, with regard to the service of the requisition forms under the Representation of the People Act?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I find by the Report of the Union clerks that the general practice is to deliver the requisition forms by hand to the persons rated, or leave them at the rated premises. In about 50 Unions, however, some of the forms were sent by post,

  537
  chiefly in cases where the persons taxed lived at a distance.

  POST OFFICE (IRELAND)—SERVICE OF MAILS, NEWPORT, CO. TIPPERARY.
  MR. J. O'CONNORasked the Postmaster General, Whether he received a Memorial from the inhabitants of Newport, County Tipperary, praying to have a mid-day arrival and morning despatch of mails in connection with that town; and, what steps, if any, he has taken to meet the wishes of the Memorialists?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES): A Memorial such as the hon. Member describes was received from Newport, County Tipperary, in October last; but as it was found that the existing service in connection with the night mail was carried on at a loss, I was unable to sanction the additional expenditure for the establishment of a second post.

  IRISH LAND COMMISSION—SUB-COM- MISSION AT CARLOW.
  MR. J. O'CONNORasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, When the Land Sub-Commissioners are likely to sit next at Carlow for the purpose of hearing the large number of cases of which notice has been given?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The Land Commissioners inform me a Sub-Commission will commence its sitting in the County Carlow on the 4th of June.

  THE MAGISTRACY (IRELAND)—MR. J. J. THERRY, J.P.
  DR. TANNER(for Mr. JOHN O'CONNOR) (Tipperary, S.) asked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether Mr. John J. Therry, J.P., of Springvale, Kildorrery, County Cork, has been adjudicated a bankrupt; and, if so, whether he will be retained on the Commission of the Peace?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR)hesitated to rise.
  DR. TANNER: Is this Question convenient to the right hon. Gentleman to answer?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am informed by the Lord Chancellor that Mr. Therry
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  has been adjudicated a bankrupt, and has ceased to hold the Commission of the Peace.

  POST OFFICE—PROVINCIAL POST- MASTERSHIPS.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELLasked the Postmaster General, On what principle vacant Postmasterships in the Provinces are filled up; whether, in the case of several recent appointments to important offices in Provincial towns, officers of the Registered Letter and Money Order Departments have been appointed; and, whether, as the filling of such vacancies by a process other than that of selection from the general body of Postmasters retards promotion in this class of public servants, he will explain the grounds of these appointments?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES): The Question of the hon. Member would seem to imply that promotion to the more important post offices is by right confined to those who are Postmasters already. But such is not the case. When one of these post offices becomes vacant candidates are invited from all parts of the Post Office Service; and out of these candidates the Postmaster General selects the one whom he considers the best fitted for the duties to be discharged. Out of more than 200 such appointments which have been filled during the last 10 years, I find that one has been given to an officer of the Money Order Department; while the Registered Letter Department has received none at all.

  THE CROFTERS—EMIGRATION FROM STORNOWAY.
  MR. A. SUTHERLANDasked the Lord Advocate, Whether it is the fact, as stated in the newspapers of Tuesday last, that 25 crofter families, or a total of 113 souls, left Stornoway on the previous day for Manitoba; and, whether he can inform the House how much land the emigration of these 25 families or 113 souls has been made available for those who remain?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): Eighteen families have started from Lewis for Manitoba, numbering about 100 souls. Of these,

  539
  two have left crofts, and 16 were cottars who had been squatters on crofts. I am unable at present to state the area of land thus vacated, or the relief to township common pasture, as I have not particulars of the distribution.
  MR. HUNTERwished to know whether it was the intention of the Government to continue to send cottars and crofters from Lewis during the Whitsuntide Recess, the Government having refused to lay before the House the scheme under which the crofters were sent?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALDsaid, the assumption in the last part of the Question was incorrect. The scheme was in print, and had been laid before Parliament. It was not intended to send any further emigrants from Lewis; but he expected some would be going from the Island of Harris.
  MR. HUNTERasked, when the scheme would be in the hands of Members?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: To-morrow.
  MR. A. SUTHERLANDasked, what arrangement had been made with regard to the tenant right of these crofters?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALDsaid, a letter had been sent pointing out to the factor of the landlord that an arrangement would be made by which any land that would be vacated was to be made available for the neighbouring crofters; but he could not speak in detail.
  MR. HUNTERsaid, he would like the right hon. and learned Gentleman to explain to the House why these crofters had been sent away before any Parliamentary authority had been obtained?
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: An opportunity will be afforded for entering into that matter?
  In reply to Mr. ANDERSON (Elgin and Nairn),
  MR. J. H. A. MACDONALDsaid, that the selection of the crofters had been made by Mr. Malcolm M'Neill, who was a man with a great deal of experience of the Highlands.
  MR. HUNTERgave Notice that on the Motion for the adjournment of the House he would call attention to the policy and action of the Government in this matter.

  AGRICULTURE—THE VOTE FOR DAIRY INVESTIGATION.
  MR. ESSLEMONTasked the Lord Advocate, in regard to the sum of £5,000 to be voted for Dairy Investigation, How much of that sum it is proposed to allocate to Scotland, and also to whom it is proposed to entrust its distribution; and, under what conditions it will be granted?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): The proportion of the sum for which a Vote is asked as between the different parts of the Kingdom has not been fixed. The distribution will be arranged by the Privy Council. The final adjustment of the conditions under which the grant is to be given is not yet made.

  EMIGRATION—ASSISTED EMIGRATION FROM SCOTLAND.
  MR. ESSLEMONTasked the Lord Advocate, Whether Her Majesty has had under consideration a Memorial from Fraserburgh in regard to assisted emigration on behalf of fishermen and others; and, whether the same assistance will be given to fishermen on the East Coast as has been offered on the West Coast of Scotland?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD): The Memorial referred to has received the consideration of Her Majesty's Government; but at present the colonization scheme is necessarily limited to the crofting population of the West Highlands and Islands.

  LAW AND JUSTICE—SENTENCES OF FLOGGING AT LIVERPOOL ASSIZES.
  MR. PICKERSGILLasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether each of the prisoners who were sentenced to be flogged at Liverpool Assizes on Monday last had inflicted bodily harm upon any person; and, if so, what was the nature of the injury done in each case?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): I understand that these men were found guilty of robbery with violence. According to a newspaper report of the proceedings, the Judge remarked that they might

  541
  have been tried for inflicting grievous bodily harm. In one case the man attacked had two or three ribs broken; and in another the prosecutor's head was cut, and he was struck in the mouth. In each of the other three cases there was a violent assault committed, in one upon a woman, and in another cuts were inflicted with a knife.

  CUSTOMS DEPARTMENT—CIVIL SERVICE WRITERS.
  MR. PROVAND (, &c.)asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether a Circular Letter has been recently addressed by the Civil Service Commissioners to Civil Service writers employed at the various out-ports, informing them that they will be shortly discharged from the Customs Department, and that, if they are prepared to come to London at their
  "own expense, employment could probably be found for them shortly after their arrival;"
  whether this will have the effect of compelling their removal to London (in many cases with their families), and subject them in consequence to much expense and hardship, or in the alternative to practically enforce their retirement from the Service, contrary to the statement of the Secretary to the Treasury, made on the 15th of July, 1887—
  "That there was no desire on the part of the Government to inflict any injustice on the writers, nor to force them out of the Service;"
  and, whether, having regard to the fact that most of these writers have been employed for many years in their present posts, the Board of Customs will reconsider their decision?
  THE SECRETARY (Mr. JACKSON): A Circular Letter as described was sent by the Civil Service Commission without consultation with the Treasury. I am distinctly of opinion that if any copyists are removed for the benefit of the State from the outports to London the Treasury should allow travelling expenses; and, further, they will be ready to consider any cases which, in the opinion of the Customs, would involve hardship.

  ADMIRALTY—DEVONPORT DOCKYARD —EMPLOYMENT OF SEAMEN IN PRIVATE DUTIES.
  MR. CONYBEAREasked the First Lord of the Ad-
  542
  miralty, Whether it is the fact that some eight seamen belonging to the Indus are continually employed by the Admiral Superintendent of the Devonport Dockyards in his garden, and upon domestic duties in his official residence; whether the services of these men are allowed him in addition to the £200 per annum voted to him in lieu of servants; whether he can state the total cost to the country of these seamen in pay, provisions, and allowances; what was the cost of the floating bath recently constructed and equipped by Steam Reserve artificers with Government material for the use of the Admiral's family, and out of what Vote in the Estimates was the cost of such labour and material defrayed; and, what was the cost of transforming and furnishing the Dockyard Lower School into a card-room and billiard-room by the Director of Works Department for the use of the Admiral Superintendent and his friends, and under what Vote was the cost of the material and labour of such work accounted for?
  THE FIRST LORD (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON), in reply, said, the insinuation running throughout the Question that the Admiral Superintendent had made improper use of his position for his own personal convenience was wholly unfounded. The eight seamen referred to formed a boat's crew, who had been employed in their legitimate duties, and not in the house or garden of the Admiral. The floating bath was for the use, not of the Admiral's family, but of the officers generally. The alterations in regard to the billiard-room had been sanctioned by the Admiralty for the use of the Dockyard officials; and similar billiard-rooms had for some time existed both at Portsmouth and Chatham.
  MR. P. STANHOPEasked, if it was to be laid down as a general principle that sailors were to be available for domestic service?
  [No reply.]

  EAST INDIA (CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS)—REPEAL.
  MR. JAMES STUARTasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether the Government of India has taken, or is about to take, any stop for securing the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act in that

  543
  country, in addition to temporarily suspending its operation; whether Her Majesty's Government is prepared to make to the Government of India any representation with the view of securing that repeal; and, whether Her Majesty's Government is prepared to make to the Government of India any representation with the view of securing the repeal of those provisions in the Cantonment Acts which give powers to the Local Government to make Rules and Regulations for inspecting and controlling houses of ill-fame, and for licensing and compelling the examination of prostitutes?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JOHN GORST): The power of repealing Acts of the Indian Legislature is vested, by Act 24 & 25 Vict. c. 67, in the Council of the Governor General for making Laws and Regulations. The Government have no intention of interfering—nor have they the power to interfere—with the discretion of that Body in making, repealing, or amending laws. The directions given to the Government of India as to the Regulations to be framed under the Cantonment Act will be found in the despatch which I have laid on the Table.
  MR. JAMES STUARTasked, whether the House was to understand, from the hon. Gentleman's reply, that the Government, while condemning certain Regulations as immoral and ordering their removal, were unwilling to take any steps for removing that legislation which authorized them, and, in some cases, encouraged them.
  SIR JOHN GORST: The Legislature having entrusted a particular Body in India with the duty of making and amending the laws, it would be highly unbecoming of Her Majesty's Government to interfere with them.
  MR. STANSFELD: Does the hon. Gentleman mean to assure the House that in the history of the relations of Her Majesty's Government with the Government of India there are no precedents of advice or counsel being given by the Secretary of State to the Government of India?
  SIR JOHN GORST: That being a Question of precedent, it is only fair that I should have Notice of it.
  MR. JAMES STUART: Does the hon. Gentleman know that advice was
  544
  given to the Government of India by Her Majesty's Government four years ago?
  SIR JOHN GORSTasked for Notice of that Question also.
  MR. STANSFELD: In consequence of the answer of the hon. Gentleman, I beg to give Notice that on the 5th of June, on which day my hon. Friend the Member for the Crewe Division (Mr. M'Laren) has obtained first place for a Notice of Motion, he will move a Motion in favour of the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, or those portions of them which authorize or encourage either the compulsory examination of women or the regulation of prostitution, and on that occasion he will undoubtedly endeavour to obtain a decision from the House.

  INDIA—PROTECTION OF YOUNG GIRLS.
  MR. JAMES STUARTasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether a numerously signed Memorial was presented, in September last, to the Governor General of India, from the Ladies' Committee of the Calcutta Missionary Conference, and from other women in India, praying that the protection afforded by "The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885," to young girls under 16 in this country might be extended to India; whether it is the case that the Governor General has replied to that Memorial refusing its prayer; whether such protection is afforded to girls under 16 in Russia; and, whether a Treaty has been concluded between this country and Russia, which came into force a year ago, by which provision is made for the extradition from India to Russia of persons accused of seducing girls under 16, which persons are thus liable to be delivered up from India to Russia, to be there tried for what is not a crime in India itself?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JOHN GORST): The Secretary of State has no knowledge of the facts stated in the first two paragraphs of the Question. Protection is afforded to girls under 16 by Section 373 of the Indian Penal Code. The answer to the last two paragraphs is in the affirmative; but the 18th section of the Russian Treaty provides that its stipulations

  545
  "Shall be applicable to the Colonies and Foreign Possessions of Her Britannic Majesty, so far as the laws for the time being in force in such Colonies and Foreign Possessions respectively will allow."

  IRISH LAND COMMISSION—SUB-COM- MISSIONERS, CO. WICKLOW—FAIR RENTS.
  MR. BYRNEasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Whether it is true that a large number of originating notices have been served to have fair rents fixed by the Sub-Commissioners now sitting in the County Wicklow; whether only 22 applications have been listed for hearing from the Shillelagh Union, 42 from Baltinglass Union, and 134 from Rathdrum Union; and, whether, considering that a very large number of cases will be left undisposed of in the county, he will arrange to have a supplemental list issued for the present Sub-Commission, or have another Sub-Commission granted to sit on an early day?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The Land Commissioners inform me that the numbers stated in the Question are correct. All notices received from the County Wicklow up to and including the 27th of September last have been listed for hearing at the present sitting. The Commissioners cannot, having regard to the claim of other counties, extend the existing list of cases, or arrange at present for a further Sub-Commission sitting for the County Wicklow.

  WAR OFFICE—THE INNISKILLING FUSILIERS.
  MR. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAMasked the Secretary of State for War, If he is aware of the widespread discontent among the non-commissioned officers of the Inniskilling Fusiliers at Aldershot consequent on their being passed over in promotion in favour of the junior sergeant but one, in the filling of the post of Quartermaster Sergeant; is he aware that several general complaints have been made by the men so passed over; and, whether he will cause inquiry to be made into the truth or otherwise of the allegations contained in the General Reports with
  546
  a view to removing the discontent so prejudicial to discipline?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. E. STANHOPE): The promotion of non-commissioned officers to the Regimental Staff is effected by the selection of the man whom the Commanding Officer considers to be best fitted for the post, irrespective of seniority. In this case the action of the Commanding Officer has been fully approved by the General Officer commanding the Brigade, and I decline altogether to interfere in the matter.

  CRIMINAL LAW AND PROCEDURE (IRELAND) ACT, 1887—CONVICTION OF JAMES M'KEON FOR RE-ENTRY.
  MR. CONWAYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to the case of James M'Keon, who was tried before Colonel Turner and Mr. Maloney, Resident Magistrates under the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, at Manorhamilton, 9th May, and sentenced to 14 days in Sligo Gaol for re-entering a farm from which he had been evicted in October last; whether he is aware that the County Court Judge, in issuing a decree for possession, also made an order to the effect that in the event of M'Keon paying or tendering one year's rent within a certain time he might regain possession of his holding; whether the defence on 9th May was that such tender was made, but refused, unless costs were paid; whether the ruling of the County Court Judge was denied by Messrs. Hewson and Frazer, the complainants, who it was alleged were in Court when the ruling was given; whether there was some delay in obtaining a copy of the ruling from Mr. Harris, Clerk of the Peace, yet such copy of the ruling arrived before the Court of Petty Sessions broke up, though M'Keon had in the meantime been sentenced; and, whether, under the circumstances, the sentence on M'Keon will be set aside, and some compensation given for injury inflicted and loss of time?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): James M'Keon was tried before Mr. Turner, R.M., and Mr. Molony, R.M., on a charge of forcible entry and detainer of the house from which he had been

  547
  evicted at the complaint of his landlord. M'Keon pleaded guilty to the charge, and was sentenced to 14 days' imprisonment without hard labour. He did state that the County Court Judge made an order that if he paid a year's rent within a certain time he might regain possession. He produced no evidence, written or otherwise, to sustain this statement, which was denied by the agent, Mr. Hewson, on oath, and by the landlord's solicitor, Mr. Fenton. The written decree of the Judge was produced to the Court; but showed no such ruling on its face as that alleged by the defendant. The charge against M'Keon had been adjourned before it was heard for two weeks, which was ample time for him to procure any proof of his innocence, if such existed. Nothing is known of the alleged arrival of any document, or copy of ruling in connection with it.
  MR. CONWAY: Has the right hon. Gentleman made any inquiry of the Clerk of Petty Sessions with regard to the document furnished by the defendant; and is it not a fact it was read by the Petty Sessions Clerk to the magistrate before M'Keon was sent to gaol.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he was afraid he had given all the information in his power.
  MR. CONWAYsaid, he should put a further Question on the subject.

  LAW AND JUSTICE (IRELAND)—JUDI- CIAL OATHS—THE PRESBYTERIANS.
  MR. SINCLAIR (, &c.)asked Mr. Solicitor General for Ireland, Whether it is the custom that when a Presbyterian desires to swear by the uplifted hand, in accordance with his legal rights, he is almost invariably asked in the Irish Courts of Law, "Do you believe that form of oath is binding on your conscience?" whether such a question is asked in virtue of any statutable requirement; and, if so, can he indicate where this statutable requirement is to be found; and, whether, as this inquiry is looked upon as an insult by many of those to whom it is asked, he will consider how best to put a stop to this or similar questions being asked in future?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN): I am making inquiry as to the existence of the custom referred
  548
  to in the Question; but from the information I have it does not seem to universally prevail. If the hon. Gentleman will kindly postpone the Question until after Whitsuntide, I will be able to give him a complete answer.

  PRISONS (SCOTLAND)—DISCHARGE OF PRISONERS FROM BARLINNIE PRISON.
  MR. D. CRAWFORDasked the Lord Advocate, Whether the Government have yet arranged any plan for the discharge of prisoners from Barlinnie Prison which will be free from the inconvenience to the neighbourhood, amounting to a public nuisance, caused by the present system?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD), in reply, said, that arrangements to meet the difficulty had been adjusted subject to the approval of the Treasury, in which Department the matter was at present receiving consideration.

  LAW AND JUSTICE (IRELAND)—AL- LEGED MAINTENANCE OF CROWN WITNESSES.
  MR. CONYBEAREasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is the fact, as sworn by Cullinane, the Crown witness in the Lisdoonvarna Moonlighting case, that he and others had been kept in the pay of the police, and housed and maintained in a certain house in or near the Ballyrough Road, Dublin; whether he can state the cost of maintaining such lodging house, and whether it is accounted for under any, and which head, of the Irish Votes; and, whether he will state the number of Crown witnesses who have been thus housed and maintained during the last three years; and whether any, and which, of them have been convicted of any, and what, offences?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I have as yet received no Report in reference to this matter; and I am, therefore, unable to give an answer to the hon. Member.
  MR. CONYBEAREsaid, if it would suit the convenience of the right hon. Gentleman, he should repeat the Question after Whitsuntide.

  ADMIRALTY—DEVONPORT DOCKYARD —THE FIREMEN.
  MR. CONYBEAREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether any, and what, means were taken to ascertain the fact, as recently stated by him, that the firemen employed in the Davenport Dockyards are satisfied with the present arrangements; whether it is the fact that two Petitions detailing their grievances had been some time previously forwarded to the Admiral Superintendent from the turn-cocks and engine-drivers and stokers; and, whether they received a reply to the effect that "the matter has been considered, and nothing can be done in it"?
  THE FIRST LORD (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON): The Admiral Superintendent of Devonport Dockyard informed me that the men were generally satisfied; and that, upon his informing them if they wished to give up this duty and the remuneration attached to it they could do so, they declined to take that course. The cost of the extra arrangements for dealing with fire in all the Dockyards, except Devonport, does not exceed £35 per annum. At Devonport, where different conditions exist, the cost of provisional arrangement introduced in 1886 was £960 per annum; and because the Admiral Superintendent has made some changes by which this excessive cost is reduced to £210 per annum, the hon. Gentleman has put to me nearly 30 Questions in support of the former extravagant system.

  WAR OFFICE—COMPETITION FOR SUBALTERNS OF MILITIA.
  COLONEL WARINGasked the Secretary of State for War, Why it was that whereas 75 commissions were offered at the last competitive examination for subalterns of Militia only 63 were given; and, whether any change has recently been made in the system of marking?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. E. STANHOPE), in reply, said, that 75 commissions had been given at the last competitive examination for subalterns of Militia.

  WAR OFFICE—THE "FIELD EXER- CISES."
  COLONEL WARINGasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether, in view of the recent changes, it is intended to issue a new edition of the field exercises; and, whether it is a fact, as stated by many booksellers, that the present edition is out of print?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. E. STANHOPE), in reply, said, that it was intended to issue a new edition of the field exercises.

  WAR OFFICE—POWDER AND AMMU- NITION BARGES IN THE RIVER THAMES.
  COLONEL HUGHESasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether a new barge contractor has recently, by his neglect, placed the arsenal and town of Woolwich in great danger by leaving powder and ammunition barges unattended in the river Thames; whether about 750 tons of explosives were in the deserted barges, and that, with the adjacent powder ship and Government barges, a total of 2,000 tons of ammunition and powder was involved in risk; to whom would the people of the Metropolis look for indemnity for loss of life and property in case an accident had happened; whether his attention has been called to the statement of the contractor—
  "That he employed vagrants, whose names and addresses he did not know, and who deserted the barges;"
  And, if so, will the Government offer a reward for the said vagrants to come forward and explain whether they swam ashore, or how they all made their escape unobserved, and particularly why they left work for which they were to be paid; and, whether the said contractor will be continued in the service of the Government?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. E. STANHOPE): I explained, in answer to my hon. and gallant Friend a few days ago, that a barge contractor had recently committed a grave offence in the manner indicated in the Question. The contractor is bound by his contract to provide a suitable watchman for each barge; and as

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  he failed to do so, he was summoned and punished by a heavy fine. The responsibility for the characters of the watchmen must rest with the contractor. This contractor is quite new to the work; and the notice taken of this offence will, no doubt, render him more careful in future.

  TRADES AND COMMERCE—THE AUS- TRIAN TARIFF—DUTY ON BICYCLES, &c.
  MR. ERNEST SPENCERasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether be is aware that the Austrian Government suddenly, without any previous warning or notice of any kind, have decided that bicycles and tricycles should be ranged in the class of carriages or personal vehicles, and that, under such regulation, the duty payable on each bicycle or tricycle imported will be florins 25 gold or £2 10 s. (circa), and also that such duty should come into operation on the 10th of May instant; and, that, inasmuch as this measure will practically ruin the very considerable export business done by this country with Austria in the sale of bicycles and tricycles, whether he would communicate with the Austrian Government on the subject, with a view to securing the withdrawal of the impost?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JAMES FERGUSSON): Inquiry will be made, and such action taken as, in the circumstances, may be possible.

  ISLANDS OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC—SAMOA—HARBOUR OF PAGO PAGO.
  MR. HOWARD VINCENTasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Treaty between the United States and Samoa, conceding to the former Power the conclusive control of the Harbour of Pago Pago in time of war, is still in force; and, in such case, if any period has been fixed for its termination; whether representations have been from time to time addressed to Her Majesty's Government by Australasian Ministers, directing earnest attention to the deprivation thereby to British ships of a suitable harbour and coaling station in Mid Pacific, and in the direct ocean track between Australasia and Vancouver, and
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  Australasia and Panama; and, what steps have been taken in the matter?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JAMES FERGUSSON): There is a Treaty between the United States and Samoa of January 17, 1878, which provides that the United States may establish a Naval Station in the Harbour of Pago Pago; but it does not give to the United States exclusive control over other parts of the harbour. So far as Her Majesty's Government are aware the Treaty is still in force. As far as I have been able to ascertain at present, no such representations as are indicated in the second Question have been made.

  ISLANDS OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC— SAMOA.
  MR. W. A. M'ARTHURasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether any agreement was arrived at with Germany in regard to Samoa prior to the assembling of the Washington Conference; and, if so, what was the date of the agreement; whether the United States Government has agreed that Germany should act as the mandatory Power in Samoa; whether Germany was acting within her right in landing a force of armed men at Apia, in forcibly deporting to the Cameroons a King in Treaty relations with us, and in abolishing by declaration of their Consul the joint Consular jurisdiction over the district of Apia previously exercised by England, Germany, and the United States; and, whether there exists any correspondence on this matter with either Germany, the United States, or any of the Australian Colonies; and, if so, when it will be presented to the House?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JAMES FERGUSSON): As I have already stated, the views of Her Majesty's Government were founded on the Reports of their High Commissioner in the Pacific, and were in accordance with the proposals made by Germany to the Conference at Washington. There was no "agreement" between Her Majesty's Government and that of Germany; but certainly an interchange of views and, as I have said, a concurrence of opinion as to the basis of an arrangement for the future government of Samoa. No

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  conclusion has been arrived at upon that proposal. The landing a German force at Apia was consequent upon a declaration of war. The termination of the joint Consular jurisdiction at Apia was the consequence of the withdrawal of Germany from the Convention of 1879, upon which the separate jurisdiction of the Consuls revived. Her Majesty's Government do not think the maintenance of that Convention desirable. No doubt, there is Correspondence on these matters; but I am unable to say, at such short Notice, whether there is any that can at present be conveniently laid upon the Table.

  POOR LAW GUARDIANS—VISITING COMMITTEES.
  MR. ATHERLEY-JONESasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether only Guardians who are on the Visiting Committee are permitted to visit the poorhouse of their Union; whether this Regulation is in accordance with an Order of the Local Government Board; and, if so, for what object such Order was made; whether the Regulation has led to ineffective control and supervision of workhouses by the Guardians, and whether, in consequence thereof, many complaints have been made; and whether he will consider the desirability of rescinding or modifying such Regulation?
  THE PRESIDENT (Mr. RITCHIE): The Regulations of the Local Government Board require the Guardians to appoint one or more Visiting Committees from their own Body. The Board consider that Guardians who are not members of the Visiting Committee cannot claim as a right to visit the workhouse. The Regulations which the Board have issued contain no provision to this effect; but it appears to the Board to be the result of the statutory provision in the 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 76, s. 38. It is to be observed, however, that the Board of Guardians may grant permission to visit the workhouse, if they think fit, to any Guardian or Guardians who are not members of the Visiting Committee. The fact that every member of a Board of Guardians has not the right to visit the workhouse at any time he may think fit has not, in my opinion, led to ineffective control and supervision of workhouses by the Guardians; nor
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  am I aware that many complaints have been made on the subject. I should not be prepared to interfere with the discretion of the Guardians in this matter.

  VENEZUELA—THE UNITED STATES.
  SIR GEORGE BADEN-POWELL(for Mr. WATT) (Glasgow, Camlachie) asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he can state if it is a fact that the United States Government have decided upon taking action against the United States of Venezuela, so as to recover the long outstanding claims of certain United States subjects; and, whether Her Majesty's Government, having regard to the widespread discontent existing in British Guiana, owing to the long delay in the delimitation of the North-Western Frontier, are now prepared to state what action they propose taking, so as to determine the question of boundary?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir JAMES FERGUSSON): Her Majesty's Government have no such knowledge. I am not aware that there is widespread discontent in British Guiana. The state of affairs in the disputed territory is, undoubtedly, not satisfactory; but, at present, Her Majesty's Government are not prepared to state what action may be taken to determine the question of boundary.

  ADMIRALTY—CASE OF G. L. GROVER, LATE MIDSHIPMAN OF H.M.S. "BACCHANTE."
  MR. WHITMORE(for Mr. GILLIAT) (Clapham) asked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether he has been able to re-consider his decision not to grant a pension in the case of George Lionel Grover, late Midshipman of H.M.S. Bacchante, discharged without pension on his return invalided from service of great hardship on the coast of Africa?
  THE FIRST LORD (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON): No, Sir. I have very carefully inquired into Mr. Grover's case, and regret I am unable to reverse the decision previously come to. To place a midshipman after three years' service for the remainder of his life on the pension list is an act to

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  which I cannot assent, when the officer does not, in my judgment come within the Regulations governing such pensions.
  MR. WHITMOREbegged to give Notice that, in consequence of the answer just given, his hon. Friend would call attention to the subject on going into Committee of Supply.

  METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS— EMPLOYMENT OF COUNSEL.
  MR. LABOUCHEREasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been drawn to the statement made at the meeting of the Metropolitan Board of Works on Friday last, that the Board was entitled, under the provisions of the Act appointing the Board of Works Inquiry Commission, to employ counsel on behalf of the Board, and to pay the cost of them out of the money of London ratepayers; and, whether, under the provisions of the said Act, it is competent for the Board to employ and to pay counsel at the expense of the ratepayers?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): The Act under which a Royal Commission is sitting to inquire into the working of the Metropolitan Board of Works enables them to appear by counsel or solicitor before the Commissioners. It is silent as to the payment of the counsel. I understand the contention of the Board to be that this clause carries with it, by implication, the right to charge the expense on the rates. Whether that contention is well founded or not is a question of construction, on which I cannot give an opinion. It must be settled by a Court of Law if any contest arises.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL—BOARDS OF GUARDIANS—TRANSFER OF POWERS.
  MR. PAULTONasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether, under Section 8 of the Local Government Bill, the powers and duties of existing Boards of Guardians could by Order in Council be transferred to the County Councils?
  THE PRESIDENT (Mr. RITCHIE): The
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  terms of Clause 8 of the Local Government Bill are, no doubt, very comprehensive; and when the clause is reached in Committee I shall be prepared to agree to its being made clear that it is not to extend to Boards of Guardians.

  ADMIRALTY—THE DOCKS AT HAULBOWLINE.
  DR. FOXasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether it is the intention of the Government to complete the docks at Haulbowline, and to open them for the repairing and building of ships?
  THE FIRST LORD (Lord GEORGE HAMILTON): The dock at Haulbowline is in course of completion; and, when finished, will be utilized on any occasion when it advantageously can be.
  DR FOX: Is it the intention to spend any of the large sums about to be voted for the improvement of the Navy——
  MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, order!
  DR. TANNERasked, if the Admiralty purposed excavating a passage from the deep sea channel to the dock, inasmuch as the dock could not be utilized before that was done? He had asked this Question three times in the course of the last seven months, but had received no answer. Had the work been commenced?
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTON: Of course, the dock would be useless unless there was access to it. Of course, the passage would be made before the dock was opened; but he could not answer the Question off hand.

  THE MAGISTRACY (IRELAND)—RE- APPOINTMENT OF MR. H. EGAN— TULLAMORE.
  DR. FOXasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether the Lord Chancellor has received a requisition from the Board of Town Commissioners of Tullamore, asking for the re-appointment of Mr. Henry Egan to the Commission of the Peace, for the purpose of the Towns Improvement Act; and, whether there is any special objection to his re-appointment?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): The Lord

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  Chancellor of Ireland has favoured me with a statement, to the effect that last December he received the requisition alluded to; but that he declined to make the appointment. In so declining he acted in the exercise of the discretion vested in him by law.
  DR. FOXasked, was it not a fact that after the re-election of Mr. Egan to the Chairmanship of the Town Commissioners of Tullamore he was allowed to act as magistrate; and that it was only when acting in his capacity as Visiting Justice at Tullamore Gaol in connection with some of the right hon. Gentleman's political opponents that the Lord Chancellor struck him off the list?
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers that, may I ask whether Mr. Egan had any right to visit as a Visiting Justice?
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, if Mr. Egan acted as a magistrate he acted on his own responsibility, and he had no title whatever to do so.
  DR. FOXasked, was it not the fact that there was no magistrate in Tullamore for the purpose of the Towns Improvement Act; and, also, whether it was the intention of the Lord Chancellor to appoint Mr. Egan?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am afraid I cannot answer that Question.
  DR. FOXsaid, that on a future day he should put a further Question on this subject.

  MARGARINE ACT, 1887—SEIZURE OF DUTCH MARGARINE.
  MR. MACLUREasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether he is aware that since the passing of the Margarine Act thousands of packages of margarine have been shipped through the Port of Hull branded as margarine, Dutch make, but that during the last four days such consignments have been seized, the only grounds given being that it should have been marked "Dutch made," not "Dutch make?"
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON)(who replied) said: I am informed that the goods in question have been released, with a caution to the importers. It is right to state that, in addition to the words "Dutch make" the packages were labelled with English words, such as "the best."

  BARNARD'S INN—SALE OF THE INN.
  MR. BROOKFIELDasked Mr. Attorney General, Whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that Barnard's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery, is to be offered for sale on the 20th of June next; whether it is a fact that this Inn is an ancient Corporation originally established for the training of law students; and, whether the sale, if it takes place, will divert a public property to private purposes?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir RICHARD WEBSTER): Whatever may have been the original constitution of Barnard's Inn, I believe that, in common with many other Inns of the same character, it long since passed into private hands; and therefore, to the best of my belief, under the present sale no property will be diverted from public to private purposes. As the hon. Member is probably aware, there were other Inns in a similar position, and they are believed to have been private establishments, with a view to the study of the law.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL—THE LICENSING CLAUSES—LEGAL RIGHT TO RE- NEWAL.
  MR. SUMMERSasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Licensing Clauses of the Local Government Bill were framed upon the advice of the Law Officers that publicans have, in the absence of misconduct, a legal vested right to the renewal of their licences; whether there is now reason to believe that this opinion is erroneous; and, whether the Government will take advantage of the Recess to re-consider their proposed legislation on this subject?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE)(who replied) said: It is quite unusual for the Government to state what advice they receive from their Law Officers; and I cannot, therefore, give the hon. Gentleman any information on the subject. I may say, however, that I have already stated in the House that in framing our proposals on the licensing question we were guided by what we consider the paramount claims of equity, and from these we cannot recede. I

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  desire, however, to take this opportunity of saying that the Question of the hon. Gentleman seems to imply a misconception of the proposals of the Government—a misconception which I have noticed seems to be largely shared by those who have adversely criticized the clauses in the Local Government Bill dealing with this question. It seems to be the impression that we propose to take away certain powers now possessed by the Justices under which renewal of licences may be refused. The Bill does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it is expressly provided that where a person is desirous that a licence should not be renewed on any ground on which Justices would, if the Act had not passed, have been authorized or required to refuse the renewal of such licence, such person may apply to the Justices, who may make a Report that the licence ought not to be renewed; and if, on appeal, the decision of the Justices be confirmed the Licensing Committee must refuse to renew the licence. In such a case there would be no claim for compensation. Whether the Justices do or do not possess such a power except for misconduct under the existing law is, I am aware, a matter of contention; but if they do possess such a power it will be seen we do not propose to take it away. Undoubtedly, however, such a power, if possessed, has been rarely exercised. This being so, we thought it right, with a view of facilitating the closing of public-houses where not required, to confer upon the County Councils powers, in addition to those of a judicial character possessed by the Justices, expressly enabling them to close public-houses where, in their opinion, they were not required; and in that case, and that alone, compensation can be claimed, and to provide for that compensation a special duty on licences may be imposed. The position, in the event of the Bill passing, would, therefore, be that where renewal of licences was refused in consequence of the action of the Justices under any powers at present possessed by them, no compensation could be claimed; but where renewal was refused by the County Council under the new powers created by the Bill compensation would be paid by means of a fund practically created by the Licensed Victuallers themselves.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: The right hon. Gentleman says the magistrates rarely exercise their powers of refusing licences. I desire to know whether the right hon. Gentleman is willing to give the Returns he referred to the other day in reply to the hon. Member for the Leigh Division of Lancashire (Mr. Caleb Wright)?
  MR. RITCHIE: I have promised to communicate with the Home Office upon the subject, and have done so; but I have not yet ascertained whether the Return can be prepared. If it can, it shall be granted.
  MR. J. E. ELLIS: Does the right hon. Gentleman still adhere to the statement made that the Bill places holders of licences in a more secure position?
  MR. RITCHIE: Yes, Sir; I take it that under the provisions of this Bill it will not be possible to do that which I know some hon. Members in this House desire—namely, to close the whole of the public-houses in a neighbourhood by means of what is commonly known as local option.
  MR. LABOUCHEREasked whether, according to the right hon. Gentleman's own showing, the Licensing Magistrates would not have a perfect right to close every public-house without assigning any reason; and that, if they did not assign any reason, there would be no compensation?
  MR. RITCHIE; As I have stated, what the exact powers of the magistrates are in this respect is a matter of contention; but, certainly, if the hon. Member refers to a decision recently given, I understand that Justices could not, even under that decision, act as the hon. Member suggests; but must take each case into consideration, and act judicially with reference to it.
  MR. SUMMERSasked the First Lord of the Treasury, whether, in view of the important discussions that might be anticipated on the Licensing Clauses of the Local Government Bill, he would cause to be printed and circulated as a Parliamentary Paper a full report of the case of "Sharp v. Wakefield and others," and of the Judgments delivered in that case by Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice Wills?
  MR. RITCHIE(who replied) said, although the Judgments of Mr. Justice

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  Field and Mr. Justice Wills are, no doubt, of considerable importance, as the hon. Member is probably aware, an appeal against the decision of those Judges is pending. This being the case, it is not proposed to issue as a Parliamentary Paper a full report of the case and Judgments, as that would be a very unusual course.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman not bring forward the Licensing Clauses until that appeal is decided?
  MR. RITCHIE: Yes, Sir; we shall bring forward the Licensing Clauses as soon as the House will allow us to do so.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL—THE FISH TRADE— THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL AND THE GREATER MUNICIPAL COUNCILS.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL (, &c.)asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether Her Majesty's Government see their way to any steps to remedy the excessive difference between the price of fish brought to shore cheap and sold to the consumer very dear; or whether they will propose to add to the Local Government Bill provisions giving to the London County Council and the greater Municipal Councils powers of local legislation sufficient to deal with markets and monopolies and the sources of dear fish, bad gas, insufficient water, and other evils of that kind?
  THE FIRST LORD (Mr. W. H. SMITH): The hon. Member asks me whether the Government see their way to take any steps to remedy the excessive difference between the price of fish brought to shore cheap and sold to the consumer very dear. I should have said myself that that is, undoubtedly, an opportunity for private enterprize, which the hon. Gentleman might endeavour to stimulate himself. There is evidently a vast field for those who desired to benefit themselves and to benefit their countrymen. Then the hon. Member asks the Government to add to the Local Government Bill provisions giving to the greater Municipal Councils powers of local legislation. I think that the right time to
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  discuss that question is when we arrive at the Local Government Bill itself; and if the hon. Gentleman desires to improve that measure the Government will be very glad of his assistance.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLgave Notice that he would put on the Paper an Amendment giving power to these Councils to deal with these and other monopolies.

  UNIVERSITIES (SCOTLAND) BILL—THE COMMISSIONERS.
  MR. BRYCEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, When Her Majesty's Government propose to state the names of the persons to be appointed Commissioners under the Scottish Universities Bill, which has been introduced in the House of Lords? He also wished to ask, in consequence of a rumour that the Government proposed that the Commission should consist of 15 Members, whether the right hon. Gentleman could now state the number of Commissioners?
  THE FIRST LORD (Mr. W. H. SMITH): As the latter Question was not put upon the Paper, I have not informed myself upon the subject; and, therefore, I am unable to give the hon. Member the information he asks for. With regard to the Question on the Paper, the Government hope to be able to state the names of the Commissioners under the Scotch Universities Bill during the Committee stage in the House of Lords; but, in any case, they will be stated before the Bill leaves that House.

  SCOTLAND—INSPECTION OF MINES— APPOINTMENTS.
  MR. J. W. PHILIPSasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether, in the event of a vacancy occurring among the Chief Inspectors of Mines in Scotland, he will give a pledge that he will appoint a new Inspector only from among the ranks of men who are, or have been, practical working miners?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. MATTHEWS): No; I can give no such pledge. I shall on every occasion appoint the most competent person I can find.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES)—THE MILITIA (IRELAND)—INSUBORDINA- TION.
  COLONEL WARINGwished to ask the Secretary of State for War a Question of which he had given him private Notice. It was Whether he had seen a report in The Dublin Evening Mail,, taken from The Cork Herald, which states that the Clare Militia, when assembling for their annual training, saluted their commanding officer with three groans; and what steps he intended to take in case this report should be verified?
  MR. CONYBEARE: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers the Question, I should like to ask him whether the commanding officer was not Colonel O'Callaghan?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Mr. E. STANHOPE): I know nothing of this matter except what is contained in the paragraph referred to. It is obvious, therefore, that I can make no statement with regard to it.

  AUSTRALIA—CHINESE IMMIGRANTS.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATONasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether he is in a position to state what progress, if any, has been made in the negotiations between the British and Chinese Governments with reference to the landing of Chinese in Australia; and, whether the Governor of New South Wales has been instructed to veto any special Act passed by the Parliament of the Colony dealing with Chinese immigration?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Sir JOHN GORST)(who replied) said: Her Majesty's Government are not in a position to make any statement on the subject, which is one requiring full and careful consideration. No instructions of the nature suggested have been sent to the Governor of New South Wales.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—THE WHITSUNTIDE HOLIDAYS.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTdesired to know whether it was intended to hold a Morning Sitting to-morrow?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH), in reply, said, the Government were entirely in the hands of the House, and desired to meet the convenience of the House, with regard to the adjournment over the Whitsuntide Recess. There were, however, two steps which must be taken before the adjournment could be moved. In the first place, he must ask the House for a Vote on Account; and, secondly, he hoped that the House would read the Employers' Liability Bill a second time, so that it could be sent to the Grand Committee on Trade. If these steps were taken they would be prepared to move the adjournment that evening. But if those steps were not taken, he should have to ask the House to meet to-morrow at 2 o'clock.
  MR. HUNTERsaid, he had proposed, on the Motion for Adjournment, to discuss the question of the emigration of crofters; but as he found that it would be possible to raise that question on the Vote for the salary of the Secretary for Scotland, he would deal with it then, and so avoid the necessity of delaying the adjournment.
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, that he would take care that all the Papers on the subject should be in the hands of Members before the end of the Recess. In reply to Dr. FARQUHARSON (Aberdeenshire, W.),
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he was not able to say precisely when the Lunacy Acts Amendment Bill would be taken; but it was possible they might be able to reach it on the 4th of June.
  In reply to Mr. ILLINGWORTH (Bradford, W.),
  MR. W. H SMITHsaid, that if the Employers' Liability Bill was not read a second time that night he should have to ask the House to come to a decision on the measure at the Morning Sitting to-morrow.

  CRIME AND OUTRAGE (IRELAND)—THE AFFRAY AT MITCHELSTOWN IN SEPTEMBER LAST—THE CORONER'S INQUEST.
  MR. SUMMERS: I wish to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland a Question of which I have given him private Notice. It is this—Whether he is correctly reported, in his speech at Battersea last night, as having described the in-

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  quest at Mitchelstown as corrupt; and, if so, whether he will state to the House the ground on which the charge of corruption was based?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I am not sure that I used that word. If I did, I am glad that the hon. Member has given me the opportunity of saying that I never intended what the word "corrupt" naturally means when applied to a tribunal—namely, being bribed or influenced by corrupt pecuniary considerations. What I ought to have said—and I beg everybody concerned to take the correction—is that the tribunal was incompetent and worthless.
  Subsequently,
  SIR WILFRID LAWSON: I have to ask the Chief Secretary a Question arising out of the answer he has given just now. In answer to my hon. Friend he said that the inquiry into the cause of death at Mitchelstown had been made before a tribunal which was incompetent and worthless; and I wish to know whether he will take steps to have an inquiry into the cause of death by some tribunal which is competent and worthy?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have already answered several Questions on this subject, and I do not know that I have anything to add. I have followed exactly the precedent set by my Predecessors.

  INLAND NAVIGATION AND DRAINAGE (IRELAND)—THE RIVER BANN— LEGISLATION.
  MR. LEA: I wish to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in the event of the House not sitting to-morrow, when he proposes to introduce the Irish Drainage Bills, and especially that relating to the drainage of the Bann?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR): I must be guided by the feelings of the Irish Members. If they will take it as a non-contentious Bill, and the House has no objection, my right hon. Friend is not indisposed to put it down for Thursday, the 31st, the day we re-assemble after the Recess?

  WAR OFFICE—NAVAL AND MILITARY ORGANIZATION—THE ROYAL MA- RINE FORCE.
  CAPTAIN COLOMB (, &c.)asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he can give an assurance to the House that the promised inquiry into naval and military organization will include an examination into the cost of organization and employment of the Royal Marine Forces; whether at present the country reaps the full advantage from the expenditure on the scientific training and technical instruction of the officers and men of the Royal Marine Artillery; and, whether the transfer from the War Office to the Admiralty of the coaling stations abroad, and the substitution of Marine for Army garrisons, will tend to reduce expenditure and increase efficiency?
  THE FIRST LORD (Mr. W. H. SMITH): The Government certainly intend that the subject to which the hon. and gallant Member refers shall be inquired into by competent persons, under their direction and with their full responsibility.

  NATIONAL DEFENCE BILL.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONasked, when the adjourned debate on the National Defence Bill would be taken?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH)said, the Resolutions relating to Imperial Defence and the National Defence Bill would be the first Orders for Monday, June 4, as the Government were desirous, owing to the importance of the question, to have the matter disposed of as rapidly as possible. After the two Bills on this subject the Irish Bills would be taken.

  RULES OF DEBATE—QUESTIONS.
  MR. BARTLEYasked—in consequence of the enormous delay and waste of the time of the House that had been involved to-day in the answering of Questions—Whether the First Lord of the Treasury would arrange that in future the Questions and Answers should be printed with the Orders of the Day?
  THE FIRST LORD (Mr. W. H. SMITH): I think

  567
  the hon. Gentleman must see that that is a question which must be decided by the House itself.

  FRIENDLY SOCIETIES—RETURN.
  DR. CLARKasked, If the Government still intended to oppose the Return moved for by his hon. Friend (Mr. Handel Cossham) with regard to Friendly Societies?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON)said, the Government still intended to oppose the Return in question, because they did not know how to get the information desired.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES.
  SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)

  SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES.

    VOTE ON ACCOUNT, No. 2.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That a further sum, not exceeding £4,205,300, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the following Charge for Civil Services and Revenue Departments for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1889," viz.;—

    CIVIL SERVICES.
    CLASS I.—PUBLIC WORKS AND BUILDINGS.

    Great Britain:—

    £

    Admiralty, Extension of Buildings

    Disturnpiked and Main Roads (England and Wales)

    Disturnpiked Roads (Scotland)

    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, that the policy of passing Votes on Account was a very doubtful and dangerous one, and that the present Vote, although it did not affect the Army and Navy, practically covered the whole of the Civil Service Estimates, of which only Class I. and Class II. had already been obtained. On Friday last the Government put down upon the Paper a Notice of effective Supply, as if they had intended to take Supply that evening; but, nevertheless, they permitted the House to be counted out before a quarter to 8 o'clock. They, therefore, lost that opportunity, as they had done also on several previous occasions. He was of opinion that they had failed to make such a use of the time of the House for pushing forward the Estimates as they might have done without difficulty, and under those circumstances it was a somewhat strong measure for them to come down to the House in the middle of May, and ask for a second Vote of Credit for those very Estimates which, if they had desired, they might have placed in a much more advanced position than they actually occupied. There had already been one Vote on Account abused on the 16th of May, and that Vote put Her Majesty's Government in funds for two months of the financial year. He did not object to the course taken on that occasion; in fact, it was, under the arrangements which prevailed in reference to the financial Business of the country, invariable that a Vote on Account should be taken in connection with the Civil Service Estimates, in order to enable the Government to carry on the business of the country. But a second Vote on Account was justifiable only in extreme and very unusual circumstances. The whole system of Votes on Account was open to very great abuse, and of late years it had been very considerably so treated, with the result that the scrutiny and fair con-

    571
    sideration at the hands of independent Members of the House of Commons was altogether impossible. The Vote the Committee was asked to pass now would carry on the Government until the end of July. That was to say, that if the Committee consented to the Vote, as in all probability they would—indeed he knew they would—the Government would be so much in funds that they could go on with their Administration until the very eve of the month of August, altogether independent of the criticism and supervision which it was the first duty of the House of Commons to give to that Administration. He would ask any Member of the House whether his own practical experience did not prove that the amount of supervision, criticism, and control that should be applied to the Estimates in the month of August was not of the most unreal and ineffective character. To discuss Votes of Supply in the month of August was practically to turn the proceeding of Supply into little more than a question of form. The present Government, of all others, was scarcely one which ought to bring forward a second Vote on Account with hardihood; because they were more open to suspicion in regard to their intentions than almost any other Government which had ever sat on the Treasury Bench. With one single exception, they were the first Government which had asked for a third Vote on Account, and they did that last year With the exception of the unfortunate precedent to which he alluded, and which occurred earlier, that was the first occasion on which the Government came down to the House to ask for a third Vote on Account of the Civil Service Estimates and that they did in the middle of July last. The result of that proceeding was that there was no practical discussion on the Civil Service Estimates in Committee of Supply last year with regard to a considerable portion of the Votes What the Government did last year there was every reason to suppose they would do, or be strongly tempted to do again this year. If they obtained this Vote there was absolutely nothing to prevent them repeating and establishing the precedent of last year, and, at the last moment, towards the end of July they would ask the House to consent to a third Vote on Account of the Civil Service Estimates. This system of
    572
    Votes on Account was bad in itself, and was one which had been strenuously resisted in respect of the Army and Navy Estimates whenever it had been suggested. It had only been allowed in regard to the Civil Service Estimates. Some years ago, in 1882, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone) was Prime Minister, in the debate on the Army Estimates the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for North-West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) suggested at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, that instead of persisting with Vote 1 of the Army Estimates, the Government should be satisfied with a Vote on Account for a smaller sum than was asked for. The Prime Minister at once repudiated the suggestion, and he said—
    "I believe it to be a practice totally unknown to Parliament to take a Vote on Account in regard to the Army Estimates, and the only occasions on which it has been assented to has been when there has been a Dissolution of Parliament, or a change of Government in prospect. That constitutes a state of things wholly exceptional, and the whole of the House of Commons, it may be, has not been in a position to discuss the policy, because it was not known what Government would deal with the Estimates of the year.—(3 Hansard, [267] 852.)
    Those were the only circumstances on which Votes on Account could be permitted upon the Army or Navy Estimates. In regard to the Civil Service Estimates, the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that Votes on Account of the Civil Services were absolutely necessary; but they were never tolerated, except in cases of absolute necessity. He thought the Government would find it rather difficult to show that it was absolutely necessary that this Vote on Account should be taken that evening. The money which they had now in hand from the previous Vote on Account would carry them down to the end of the present month. They proposed to take power to obtain effective Supply on the 31st of May, when the House re-assembled; and, therefore, it was not necessary that this Vote on Account should be taken on the 17th of May. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, in the remarks which he made in 1882, went on to say that if they allowed Votes on Account to apply to the Military and Naval Services, the consequence would be that a large portion of the expenditure would be in-

    573
    curred by the House of Commons at the beginning of the year without discussing the scale of expenditure as fixed by the Government, and a considerable portion of it without any discussion at all. What was true of the Army and Navy Estimates was equally true with respect of the Civil Service Estimates, so far as Votes on Account were concerned. In passing a Vote on Account, they gave the sanction of the House of Commons for a certain portion of the year to the entire scale of expenses in all its parts and particulars, and the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian added, that a practice of this kind greatly tended to relax the control of the House of Commons and to encourage the Government to put forward other Business after taking as many Votes of Supply as they were able to get. Hon. Members would be aware that the Government had evinced a desire to push forward other measures—such as the Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Bill, and what they had already done they would be prepared to do again; because their hands were quite full of measures. If the House assented to Votes on Account it would be taking an important step in the direction of establishing a most mischievous precedent—a precedent attended by all the mischief which was indicated by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian in his speech in 1882. It appeared to him (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) that the Committee was making a great mistake in relaxing its hold over the voting of public money, and allowing the Constitutional practice which had been provided for controlling the action of the Executive to slip away. At any rate, they ought to have an assurance from the Government that they would not do this year what they did last Session, and come to the House in the month of July for a third Vote on Account, so that they might be enabled, as they were last year, to evade any responsibility to the House of explaining the details of the expenditure. He altogether objected on principle to the Government being put in possession of funds for such long periods. He would refer to one or two of the items affected by the present Vote, and he thought that he should be able, in so doing, to show the Committee what the nature of his objections was. He would say
    574
    nothing of Class I., but there were two or three items in Class II. which he thought would show that a Vote on Account was not at all likely to add to the efficiency of the House in criticizing the policy of the Government. The Government had already been voted a large sum for the Foreign Office, and they now came forward to ask for another sum of £15,000. That was to say, that they proposed to place themselves in possession of funds which would enable them to carry on until the end of August. Both with regard to the Foreign Office Vote, and the Colonial Vote, it was perfectly clear that the situation of affairs, not only in Europe, but in Asia, was of such a nature that some very important matters were likely to occur between this and the month of August. Was, therefore, the Government to be in such a position as to afford to dispense altogether with the assistance of the House of Commons with respect of its Foreign and Colonial policy for so long a period? Then, again, there was the Board of Trade and its subordinate Departments. Further Votes were to be taken for that Department, and yet the Government admitted that they did not know, and were not able at present to afford to the House any information in regard to the amount of money it was proposed to take from the suitors or creditors in Bankruptcy, nor what steps were proposed to be taken to enable the House to judge of the propriety of the future proceedings that were to be taken in reference to the Bankruptcy Court. They were told by the Government that the site at the west-end of the Law Courts was to be covered by a new Court of Bankruptcy, and he wanted to know whether the whole of the expenses in connection with that new building was really to be taken out of the Suitors Fund, and whether the creditors were to be despoiled in that manner. He thought the Committee were entitled to have information on matters of that kind before the Government came down and asked for a large Vote on Account, which would practically enable them to evade explanation. Then, again, there was the Exchequer and Audit Department. The Government asked for a sum of £10,000, when they had already received £9,000. The Exchequer and Audit Department was, at the present

    575
    moment, in an interesting position. One of the most important posts in the whole of the Public Service was at present vacant, and it was a matter of great concern to know who was to succeed the late Controller and Auditor General, a man of exceptional ability and of great experience, who, although he had retired on account of failing health and advanced age, had done great public service. There was a Gentleman subordinate to him, Sir Charles Ryan, who had clone excellent work as a public officer. It was of great importance to the public to know how servants of that kind were to be treated, or who was to occupy this particular post in future as representing the House of Commons in checking the public expenditure. They were not informed about that, nor what future means the Government were taking for the administration of the Exchequer and Audit Department. The next item in the Votes which appeared to call for challenge was that of the Patent Office. It had had £9,000 advanced for it already out of a total Vote of £54,000, and the Committee were asked to vote £9,000 more, making £18,000 in all; or one third of the annual expenditure in connection with the Office was to be advanced without any effective criticism being possible in the House of Commons, or without the Committee being informed what the Government proposed to do in connection with the Department. At present it was a notoriously mismanaged Department. Thousands of pounds had been voted for the Department, in order that they should be spent in a particular way; but year after year the work for which the money was voted had not been done, in spite of representations from Lord Chancellors, Committees, and Commissioners. Indeed, the work had not been done to that day, and then it was proposed that the Committee should vote to those who had the control of the Department a further sum of £9,000. The last item was that of the Mercantile Marine Fund. Out of a total Vote of £40,000, £15,000 had already been advanced, and the Government now asked for £20,000 more. That was to say, that they asked for £35,000 out of a total annual sum of £10,000, leaving only £5,000 to be voted hereafter. Now, what was the condition of the Mercantile Marine Fund?
    576
    Everyone knew that the whole question of fees and dues for lighting in connection with our shipping would have to be revised by reason of the reckless fashion in which some time ago they were reduced. They were reduced in such a way that in one single year there was a loss of over £300,000, and it was found necessary to borrow a sum of £150,000 from Greenwich Hospital in order to allow the thing to go on. It was important, not only to the Committee, but to the whole mercantile community of this country, that some information should be given in regard to the way in which the Mercantile Marine Fund was to be dealt with. He did not object to the Votes which were proposed to be taken for most of the public offices in Ireland. So far as the Lord Lieutenant's Household, the Chief Secretary's Office, and other Departments were concerned, the demands which were made seemed to him to be reasonable and just, and it would not be fair to withhold a contribution from them when they were voting money on account. But there was one Office in Ireland—namely, the Public Office of Works—which would have important work thrown upon it in the new legislation which the House would shortly be invited to consider. Now, the Board of Works had already been subjected to much criticism in regard to their proceedings in the past. Their relations with the Treasury up to a recent period had been always anything but satisfactory, as the Treasury had itself more than once admitted. Therefore, the Committee ought to know something about the position of the Board before they were asked to vote such a large sum as £6,000 for that Department. There was another extraordinary feature in these Estimates. Many questions had lately been asked in regard to the Metropolitan Police, and he found that the total sum to be voted for that Force in the present year was £583,000, of which £125,000 had already been provided. The Committee were now asked to vote another sum of £125,000—that was to say, that it was proposed to take one-half of the necessary expenditure in the shape of two Votes on Account. Those Votes would carry the Government beyond the possible duration of the present Session; and when once the Committee passed this Vote on Account, the Government

    577
    would be under no necessity of submitting another Vote to the consideration of Parliament until the very eve of the Prorogation. Another extraordinary fact with regard to this Vote for the Metropolitan Police was this—that whereas the Government required almost 50 per cent of the total Vote for the Metropolitan Police, with regard to the other police of the country it did not require anything of the kind. They wanted very little for the County and Borough Police, notwithstanding the fact that they were asking for 50 per cent of the total Vote for the Metropolitan Police. Why was that, unless the Government were anxious to obtain sufficient money in respect of the Metropolitan Police to enable them to set at naught all the criticisms which might be addressed against the Metropolitan Police from that (the Opposition) side of the House, and thus stave off any adverse vote which the House might consider it necessary to come to? Then, again, there was another Vote on Account of Ireland which it seemed to him was very much in excess of what the real requirements were. He referred to the Land Commission. The total Vote was £45,000; £20,000, or about one-half of it, had already been voted. The Government were, therefore, in funds for six months of the financial year, which would carry them up to the end of September; and yet the Committee were asked now for a further sum of £15,000, or £35,000 out of a total of £45,000. This Vote, if it were passed, would carry them on to January next. What would be the use of any comment by any Member of the Committee upon the Land Commission, if the Government were to have the money in hand so that they could go on utterly regardless of any observations from those who were concerned in criticizing their policy? This Land Commission was one of the Offices about which the Committee ought to have exceptional information; because the Government had now on the Table a Bill relating to the Office, and it was only right that hon. Members should be informed why this unusually large sum was to be taken for the Commission. He was afraid that he was wearying the House, but he would only cite one other item. Last year there was a Grant-in-Aid for Cyprus of £18,000. This year that £18,000 was to be run up to £30,000, or an
    578
    addition of £12,000. What were the Committee now asked to do? £30,000 being the total Vote for the year, they were asked to vote on account a further sum of £11,000, making £29,000 in all, and there would only remain a balance of £1,000 out of the £30,000 to be discussed hereafter. Of what use would any discussion be, if the House had already voted £29,000 out of a total of £30,000 and the money had been spent? He presumed that the money was required for immediate expenditure, because the Government told them it was absolutely necessary to vote it. He respectfully submitted to the House that, whether necessary or not, it was only right and proper that the House should give some distinct information as to how it was that 29–30ths of the total Grant-in-Aid for Cyprus was required to be voted on account. There were other matters in this Vote which he might have gone into, but he had no desire to detain the Committee. He thought he had said enough to show, first of all, that the policy of these Votes on Account was a very doubtful and a very dangerous policy; and secondly, that many of the details and items of the Vote required special explanation at the hands of the Government.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH): The hon. Gentleman at the commencement of his observations referred to the "count out" which occurred last Friday; but when that "count out" took place, and it was moved on the other side of the House, it is right to say that there were only three Members present on the opposite Benches, while there were 24 or 25 on those Benches, the Government Bench itself being full.
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: There would have been all the evening to get the Vote.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: The hon. Member would be aware that there were seven Notices of Motion down on the Paper on going into Supply, and that certainly one hon. Gentleman intended to go on with his Motion if the House were kept, so that the Government had no chance of getting any Votes on that evening.
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: In the case referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the hon. Member, could not have

    579
    moved the Motion, because the terms of it had not been placed on the Paper.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: The hon. Member must be aware that on the Motion that Mr. Speaker leave the Chair, any kind of conversation may take place, and that it may extend for any period. I think the eagerness of hon. Gentlemen opposite to keep on with the Business of the House was evinced by the fact that nearly the whole of them were absent, whereas the attendance of about 27 Members on this side fully evinced our desire to keep a House, and it would have been kept, if any Gentleman opposite had supported us. The hon. Gentleman altogether objects to this Vote on Account, owing to the early date—the 17th of May—upon which it is asked for; but he must be aware that the 31st of May, the date to which it is proposed to adjourn for the Whitsuntide Vacation, is the last day of the two months for which we obtained the previous Vote on Account. Therefore, practically, unless we obtain a further Vote on Account before the 31st of May, we cannot use the money which is absolutely needed for the service of the country until the House reassembles. It may, or may not, be obtained on Friday, the 31st of May, and, if not, it could not be obtained until Monday, the 4th of June. The Treasury are in need of the money, and if the Government do not obtain this Vote on Account to-night, they will be in the position of being unable to make payments which ought to be made. Therefore, our only course is to come down to the House of Commons and ask for a further Vote on Account. The hon. Member objects to the system of taking Votes on Account. Now, I think that we have shown that the Government have endeavoured, as far as they can, to make progress with Supply this Session; but there is a Procedure Committee now sitting, of which the hon. Gentleman is a Member, to inquire into the system under which Votes are taken in this House, and from the investigation of that Committee I hope that great benefit will be derived, not only as far as the House is concerned, but also by the country. I am quite with the hon. Member in the remarks he made as to the inconvenience and want of common sense and the arrangements which now prevail with regard to the voting of
    580
    the Estimates. But the hon. Gentleman must be aware that if the service of the country is only provided for up to the 31st of March, and if there is any desire on the part of the country that legislation should proceed, it is utterly impossible for the Estimates to be voted in sufficient time to prevent the necessity arising, not only for one Vote on Account, but for two Votes in the course of the Session. As far as the Government are concerned, they have shown themselves most anxious that the Financial Votes should be considered in this House, and I think that they have followed precedent in the course they have taken in putting down Supply on every available opportunity and asking the House to consider the Estimates. The hon. Gentleman says that he objects to our taking a Vote on Account that will last till near the end of July. That does not mean that hon. Members will lose the opportunity they desire to have of discussing the Votes long before that day. With the assistance of the House the Government will use their best endeavours to enable the Committee to consider the Votes on every opportunity they can avail themselves of. The hon. Member and his Friends are aware that we have had Business before us in which both the House and the country are deeply interested, and if the House will only assist us in limiting the deliberations of such measures as we are compelled to bring forward we shall be glad to avail ourselves of the opportunity of putting down Supply whenever we think it is possible to proceed with the Estimates. The hon. Gentleman has referred to the speech of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian with reference to the Army and Navy Estimates in 1882. The hon. Member is so well acquainted with the Forms of the House and the practice of the Departments, that it is hardly necessary to point out that as regards the Army and Navy Estimates, a power exists of applying a substantive Vote for one purpose to all the services of the Army and Navy. No similar power exists with regard to the Civil Service Estimates. For instance, we cannot apply the Vote for Education or for the Post Office to any other branch of the Civil Service that is included in the Estimates presented to Parliament. If that were so, probably they might be applied with advantage;

    581
    but it is open to question whether Parliament would ever permit a Government, however strong it might be in the confidence of the House, to apply money for a specific purpose to an entirely different purpose. Until that is done, and until some great change is made in our financial system, I think the hon. Gentleman will see that no Government can, by any possibility, avoid asking Parliament from time to time for a second Vote on Account. It is altogether different with regard to the Army and Navy Estimates. The Army Estimates are substantially a Vote for men and money to carry on the service for three or four months. And so it is with the Navy, and the money once voted for one purpose can be applied to any other service included in the Army or Navy Estimates. The hon. Gentleman has criticized the Foreign Vote, the Colonial Office Vote, the Board of Trade Vote, the Vote for the Exchequer and Audit Department, and the Votes for the Patent Office, the Mercantile Marine Fund, the Irish Board of Works, and the Irish Land Commission. He is well aware that the Votes are taken in the order in which they stand, and that Supply is put down for Thursday week. The Foreign Office Vote stands first, the Colonial Office Vote next, the Board of Trade third, followed by the Vote for the Exchequer and Audit Department. Therefore, it is quite certain that with regard to those Votes the delay of a fortnight will not occasion any considerable amount of inconvenience as far as the House of Commons is concerned. The Government will be prepared to receive assistance from the House of Commons, and to give every information in their power on common questions of interest that may arise upon the Votes. As far as the Metropolitan Police are concerned, the hon. Gentleman complains that the sum asked for will carry us over a period of four months. The reason of that is that the payment to the Metropolitan Police is made in quarterly sums, and, therefore, as two months have passed, another quarterly payment has become due and has to be provided for. In regard to the Land Commission the hon. Gentleman has asked why we should take so large a portion of the entire charge for that Commission. Now the Land Commission expires by statute in August next, and, therefore, it was not in our
    582
    power to put on the Estimates a provision that would carry us over August. The hon. Gentleman will, therefore, see at once that much more than one-third of the whole sum necessary for carrying on the work of the Land Commission for 12 months will have to be provided for. Under the present Estimate four-fifths of the sum necessary for the five months are provided for. I hope I have now answered the questions which have been put by the hon. Gentleman.
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: The right hon. Gentleman has not alluded to the Grant-in-Aid for Cyprus.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: The Government are in no sense responsible for that. The payment is made under the obligations which this country has contracted to the Turkish Government. Those obligations have to be paid by Her Majesty's Government, and the money is payable in July. Under those circumstances, we are obliged to put in the full sum required, which has been increased to £30,000, owing to the failure of the crops in Cyprus last year. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler) who takes a great interest in these matters, and the Committee on which the hon. Member and the right hon. Gentleman sit, will be able, before the House rises, to make some suggestions to Parliament by which we may arrive at some more businesslike arrangement for dealing with the estimates than that which now exists. Any assistance which the Government can give, with that object in view, they will be glad to give; and let me remind the Committee that this is not a Party question, but one that concerns the character of the House of Commons. No one can justify the system which now exists, which is not creditable to the business-like character and habits of the English Members of Parliament. I therefore trust that the labours of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and those of the Committee to which I have referred, will result in some recommendations which it will be in the power of the Government to adopt.
    MR. HENRY H. FOWLER: I think the Committee are under an obligation to the hon. Member for East Donegal (Mr. Arthur

    583
    O'Connor) for calling our attention to the principle of these Votes on Account. As the First Lord of the Treasury has said, they are not very creditable to our business-like mode of procedure, and I quite agree with every remark he has made as to the desirability of introducing some reform. The question is now undergoing very careful consideration in the Committee upstairs, and I am very sanguine, in the belief that we shall be able to make a proposal which will meet the approval of the House for securing more complete control over the expenditure, and also a more rational mode of discussing that expenditure. But I do not believe it will be possible—in fact, I know it will be impossible—to abolish Votes on Account. So long as Parliament does not sit until the middle of February, and so long as our financial year closes on the 31st of March, and that our financial system wisely requires that all balances should be surrendered to the Exchequer at that time, and that no payment can be made after the 31st of March, except under the direct authority of this House, it is absolutely necessary that a Vote on Account should be given for the service of the current year. I will not indicate what might be the best plan for carrying the system out, but I will say that the present plan under which we proceed is not satisfactory. There are one or two words I should like to say in reference to this Vote on Account. I cannot agree with the First Lord of the Treasury that Supply has proceeded with great rapidity this year, and that the House has devoted a great amount of time to it. I am under the impression that the Civil Service Estimates have only had two nights devoted to them during the Session if we exclude the Army and Navy Estimates and the Supplementary Votes. When the House meets after a Recess, there is a tendency to make progress on the first night. The Secretary to the Treasury is fully aware of that fact, and I congratulate him on having appropriated Thursday week, when the House re-assembles after the Whitsuntide holidays. In reference to the present Vote, I do not find any fault with it. I know it to be necessary to have a further Vote on Account, and I do not agree with the criticism of the hon. Member for East Donegal. All the ex-
    584
    ceptional amounts which the hon. Member has mentioned are capable of explanation. The Votes themselves are prepared by competent officials of the Treasury, who know what the requirements will be, and this Vote on Account does not represent more than an actual expenditure for two months. I would, however, impress upon the First Lord of the Treasury that we ought not to have a third Vote on Account this year. There are no special legislative measures which are likely to interfere with the taking of Votes in Supply, and before the 31st of July we ought to have made such satisfactory progress in discussing the Estimates that a third Vote on Account ought to be unnecessary. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that there will be considerable discussion on the Army and Navy Votes. It will be impossible for the House this year to do what was done last year. Totally outside the great and grave question which has recently occupied our attention, there have been many cases of what I may call extravagant and unnecessary expenditure which have been ascertained by the Committee over which the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington (Lord Randolph Churchill) presided, in connection with the Army and Navy Estimates, which will have to be brought before the House in Committee of Supply. I am afraid they will necessitate a good deal of discussion, and I think we may anticipate that the consideration of the Army and Navy Votes will occupy more of the time of the House than it generally does. I am certain that full opportunity must be afforded for discussing and criticizing a good deal of the evidence which has been given before the Committee presided over by the noble Lord. In addition to that, we have the ordinary Civil Service Estimates to discuss. I do not ask the First Lord of the Treasury to give any pledge, but I should ask him to consider favourably what I have now suggested—namely, the desirability, in the first place, of avoiding a third Vote on Account, and in the next, of making such arrangements for the conduct of Public Business during the next six weeks that the House of Commons may be able to afford considerable time to the discussion of the Estimates in Com-

    585
    mittee of Supply. Ample time should be allowed this year for that criticism of the Estimates which is reasonable and desirable, and the consideration of Supply ought not to be thrown over until the fag end of the Session in August. So far as this Vote is concerned I shall support it.
    GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOUR,said, he cordially concurred with the observations of his hon. Friend the Member for East Donegal (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) in regard to the service of the late Comptroller and Auditor General, who had recently retired from the office. Having watched that Gentleman for a number of years, he had been much impressed with the admirable manner with which he had discharged his duties.
    MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he quite agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for East Donegal (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) in thinking that Votes on Account had now reached such a point that the Committee ought to protest against them. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury said the Vote on Account would only carry them over until the end of July, and that the Estimates were in a very forward state. Now, the Estimates were not in a very forward state. Two days, and two days alone, had been devoted to the consideration of the Estimates, and what were those days? They were the very best days which that astute Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury could have secured for his purpose—namely, those immediately after the Easter Holidays, when hon. Members had not returned from the country. The right hon. Gentleman was about to do the same thing now. He knew that people would not rush back after the holidays, and there would be few practical persons present except the hon. Gentleman and his Friends on the Front Bench. The right hon. Member for East Wolverhampton was a Member of the Committee which had been appointed to examine into the best way of taking cognizance of the Estimates. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury said the matter was not a Party one. No doubt there was much in the Estimates that was of a purely financial character; but there were other points on which per-
    586
    sons took different views in accordance with their political leanings. He would take one case—namely, the salaries of Ministers. Speaking as a Radical and a Democrat, he thought the salaries of Ministers were extravagant. It was perfectly absurd that Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench should have £5,000 per annum. That raised the whole scale of salaries all along the line, and for that reason he had occasionally moved the reduction of the salaries of the First Lord of the Treasury and other Ministers. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he had no personal feeling against him, and he had taken that course equally in regard to right hon. Gentlemen on his own side of the House. He did not think they ought to indulge in nagging against 2½d. given to a postman, and yet give these large salaries to Ministers. He thought it would be best to reduce the large salaries first. There might be some Gentlemen who were patriots, and who did not care for large salaries, and who would be ready to accept Office without any at all. But all Gentlemen were not constituted in that way, and allowance must be made for the feebleness and weakness of right hon. Gentlemen. In his opinion, nothing would tend more to get good sound men at the head of affairs than to reduce salaries. They ought to go into the market, and get the services of men at the market price. Would any right hon. Gentleman sitting on the Treasury Bench say that he was there solely on account of the salary he received? He did not think the First Lord of the Treasury would leave the position he occupied or give up his seat in Parliament if they reduced his salary? No; he would still remain. They must look at these matters in a strictly commercial aspect, and when they had managed to reduce the salaries of right hon. Gentlemen in that House they would be able to reduce those of Admirals, Generals, Foreign Ministers, Judges, and other high officials. His opinion was that the highest salary any person ought to receive from the State was £2,000 a-year. A man could live on that, and he thought that it was possible to get good Judges, Admirals, and Generals for such a sum.
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD)was understood to say that a General would cost more than a Minister.
    MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, he was quite aware that Generals and Admirals were just as eager after money as even the Lord Advocate. Many of the Generals they now employed were useless. Take the Generals serving in India who were in command of the different Presidencies. A Committee had reported against them, declaring that they were of no use, yet, with allowances, they received as much as £5,000 and £6,000 a-year. Many of them not only got as much as the Lord Advocate, but a great deal more. He had merely stated that as one of the instances in which something beyond a mere financial question was brought before the Committee of Supply, and which it was impossible to engage the attention of a Committee appointed simply for the purpose of investigating the Estimates. There ought to be a Committee with power to look into the Estimates, to call before them the permanent officials, and submit a Report to the House of Commons; but the House ought not to be deprived of the right it now possessed of fully discussing the Estimates. It was perfectly well known that when the Estimates were under consideration a Motion was brought forward, not for the purpose of reducing the Vote by a particular sum, but in order to raise a point which was essentially one of principle, on the ground that redress of grievances come before the voting of money. Every day private Members were losing some of their rights. The sole chance they had now was upon the Estimates, and they ought to take care not to lose that chance by the system of taking Votes on Account and postponing the discussion of the Estimates until the end of the Session. When that was done, hon. Members knew very well what occurred. If a protest was raised against it, the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury said it was a duty he owed to the country. What was the duty of the right hon. Gentleman? It was the duty of shutting the mouths of hon. Members; yet they also owed a duty to the country. Vigilance was the price paid for economy, and it was their duty to be vigilant and to discuss the Estimates whenever
    588
    they found it necessary. They could not do that in the month of August. If they attempted it they were bullied all round, not only by the First Lord of the Treasury, but by private Members, who said: "Surely you are not going to keep us here? Do you want to prolong the Session? It is all your fault that the sitting of the House is prolonged." There ought to be some understanding that if the Committee consented to grant this Vote on Account, the Government would use their best endeavours to have the Estimates before the 31st of July. A guarantee ought to be given that a certain number of nights should be devoted to Supply before that date. He was quite ready to make this bargain—let the Government give them one night a-week, not necessarily one in each particular week, but let the total number up to the 31st of July be the number of nights at the rate of one a-week, which would occur from the first of June to the 31st of July. Of course, Ministers were naturally inclined to get Votes on Account, and when they asked for them they talked of using their best endeavours to have the Estimates satisfactorily discussed. He thought the Committee ought to have something more clear and definite before they consented to part with the large amount of money now asked for. There was no idea of discussing this Vote on Account. He was perfectly ready to act fairly towards the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, and he hoped that in return the right hon. Gentleman would act fairly towards those who felt it their duty to discuss the Estimates.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: I hope that hon. Members will not deem it necessary to prolong this discussion. I fully reciprocate the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton, that it is the duty, as it is also the object, of the Government to give every possible opportunity to the House of considering the Estimates before the end of July. I do not think, however, that any good purpose will be facilitated by continuing this discussion. The right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) know that it is impossible for the Government to enter into any specific engagement as to the appropriation of time between this and the end of July. We will, however, do our best to meet

    589
    the views of the Committee; but I can give no undertaking on the subject, as the discussion at this moment must be more or less of an academic character, and, considering that there is a measure on the Paper with which we are anxious to make progress this evening—considering also that we have arrived at a comparatively late hour, and that six hours will not be too much to devote to the important question we desire to bring before the House—I make an earnest appeal to the Committee to agree to the Vote at once.
    MR. ILLINGWORTHsaid, he was sorry he was not able to agree to the speed at which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) wished to travel when voting those huge Grants on Account. His principal reason was that so few opportunities would be afforded to the House to take up those great questions of foreign policy which must come under consideration. They had already been engaged in a discussion which involved a large expenditure upon the Army and Navy, and many hon. Members must feel themselves in a peculiar position in regard to that subject. It might be that the money was necessary.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: Allow me to point out that there is no item included in this Vote on Account for the Army and Navy. The Vote which is necessary for that purpose will afford ample material for a subsequent Resolution of the House.
    MR. ILLINGWORTHsaid, he was quite aware that there was no Vote in the Vote on Account which dealt with the Army and Navy; but the point he was coming to was that the Vote contained a sum on account of the Foreign Office. It seemed to him that in the course taken by the Government in asking for these huge sums of money they were putting the cart before the horse. Surely, before making this grant, the country had a right to know what the policy of the Government was with reference to foreign affairs. At any rate, that ought to be made plain before Parliament sanctioned a new and extensive departure in regard to the Army and Navy expenditure. Many independent Members felt themselves placed in this respect in a very embarrassing position. How was it possible for the House or the country to
    590
    appreciate the seriousness of the position, unless they were informed what the policy of the Government in regard to foreign questions was? There had been a discussion in "another place" which, perhaps, might throw some little light upon the subject; but for his own part, he thought it was of importance for the House of Commons to insist upon a great deal more light being thrown upon the question. So far as he knew, there had not been a single hour in the course of the present Session in which the question of our foreign policy had been raised or considered. The Government complained that the progress which had been made with Public Business had been slow. No Members on that side of the House had offered any factious opposition in regard to foreign questions; he was afraid they were falling into the other extreme, and that they were neglecting their duty as vigilant servants of the public by leaving those foreign questions to take care of themselves. The position of this country was one which required the closest observance on the part of the Representatives of the people. The state of affairs on the Continent was extremely critical, and placed in the hands of the Government almost overwhelming responsibilities. For his own part, he was of opinion that no increase in our naval or military expenditure was necessary, if the foreign policy of the Government were of a sufficiently wise character as not to involve any interference on our part. He confessed that he was extremely anxious to know from some responsible Member of the Government, and he was glad to see the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his place, whether this country was absolutely free from any engagement which was likely at the first brush of Continental difficulties to land us in any naval or military interference. Nobody could doubt that the state of the Continent was such as to inspire alarm on the part of all commercial people in this and every other country. All business undertakings were under a cloud, and the state of the Continent, its military condition, and the relations of one Power with another were such as to be a source of constant anxiety. They could not take up a foreign newspaper or the correspondence of an English journal in which that was not apparent every hour

    591
    of the day. Some words were uttered by the Prime Minister, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary some time ago, which remained in the memory of all men who had business obligations in every part of the world. The noble Lord indicated that whatever might happen to be the policy of Austria must be a question of primary interest to this country. Those words must be construed to carry with them a very great danger to this country. If complications should arise in the East of Europe, he wanted to have an assurance from the Government that it was their firm intention not to make this country responsible, should an international war break out. Many of them would remember the circumstances of the Crimean War. They knew that in that case Great Britain was the first of the Great Powers to rush into conflict with Russia, and that, in reality, we left Austria and Germany with their hands absolutely free, laughing in their sleeves, while we fought the conflict in which they were much more interested than we. We might find that situation repeated, and he wished to ascertain whether the Government had learned wisdom from the experience this country had gained in the Crimean War. We had the admission of more than one foreign statesman that the policy pursued by this country on that occasion was unwise, and that the conflict, as far as we were concerned, might have been avoided for a considerable period, if not altogether. He, therefore, wished to know from the mouth of the hon. Gentleman who represented the Foreign Office, and from Her Majesty's Government generally, that there existed no obligation by which this country could become involved in any foreign complication in the event of the peace of Europe being disturbed. He did not say that this country ought to take no share, no matter what complications might arise, because something might happen which might affect us as well as other parts of the world. But assuredly it became us to be guided by a due sense of our responsibility in regard to our Colonial engagements and our relationship to our dependencies, and we should be the very last to commit ourselves and tie our hands in reference to any foreign Power. He would confess that, if there was a lingering disposition on the part of the Government to take
    592
    part in any Continental broil—our Army, as had been stated by the Adjutant General and the Commander-in-Chief, was really too weak for any such purpose. If, on the other hand, the Government maintained the steady purpose not to interfere in any continental squabble which was likely to break out in the existing relations between Russia, Austria, and Germany, he thought it would be possible for this country to maintain such a position as would not render it necessary to make any large increase in the Army. Probably most of them would agree that our Navy ought to be maintained at such strength as to afford full security to our possessions at home and abroad. He thought that the present provision for the Navy was ample for that purpose, if we kept ourselves free from Continental complications. There was no reason why there should not exist between this country and France and this country and Russia such a state of feeling as would keep us apart from any Continental squabble. In that case this country would run no risk whatever, and there would be very little necessity for an increase of expenditure on the part of the Army. He hoped to have an assurance from the hon. Gentleman representing the Foreign Office or from the First Lord of the Treasury, that it was the desire of the Government and their intention to leave our hands free from any entangling engagements which would deprive us of our freedom of action if war should unhappily break out on the Continent.
    MR. HUNTERsaid, he desired to call the attention of the Committee to Vote No. 29.
    MR. LABOUCHERErose to Order, and said that he desired to discuss several Votes before the hon. Member moved the Amendment of which he had given Notice.
    DR. CLARKsaid, he had recently asked a Question of the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as to the Zambesi River. The Portuguese claimed all that portion of South Africa from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Now, upon some of the tributaries of the Zambesi River, as well as upon the Zambesi River itself, there were a considerable number of British subjects. The Portuguese, however, had deprived them of the means of navigating the river, and he wanted to

    593
    know whether the Government would take steps to protect British traders and the Scotch missionaries on the Zambesi River from the encroachments and usurpations of the Portuguese Government and their subjects? If they took no such steps, they practically, by their inaction, recognized the Zambesi River and its tributaries as belonging to the Portuguese Government. We had taken over a portion of the territory of one of the Chiefs which ran down to the Zambesi River. At present, all the mouths of the river were in the hands of the Portuguese, who imposed transit duties on foreign goods or everything that went into Africa by means of that river. He was not prepared to say that they had not the right to place transit duties on all goods that entered Africa by means of the Zambesi River. That was rather a question for the consideration of the Government. But he was informed that the Portuguese Authorities were preventing our steamers from coasting there, and wore demanding that British vessels trading there, and the missionaries who had settlements on Lake Nyassa, should fly the Portuguese flag or cease trading. He wished to know whether the Government intended to protect British subjects and their steamers, or to acknowledge the right of the Portuguese Government to prevent the British Government sailing on the Zambesi River, having in view the fact that by taking over territory which ran down to the river they had now become one of the Powers on the Zambesi? There was another point which he also desired to call attention to. He had put a Question to the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury, in regard to a Return moved for by the hon. Member for Bristol in reference to the Office of Registrar of Friendly Societies. The Secretary to the Treasury said, in reply, that he had no means of getting the information asked for. He might tell the hon. Gentleman that some of the secretaries and officials of these friendly societies were getting larger salaries than the Prime Minister himself. Two of them received £6,000 a-year each. To his knowledge, there were 9,000,000 or 10,000,000 of persons, principally belonging to the working classes, who were insured in those industrial and friendly societies.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I do not see Low this subject conies under this Vote.
    DR. CLARKsaid, it came under the Vote for the Registration of Friendly Societies, which was Vote 13. He had said, last year, that he would move the rejection of the Vote, unless something was done to make the Office a reality instead of a sham. The present registration meant nothing, but it led people to believe that, because the rules were registered, there was Government security. The Government had indicated that they were willing to appoint a Select Committee to consider the whole question, and the hon. Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) had brought in a Bill upon the subject. He understood, however, that the Government were opposing that Bill. The hon. Baronet said that his measure only affected collecting societies; but this was a question affecting the whole of our working population, as one of these societies consisted of from 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 members. The Secretary to the Treasury had refused to print evidence which was given on the last inquiry. He (Dr. Clark) thought the time had arrived when there ought to be a full investigation into the working of the Act. Then would come the time for the Select Committee to consider the matter. As they had received a pledge from the Treasury last Session, he thought the Government ought now to state what they intended to do in the matter. The Secretary to the Treasury had stated that they could not get the information; but if a Select Committee were appointed, it would soon be able to lay all the information that was necessary before the House and the Government.
    MR. BUCHANANsaid, he should like to say a few words on this subject before the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Sir James Fergusson) rose to reply to the observations of hon. Members who had spoken on that side of the House. There were undoubtedly many of the Scotch people who at that moment took a very strong interest in the condition of affairs in the interior of Africa, and who thought that the fact that many of the missionaries were at stations beyond the settlement of any European Power was no reason for their not receiving protection at the hands of the British Government. The first and most important point which

    595
    they were inclined to urge on Her Majesty's Government was that which had been put forward by the hon. Member for Caithness (Dr. Clark)—namely, that the access to the interior—the only good and available one—by the Zambesi, should be kept open to all nations, and particularly to this country, which had made settlements in the interior of that part of Africa. He urged on Her Majesty's Government to enforce on Portugal and other Powers the necessity of keeping open the Zambesi as an international highway. Portugal had undoubtedly certain legal rights on the South African literal, and she had of late been not only exercising those rights, but, as he thought, unduly extending them in the manner alluded to by his hon. Friend. Hon. Members, he thought, ought to insist that the Government should recognize in no way whatever any territorial Sovereignty in South Africa over the waters of the Zambesi. We had a Consul at Nyassa—of course, not accredited to any Power, because there was no Power to whom he could be accredited—whose duty it would be to look after British interests when an appeal was made to him. Such an appeal would be made to him naturally when an attack was made upon the settlement by the slave dealers, and he, in his turn, would naturally appeal to the British Government for instructions. He, therefore, urged upon the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that something should be done for the maintenance of the authority of our Consul; that there should be no recognition, under any circumstances whatever, of any claim to territorial Sovereignty in the interior; and, lastly, the maintenance in all cases of free navigation on the Zambesi.
    MR. CONYBEAREsaid, that the considerations laid before the Committee with regard to the position in Southern Africa were exceedingly important at the present time, and it was also necessary that they should ascertain from the Government what were their views and policy with regard to the Northern districts. At present, our territory, so far as it was represented by the Protectorate, was limited by a line drawn on a level with the Northern boundary of the Transvaal—that was to say, the 22nd parallel. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman
    596
    would know the limits to which he (Mr. Conybeare) referred. In the last few weeks news had arrived that we had actually extended our Protectorate in some form or other to Bechuanaland. He asked the right hon. Gentleman what territories that Protectorate included, and whether the Government themselves had any clear idea of the limit to which the Portuguese territory was supposed to extend Westward from the Eastern seaboard; because it appeared to him, from what he had been able to gather, that the limits of the Portuguese territory were altogether of the most shadowy and uncertain character. It was worth while to recollect what took place in connection with Angra Peguena. He believed they had kept Germany waiting for two years to know our views with regard to the interior of Africa, in consequence of which Prince Bismarck became impatient, and secured a tract of territory which he believed he was correct in saying exceeded in extent anything which the people of this country believed to be in the hands of Germany. The cession of Angra Peguena included the acquisition by Germany of a huge district in which were some of the richest gold mines in South Africa. They did not want the same sort of imbroglio to arise in connection with Matabeleland as had arisen in that case. He did not say that it was wise for the Government to lay down a hard and fast line of demarcation. That would be impossible; but they did not want to allow matters to drift in an unbusiness-like way in connection with affairs in South Africa, and presently to find that Germany or Portugal had established a locus standi in the country, and acquired a vested interest which it would be impossible not to recognize. There were two courses which this country might adopt with reference to Matabeleland—one was that we should never interfere with a view to appropriating that country; and the other was to make it clear to other countries that we had interests there, and that those interests would probably extend in future, and that we intended to take such means for their protection as might be necessary. The first course appeared to him to be impossible; because, although it was well known that some parts of the Transvaal were rich in gold

    597
    and precious stones, this district was richer than anything they had yet seen. It was probable, therefore, that there would be a very considerable inrush of British subjects into Matabeleland. If that were so, it would be far better to take a statesman-like view of the situation and decide, once for all, what shape our policy should assume rather than let the matter slide. They did not want the history of Stellaland and Zululand to be repeated in Matabeleland. They had a right to ask that the Government should come to some understanding with Portugal as to where its territory was to begin and where it was to end; and if the right hon. Gentleman knew how that matter stood, he should be glad if he would give the Committee some information about it. It was well known that there had been some expeditions by British officers across the Victoria Falls, and the accounts given of the country showed how interesting it was, and how rich it would become if it were developed and fully opened up. Another consideration was that British subjects were already flocking into the country. He asked the right hon. Gentleman whether it was not a fact that valuable concessions had been granted, or attempted to be obtained, of mineral rights extending over huge tracts of the country? If the country was to come at all under British control, he thought they had a right to claim that concessions of mineral rights should not be made to individuals. He thought these matters should be regulated; because the difficulties which had arisen in other parts of South Africa were the consequence of the Chiefs unknowingly assigning away their rights. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman had already taken steps in that direction; and if so, he should be glad to hear what had been done. He should like to point out to the Government that there was a very strong feeling amongst those who were conversant with matters in Bechuanaland and Matabeleland generally that the proper trade route to the latter would be through Bechuanaland, and that the best thing to be done would be to extend the existing railway. This, although a difficult undertaking, would be an important step to take, and would not cost more than £3,000,000, a sum that we had thrown away on Sir Charles Warren's expedition, which was practi-
    598
    cally useless. If that money had been spent in constructing this railway, it would have been a thousand times more usefully employed than on that expedition. He was told that the Germans had an expedition in Matabeleland at the present time, or, at any rate, that there was competition between them, the Portuguese, and other nations, for a locus standi in the country. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could give the Committee some information on this subject. It was very desirable that we should come to some common understanding with those countries that were taking action on the Continent, and prevent the recurrence of such a step as was taken by Germany in the case of Angra Peguena.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir JAMES FERGUSSON): I do not think Her Majesty's Government will ever complain of interest being taken in foreign affairs and of demands being made for information before any step is made which would involve the interests of the country. I am glad to acknowledge the reticence and prudence of hon. Gentlemen in the midst of anxious affairs, in not unduly pressing the Government, and I hope that the assurances that I gave the House at the beginning of the Session, when challenged directly on the subject raised by the hon. Member for Bradford, were satisfactory to the House. I then assured the Committee that the Government had not entered into any engagement pledging the material action of the country which was not known to the House of Commons—that is to say, that the Government were free to deal in the interest of the country with events as they might occur. There had been no fresh engagements incurred by the Government since, and the position remained the same as when he last ex-explained it. It would, indeed, be most imprudent for the Government to make any general and binding declaration of abstinence from interference in the affairs of the world. When we considered how wide and diversified were our national interests, and how great was the influence of this country in assisting in the maintenance of the peace of the world, any declaration of total abstinence from interference in European politics would be not only imprudent,

    599
    but unworthy of the duty we owed to the world. I hope that will be considered by the hon. Member for West Bradford a sufficient answer to the observations he has made. I would remind the Committee that a wide discussion on foreign affairs is unnecessary at this moment, because the Foreign Office Vote stands first on the Paper for discussion on the 31st of the present month, and foreign affairs will, therefore, occupy our attention when the House re-assembles after Whitsuntide. But in answer to the hon. Member for Caithness (Dr. Clark), who has put some questions of undoubtedly great interest, I say that Her Majesty's Government distinctly do not recognize unlimited claims on the part of Portugal in the interior of Africa. The conditions by which the spheres of influence of European Powers in South Africa are bounded are perfectly well known. Those influences are not recognized, except where settlements take place, and where a Power possessed the means of maintaining order, protecting foreigners, and controlling the Natives. Where a Power, though seated on the sea coast, has made no approach to a settlement in the interior, and no step in the fulfilment of international duties, it is evident that we cannot recognize that it has any claim to deny us free commerce with the interior by a natural highway. Thus Her Majesty's Government cannot for a moment admit a right on the part of such a Power to stop the free passage of the Zambesi, which gives access to regions where the enterprize of our fellow-countrymen has already made considerable progress. It is a matter of regret that our commerce should be hindered by heavy charges; but where no international obligations interpose, it is in the power of Portugal or any other country to levy such duties as she may impose within her own territories. Hon. Members opposite have referred to the condition of the settlements in the interior of Africa. I must entirely deny that anything like a state of war has been entered into by Her Majesty's Consul on the authority of Her Majesty's Government. It is true that in view of the danger that threatened European Settlements, two British Consuls assisted personally in checking an attack upon those Settlements and in beating back the Arabs,
    600
    but undoubtedly it would not be the duty of the Consul to join in any hostile expedition against these tribes. It had been said it was for the settlers themselves to take steps for their own protection. That was obviously their duty, and it would be out of question to hinder them from taking steps for their own legitimate defence; but it would be incurring a most dangerous responsibility if Her Majesty's Government were to authorize, as suggested by the hon. Member for West Edinburgh (Mr. Buchanan), the Consul to enrol men, or to take up any position in which he would require to be supported in case of disaster. It would be impossible that we could support a force entirely cut off from the British base, and from British territory. The hon. Member for the Camborne Division of Cornwall (Mr. Conybeare) has asked me questions with regard to matters of very recent date, but I hope he will allow me to postpone giving an answer to them, because it would require reference to documents which are not at hand. I trust it will not be supposed that we are not aware of the importance of not losing an opportunity of developing our interest through supineness, and the recent assumption of our Protectorate in what is generally called Amatongaland is a clear indication that neither the Imperial nor Colonial Authorities are indifferent to their obligations in that respect. I hope we shall keep pace with the expansion of colonization within the sphere of these most important Colonies in South Africa, the legitimate development of which they have a right to expect shall not be checked. It is undoubtedly an important point to which the hon. Member has directed attention, namely, that there should be no waste of the valuable mineral deposits in these countries by hurried grants made by the Native Chiefs, so that if they should become British Colonies, they should not be found to have been despoiled of those natural resources. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that those important considerations will not be lost sight of. In assuming a Protectorate it is evident that we ought to give advice and also exercise control.
    DR. CLARK: Have we assumed a Protectorate over Matabeleland?
    SIR JAMES FERGUSSON: I must, I think, ask the hon. Member to give me Notice to enable me to answer that ques-

    601
    tion with more precision than I can do at the present moment. I had no intimation that this discussion would be initiated to night; but I may say that of the correctness of the view that British enterprize in these territories should proceed on a settled plan, there can, I think, be no doubt. While there is much to be said in favour of the view that the vast regions of the interior of Africa should be opened up by an extension of railways from the South, it seems to me that there may also be valuable communication from points on the Eastern Coast. I trust the Committee will not think it necessary for me now to go into further details, and I am only sorry that it has not been possible for me to anticipate the questions which hon. Gentlemen opposite have referred to.
    MR. W. H. SMITH: As there will be another and early opportunity of discussing foreign affairs, I claim to move "That the Question be now put."
    THE CHAIRMANsaid, that looking at the time of the evening (7 p.m.), and the importance of the subject, he thought it reasonable that the discussion should proceed, say for another half-hour.
    Debate resumed.
    MR. BRYCEsaid he did not propose to enter into the discussion on Matabeleland, because he thought the right hon. Gentleman had shown that it was desirable not to do so without Notice. He rose only to advert very shortly to the points raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Buchanan) and the hon. Member for West Bradford (Mr. Illingworth). He hoped he was correct in understanding that it was the intention of the Government that there should be free and open navigation of the Zambesi. The free navigation of that river was a matter of great importance to this country, and he thought that Her Majesty's Government should not admit any interference with that policy, which would, he believed, make it one of the great highways of commerce. With regard to the point of the hon. Member for West Bradford, he wished to express the satisfaction he felt at the acknowledgment of the right hon. Gentleman at the great forbearance which had been shown on that side of the House as regarded the foreign policy of the present
    602
    Government. But while they felt that it was desirable to avoid anything which would embarrass Her Majesty's Government and increase the great difficulty in which they had been placed (during the last few months, they thought at the same time that it was the paramount duty of the Government to embrace the earliest possible opportunity of taking the opinion of the House, and through the House the opinion of the country, before committing the country in any way to a change of relations with any foreign Power.
    MR. HUNTERsaid, there was one point to which he must ask the attention of the Committee. He thought the First Lord of the Treasury and the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate would admit that, if it was the intention of hon. Members to censure the course of the Government with regard to their action in reference to emigration from Scotland, they should do so at the first possible opportunity. It would be in the recollection of the Committee that when the question of the condition of the crofters was last before the House, the Government had disclosed very little with regard to their plan of emigration. In answer to Questions put to them from that side of the House, both the Lord Advocate and the First Lord had taken refuge in silence, but promised that a full scheme of emigration should be laid before the House. His astonishment had been very great to find, although the scheme had not been laid before the House, a new departure of a most grave and serious character had been taken on the sole responsibility of the Government and the Secretary for Scotland, and that on Monday last 25 families were reported to have left their homes en route for Canada. He objected to the action of the Secretary for Scotland on two grounds. In the first place, he objected to his not having first submitted his plans to Parliament, and obtained the consent of that House; and, in the second place, he was opposed to his emigration scheme in toto. What was that scheme? The Committee had heard that 100 crofters and their children had been sent to Canada, at the same rate at which 100 might be sent. He asked if that was a measure of the slightest practical value for the relief of distress in Lewis or for the benefit of the people in the Highlands. That ques

    603
    tion the Committee would be able to understand when he had stated the figures relating to the case. Under this scheme they were to remove from the Island of Lewis 500 people out of a population which in 1881 amounted to 25,487, and which at present was probably larger; in other words, they were going to cure the distress in the Highlands by removing one out of every 51 or 52 of the population. Now, he thought that fact was sufficient to show that the action of the Government, if it was to be limited to this £10,000, was for practical purposes wholly useless; and if it was not to be so, it must be the beginning of action which would involve an enormous drain upon the Exchequer. If the people were to be expatriated to America at the cost contemplated by the Government, it was the taxpayers who would have to face a very heavy bill indeed. But he objected also to the scheme, because they had not been told on what terms the crofters had been sent out. All he could gather from the statement of the Lord Advocate was that the people were to be in a state of bondage for five years, either to the British Government or to certain Land Companies in America. They were not going out with their hands free to begin the world; they went with a load of debt upon them, which it was contemplated might, under favourable circumstances, be removed in five years; but, although in some cases there might be an ultimate improvement in the condition of the crofters, they were in the meantime to remain under the tender mercy of the Land Companies. There was another thing which he must refer to, and that was the kind of place, of all places in the world, to which they had been sent to. These people had little power of resisting cold; they lived in a climate which was naturally damp, but never very cold, and it was from such a climate that they were being sent to the British Siberia, where the extremes of heat and cold were greater than in any other part of the British dominions. Whatever might be the result of that experiment he could not regard it as one free from danger and risk, for no spot could have been less congenial to the habits of the crofters. Now, he objected again to State emigration as being nothing more than a perfectly hollow and illusory remedy for the
    604
    distress in the country. Emigration had been recommended to them by no less a personage than the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and that was done upon the ground that there was something abnormal in the rapid increase of the population in Lewis; it was said that the people there were so given to multiplying their species, that it was impossible to deal with their grievances until some radical change took place in the population. But anyone who looked at the facts would see that the Lewis people were not sinners in that respect, above all others. If it were to be said that up to 1851 the population of Lewis increased somewhat rapidly, there would have been facts to support that conclusion, because, beginning with the present century and coming down to 1851, he found that the population had doubled in 45 years; whereas in England and Wales the population had doubled in 51 years. But since 1851, while the increase in the population of England and Wales had been 45 per cent, that in Lewis amounted to no more than 23 per cent, or only one-half the rate of increase in the former case. There was contained in the Papers laid on the Table of the House a most striking statement made by a gentleman who conducted the inquiry at Lewis on behalf of the Government, to the effect that in 1851 it was confidently predicted that unless the surplus population of Lewis were induced to remove some fearful calamity would ensue. But the people had not removed, and the predictions of 1851 had not been verified, and he said that the people remained and continued to multiply with great rapidity; that they had not starved, but year after year were adding to their expenditure on food and clothing, by-and-bye adding luxuries to their former articles of daily use. There was nothing abnormal in the increase of the population of Lewis, although it had been larger than the increase in purely agricultural districts, the reason being that the people there had never been wholly dependent on agriculture in the present century. During the early part of the century they had the kelp industry, and after 1851 they had the fishing industry. It was, therefore, not a question of overpopulation; the distress in Lewis was simply the effect of the temporary de-

    605
    pression under which their primary industry of herring fishing was suffering. After 1851, that industry had enlarged to such an extent as not only to maintain the whole population, which was considered very excessive, but to maintain a far larger and steadily-increasing population. He entirely refused to accept the views of those who said that the fishing industry was permanently destroyed in the Highlands; he could not believe that when there was a population of 30,000,000, so to speak, at the doors of these people, and an ocean teeming with fish, that permanent collapse of that industry had taken place, and therefore he thought the course of the Government would have been to deal with the present distress as of a temporary and not a permanent nature. The present condition of the people was not due to over-population; they were in distress, because they were denied access to the land. The general law was that a population would multiply until the lowest standard of comfort was reached, and the only thing that differentiated Lewis from the other parts of the Kingdom was that the standard of comfort there was very low. Some 200 years ago the standard of comfort throughout the country was about the same; but as time had gone on, the standard had improved elsewhere, and had remained very low in Lewis. He did not think it could be said that less than 25 per cent of the gross earnings of the people had been destroyed by the landlords. If that 25 per cent had been left to fructify in the pockets of the people, or used to raise their standard of comfort, there would be very little reason to complain of the total or relative amount of population in Lewis. He thought emigration was very much to be deprecated, because there were alternatives. There were home industries which might be created by the direct action of the Government. He was unwilling to put before the Committee any ideas on the subject, because, until they had Home Rule for Scotland and a national purse, a proposal which recommended itself to many people in Scotland might not be considered a practical one. But, to anyone who had travelled in the Highlands, it would be evident that the destiny of a large part of the Highlands was not to grow deer and sheep and grouse, but to
    606
    grow timber. He did not attempt to enter into the question at any length; but he might remind hon. Members that the subject was before a Committee of the House last year, and that three foresters—the foresters of the Duke of Atholl, the Countess of Seafield and of Lord Mansfield—three of the most experienced Men in Scotland, gave evidence. The substance of their testimony was that a great part of the land in the Highlands, which for a sheep rent, a deer rent, or a grouse rent, would only yield 1s. 3d. per acre, would, if planted with timber, yield from 7s. 6d. to 10 s. per acre. There was unquestionably a vast amount of money in that proposal. The reason why proprietors had not planted as largely as they might was obvious; they could not afford to plant for posterity; but the nation could afford to plant for posterity, and if a practical scheme for planting the greater part of the Highlands with timber were inaugurated, it would be found that so far from it being a wise course to export the population to British Siberia, or elsewhere, they would require a larger population than existed in the Highlands at present. Therefore, he said that on every ground the conduct of the Secretary for Scotland in this matter was to be deplored; it was to be deplored that he should have taken the question of emigration out of the hands of the House of Commons and decided it for himself, and especially in the manner he had done. In order to take the sense of the Committee upon the conduct of the noble Marquess, he begged to move to reduce the Vote by £100.
    MR. A. SUTHERLANDsaid, it was quite clear that if the Government were to emigrate every man, woman, and child in the Island of Lewis with the exception of one family, and the same conditions were to apply to that family as now applied to the people, they would be paupers, because they would be shut out from the resources of nature. His hon. Friend (Mr. Hunter) had suggested certain alternatives to emigration; but there was one alternative which he did not suggest, and it was one which must naturally suggest itself to Her Majesty's Government, and that was that the people should have access to the land. That alternative should, in his opinion, take precedence of that of planting the Highlands. It

    607
    was generally assumed that there was not sufficient land in the Island of Lewis for the population; yet, as a matter of fact, there was in that Island 35 acres for every man, woman, and child there. Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate (Mr. J. H. A. Macdonald) say that the majority of the people had a holding of anything like that size? He (Mr. A. Sutherland) thought that until there was something approaching an equal division of land, it was not time to talk of emigration. They knew there was a state of things existing in the Island of Lewis that must be painful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman as well as to them. But the question was whether the Government had hit upon a proper remedy. He and his hon. Friends maintained that the Government had not done so; that they were deliberately shutting their eyes to the remedy which was at their door, and they were taking a course which would prove utterly futile. It would appear as if there never had been emigration from the Island before. There had been a constant stream of emigration from the Island for many years, and yet it had been of no use. Why? Because concurrently with that emigration there had been no opening up of the land for the people. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate knew perfectly well that the whole of the destitution in Lewis—the whole of the unsatisfactory state of the Island—arose from the pursuance of such a policy. This House had recognized the fact in legislation; because one of the conditions laid down in the Crofters Holdings Act, 1886, was, that there should be an attempt made to revert to the state of matters with regard to the distribution of the land which existed 80 years ago. That condition was a practical recognition that the Government made a mistake in allowing the depopulation of the Island, and that landlords made a mistake in carrying it out. The Committee was perfectly justified in criticizing the conduct of the Government in the matter of emigration, because emigration was not wanted by the people. He was perfectly aware that emigration was wanted by the Highland landlords, but it was never desired by the people. While redistribution of the land had been asked for by the Highland people for years, their request had
    608
    never been listened to. Emigration was wanted by the landlords, so that there would be no danger of the people asking for land, and the Government hastened to carry out the wishes of the landlords. He asked the Committee to contrast the conduct of the Government in the matter of emigration with their conduct with regard to money that was expressly voted by Act of Parliament. There was a clause in the Crofters Act to the effect that a certain amount of money should be devoted to the purpose of assisting people in the crofting parishes of the Highlands to buy boats and fishing gear; yet it was only after an agitation in the House, extending over a year, that the Government thought fit to give power that that money, should be paid out of the Exchequer, and even then it was given under conditions which made it almost impossible for the people to get any benefit from it. No money had been asked by the people for emigration; but in the case where money was provided by Act of Parliament the Government did everything they could to throw obstacles in the way of giving it. Then he noticed that it was only picked families who had been deported. What would be the result on the Highlands if the flower of the population were to be taken out and the useless people left at home? What result would that have upon the development of the country? How could the Government hope to develop the fisheries, or do anything to mitigate the sufferings of the people when the flower of the population were sent away? Besides, he could not think that the conduct of the Government in this matter was Constitutional. It required an Act of Parliament to grant money in order to help the people to get fishing boats, but it seemed it required no Act of Parliament to deport the population. That was a matter upon which he hoped the Lord Advocate would be able to afford some satisfactory explanation to the Committee. For the reasons he had given, he heartily seconded the Motion of his hon. Friend (Mr. Hunter).
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Item of £1,000, for the Secretary for Scotland, be reduced by the sum of £100."—(Mr. Hunter.)
    DR. R. M'DONALDsaid, there was one point of some

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    importance to which no attention had been drawn in the course of the debate, and that was that the Government had begun too late. They were sending these people to Canada after the crops had been sown, when, indeed, the crops were half-grown, and there was nothing more to do than prepare for the winter. Of course, they would have £100 to live upon; but what was to become of them until next year? Could any Gentleman who knew anything about America or Manitoba controvert the statement that emigrants going out now had nothing to do but build shanties? If the Government wanted to send these people away, why not send them just when the snow was melting? As it was, the money given to them would be spent before the next season came round. He was afraid that either this Government or the Government of Canada would have to furnish these people with money to prevent them dying of starvation. There was another point to which he wanted to direct attention. This was the only remedy, as his hon. Friend the Member for Sutherland (Mr. A. Sutherland) had said, which was always offered to them, no matter what Government was in Office. The Government professed to know the wants of the Highland people better than they who had been born and bred amongst those people. The Lord Advocate could not but allow that if he moved half the crofters in the Highlands, and gave two crofts to each crofter remaining, the latter would be very nearly as badly off as hitherto. But supposing that half the population were removed, and that the remaining crofters would be better off, what did the proposal mean? It meant that they would have to remove from 20,000 to 25,000 families. Were the Government prepared to do that? If not, what was their remedy worth? Who was to gain by this scheme? He did not see how the landlords would gain. He understood that each family was to get £120 out in Canada. Assuming that on the average there were five in a family, the fares to Manitoba would bring the total cost of the emigration of each family to £180. To remove half the population of the Highlands, therefore, they would be required to spend £3,600,000. Was the country prepared to spend so large a sum of money in sending crofters out of the country? It
    610
    would be much more sensible for this Government, or any Government, to spend £500,000 sterling in increasing, the crofts, and giving the crofters a chance of making a living in the country in which they were. But the Government seemed to think it was the landlords who must be attended to—that they must not be interfered with in any way. Why had the present Government, who had assented to the proposal for increasing the holdings, when asked to prepare rules and regulations respecting the increase of holdings, always answered "No?" He would not weary the Committee with any further observations, because what he was particularly anxious about was that the Lord Advocate should tell the Committee how these people were to live in Manitoba until they got their first crops out of the ground.
    MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: My hon. Friend (Mr. Hunter) was correct in saying that the answers given to the Questions have been dull in the sense of being short; but if, in answering Questions, one had gone into an argument, it would have taken up too much time, besides being irregular. But I think I stated very distinctly, in my answers to Questions, that it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to give a full opportunity to discuss this matter upon an Estimate which would be laid before the Committee of the House for this purpose. I take it that it is the mind and intention of my hon. Friends that it would be more just to go into the matter then, and that this is but a preliminary skirmish with the view of opening up the question. Having given that distinct intimation, it was our intention to place materials before hon. Members in ample time for that discussion, because it could not come on before the Recess. My hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Hunter) made a remark which struck me as a very remarkable one. He said the proprietors in Lewis had in the past taken 25 per cent of the gross earnings of the laud, and all the other earnings, to themselves. If that was the case, and if it be the fact, as has been stated over and over again in this Rouse, that the average payment to the landlord in Lewis is only £2—[Hon. MEMBERS: £4.] I beg pardon; my information is different; but I will take it at £4.
    DR. CLARK: £4. We got the information from yourself.
    MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: I do not think I ever stated that the average rental in Lewis was £4. If I did, it was, I believe, wrong; but I will take it at so much. Twenty-five per cent on that would leave for the whole family £16 per annum upon which they could live. But our policy has been all along to accept the decision of the Crofters' Commission, which sat some years ago; which declared that, without emigration from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, there was no real hope of any satisfactory solution of the difficulties which exist. We have been supported in that by hon. Members of the Party opposite, who have inquired into this question, and have in this House, within the present year, told us the same thing. Our policy is one which we have declared over and over again, and it has been met with obloquy. I am afraid we must bear that obloquy. If it is wrong, it must be put right by those who have the power to put it right; but consistency in this matter is the course we intend to pursue. We cannot help it. It is said that this is a scheme to send people out from the Highlands to what is called British Siberia, I can only say that people who have gone from the Highlands to that part of the British Dominions on former occasions have prospered, and have been happy and successful; and that the result of their going, on the inducement of others, had been that they themselves had induced others to go. The experiment we have made is a small one; but, in making it, we give the best proof of our good faith. If this place to which these people have gone out is, indeed, a British Siberia, then we have done certainly a most foolish thing as regards the future, because the reports which will reach home will be such as will prevent any further carrying out of our scheme. We are willing to face that condition, and we shall see who is right in the matter. Observations made here are reported; and I only say this for the purpose of stating that we do not agree with hon. Members opposite that it will be found to be a Siberia. No doubt, people who go out to Canada, and accept its more genial summer, which is better adapted for raising good crops, must face the consequence of
    612
    a severe winter. These people in Lewis are spoken of as being "deported." I really must ask my hon. Friends not to use such language; it is not fair. There is not one of the persons who has gone off in the steamer to-day who has not gone willingly. As a matter of fact, there has been a difficulty in making a choice, and many have remained behind disappointed. I say it is not fair to use such a word as "deported," which indicates compulsion, instead of, as we hope, willingness, and with the result of inducing others to go. If there is not willingness to go, then our scheme falls through. I may mention another fact which I think of good omen. The opportunity presented to these people to go abroad has resulted in this—out of 100 who have gone I learn to-day that six married before they started. I am glad to say they were sufficiently prudent to abstain from entering on the obligations of matrimony before they started for that land, where, we believe, they will prosper. My hon. Friend the Member for Ross (Dr. R. M'Donald) complains that these people have been sent out so late in the year. I quite admit it would have been a good thing if we could have started them a little sooner this year. That was not to be done; but we have had very excellent advice, and the advice given by those who know something about the matter is that we are not too late in sending them out, considering the way they will be received and looked after during their first year. It is a serious matter; but I can assure hon. Members it was not overlooked. Now I would like to correct one or two matters of fact. There is no intention to ask any interest on the money advanced to these people for the first four years, so that they will not be oppressed with any fear of that; and although they are to receive the money for four years without deduction, ultimate payments, including principal and interest, will not come to more than £4 16 s. per £100.
    MR. HUNTER: For how many years will it run?
    MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: I think it will run for about 12 years, and I think there will be no difficulty in accomplishing that repayment. Nor will there be the least disposition on this side of the ocean or the other to press

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    these people, if it should turn out that the period is too short. The matter will be controlled and managed by a Board of Commissioners, representing the imperial Government, the Canadian Government, private subscribers, and the Land Companies.
    MR. A. SUTHERLAND: Will the crofters who receive the money be represented?
    MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: I think they will be represented by the private subscribers, who have philanthropically advanced money.
    MR. A. SUTHERLAND: Are those who pay the interest represented direct?
    MR. J. H. A. MACDONALD: It is not usual, I think, so to treat people who have money advanced to them, and have to repay it. But, I repeat, they are substantially represented by the private subscribers, who have taken an extreme interest in this philanthropic scheme, and believe in its success. It is perfectly true that what we are doing at this particular moment is, as the hon. Member (Mr. Hunter) has said, a mere drop in the bucket. But you must make a beginning somewhere. If we succeed, as I earnestly hope we shall, we shall have a good opportunity of showing whether emigration can be carried out with practical success; and I have no doubt, if it is shown that that can be done, the people themselves will take it up.
    DR. CAMERONsaid, he would much have preferred that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate, instead of entering into a discussion which was hardly germane to the particular Vote before them, had told them by what authority, statutory or otherwise, the Government engaged in a scheme involving expenditure without, first of all, obtaining for it the sanction of the country. The right hon. and learned Gentleman told them that a Commission was to be appointed, and he told them how that Commission was to be constituted. Was that Commission to be a statutory one; and, if so, by what authority was it to be appointed? Was it to be appointed by Parliament; and, if it was to be appointed by Parliament, why had the Government commenced a scheme to be regulated by a Commission without, in the first place, having obtained the requisite power from Parliament? The right hon. and
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    learned Gentleman told them that full opportunity would be given for the discussion of this matter; that Papers and Estimates would soon be laid on the Table; and that that would afford an opportunity for discussing the whole subject of State-aided emigration from the Highlands. If they were to have Papers and Estimates so soon, why had there been this unseemly and unconstitutional haste in forcing on an experiment which he thought the right hon. and learned Gentleman would admit it was perfectly right they should have full opportunity of considering? Why had the Government been in such haste, without any powers, without any authorization from the House, to spend money upon this scheme? His hon. Friend the Member for Sutherland (Mr. A. Sutherland) asked the Lord Advocate to explain by what authority he committed the Government to this expenditure of money, by what authority he had acted in the matter; but the right hon. and learned Gentleman carefully avoided the point. The Lord advocate went into all sorts of extraneous matter; he raised a laugh here and a laugh there; but he carefully avoided what was the real matter of which he (Dr. Cameron) and his hon. Friends complained. The Lord Advocate told them that the Crofters' Commission recommended State-aided emigration, and that the policy of the Government was to carry out the decision of the Crofters' Commission. That was only one of the recommendations of the Crofters' Commission. Why had the Government not shown something like equal alacrity to carry out some of the other recommendations of the Commission, to carry out recommendations which they might have carried out without doing what appeared to him to be an unconstitutional act—namely, forestalling the House in the expenditure of public money? At the commencement of the evening he was much struck with a remark made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Henry H. Fowler). That right hon. Gentleman referred to the most valuable Constitutional provision under which, he said, no payment could be made out of the Treasury after the 31st of March, except on the authority of a direct Vote of the House. But when the right hon. Gentleman was saying that, they knew

    615
    that in a few minutes they would have to discuss this commitment of the Government to the expenditure of money for a policy which was open to the gravest criticism. He did not blame the Government for trying an experiment of this sort tentatively, and in such a way as to make sure they did not do mischief; but what he did complain of was that while they pretended to give the House a full opportunity, by laying Papers on the Table, and introducing a special Vote, for the discussion of a most important question—namely, the propriety of devoting the funds of the State to the emigration of certain people, they prejudged the whole question by rushing in and carrying out the scheme with a high hand. The right hon. and learned Gentleman told them that of the men who had been emigrated no fewer than six got married on the morning before they left. He (Dr. Cameron) could quite understand that, because, according to the estate regulations, any young man who married without permission was liable to be evicted. No wonder that when men got an opportunity of going abroad they should rush into matrimony. In going into this scheme, the Government had gone in for a scheme which was tried by Sir James Matheson, and failed. Sir James Matheson spent, in connection with this very Island, as large a sum of money as the Government proposed to spend—he spent £12,000 on an emigration scheme, and the result was absolutely nil. Years passed, and it was then said that unless an emigration scheme were adopted the Island would go from bad to worse. As his hon. Friend (Mr. Hunter) had proved, by the quotations he read to the Committee from the Report of the Board of Supervision, events had completely given the lie to that prediction; and yet, in face of that, the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposed to repeat the experiment. He did not blame the Lord Advocate; he did not blame the Government for acting upon their conviction: what he blamed them for was committing the country to the expenditure of public money in a new direction and for a new departure altogether, and for doing so, when there was not the smallest need for haste, in such a manner as absolutely to forestall the House in the matter. He thought the least the right hon. and learned
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    Gentleman could have done, if he wished fairly to carry out the pledge he gave to the House that they should have an opportunity of discussing the question before anything was done—[Mr. J. H. A. MACDONALD dissented.] He admitted that they required to construe an answer of the right hon. and learned Gentleman as they would a contentious clause in a Bill; but, certainly, the interpretation he had put upon the pledge of the Lord Advocate was the interpretation which any ordinary-minded man would put upon it. It certainly would have been very much better had the right hon. and learned Gentleman refrained from doing anything until he had given hon. Members an opportunity of discussing the whole question.
    MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he wished to say a few words in answer to the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the College Division of Glasgow (Dr. Cameron). They were asked by what authority they had acted in this matter? They had acted, as all other Governments had acted, in the face of a great emergency. They had taken upon themselves the responsibility of applying public money which, if Parliament did not give them, they must make good. They were in face of a great emergency and difficulty. The hon. Gentleman (Dr. Cameron) said he had no objection whatever to a tentative process, or to an effort to ascertain whether the emigration of crofters from Lewis would tend to the advantage of those unfortunate people, and all he found fault with them for was that they had been in a hurry. The hon. Gentleman thought they had done this before they ought to have done it—that Parliament ought to have had a full opportunity of expressing its opinion upon the whole scheme before anything was done. But what would have been the result of that? The tentative process which the hon. Gentleman desired should be carried out could not be carried out that year. For another year these people who had now gone out must have remained in Lewis, must have remained in a condition of destitution, and with the prospect of starvation before them. The Government would have been just a year behind in the testing of this experiment which, in their conscience, they believed to be necessary, and which they hoped would

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    be entirely successful. They were applying a scheme of emigration tentatively, upon their responsibility, as one of the measures which they hoped might, if extended, afford relief to those distressed people. The hon. Gentleman said they ought to have laid the Papers and the Estimate on the Table before embarking on the scheme. They could not. It was impossible for them to lay Papers on the Table and ask for a Vote of £10,000, which Parliament knew they were about to apply for, in time to have obtained a judgment upon it. They bad to carry out negotiations in Canada; they had to obtain an Act in the Canadian Parliament authorizing the course they had taken. Until that Act was obtained they could not proceed. The crofters themselves were only too anxious to go. The difficulty had been to make a selection, and in making a selection their aim and purpose had been to choose those who, as far as human foresight could see, would profit, and be successful in the new country. Whether the Government failed or succeeded, whether they were right or wrong, they had acted in the discharge of what they believed to be their duty to these people. They were prepared to take the consequences, and they believed that Parliament would approve of their action.
    DR. CLARKsaid, he and his hon. Friends would take a Division, because the arguments used on the part of the Government by the Lord Advocate and the First Lord of the Treasury did not meet the case at all. He quite admitted it was competent for the Government to act independently of Parliament; and if some special reason had been urged for their doing so, he and his hon. Friends might not have taken the action they intended. As a matter of fact, no experiment could be tried by the Government during the present year. The emigrants, or transported crofters, would not reach their destination until June, and it would be utterly impossible that they could do anything during the present year, so far as the sowing of crops was concerned. By sending them out now the Government were simply wasting the men's time. The Government were sending these crofters out far too late to be of any use this year, and the experiment they were making would be null and void, in place of being attended with satisfactory
    618
    results. All the result would be to give some 40 or 50 extra labourers to the farmers in that neighbourhood. The reasons given by the Lord Advocate for the unconstitutional step taken by the Government—for it was unconstitutional for the Government to spend money without the knowledge of Parliament, and to conceal the fact until pressed for information in the House—were wholly insufficient. There was no necessity for the unseemly hurry in which this emigration scheme had been carried out. The proper time to have sent the people out would have been in the Indian summer, or the fall of the year. It was said that the late Royal Commission had recommended that emigration should take place; but the late Royal Commission did not do so. Only a portion of the Royal Commission recommended it. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Inverness-shire (Mr. Fraser-Mackintosh) did not recommend it—the recommendation only came from the landlord part of the Commission, and even then it was only one of the minor recommendations of the Commission. The important recommendations were two. The first was that the size of the present crofters' holdings should be increased. It was recommended that the Sheriff should have power, when a township declared itself overcrowded, to increase the holdings in that township; but nothing had been done by the Government to carry out that, the principal, recommendation of the Commission. Secondly, they recommended that, in addition to new holdings, new townships should be formed under the conditions laid down in the Crofters' Act; but as he had lately brought before the notice of the House, though clauses were put into the Crofters' Act allowing the Crofter Commission to increase holdings for five years, now over two years of that period had passed, and not a single holding had been increased by the Commission, and during the remaining three years he did not expect that there would be more than 500 holdings increased, because the conditions upon which the enlargement was to be allowed would render the crofts worthless. The Government, he maintained, ought to have amended the Crofters' Act before they tried this emigration scheme, and ought to have allowed the Crofter Commission to have increased existing hold-

    619
    ings, and to have created new townships for the accommodation of the great bulk of the population. Under the Crofters' Act, in the arrangements for increasing the holdings, the Government had not touched that other important factor in this matter—namely, the cottars who were one-third of the population in the crofter districts. These cottars, who were evicted crofters or their immediate descendants, had no land, and the only way to benefit them was to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission he had named—namely, to create new townships. But nothing of the kind had been done, and of all those recommendations of the Royal Commission which were made unanimously, the Government had disregarded the only recommendation they were anxious to adopt, having been a recommendation upon which the Commissioners were not at one. He (Dr. Clark) was opposed to the principle of the scheme the Government were carrying out—he was opposed to their policy in this matter in every shape and form. He had lived, he thought, in every one of our self-governing Colonies, and he knew something of our Crown Colonies; and he must say that, so far as comfort in the ordinary conditions of life was concerned, he should infinitely prefer to live in Sydney, Melbourne, or Dunedin, than in London, Dublin, or Edinburgh. Physically, those places in the Colonies were infinitely better than our large towns at home, and it was only sentimental reasons which kept him here. The other countries were superior in a great many ways, and they would be great nations when we probably were played out; but, as a citizen of this Empire, and as a Scotchman, he certainly objected to the principle underlying the Government policy. They were clearing away the agricultural population of these Islands, and for what? In order to create deer forests and sheep farms. What was the economical condition of the country under the present system? Why, it was this—that the land was becoming less and less fruitful, the production from it decreasing year by year. The sheep farms had no labour placed upon them, and were returning to a state of nature, the result being that they did not grow more than half, or, at the outside, two-thirds of what they used to grow. The land formerly occu-
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    pied by crofters, being allowed to remain fallow, was producing less and less every year, and, of course, the general production of the whole country was less and less every year. No one would contend, except, perhaps, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that deer forests were of any use to the people generally, and he said emphatically that if they were going to get rid of their country population they would bring about a national calamity. We relied too much upon the extent of our manufactures. He knew something about the countries that used to be our customers for our manufactured goods, and he said, from his knowledge of them, that they were now supplying themselves with those commodities which they formerly used to obtain from us. What we should have to depend upon ultimately would be the home trade, and if we lessened the possibility of providing for our own wants at home we should be gradually preparing the way for a national calamity—we should be filling our towns more and more with an idle population with less food to feed them on, and would be, in fact, guilty of a national crime. However, those were questions which must be entered upon fully when the Government brought their scheme formally before the House. All that could be done now was to protest against the policy carried out by the Government, and to protest against the manner in which it had been sought to conceal from the House the real facts of the case until hon. Members had, unwillingly, wrung those facts from the Front Bench opposite. Furthermore, Members interested in this subject submitted that the Government were carrying out their experiments at a bad time of the year, when there was no chance of success, instead of deferring the discussion and putting off the adoption of arrangements until a period when there was a likelihood of light being thrown upon the subject, and a probability of the scheme being carried out successfully. He supported the Motion of his hon. Friend, and trusted he would carry it to a Division.
    MR. ANDERSONsaid, he wished to say a few words upon this question, and to call the attention of the Government to certain points at this stage, because he had had several communications from members of his

    621
    constituency who were crofters and fishermen, and who were desirous of ascertaining whether the proposed scheme of emigration would be applied to that part of the country which he represented. He had once or twice asked the Lord Advocate for information on the subject; but, in reply to every Question put to that right hon. and learned Gentleman with regard to the government of Scotland, they got little or no information. He did not altogether think it was the fault of the Lord Advocate, however. It was the fault of the First Lord of the Treasury, who would not have the Secretary for Scotland in the House of Commons. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate merely came to that House as a machine to read from Papers answers to certain Questions. When the Scotch Members pressed him earnestly for further answers, he was, of course, like the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the President of the Local Government Board, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so far as Scotland was concerned, and so far as the subjects to which the Questions related were concerned—that was to say, he knew nothing about them. The consequence was that Scotch Members had to drag important statements from the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Lord Advocate bit by bit, and often had to put the same Question down on the Paper three or four times, because they could not get a reply. He declared that, so far as the present Vote was concerned, the Secretary for Scotland and the Government were very much to blame for not having someone in that House who was responsible for the affairs of Scotland and knew what was taking place in Scotland, and who was, in fact, the Secretary for Scotland. He thought, if the First Lord of the Treasury would consider this matter—if he ever did consider Scotch affairs—the right hon. Gentleman would see that this debate illustrated emphatically the point he (Mr. Anderson) was making. On this emigration question what information had they got? Hardly any, except that they were told that the policy—the only policy—of the Government with regard to the state of things in Scotland was emigration. Well, he should have thought that, inasmuch as there were other alternative policies, the Government might have turned their attention
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    to them. The policy the crofters wanted was not that of sending them to Canada or other far-off places. They wanted to live in their own country; they wanted to have land given to them, and to be allowed to cultivate that land. He wondered whether the Government had seen the Memorial just presented to Lady Matheson, in which it was pointed out to her that two districts which were now deer forests—namely, Lochs and Aline, 30 or 40 years ago were covered by small though flourishing crofter townships. These places were cleared for the purpose of making the Lochs Forest and the Aline Forest. He (Mr. Anderson) wanted to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he did not think the attention of the Government should be turned rather to the expressed wishes of those people, in order to see if they could not bring in some legislation which would bring the crofter population back to the land they originally occupied? To get up here and say that the people wanted to emigrate was all stuff and nonsense. They did nothing of the kind. They looked upon going to foreign countries as absolute banishment. Think of what emigration meant to a man well advanced in life! Emigration might very well be a good thing to a young unmarried man of 18, or from 18 to 25; but if they took a man past 30 years of age—say a man of 40—with a family, and, transplanting him from his own country, sent him over to Canada, without friends, ignorant of the habits of the people and having to learn everything there, it was no wonder that they found numbers and numbers of instances in which the people returned to their own country, having, as emigrants, proved utter failures. He would send to the First Lord of the Treasury—if in the midst of his multifarious duties he could devote a little time to the perusal of such a document—an account which appeared in one of the local newspapers of the counties he (Mr. Anderson) represented. This account, which he had received that morning, gave particulars of the condition in which some of these emigrants found themselves abroad. The account was given by two fishermen who had heard from emigration agencies brilliant statements as to the profits which were to be made by fishermen, and, being hard pressed to live at home, they had been led away

    623
    by the rosy descriptions they had heard and had emigrated. But what did they find in the country to which they had emigrated? Why, they had had to go from place to place, and had everywhere found the trade crowded by competition; but, worse than that, they found wages far lower and living very much inferior, and houses far worse and the fishery much more difficult, than at home. And yet it was said that these men were to go out to British Columbia and fish and secure great prosperity. He did not think it was possible to read an instance of more absolute failure than that of the two men he referred to, and he trusted the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury would not object to his sending him the account in question. If the right hon. Gentleman, as he had said, could in the midst of his other numerous duties find time to read it, it would, no doubt, produce a very strong effect upon his mind, as it would open up to him a new phase of this question which he had not been in the habit of considering. The Government were remarkable in this matter for a want of policy. They had not considered the interests and the capabilities and the character of the persons who were to be benefited, and they rushed blindly into this scheme of emigration. To think, as the First Lord of the Treasury had said, that at this great crisis an expenditure of some £10,000 would be sufficient for the relief of the distressed crofters, and to think that by that means they would be putting a stop to agitation and really conferring a benefit upon the population, was the most absurd proposition ever made from the Treasury Bench. But there was another point upon which he wished to say a word; and it was this—Where were the Government going to take these people from? Were they going to take them simply from Lady Matheson's estate? Were they going merely to give her an opportunity of getting rid of her crofters by sending them off, that she might be relieved of the trouble they gave her? How did the Government mean to select the emigrants? He rather thought—in fact, he had heard it stated—that the emigrants were selected in this way—there was a sort of anxious desire that the leading crofters, those people who were agitating to get their land back, should
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    be got out of the way, and that those were the people who were preferred in the patronage of the Government. It was said that the Government were anxious to transplant from their native country those people who gave most trouble; and certainly, unless some preference was exhibited, he was at a loss to understand how the selection was being made. There must be some influence of that kind at work. At any rate, he would ask the Government this question, which he thought was a fair one. Why were the fishermen living on the Eastern Coast of Scotland left out? Let the Government think of the jealousy they were creating with these people. There was amongst the fishermen of the Moray Firth a great deal of distress, and perhaps the men there were anxious to try the experiment of emigration. Probably, after reading the account of their want of success given by the two fishermen to whom he had referred, these people would not be so anxious for emigration as they had been hitherto; but, be that as it might, the people on whose behalf he was speaking were anxious, whilst there was money being spent in this way, that they should derive some advantage from it as well as other people. He did not wish to increase the difficulties of the Government. All he desired to say was that he viewed with great disfavour any scheme which would ignore the counties he represented; and if the scheme did not include these people he certainly should move its rejection. If the scheme was one merely for the purpose of spending money on one particular county or estate, he looked upon it as very objectionable; and, therefore, he trusted that, before the scheme was wholly carried out, the Government would consider the suggestion he was making. Perhaps the remarks he had addressed to the Government would come to the notice of the Secretary for Scotland. They would not be reported to him by the Lord Advocate, because that right hon. and learned Gentleman had not been there to listen to them; but he (Mr. Anderson) trusted, at all events, that through one of the many different channels which had to be traversed in order to get at the Secretary for Scotland, and to bring any influence to bear upon him, there would be brought to his notice the view taken by

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    some Scotch Members upon this subject, and that the scheme would not, after all, be an exclusive one, but would extend to other counties. He knew the difficulties which surrounded the subject—he knew the difficulties the Government had to face in dealing with the Crofter Question; but the Government seemed to be impressed with the idea that there were no crofters in any of the counties, except four or five. They seemed to have the most supreme ignorance as to what the crofters were, and where they were to be found. He trusted they would consider the few remarks he had made, and certainly hoped that his hon. Friend who had moved the Amendment would carry it to a Division, as he did not think the House had been fairly treated in this matter. He thought that on this, as on other questions as to the management of their affairs, Members representing Scotch constituencies were not fairly dealt with by the Government, mainly for the reason, as he had pointed out, that they had nobody to represent Scotch affairs in the Government in that House.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 37; Noes 88: Majority 51.—(Div. List, No. 114.)
    Original Question again proposed.
    MR. CONYBEAREsaid, he wished to call attention to a subject of local interest in connection with the item in the Vote for County Courts. There had been no satisfactory explanation given with reference to the complaint which had been made of the action of the County Court Judge at Stowmarket in Suffolk. There had been a good deal of friction between the County Court Judge and the suitors who came before him in the ordinary course of business. Questions which had been asked of the Government had had reference to special points; but the broad question which appeared to underlie all these special points was this—that the County Court Judge in question had been acting in a very harsh manner, and not to one person only, but to a great number of persons who had come before him. In that House the Government had referred hon. Members to the Lord Chancellor, and had put hon. Members off with answers which were not satisfactory—he would not call
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    them evasive answers, because he did not suppose they were anxious to burke the question. No doubt, it was a difficult and even a delicate question; but he contended that in a matter like that, where constant complaints were arising from different Members of the House who were asked to take up the matter and press it upon the attention of the Government, where they had evidence of a state of things which could not be allowed to continue, it was no answer to the poor people whose claims for redress in a Court of Justice had been set aside and injured by the conduct of a particular individual—it was no satisfaction to them to be told——
    THE CHAIRMAN: I understand the hon. Member is raising a question as to the conduct of a County Court Judge.
    MR. CONYBEARE.Certainly, Sir.
    THE CHAIRMAN: The salaries of County Court Judges are paid out of the Consolidated Fund, and are not included in this Vote.
    MR. CONYBEARE: What, Sir, is this Vote for County Courts for?
    THE CHAIRMAN: The salaries of the Judges of the County Courts and the salaries of the Judges in the higher Courts are included in the Consolidated Fund.
    MR. CONYBEARE: Then do I understand, Sir, that it is impossible to discuss a question connected with the County Courts upon the Estimates?
    THE CHAIRMAN: It is impossible to discuss a question as to the conduct of a County Court Judge upon this Vote.
    MR. CONYBEARE: Then I beg to give Notice that I shall take the opportunity of bringing this subject forward on the Motion for Adjournment.
    DR. TANNERsaid, in the course of some introductory remarks made on this Vote on Account, the hon. Member for the Eastern Division of Donegal laid particular stress on Vote 37. Dealing with it in a very few words, the hon. Member had practically shown that a great deal of money had been wasted over the Vote in past years. Anyone who would take up the Auditor General's Report on this Vote would see from those figures that the estimated receipts last year were £78,500, and the actual receipts £74,011 3s. 3d.; therefore the Estimates exceeded the

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    receipts by £4,448 16 s. 9d. But that was not all. He did not propose to deal with the matter in extenso, but he wished to draw the attention of the Secretary to the Treasury to it, and he knew that that Gentleman in that House was always most anxious to clear up any point—
    THE CHAIRMAN: I must point out to the hon. Member that we have passed the item upon which he is speaking.
    DR. TANNER: I was not aware, Sir, that these Votes were being taken seriatim.
    THE CHAIRMAN: There was a Division on an item subsequent to that to which the hon. Member is refering.
    DR. TANNER: I presume, Sir, I should be in Order in taking up any Irish Vote on page 3, the Lord Lieutenant's Household for instance. There has been no Division on those Votes. I would ask your ruling, Sir, upon another point, and that is this—supposing a Division is taken upon any one of these Votes, and that then any one of us discusses a Vote lower down on the list, would it be in Order for an hon. Member who might not happen to have been present, and who might have something to say on a succeeding Vote to that made the subject, would he be able to speak?
    THE CHAIRMAN: It is quite unnecessary to deal with a hypothetical case. The case in point has already been practically decided.
    DR. CLARKsaid, he wished to say a word with regard to the payment of Fiscals. A Royal Commission had recommended that in future Procurators Fiscal, when appointed, should be limited to Crown work—that was to say, should be the servants of the Crown, and should not represent landlords as well. Since then, however, an important appointment had been made, and this recommendation had been overlooked, notwithstanding that all the lawyers in Scotland had been opposed to it. He thought it desirable that they should know how they stood in this matter, as there had been a pledge given by the late Lord Advocate. The Scotch Members understood, and it was agreed that in future Fiscals should be appointed for Crown work only, and that they should not be allowed to do private work, for the reason that if they were allowed to do private work
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    as well as Crown work, the private work was affected by that Crown work. He (Dr. Clark) desired to know why, notwithstanding the pledges which had been given, the recommendations made by the Royal Commission had not been carried out? He did not wish to take up the time of the House by moving the reduction of the Lord Advocate's salary; but he wished to know the reason why the Treasury stood in the way of carrying out the system recommended by the Royal Commission?
    THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON)said, he was afraid he had no facts upon which to answer the specific question put by the hon. Member. The hon. Gentleman knew that in some districts the Procurator Fiscal had to give his whole time to the Crown, and take no other work. In other districts, however, a much higher rate of pay would have to be given to get the requisite ability than that which the amount of work would really require or demand, if the Procurator Fiscal were required to do no other work. He was sorry the Lord Advocate was not present, but he would communicate with him and ascertain what had taken place.
    DR. CLARKsaid, he should like to ask the Government if they could give him any information as to the reason why the Crofter Commission had not been allowed to appoint Assistant Commissioners, in order that they might dispose of their work more quickly than they were doing? Three or four times this subject had been brought before the notice of the Treasury, and Scotch Members had understood that at last something was to be done to appoint Assistant Commissioners in order that the Commission might get through a portion of the work which was very urgent. Lewis had been spoken of a good deal in connection with the Crofter Question, but during the two years that the Commission had been at work they had not yet got there, and goodness knew when they would get there, because he understood they were going to Orkney and Shetland first. That was very hard on those poor crofters who applied to the Commission nearly two years ago for relief, and had not yet had their cases attended to. Unless the Government did something to have Assistant Commissioners ap-

    629
    pointed, the three men who were now at work on the business of the Commission would not possibly be able to hear all the cases. They had dealt with but few of the holdings, and the time they had occupied in deciding these cases was worth more than the value of the crofts. The Commissioners examined the land, and the work they did was so little compared with the necessities of the case, and with the work they might do, that he did not think it was worth while for Parliament to carry on the Commission at all in its present inadequate shape. Surely an appeal ought to be heard within 12 months of the time of its being lodged? Men, feeling that they were rack-rented, and seeing on estates in other parts of the country reductions made ranging from 25 to 75 per cent, were naturally unwilling to pay their rents, and in this way things were getting into a very bad state. The Government would have serious trouble to face unless they made provisions to have the crofter cases heard, and also to have appeals decided. He thought that the present attitude of the Government was a penny wise and pound foolish one, as it led to great expense being piled up. He trusted they would make good what the Act permitted. Clauses were passed in the Act to allow Assistant Commissioners, Valuers, and officers of that kind to be appointed; and surely it was the original intention of the Government to appoint men to do the work, and not to have the muddle and deadlock which existed at present. The Commissioners had been unable for years to do the work. As he had pointed out, in an island like that of Lewis, they had been unable to do it. The only way in which it was possible to get the Commission to go anywhere to hear cases within a reasonable time was to kick up a row, and to do illegal acts. That, however, was teaching the peasantry a very bad lesson. He thought that the Government should give the Act a fair chance, so far as they could, and should not prevent its being carried out merely because the Secretary to the Treasury was afraid of spending a pound or two. The Government scorned to forget that for every pound they spent for legal purposes in Scotland in England they were spending £2 10 s. 0d., and in Ireland £5. He protested that in this
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    matter they were treating Scotland in a mean and niggardly fashion.
    DR. TANNERsaid, that, in the Vote on Account, there was included an item to which he took considerable objection; in fact, if the Members of the Party to which he had the honour to belong took the matter up seriously, it would require a whole Sitting to deal with it, or, perhaps, two Sittings of the House. The item to which he referred was one for Law Charges and Criminal Prosecutions in Ireland. Now, it was within the recollection of the House that since the Criminal Law and Procedure Act, which was popularly known as the Coercion Act, was passed, a number of cases had been tried under its provisions, and again and again illegal actions had been committed by the magistrates who had tried those cases. He felt sure that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen—no matter how much they might differ from hon. Members who sat below the Gangway on that (the Opposition) side of the House—if they only thoroughly appreciated the facts, would understand that it was necessary that the Irish Members should be privileged to discuss these questions when money was asked under such a Vote, seeing that that money was not only to pay the magistrates who tried the cases, but the prosecuting counsel who appeared before the magistrates. Practically speaking, from the magistrates who sat on the Bench to the counsel who prosecuted, and the policemen who arrested a person, all these officials were paid by the Crown, and they were all part and parcel of the same method of carrying out, as far as possible, the political modus vivendi of the right hon. Gentleman who conducted, or rather misconducted, the business of Ireland. He should like to bring before the notice of the Committee two or three cases which had come under his own observation. What he was about to describe he had seen himself, and they said that—"Seeing was believing." The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, however, when he (Dr. Tanner) told him what he had seen in connection with one of the cases, had stated that his (the right hon. Gentleman's) information—which was inconsistent with what he (Dr. Tanner) had seen—was received from a reliable source; and what the right hon. Gentleman's insinuation there

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    was he (Dr. Tanner) would leave to the judgment of the House. He would now allude to the case of one of his constituents—the case of a man named Creedon. This man, on Sunday the 8th April last, went into the town of Macroom. Well, it was within the knowledge of most men who paid any attention to Irish affairs that Ireland had been relegated, or was supposed to have been relegated, to a subordinate position by Her Majesty's Ministers, although, as a matter of fact, she still occupied that position to which she was entitled, aye, and which she would ever maintain. The Government might do their utmost against her, but she would come to the fore again and again. The more they tried to put her down, the stronger she would stand in front of them, and the more certain she would be to procure the downfall of the enemies to patriotic and single-minded and undivided action. But he was about to refer to the case of the young man Creedon. On that very day, Sunday the 8th of April, several meetings were to be held in different parts of Ireland by the Irish Nationalist Party. It had been determined to hold these meetings in consequence of a boast of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. For his own part, he did not find any fault with the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for making this boast. The poor unfortunate right hon. Gentleman really did not know very often what he did. He had never visited the Province of Munster; he had never visited the Province of Connaught, and he had never gone into Ulster. In that very House he (Dr. Tanner) had said that, if the right hon. Gentleman would allow him, he should only be too glad to bring to his personal notice a great number of cases which might, perhaps, occasion his turning over a new leaf and being a better boy for the future. The right hon. Gentleman had stated in that House that the National League was dead. He (Dr. Tanner) happened to be the Representative of a portion of Cork in which the National League was "suppressed," consequently the right hon. Gentleman's boast referred to a portion of his (Dr. Tanner's) constituency. Well, the members of the suppressed branches of the National League determined that they would show the Chief Secretary to the
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    Lord Lieutenant that he was utterly mistaken in his premises, and that in the speech he had delivered he had made a false statement to the country. Of course, it was immaterial for him (Dr. Tanner) whether or not the right hon. Gentleman had simply made his statement for the purpose of catching votes in this country, and to show what a great man the right hon. Gentleman was; suffice it to say that it was determined to hold meetings of the National League all over the country, and it subsequently transpired that several meetings were held in Macroom. On the Saturday before the meeting to which he was about to refer, he happened to meet in the City of Cork an old gentleman, a quiet old gentleman, a really good old man to play a game of whist with, but a person utterly unfitted to act as a magistrate, the duties of such a post being altogether past his time of life. This old gentleman told him that the meeting in Macroom was to be suppressed, whereupon he rejoined—"Who is going to suppress it?" and, turning round with a gallant air, this Captain Redmond—for this gentleman, as his name would indicate, had held a position in Her Majesty's Reserve Forces—of course, most of those gentlemen who belonged to the Magisterial Bench were attached to Her Majesty's Reserve Forces and had never been in action—Captain Redmond's manly breast heaved, and he said—"I am going to suppress it!" Now, really, there ought to be some common sense displayed in the matter of the suppression of these meetings. When an elderly gentleman of that kind took upon himself to suppress an entire district, and refused to give anyone any information as to the matter, he protested that the policy which permitted such a thing was absurd, and that the state of affairs was such that it could not be expected to meet with the sanction of the people of the country they now occupied. He asked Captain Redmond for further information, but he refused to give it. He (Dr. Tanner) had gone down to Macroom next day, as it was his duty to do. He had not been served with a copy of the writ stating that the meeting was to be suppressed, and he held the meeting in the morning—a meeting which was attended by some 500 men on horseback. At that meeting they

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    discussed the matters most worthy of their consideration, and they congratulated one another on the fact that notwithstanding the edict of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who knew nothing whatever about the district, not only was the League doing well there, but, as a matter of fact, the numbers of the National League in the town of Macroom had increased once and a-half what they were before the publication of the edict. They also congratulated themselves upon the fact that in other places similar advances had been made by the League. So great had been the success from a National point of view which attended the suppression of the League, that it was a question whether it was not advisable, in order to make the organization more successful in those places where it had taken less hold amongst the people, to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, as a special and peculiar favour, to suppress the organization in the remaining parts of the county he had the honour to represent. Well, the morning meeting was held, and at 2 o'clock they proceeded to hold another meeting. At that time a troop of Cavalry had ridden into the Square, and there were over 100 Constabulary there. They were led by Captain Redmond, who walked up and down the Square, looking very uncomfortable, and by two or three District Inspectors of Police, trying to make the best of their time smoking cigarettes. He (Dr. Tanner) then thought it was desirable to make a protest in the name of the constituency and in the name of law and order, as supported by the people, as against this illegal demonstration on the part of the Crown. Accordingly, in order that the people might not suffer, he himself undertook to go forward. He tried to get the people to step back and remain quiet whilst the protest was being made, because he knew, from circumstances which had preceded this occasion, that the police had received orders "to bâton, but not to arrest." The Crown did not take the responsibility of arresting him on that occasion; but they did what they would not have dared to do in England, Scotland, or Wales—that was to say, they tried to break his head. [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite might laugh; but he could
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    assure hon. Members from the North of Ireland and also English Members that if they could have witnessed the conduct of the police officials and the official supporters of law and order on the occasion in question they would not have been disposed to laugh, and would have been very much ashamed of supporting a Government which endeavoured to carry out its mandates by such brutal illegality. What happened on the occasion to which he was referring? He went into the Square, being perfectly content to do so, so far as he was personally concerned. He had, as he had said, told the people to be quiet and not to follow him; for if they did they would get into trouble. He had said—"Stop there, and let me go on." He got to the centre of the Square, and there he was collared. [Laughter.] He doubted whether hon. Gentlemen would laugh if they know what took place. The District Inspectors in days gone by used to be considered gentlemen; but in recent years they had sadly degenerated, and that description could no longer with justice be applied to them. Well, while he was in the hands of three policemen and firmly pinioned, a District Inspector came up, and deliberately struck him in the face. The District Inspector would not have done it if his (Dr. Tanner's) arms had been free. Was, therefore, the act of this person gentlemanly or cowardly? He did not think hon. Gentlemen opposite would endorse such action; but he could assure them that it was quite a common occurrence in Ireland under the existing state of things in that country. He merely alluded to this incident because it was a personal matter, and he had no grudge against the unfortunate man who had been guilty of this piece of brutality. He treated him and the rest of his class as beneath contempt, and merely alluded to the subject en passant. The policemen who collared him took him off the Square; but he would do some of them the justice to say that in the evening they came to him and apologized, stating that although they were obliged to carry out the mandate of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, practically speaking, their hearts, their inclinations, and their minds were altogether against such dirty work. This young man, when he

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    saw him dragged from the Square, made an exclamation, and the policeman struck him.
    MR. MACINNESrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
    Question put, "That the Question be now put."
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 103; Noes 13: Majority 90.—(Div. List, No. 115.)
    Original Question put accordingly, and agreed to.
    Resolutions to be reported upon Thursday 31st May.
    Committee to sit again upon Thursday 31st May.

EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY FOR INJURIES TO WORKMEN BILL.— [BILL 145.]
(Mr. Secretary Matthews, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Ritchie, Mr. Forwood.)
EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY FOR INJURIES TO WORKMEN BILL.— [BILL 145.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS), in rising to move that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that the Bill was a consolidating as well as an amending one. In the interests of the working classes it was desirable the law on this subject should be put into one Statute. He would not now debate questions of large principle which he regarded as settled. It seemed to him impossible, as some Members wished, to sweep away the doctrine of common employment which had grown up in English laws. It was fair to call on an employer to provide plant and machinery in good condition; but that he should be rendered liable for the casual negligence or wilful misconduct of a servant was a doctrine which could not be upheld. It was not proposed in the Bill to do away with the doctrine of common employment; but they did propose to correct what they might deem had been the undue extension of that doctrine in the Courts of Law. All lawyers, he thought, would agree that when an employer delegated his control and authority over his workmen to a manager, who was an alter ego of himself, and who superintended in his name, the manager could not, and
  636
  ought not, to be treated as a fellow-servant with those over whom he ruled. If he were so treated a premium would be placed upon such delegation of authority. It was right, therefore, in his opinion, to exclude all such cases from this doctrine of common employment. There was another matter dealt with in the Bill of some novelty to which he must refer. There largely prevailed, especially in the building trades, a practice of the contractor giving out different parts of the work to sub-contractors. Those sub-contractors were frequently men of straw, whose responsibility and liability to workmen were extremely inadequate, and yet the principal employer escaped liability because there was no privity between him and the men employed by the sub-contractors, although the plant or materials supplied by him proved to be deficient, and consequently led to accidents. That seemed to be a hardship; and it was attempted to be remedied in the 2nd clause of the Bill. While the liability of the sub-contractor was kept alive, the principal contractor, for whom the work was really being done, was made also liable for accidents which happened owing to the patent defect in the plant used. The next point he desired to refer to was that with regard to the burning question whether workmen should be allowed to contract themselves out of the Act. There were three possible courses that might be adopted. In the first place, absolute liberty might be given to the workmen. The second alternative was absolutely to prohibit contracting out of the Act; and the third was to prohibit the sub modo—that was to say, unless something as good as, or better than, the provisions of the measure existed in the contract of employment. The first course was one that naturally commended itself to some men of masculine mind, who thought it unwise to treat the working men of this country, who were its mainstay, like women and children, lunatics and sailors—these were all classes which the law, sometimes wisely, sometimes somewhat oddly, treated as incompetent to protect themselves. But among the friends of the working men who best knew their wishes there was a strong feeling that working men were often subjected to such pressure and coercion and influence on the part of their employers that

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  the men were not really free agents. Absolute prohibition was condemned by the Committee which sat about the year 1876, before the Act of 1880 was passed; but the Committee which sat last year was about equally divided on the subject; so that the opinions in favour of prohibition had made progress. By the casting vote of the Chairman, the Report in favour of prohibition sub modo was adopted, which had been followed in the drafting of this Bill. The result of absolute prohibition would be that since the masters could not be prevented from insuring, the injured workmen would on all occasions have to meet, as antagonists, Insurance Companies, whose whole energies would be devoted to fighting every claim for compensation; there would thus be a great increase of litigation, and great hardship in many deserving cases. Moreover, absolute prohibition would put an end to a number of arrangements existing at this moment, and which were, in his judgment, much more beneficial to the men than any chance of compensation they could obtain under an Act of Parliament. Two, at least, of the great Railway Companies—namely, the London and North-Western and the London, Brighton, and South Coast, had established between themselves and their men arrangements for mutual assurance, which seemed to him to be of the most beneficial and salutary kind. Of the 53,000 employés of the first-named Company only 25 had refused to enter into this arrangement, and of the 9,000 or 10,000 workmen employed by the London, Brighton, and South Coast Company all except two had entered into a similar arrangement. Of the men employed in the collieries it was given in evidence before the Committee that 83,000 men in England had entered into such arrangement, while in North Wales 10,500 had done so. Contemporaneously with that the number of accidents had greatly diminished, especially in the latter case, so that that fact showed that the arrangement had not tended to carelessness, or want of security for the workmen themselves. This system appeared to be one of great advantage to the men, and it was, therefore, the purpose of the Bill to encourage such arrangements. The scheme they contemplated in the 3rd section of the Bill allowed the employer and the workmen, if they agreed, to contract
  638
  themselves out of the Act, provided always that an adequate consideration was given by the employer for such contract. That adequate consideration was defined by the Bill to be this—some system of insurance against accidents of all kinds, and that covered not only the limited class for which the employer was liable under the present Bill, but accidents of all kinds such as were inevitable, or even the result of the injured man's own negligence. The field that was covered by the sort of insurance which they allowed as an alternative to liability under the Bill was a very much wider field than was covered by the Bill itself. The Bill required that the employer should make a contribution to the insurance fund in accordance with the average proportion of accidents for which a master was liable under the circumstances of that particular trade to the total number of accidents of all kinds that occurred. Thus, if in a particular trade it was calculated that a master was, on an average, liable for a third of the accidents that occurred he would have to contribute one-third to the insurance fund. It was also provided that the employer should become a guarantor of the solvency of the insurance fund. One rock upon which schemes of assurance were extremely likely to split was that the actuarial calculations might not be accurately made, and the fund contributions might not be adequate to meet the demands made upon them. It was, therefore, necessary to throw upon the employer the duty of guaranteeing the soundness of the scheme. This at first sight might seem a little hard, but workmen could not be expected to judge whether the scheme was a sound one, and therefore the responsibility must be thrown on employers. It seemed to the Government extremely desirable, if possible, to avoid litigation, which could benefit nobody but the hedge attorney, who was the chief person interested in legal proceedings of the kind. It was, therefore, important to ascertain beforehand that agreements entered into between employers and workmen were fair. The Bill provided that one of the Departaments of the Government should examine and certify that any contract made, or proposed to be made, between employer and workman was a contract under which the latter obtained ade-

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  quate consideration for renouncing the advantages he would have under the Act. The Board of Trade would certify as to all schemes, except those in regard to coal mines and factories, which would come under the control of the Home Office. Practically those clauses were an endeavour to carry out the recommendations of the last Committee on this subject. He might here state that since 1881, when the Employers' Liability Act passed, the total number of cases set down for hearing under it amounted to 1,800; of these, there was a verdict for the plaintiff only in 419 cases, while there were settled between the parties 265 cases, in which he assumed the plaintiff got some benefit at least, making a total of 684 cases of successful litigation out of 1,800, or only 38 per cent. Thus, in 62 per cent of the cases set down for hearing, the workman failed in the object and purpose of his litigation, and the unhappy employer was subjected to the burden of paying his own costs and probably the costs on the other side. The hope of the Government was that these clauses would lead to some system of general insurance, and that the several trades in various parts of the country might federate with that object. With regard to the plans of general compulsory insurance, such as was embodied in legislation in Germany in 1884 and in Austria in 1887, their experience was too recent and too slight to enable them to come to anything like a sound judgment; and, besides, the details of those Continental measures would, in his opinion, be absolutely intolerable in a country of freedom like this, involving, as they did, a very serious amount of interference with trade, which was necessary and inevitable under the systems. He believed that by the machinery of this clause it would be to the mutual interest of employers and employed to institute a general scheme of insurance, and that it would do more to smooth the asperities of the labour question than almost any other system that could be introduced. He believed, too, there were sufficient data for calculating risks and rates of premium, so as to make a scheme solvent and safe. The example of the London and North-Western Company showed that in a great undertaking like that there were the materials for completing a scheme safely and successfully within the limits
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  of the undertaking itself; and his view was that by grouping collieries by districts, and the textile industries and the building trades in various parts, and getting them to combine, schemes of mutual insurance might be carried out in a solvent and practicable manner for the benefit of the workman. A novel feature in the Bill was the extension of its benefits to seamen. The recommendations of the Committee on this subject, in his opinion, were wise and went far enough. Nobody could deny the difference between the employer of labour at sea and the employer on land, for the simple reason that the former when once his ship was at sea lost all control over his delegates and agents; and, therefore, to make him responsible for their negligence or error of judgment when the ship had left harbour and was on the high seas would be an unjust extension of the principle of employers' liability. Moreover, shipowners were already under a special code of regulations, and were not free to employ whom they liked as engineers, seamen, captains, and mates. Accordingly, this Bill did not go further than the Select Committee's Report, and made the shipowner only liable for accidents occurring to his employés while the vessel was in a British port, where his position resembled that of employers on land. When once the ship had left the port his responsibility was limited to this—that she must be properly equipped with everything necessary for the protection and safety of the men before she starts. Here, again, with the object of preventing litigation, the Government had introduced a subsection which had been the subject of some criticism, enabling the Board of Trade to say in advance what things a ship of any particular class ought to have in order to its proper equipment in relation to the safety of the seamen, and it was suggested that these regulations should be annexed to the agreement of the sailor, so that he should have notice of what the ship ought to contain in order to satisfy the law. Another change introduced was the clause consolidating the Common Law action with the statutory action, so obviating a frequent cause of annoyance and suffering under the present law, and, at the same time, it was proposed to extend the jurisdiction of the County Courts in order to enable them to deal with Com-

  641
  mon Law claims as well as the statutory amount which exceeded the present jurisdiction of the County Courts. There were many other points to which he should like to advert, but he refrained from doing so with the view of giving as much time as possible for discussion. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Secretary Matthews).
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid, that before he commenced his remarks on the Bill, he must again take the opportunity of protesting against being "cornered" in this matter—against being so compressed and cabined in a debate on so important a Bill. He feared he could not interpret the situation in the same way as the right hon. Gentleman opposite had interpreted it. After taking a very active part officially on behalf of the trades of the country for 20 years, it was very difficult for him to compress his remarks into so short a period as was now allowed. However, he would contribute his share towards, if possible, closing the debate before 12 o'clock, if his hon. Friends would acquiesce in such an agreement. [An hon. MEMBER: Certainly not.] At any rate, he would contribute his share in that direction. There were three particular points in connection with the question of employers' liability, raised in the present Bill, upon which he wished to speak, and they were the question of common employment, the question of insurance out of the Act, and the further question of limitation of compensation. Now, with regard to the question of common employment, the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had argued it at very considerable length, and he had quoted the conclusions arrived at by the Committee of 1876–7 so far as their Report was concerned, though the right hon. Gentleman had not given them any quotation from the evidence of the most important witness examined by that Committee. Now, with regard to the question of common employment, there was only one basis upon which the question could ever be satisfactorily settled, and that was on the basis of the abolition of common employment.
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  Common employment was nothing but a subterfuge for shielding employers from their natural liability. Employers were liable to all others persons except to the men engaged in their employment, for injury caused by any person engaged in their employment, and if that were so, upon what basis of logic, upon what sense of justice could an employer be excused from being equally liable to compensate a person in his employ for injuries received whilst engaged on his work, no matter by whom the injury might be done? He appealed to the Home Secretary to listen to him for a moment. He was not going to argue this subject at length here, but he should have a great deal to say on the matter when the Bill got into Committee, and his speech to-night would not deprive him of a full opportunity of discussing the question at a later stage. Let him give one instance, and that was as good as a hundred instances that were occurring every day in the building and some other trades. The case was this. On the extension of the Charing Cross Railway Bridge now in process of construction, two or three months ago, a mason was at work. He was injured through the falling of some bags of sand, receiving a great weight from a great height on to his right shoulder, which so injured his arm and his wrist that he would be for ever prevented from earning his living at his trade. Now that was a most serious accident to happen to any man who had nothing but his health and strength and bodily skill to depend on for the maintenance of himself and his family. Well, this accident occurred through the man in charge of the bags of sand, whose business it was to lower them from a high platform to a lower platform, improperly slinging the bags, as the pin was not hammered tight on the top of the bags, and so, when they were slung off the platform, they toppled and fell on the man. The man was a ruined man, although only 30 years of age. He and his family (for he had a family) were a charge on the ratepayers or on the benevolence of his friends, and yet the Government said that because that accident occurred through the incapacity or negligence, or whatever they liked to term it, of a man in common employment, there was to

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  be no claim for compensation. A more monstrous piece of injustice to a workman could scarcely he conceived. This man had no more control or influence over or knowledge of the man who slung the bags of sand improperly than if he had been a workman in any other part of England or in some other part of the world. He could not see and could have no means of protecting himself against the want of skill or care on the part of the man above him. Now he (Mr. Broadhurst) asked the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary whether he thought that the law should remain in the condition whereby these accidents could occur constantly, and a workman and his family have no recompense whatever against the employer? He (Mr. Broadhurst) should, at a later stage, move such Amendments as would relieve the Bill of that anomaly, of that great injustice, and also relieve the Bill from much of its confused language. He did not say this was the fault of the draughtsman, but the confused language seemed to him to be introduced in order not to do an injustice to the workman, and at the same time to protect the employer from such liability as be would have to incur in the case of any other person except a workman in his employment. That was a subject they would have to hear a great deal of in Committee, and notwithstanding the Report of the inquiry which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had quoted with very considerable satisfaction, and with his eyes towards the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh), whom he (Mr. Broadhurst) understood was likely to give the right hon. Gentleman valuable assistance on this matter. ["No, no!"] Oh, the hon. Member did not propose to give assistance on this point, and he (Mr. Broadhurst) begged the hon. Member's pardon. It was upon another subject, but that other subject was not altogether unconnected with the point he was now referring to. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Matthews) had been smiling, and he (Mr. Broadhurst) thought his reply to him would be this, that in the case of the man injured at the Bridge under this Bill, he would be provided for and protected by the system of insurance proposed. To that system the labour
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  party entirely objected from beginning to end, and it was upon that point he believed that the right hon. Gentleman was relying upon the hon. Member for Northampton for considerable steam power in pulling the Government through this very difficult task. With regard to this point, especially if the House would permit him, he should like to read something very shortly, only one or two words from the Report of the Select Committee of 1876–7. Although he was not a Member of the House at the time that Report was presented, it was at the instance of the body of which he (Mr. Broadhurst) was then, and still continued to be, the Secretary, that that Select Committee was appointed. He had attended every one of the sittings of the Committee from the beginning to the end, and had taken some part in arranging for the witnesses, and so on. Well, the most distinguished witness that was examined by that Committee was Mr. Justice Brett, and he thought the whole House would agree that a more brilliant Judge and a more fair-minded man and a more certain man on points of law was scarcely known in the judicial system. He (Mr. Broadhurst) personally did not regard Mr. Justice Brett with any great degree of affection or personal regard, for Mr. Justice Brett had felt it to be his duty to inflict upon a man whom he knew a most cruel sentence in connection with the strike in the Metropolis. Well, Mr. Justice Brett's whole evidence from beginning to end was centred in the question of common employment, and his Lordship argued the matter with every witness. A Member of the Committee at that time was Mr. Ripley, then representing Bradford in this House—a large employer and a man of large experience, but one who could not agree with this proposal. Mr. Ripley asked this question, whether he, Mr. Justice Brett, considered that it would be better that a master should not be liable for injury done to a servant in his employ. The learned Judge, in reply, said he disagreed with the Common Law on compensation. He did not think an employer should be liable for the act of his servant; but, he said, so long as he was liable in any one case, there was no reason or justice why he should not be liable in the case of accidents through

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  the negligence of one servant causing injury to another servant. The learned Judge said—
  "Will you forgive me for stating that I must say again if you alter the old law with regard to everybody, than you should say that nobody ought to be liable fur anything hit his own negligence or want of care or skill, but so long as you maintain the general law, I think that general law ought to be applicable in regard to the liability of a master for injury to a servant."
  Evidence of that kind, replies of that nature, were to be found in every column of the eight or 10 pages of the evidence given by that very great and distinguished man. It would be difficult for the opponents of this proposal to abolish common employment to produce any two, or indeed any half-dozen, witnesses who could possibly have greater weight on this subject than the one witness which he (Mr. Broadhurst) had quoted from this Parliamentary document. And now, with regard to the question of insurance. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary boasted—and very properly boasted—that the thing was very good so far as it went—that it had prevented contracting out of the Act. He (Mr. Broadhurst) understood that to be the correct interpretation of the Bill. But, at the same time that the right hon. Gentleman had made contracting out of the Act illegal, he had made insuring out of the Act much more easy, and it was insuring out of the Act which the labour party objected to, as much as they objected to the retention of this doctrine of common employment. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to a great Corporation called the London and North-Western Railway Company. Well, the London and North-Western Railway Company was a Corporation as paramount of the Civil Service of the State. Surely, the right hon. Gentleman was not going to compare that great body, that great Railway Company, at all with the conditions surrounding ordinary and every-day employment. It was no argument to apply the results of the experience of that Company to the whole labour of the United Kingdom. It did not apply in the building trade. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary said he hoped to be able to group mines and the building trade. [Mr. ARTHUR O'CONNOR (Donegal, E.): And factories.] Yes, and factories; but he would tell the right hon. Gentleman
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  with regard to the building trade that it was absolutely and utterly impossible to do anything of the kind. There was no continuity of employment in the building trade. A man was employed on Monday, and discharged on Wednesday, if there was no further use for him on the job on which he was employed. How were they to arrange for insurance in such a case, and he gave that as a mere illustration. It was very seldom that a man worked for any considerable number of years in one employment in any one of the industries connected with the building trade, and it would be impossible to arrange insurance under such conditions. That system of insurance struck at the very root of their reasons for this legislation. Their reason for this legislation was not the amount of money they obtained as compensation; they never put it forward on that condition, upon that basis. The first speech he (Mr. Broadhurst) had the honour to make in that House ho made from the Benches opposite on the Bill of 1880, and he then declared that they did not want to get money if they possibly could avoid it, and that their desire was to ensure a motive being given to employers to take every possible security for the lives and limbs of their men. They talked about compensation—compensation of £150 to a widow and her half-dozen children who had lost their bread-winner! Did they call that compensation? Why, it was no compensation at all. No doubt £150 was better than nothing; but no money in a case of that kind could be compensation, and it was well known that it was not money they asked for. It was protection to life that they wanted, and if an employer, not-withstanding the figures quoted to the contrary—and this was his opinion from great experience in these matters—if an employer could secure himself from all liability by the payment of 1d. per head for his accidents to his workmen into some common fund or some corporation for this purpose, his motive for saving life would be greatly diminished if not entirely destroyed. The employer would pay the same money per year, whether there were accidents or not, and what they required was that when there was an accident, through gross negligence, through bad plant and carelessly arranging material, that a fine should be imposed not of an exorbitant character,

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  but such a fine should be imposed upon those responsible that they would take care in future that no repetition of the accident would occur if they possibly could avoid it. The larger the expenditure of money, the more care would be taken to prevent a repetition of such accidents. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary spoke with some pride of his success in securing the interests of workmen in Sub-section 3 of Clause 3 of this Bill. Would the House permit him (Mr. Broadhurst) to read half-a-dozen lines of Clause 3, and then he would ask whether hon. Members had ever read a clause so cleverly constructed to defy anyone to understand its meaning as this clause was? He thought there must have been some mistake in the course of the printing, and that the words of the clause had probably got jumbled together, for it could not possibly have been deliberately intended to draw such a provision as this. Sub-section 3 said—
  "The insurance should be to such amount and on such conditions as will, having regard to the whole scope of the indemnity thereby given, and having regard to the proportion borne by the number of accidents in case of which the employer is liable to pay compensation under this Act to the number of accidents which are the subject of insurance, insure to the workman, or in case of death, his representatives, a benefit equivalent to the compensation recoverable under this Act."
  If he might use such an expression by the permission of Mr. Speaker, and without offence, it would puzzle a Philadelphian lawyer to understand this clause. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would in his interest in the Bill, and in defence of the reputation of drafting, strike this sub-section out, or have it recast in language which ordinary people could understand. He thought the right hon. Gentleman could not have noticed it at all, or he would not have allowed it to pass. Sub-section 4 was an extraordinary proposal. In it the right hon. Gentleman said that every condition of arrangement entered into for any other purpose of a similar character would be binding on the parties in a case coming under this Bill.—[Mr. MATTHEWS: Admissible as evidence.] He feared he went rather farther than that. They were not going to admit it as evidence even. It might be put in evidence that a firm in Plymouth em-
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  ploying half a dozen men had made an arrangement for insurance with them, and this case might be used as evidence in dealing with the employés of a firm in Manchester, Liverpool, or Glasgow employing 500 or 1,000 men. He thought the right hon. Gentleman must see that they were not going to agree to any such extraordinary proposal as that. And now he would hurry to the last point, and that was the question of the limitation of compensation. He must ask the House to agree with him in this, that the life of a workman was worth more than £150. Now, there was the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a great financier and a man of very firm purpose and great business abilities, and he was sure the right hon. Gentleman with his great commercial knowledge would agree with him that the life of a workman was worth more than £150. They agreed to £150 in 1880. [Mr. MATTHEWS: Or three years' wages earned prior to accident.] In many cases the sum of £150 would be the amount in the case of a skilled workman, but that was not his point. His point was that the Labour Party agreed to conditions in 1880 which they were not now going to agree to in 1888. In 1880 it was the dawn of legislation of this kind. They, the Labour Party, out of the House, had to lead hon. Members of this House as they would lead timid children to the water; they had to lead them by degrees, and after years of agitation, and after the expenditure of large sums of money, they induced this timid, shivering, and shrinking House of Commons to give them a small instalment of what was right and just in matters of this kind. Well, the House took their lesson like the bold hon. Gentlemen they were, and the Labour Party now asked them for something wider, something higher, and something more difficult. They pointed to the fact that to-day the opposition they experienced in 1880 from the Party opposite had grown perceptibly less. The prophecy of ruin to the trade of the country which had been so largely indulged in had been falsified as the Labour Party knew it would be, and that Party now asked the Government to say that a workman's life was worth at least £500. There were some hon. Gentlemen who would ask the Government to remove all limit. The life of

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  an M.P. might be worth £5,000. Well, but M.P.'s, as a rule, had fortunes to leave to their families, how much more then was the life of a working man worth when he had nothing to leave his family, and when there was nothing before his wife and family but poverty the moment the bread winner was removed? On that subject he and his Friends would have a great deal more to say, and later on he should move Amendments in harmony with the remarks he had made to the House. He would now only say one word as to Clause 12, which he rather thought the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary did not seem to be so well acquainted with as he was with some other parts of the Bill. Clause 12 gave compensation to seamen under certain circumstances, but the circumstances were so difficult that to his mind seamen would very rarely obtain compensation under the clause. He should, he hoped, hear much from hon. Gentlemen representing the seaport towns in support of his views on this matter. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had limited compensation to accidents arising in the case of a voyage commencing in a port in the United Kingdom. Did he understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that under this clause, in the case of a vessel sailing, say from San Francisco to Liverpool, and an accident occurring in the course of the voyage, the seaman would be entitled to recover? He (Mr. Broadhurst) thought they would not. What reason was there why a man meeting with an accident going out should be compensated for the accident if through the negligence of the employer, and yet when returning home be not so compensated for an accident? He thought that was the correct interpretation of the Bill. [Mr. MATTHEWS: No, no.] At any rate, he would call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to what the greatest authority in the Metropolis had said with regard to this clause, and he would ask hon. Gentlemen who were interested in the subject from the standpoint in which he (Mr. Broadhurst) was interested in it to pay some attention to this. This authority said that this new departure—namely, this Clause 12—was evidently the result of the recommendation of the Royal Commission on the loss of life at sea. [An hon. MEMBER: Who
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  is the authority?] The authority was the London Chamber of Commerce. He was quoting from The Chamber of Commerce Journal of May 5 of the present year. That journal said—
  "Shipowners, although objecting generally to the provision, did not appear to be much troubled by it, as they hoped to cover their responsibilities by insurance."
  Here was a confession of faith. They knew what that scheme of insurance was invented for in the first case, and what it was continued for now. It was to relieve the souls of those wealthy shipowners from financial trouble. The Chamber of Commerce consisted of shipowners, of great manufacturers of the City of London, and of great salesmen and others, and they said that they were not troubled much by the provision as they hoped to cover their liabilities by insuring out of them. That was a stronger condemnation of the right hon. Gentleman's 12th Clause than he (Mr. Broadhurst) should be prepared to pass on it. He only spoke with great diffidence and considerable hesitation as to whether the clause would ever be of much service to seamen. The Chamber of Commerce whose opinion he had quoted was a Chamber consisting of shipowners to a large extent, and they were very likely to know what would be the result of the provision. Seeing that the provision caused them no trouble, care, or anxiety, and that they would be able to cover all their liability by a system of insurance, it did not seem as though the provision would be of much use to seamen. For these reasons, and for others, he should feel it his duty when the Bill was read a second time—and he hoped many of his hon. Friends would do the same—to hand in such Amendments to the measure as would make it reasonable and just from the standpoint of the workmen properly entitled to compensation from their employers. He had only one other word to say, and that was with regard to the Committee to which the Bill should be referred. He heard it said that it was likely to go to the Grand Committee on Trade. He hoped, however, that it would be sent to the Grand Committee on Law, and he trusted the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would favourably consider that suggestion, as he (Mr. Broadhurst) thought the Grand Committee on Law would be a much more competent and

  651
  suitable Committee to deal with a subject of that kind than would be the Committee on Trade, looking at its general composition. The hon. Member for East Donegal had given Notice of his intention to move the rejection of the Bill. He (Mr. Broadhurst) could only say that if the hon. Member should feel it to be his duty to move that Motion—which he hoped he would not do—speaking for himself, he should be unable to follow the hon. Member into the Lobby. He hoped and believed that they would be able so to amend the measure in Committee as to make it one of value to the working classes of the country.
  MR. J. W. SIDEBOTTOMsaid, he hoped the House would allow him to say a few words on this Bill—a Bill which greatly interested hon. Members—especially those who represented manufacturing and industrial constituencies. Owing to the limited time at their disposal, he must confine himself to one point, and that was the power of contracting out of the Act. He was very glad to find that the Government did not intend to make contracting out of the Act illegal, for he could not agree with the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Broadhurst) that it would be illegal under the Bill. It was not prohibited under the Act of 1880. That power had been used to a certain extent; but in many quarters it had been considered that in any amendment of the Act of 1880 the liberty should be withdrawn. He could speak on that matter absolutely without prejudice; because, although he was an employer himself, he had never contracted out of the Act, nor had he ever made any attempt to deprive his work-people of its benefits. He thought any employer of labour who would force his workpeople to contract out of any Act of Parliament passed for their benefit would be deserving of the most severe censure which could be passed on him by all right-thinking people. Then, why was he of the opinion that he had stated on the subject? In the first place, to look upon it from the workman's point of view. If he contracted himself out of the Act, and accepted the alternative laid down in the Bill—namely, insurance—he secured for himself compensation for every accident he might meet with in his work, and not
  652
  merely for those due to the negligence of his employer. In mining, only one out of every ten cases was compensated, and then, very often, the compensation had to be secured by means of Law Courts. But under a scheme of insurance, every accident would be compensated at once, without any trouble and without any friction or ill-feeling on the part either of employer or employed. Then, as to employers. He did not think that, as regarded cost, they cared whether they were free to contract out of the Act or not; because, as the House know, it was a comparatively inexpensive thing now to insure against risk of accidents in one of the many Insurance Companies which existed for the purpose. He happened to know that in view of the passing of the Bill, at that very moment one or more Insurance Companies were being started for the express purpose of insuring employers against accidents under the Bill. There were many employers who wished for something more than that. They felt their responsibility towards their workpeople was higher than a mere legal responsibility, and would gladly pay double or treble the amount they would have to pay in premiums, if they could only secure compensation to their workpeople in every case of injury. He was glad the Government were not closing the door to voluntary co-operation of that kind, and he hoped that hon. Gentlemen representing labouring constituencies would agree with him when he said that while it was absolutely necessary to protect workpeople against negligent and careless employers, there were many cases in which it was the highest and best policy to form a scheme of mutual voluntary insurance to which employers and employed could contribute to give compensation to the latter in case of accidents.
  MR. RANDELLsaid, that in rising to address the House for the first time he felt sure of receiving that indulgence which was usually accorded to a new Member on such a trying occasion. In return, he hoped he should not have to detain the House for any length of time, and such observations as he had to offer upon the Bill he intended should not be made in any captious or hostile spirit, but rather with the view to extend the scope and widen the basis of the mea-

  653
  sure, which he acknowledged was a decided improvement of the Act of 1880. He did not wish himself to labour the doctrine of common employment; but he felt there was no good reason for limiting the liability of employers in the manner proposed, and he trusted that the Bill would be so amended as to place a workman in relation to his fellow-workmen in the same position as any third person receiving injury whilst on the premises of the employer. He would also remind those who had charge of the Bill, that there were positions requiring skilled knowledge on the part of the employé, and yet that such places were filled by manifestly incompetent persons. In such cases, it surely could not be right to deprive the workman of his own claim to compensation for injuries arising out of accidents, owing to the incompetency and gross negligence of his fellow-working man. But there was another question of considerable importance—he meant of contractors and sub-contractors. Section 2, which referred to the point, did not, he thought, as drawn, apply to all such cases as it was no doubt intended that it should apply. Take the following instance. A mineowner engaged a sub-contractor to sink a shaft, at so much per yard. The sub-contractor, in turn, employed some dozen men to do the work, and paid them so much per week, all materials being supplied by the mineowner. The sub-contractor was usually a man of straw. Well, owing to imperfect shoring, a stone at the side of the shaft fell, and killed one of the working men. Under the law as it now stood, he ventured to say, the interpretation which would be placed upon the Bill, if it became law, would be that a workman had no right to compensation against the principal employer in respect of such an accident. He knew of an accident of the kind, where the representatives of a deceased workman had sought to enforce a claim for damages, and had obtained a judgment in the County Court below; but, on appeal, that judgment was reversed, although the fact was in evidence that the mine-owner's engineer superintended the work of the sub-contractor in respect of the contract. He maintained that this subsection, as drawn, would not cover that position; and he, therefore, trusted that another clause would be added to
  654
  definitely remedy the same. Then, as to notice before action, he was of decided opinion that that notice should be done away with altogether. He thought that it only embarrassed the position of the workman injured, or the position of his relatives in the case of his death. Certainly, the extension of time from six weeks to three months was an improvement; but, as he had said, he thought that the notice should be done away with altogether. If a man was seriously injured, by the time he was sufficiently recovered to consider his position, he was surprised to find that his legal rights were gone. If notice had to be given, there was no reason why it should be before action. In all actions of tort he thought it desirable that the statutory period for commencement of an action should be considerably shortened—say, 12 months from the accident, or in case of death, two years. He thought the hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) was wrong so far as the interpretation he placed on the Act of 1880 was concerned. He thought that Act gave no alternative as to the limit of the amount recoverable. It was in the Bill, for the first time, that it was sought as an alternative to place the sum of £150 as the limit of the sum recoverable; and he agreed that that amount was far too small. He would prefer leaving the question of compensation to be dealt with by a jury; but he thought that, if they fixed any limit at all, the amount should be increased to £500. It would be preferable, in his opinion, however, to leave the matter in the hands of a jury, for they would know the circumstances of each case, and the matter might safely be entrusted to them. Then, as to the question of the application of the Act to seamen. He had hoped, certainly, after the words which had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, who introduced the Bill, that the Government would have dealt more liberally with poor Jack than they appeared to do in the Bill. Looking at the sub-sections, it seemed that the remedy of the sailor was restricted to injury received in port. Sailors were a class of men who had not been so well looked after as they deserved, and he trusted that their rights of action would be more fully looked after by the Government

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  than they appeared to be in this Bill. Then, coming to the definitions of the Bill, it was to be hoped that the expression "workman" would be held to include domestic or menial servants, clerks, omnibus conductors, and tramway conductors. One would desire that the Bill should apply to every person in the position of a servant. As to the question of the time it was contemplated that the Act should come into operation, it should not be lost sight of that the old Act expired by effluxion of time at the end of this Session, and that the new Act should come into operation immediately after the passing of the same. There was evidently now a ready disposition to admit the claims and rights of the working classes, and he trusted that no political partizanship on the one side or the other would be the means of thwarting such good intentions.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid, he had put a Notice on the Paper to move the rejection of the Bill, but had done so rather with the desire to prevent the Bill being taken after half-past 12 o'clock, if by chance the House should sit so late. Certainly, he should be the very last person in the House to object to the passing of some such Bill as that, because he knew that the Bill now put forward by the Government was to a large extent a recast of a Bill of his own which was referred to a Select Committee last Session. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews), referring to that Bill, appeared to labour under the impression that both his (Mr. O'Connor's) Bill, and that of his hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt), did away with the doctrine of common employment altogether. He could answer for one of those Bills, and say that it was not correct to state that it did away with the doctrine of common employment at all, nor did he desire that it should be done away with. Suppose two men, under a common employer, were working together at a large stone, and one man happened to be negligent in handling the stone and that it fell and the other workman was injured; it seemed to him most reasonable that the common employer should be made responsible for that negligence. But what they were anxious last year to procure was that the employer should not be allowed to contract himself out of the liability
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  under the Act of 1880, and that the workman should not be liable to contract himself out of the benefit of the Act. The provisions which were placed in this Bill under Section 3 appeared to him to be absolutely unworkable. As the French said, the door must either be open or shut; the liability must either be on the employer, and there must be no means of contracting himself out of the Act, or else all the arrangements they might make would inevitably end in disappointment, and the effect of the Bill would be a bolstering up of Employers' Liability Insurance Companies. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the Bill as if it were an improvement on the existing law, so far as the interests of the working classes were concerned, and he went on to say that he proposed to simplify the law by combining the Common Law action with the action under the Employers' Liability Act. But he did more than that. He (Mr. O'Connor) would ask the House to consider the force of the 11th section of the present Bill, which related to Common Law rights; the clause was to the effect that where any personal injury was caused to a workman by reason of any wrongful act in connection with the works in which a workman was employed, and the workman was entitled, independently of the Act, to any compensation from the employer, the action for compensation should be brought in the same time and on the same motion as if it had been brought under the Act, and should not be brought otherwise. In that way this Bill, which affected to be in the interest of the working classes, really cut down the Common Law right of the workman to an action under the Act; that was to say, he would only be able to bring an action within the limited time and upon notice being given to the employer. The question of notice was a very important matter; because, in consequence of the action of many employers, workmen were deluded into delaying proceedings by the belief that it would not be necessary to bring an action against the employers at all. He said that that cut down the existing Common Law right; but, again, in Clause 1, Sub-section B, the phraseology was so arranged that the liability of the employer was further reduced at the expense of the workman. Under the Employers' Lia-

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  bility Act of 1880, if any person having superintendence entrusted to him should be guilty of negligence whereby a workman was injured, the workman so injured should have compensation at the hands of the employer; but the effect of this new clause was that unless the injured workmen was actually under the superintendence of the man who was negligent, he would have no right of action against the employer. There, again, they had a reduction of the employers' liability at the expense of the workman. In order to test this clause he would like to quote a word or two from what he believed to be the best handbook on employers' liability, which said on this point—
  "A acts as general superintendent over workmen employed in one department of a factory, and orders one of the workmen to lower a bale of goods from a window by a chain insufficient for the purpose; the chain breaks, and the bale of goods injures a workman in the same factory, but one over whom A exercises no superintendence. Under this Act he is liable."
  But, under the present Bill, he would not be liable by reason of want of superintendence exercised over the negligent official. The clause, therefore, required very great attention, in order to prevent it being liable to the objection he (Mr. O'Connor) had pointed out. Again, the class of persons who could bring an action under the Bill would be limited, as before, to those who were entitled under the Act of 1880. The Act of 1880 said in its 1st section that a workman, or, in case of injury resulting in death, the legal personal representative of the workman, and any person entitled to represent him in case of death, should have the same right to compensation against the employer. But Section 8 of this Bill said that the persons amongst whom compensation for injury should be awarded were husband, wife, parent, or child. If they were going to combine the action under the Act with the Common Law action, they would have a difficulty with regard to the terms of Lord Campbell's Act, which included with the wife, husband, parent, and child, grandparents, grandchildren, and stepchildren. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Matthews) said that that was in the Bill. He hoped it might be so; but there were authorities in legal circles who held a different opinion. The right hon. Gentleman also spoke of the disadvantage of actions abating in case of death. It was true that Sub-section 4
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  of Section 1 provided that an action under that section should lie against the representative of a deceased employer. So far, so good; but while it provided for continuation of an action on the death of the representative of the employer, the right hon. Gentleman seemed to have overlooked the case of the death of the injured workman. ["No, no!"] The right hon. Gentleman said "No;" but he could find in the Bill no provision by which an action commenced by an injured man should be allowed to continue at the hands of his representatives. With regard to Section 3, and the compensation of workmen under contractors or sub-contractors, it seemed to him that that was a recasting, and not a very good one, of his own Bill of last Session. He thought his own drafting was better. With regard to the voidance of contracts dealt with in Section 3, he had only two points to remark upon. In the first place, he would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that, unless the jurisdiction of the County Court was increased, there would be a limitation of actions in these cases. Then, with regard to Sub-section 4 of Section 3, which had been already quoted by the hon. Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst), it provided that any arrangement or agreement entered into by persons in similar employment elsewhere should be admissible as evidence of the reasonableness or propriety of any system of insurance entered into between employers and their men. He asked whether that similarity was to be treated as an issue of fact, or was it held to be a question of law? Was it a point on which appeal would lie? Again, in Section 6, Subsection 2, it was provided that on trial of an action in the County Court without a jury, one or more assessors might be appointed for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of compensation. Now, no one could doubt the, propriety of having skilled assessors where it might be necessary; but that two assessors should be required to help my qualified Court or jury to assess the amount of compensation was a thing that no one ever heard of. He suggested that it would have been well to follow the recommendation of the select Committee of last year, which was that there should be special juries—that the parties should be entitled to have special juries wherever

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  the case in the opinion of the Court warranted it. That would be much more useful than the appointment of these assessors, who were to do nothing but assess the amount of compensation. With regard to the question of seamen, he was agreeably surprised, when on the Committee, to find that although there were three Representatives of the ship-owning interest upon it, every one of them in the most loyal and generous spirit agreed in the recommendation that seamen should be included in the benefit of the Bill. He was glad to acknowledge the action of an hon. Gentleman who was sitting opposite who had no hesitation in supporting that proposal; but he regretted that the clause had been limited. It was only in case of tackle issuing from a port in the United Kingdom proving defective that a man injured in consequence was entitled to recover compensation from the owners. But it was perfectly possible for the master of a ship in any part of the world to have his vessel put in proper order and provide proper tackle. San Francisco had been suggested; but a bottomry bond could always be given for the money necessary to enable a master to put his ship in proper working order, and, therefore, why a man should not be entitled to compensation who was injured on the voyage home just as much as the man injured on the outward voyage, he could not understand. He did not wish to detain the House longer, but there was one further flaw in the Bill that he desired to point out. The right hon. Gentleman had referred, among other things, to the insurance fund in connection with the London and North-Western Railway, and he spoke of the system obtaining there as very satisfactory, and appeared to think that if other employers of labour had established the same system, there would be nothing to find fault with. But the right hon. Gentleman did not tell the House that the system was compulsory, and that the men were obliged to submit to it as a condition of employment, and that the men, if left to themselves, would prefer to trust to the benefit of the Employers' Liability Act. There was one clause in the Bill which related to procedure in Scotch Courts; but, as that appeared to be rather a question for Committee than the present stage of the Bill, he would not make further
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  comment upon it. Before sitting down, he would like to endorse the opinion of the hon. Member for West Nottingham—namely, that this Bill should not be referred to the Committee on Trade, but to the Committee on Law. There was nothing in the Bill which required that it should be referred to the Committee on Trade, but there were many points as to which it would be well that it should be considered by the Committee on Law.
  MR. AINSLIEsaid, that as one of the Committee which sat on the Bills two years ago, he felt he was bound to say something in reference to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, and particularly to that portion of it in which he spoke of the position that those whom he described as the Representatives of the employers of labour had taken up. He (Mr. Ainslie) deprecated altogether even the supposition that the Representatives, so-called, of the employers of labour had had any other object in view than that of benefiting the working classes; and, not only that, but he thought that from the recommendations of the Select Committee, and from the names of those who supported the various proposals submitted at the conclusion of the Committee, they might judge what the employers of labour desired to do. He wished also to protest against the language of the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) who seemed to think that hon. Members on that side of the House were disposed to put a money value upon the life of a workman. In fixing the limit of compensation at £150, as an alternative to three years' wages, the Committee had in view, as he thought hon. Members ought to be informed, more particularly the case of boys and apprentices, to whom an injury in early life was of the gravest moment, and who, if lamed, had a very limited scope of means of subsistence open to them in after life. The idea was that £150 to an apprentice or youth was probably a fair limit. The hon. Member for the Gower Division of Glamorgan (Mr. Randell) rightly interpreted the idea covered in the clause, providing that where negligence was shown punishment would follow, not merely in the mulcting a sum of money from the employer, for there was also a criminal liability to which the employer

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  was subjected. Both these things must be before the mind of every employer when he was engaging workmen and fitting up the machinery necessary to their employment. One matter, which had been left out of sight by hon. Gentlemen who had spoken in the debate so far, was that they, who it might be said represented in the Select Committee the employers of labour, represented two classes of employers—the large employers of labour and the small employers of labour. They particulary had in mind the small employers of labour, the men whose whole capital probably was covered by £50 or £100, and who if they were to be mulcted in the sum of £500, as some hon. Members had suggested, would simply be ruined men. It was to protect these men, as well as large men, that some limit to the money they would have to pay was fixed. With regard to contracting and sub-contracting, he had tried to find out where the limit could be fixed. He did not feel sure, for instance, that if he was painting his house, as he was bound to do so many times in the course of a lease, he would not be liable for compensation for any accidents that might happen to the men engaged by the man employed by him. The wording of the language was so wide that he had to seek not where the narrow limit was, but where the utmost limit was to which the language might extend. He thought that a few words might with advantage be inserted in Committee, defining the limit of responsibility. In regard to the time of the notice, he thought that the Committee went to the utmost limit in their recommendations. He was bound to say that in regard to Sub-section 3, Clause 3, which was the subject of much animadversion by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst), he was for a very long time puzzled to understand what the meaning of that sub-section was. But he thought that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, in his opening speech, made it sufficiently clear that if any alteration in the wording were wanted, he would take care it was made in Committee. He thanked the House for the patience with which they had listened to these few observations.
  MR. LOCKWOODsaid, he would not detain the House at any length, because he assured hon. Gentle-
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  man who sat opposite that he was not going to criticize the Bill in any hostile spirit. They, who sat on the Opposition side of the House, must recognize that what the Home Secretary said in introducing the Bill was perfectly true—that that was, after all, an amending Bill, and if there were faults in it, the blame should not rest entirely upon the Head of the Government who had introduced it. The main faults which he found in the Bill were faults which existed in the Bill of 1880, and his regret was that the Government should have found it necessary to perpetuate those faults in what the Home Secretary had rightly called the amending Bill of that year. Now, to put it shortly, the main objections he had to the Bill were these. The Bill purported to recognize the injustice of the doctrine of common employment, as it was called. It recognized the injustice to a certain extent, but it did away with the good which would result from that recognition by imposing upon the litigants—he was speaking of the plaintiffs who would bring actions under the Bill—harassing conditions, which were a great burden upon such litigants. He objected entirely to the notice of action. For whose benefit was it—for the benefit of the employer? It must be, of course, for his benefit. But what right had the employer to notice of action? In nine cases out of ten the accident happened upon his own premises, and he had direct personal notice of it. If the accident did not happen upon his own premises, it happened where his workmen were working for him, and in that way he had direct notice of it. The great Railway Companies, whose systems extended from one end of the country to the other, had no notice of action in the case of accidents which were the result of their negligence at any part of their systems. There were the great Omnibus Companies plying through the streets of the Metropolis; they surely were more entitled to notice of action than an employer whom it sought under the Bill to make liable for accidents which occurred practically upon his own premises. He thanked the Home Secretary for the figures he had been kind enough to supply him. According to those figures, there were 1,800 actions; but in only 684 had the litigants been successful, the percentage of suc-

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  cessful actions thus being about 38; but how came it that there were only 684 successful actions out of 1,800; how many of the persons who brought the actions had been made unsuccessful litigants by reason of being trammelled and hampered and harassed by this very notice of action? It was all very well for lawyers like himself to preserve this notice of action, because it was a fruitful source of litigation. Over and over again it happened that when a working man had gone into Court some objection was taken to his notice of action. The question upon whom the notice should be served, and as to within what time it should be served, and a great number of other considerations, rendered this a very harassing matter for litigants. He objected to the limit within which the action was to be brought. Why impose a limit of six months? Look at the cruel hardship which accrued from that. He had no doubt that many hon. Members remembered the case of "Johnson v. Shaw." In that case a man was injured in January, 1883, and by his injuries he was rendered insane. He was put into a lunatic asylum from which he was only brought out—fortunately cured—in July. That man had no means of appointing a committee to represent him in the action, and while that poor fellow was lying maimed and insane in the asylum, time was running against him. When he came out, the six months had expired, and he could not bring his action. There would be as cruel cases of hardship under this Bill. Hon. Members would find that one of the sub-clauses—Sub-clause 4, he believed—gave right of action against representatives of employers. But, supposing an accident happened, and immediately after the workmen had been injured the employer died. They knew what the delays of the law were, and therefore they could easily understand that more than six months might be taken up in the appointment of a representative of the employer who might be sued. In the meantime, the law's delays had prevented the workmen from bringing their action, and time had run against them. Surely, that was an injustice. Now, the third objection he had had reference to the matter of amount. Why did they limit the amount? They were told by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Ainslie)
  664
  that the Committee, in fixing the amount of compensation at £150, had boys and apprentices chiefly in view. He (Mr. Lockwood) did not see why they should value the life of a boy at £150. Why not trust the juries? The Government were continually telling the House they had confidence in juries. Why did they say that, with regard to employers, the amount of compensation which they should pay should be limited, whereas in all other cases there was no limit as to the amount of compensation? These were his three objections to the Bill. Of course he had others, but he was not going to occupy the time of the House in discussing them. Surely, it was not a very generous provision of the Bill, when they were professing to deal with the working man so far as his employer was concerned, and they were professing to put that man on an equality with third parties who were not employed. Surely, it was not a very generous thing to take away or to hamper or to harass the working man's Common Law right of action. On what principle was that done; how came it that it had been introduced into the Bill? It might have been introduced to satisfy some of the Gentlemen who sat opposite, and who, it would appear, he thought, from one portion of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks, were not pleased with some of the provisions of the Bill, but who took great care to assure the right hon. Gentleman that there was no feeling of displeasure at the measure on their part. He (Mr. Lockwood) did not wish to say anything which could have a hostile bearing on the Bill, for he certainly joined with those who deprecated any Division against the Bill. It was, no doubt, an important question to what Committee the Bill should be referred. This was a Bill which involved questions of procedure, and the clause relating to procedure appeared to him to be the most important clause of the Bill. It was suggested by some Members that the Bill should be entrusted to the Grand Committee upon Trade. Of course, that Committee was quite able to deal with the many questions involved; but they were not, he submitted, capable of dealing effectively and effectually with questions of procedure, and he could only say that, if the Bill were sent to the Trade Committee, when it came back on Report those Members who took an

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  interest in the matter would take an opportunity of being heard again upon the Bill.
  COLONEL HILLsaid, he could assure hon. Members that he should make but a very slight demand upon their time. As a shipowner, he desired to say that he had no wish whatever to offer any opposition to the second reading of the Bill; and he thought he might say that shipowners in general had no wish whatever to avoid any degree of responsibility which properly rested upon them, as upon all other employers of labour, to see that the conditions of their employment afforded the greatest amount of possible safety to the men they employed. But he wished to remind the House that there was a very considerable difference between the conditions of employment on land and at sea. The owner of a mine or a factory had the opportunity, as often as he pleased to avail himself of it, of visiting his mine or factory, and seeing that the precautions that he had ordered were being properly observed. The shipowner had not that opportunity. He might have the best possible vessel; he might have the very best equipment; and he might have the vessel manned and officered by men whom he knew to be good and skilful men, men who had obtained certificates from the Board of Trade to that effect; but when the vessel had gone away he was unable to exercise any supervision at all over her. Then he (Colonel Hill) ventured to say that the immunity from accident on board a vessel depended in a very great degree upon the skill of those on board rather than on anything the owner had had it in his power to do; and there was this also, that it was to the shipowners' self-interest in a very large degree, in a larger degree than in the case of employers on shore, that accidents should not happen. If an accident happened in a mine or a factory, it meant the stoppage of the profit-earning powers of the mine or factory for a certain limited time; but in the case of a ship it was quite different. An accident might deprive the owner of any profit for the whole twelve months, or, at all events, for the whole voyage in which the vessel was engaged. Three months' notice had been objected to in the case of employers on shore, and one of the
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  great reasons of the hon. and learned Member for York (Mr. Lockwood) why there should not be any notice was, that accidents happened at the very door of the employer, as it were, and that the employer had direct personal notice of them. That, however, was not the case with shipowners. But there was another circumstance to be taken into account; a vessel came home, and, as hon. Members were aware, the crew was paid off. Now, if the shipowner had no notice of any claim, he had no means of providing himself with the necessary evidence with which to rebut any incorrect statement which might be made. Then he also urged that no special reason existed for the application of this provision to shipowners; for the latest Return of the loss of life at sea showed that the shipping trade was carried on with increasing immunity from accidents. The last Return, which was published in the April of this very year, showed that in 1885, the last year for which there was any Return, the total loss of life was 1,068. That was a decrease of 425 on the previous year, and the decrease of 1,072 on the average of the last 10 years. He thought the House would feel that that was a satisfactory statement, and that it showed that the shipowners had not been so oblivious to the claims of "Poor Jack" as had been asserted by hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House. Then, again, shipowners and sailors were on very good terms, and he instanced, as a proof of that, that only a very short time ago he had the honour of introducing in the House a Bill which proposed to provide funds jointly by shipowners and sailors for the relief of widows and orphans. But if, however, upon these grounds it might not be considered desirable to except shipping from the operation of this Bill as it was in 1880, he hoped that the Committee, whether it be the Committee on Trade—which seemed to him to be the proper Committee—or the Committee on Law, to which the Bill was referred, would accept certain Amendments for the purpose of simplifying and adapting the Bill to shipping. Amendments would be brought forward to the effect that the liability should be confined to the equipments and fittings only. It had been said that the sailor ought to have the same right to com-

  667
  pensation for an accident occurring on the homeward voyage as upon the outward voyage, because there was every facility abroad for refitting the vessels. But that was not always the case. There were places abroad where one could not get as good materials as one would wish to get, and the master had to manage with the best materials he could obtain. The shipowner had no control over such incidents. With regard to the question of time, he had already endeavoured to point out the difficulty which existed, and he would only mention further that the Accidental Insurance Companies insisted upon a notice of claim being given a very short time after the accident. He did not see any reason why notice of claim should not be given immediately upon the arrival of a vessel in port, and he hoped the Committee would see the desirability of adopting the Amendment to that effect. Then there were certain complicated suggestions made in Sub-section C, Clause 12, which would give to the Board of Trade a great deal of power in regard to the classification of vessels and the like, which he thought would be very intolerable. He had only to add that personally he desired that the occupation of the working man should be rendered as little hazardous as possible, and that he hailed with satisfaction any just and proper measure having that tendency.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVREsaid, that at that hour of the night (11.40) he would only detain the House three for four minutes; but having been one of those who originally before 1878 most strongly recommended this legislation to the House, he was anxious to say a few words. In the first place, he wished to say that it was very satisfactory to him to find a general concurrence of opinion now-a-days in favour of the principle of this Bill, He fully confirmed what his hon. Friend the Member for West Nottingham (Mr. Broadhurst) had said—namely, that those who originally promoted this Bill had in view mainly, not so much the giving of compensation in such cases, as the giving of fresh motive to employers to take care in carrying on their works. He thought that principle had been borne in mind in this Bill; but he hoped that it might be somewhat extended in the course of the passage of
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  the Bill through Committee. There was one point he wished specially to advert to—namely, the application of the Bill to seamen. The Royal Commission, of which he was Chairman a few years ago, attached the very greatest importance to the extension of the provisions of the Act to seamen; they did so in the interest of the general security of seamen, not so much with the view of giving compensation to the men in particular cases, but because they thought that this was one of the best ways of bringing home responsibilities to the shipowners, and inducing them to conduct their business in a manner conducive to the safety of the men. He was afraid the Bill as it stood, as regarded seamen, was somewhat too restrictive, and he hoped that in Committee it would be improved in that respect. He did not see any reason for making so great a distinction between homeward and outward bound vessels as was made in the Bill. The owner of a ship who was sending the vessel to a foreign port was not in any worse position than the employer who employed an agent at home. A shipowner must at a port in a distant country employ an agent, and it was the agent's duty to see that the vessel was in as fit a state to return as it was to go out, and therefore he (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) hoped that in this respect there would be some change made in the Bill. He very much objected to the sub-sections of the clause to which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had adverted—namely, those subsections giving power to the Board of Trade to make specific regulations with respect to the equipment of vessels. That was the introduction of a provision to which the Royal Commission had objected, and he hoped that these subsections would disappear. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the changes proposed with regard to the doctrine of common employment, but he (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) had been unable to make out whether the Bill made any important changes in the law as compared with the Act of 1880. He had compared the Bill with the Act of 1880, and he found that it was extremely difficult to make out the phraseology. The only other point he would refer to was the question of forbidding persons to contract themselves out of the Act. He entirely approved of that provision; but at the same

  669
  time he was willing to admit that there was a great deal to be said for the principle of contracting out of the Bill in cases of mutual insurance. In conclusion, he had to say that he agreed with those who suggested that the Bill should be referred to the Grand Committee on Law, because he believed that, on the whole, that would give greater satisfaction than referring it to the Committee on Trade.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH)said, he desired to make an appeal to the House with regard to this Bill. He did not feel justified in exercising any pressure, looking to the importance of the subject under discussion; but he gathered from the debate which had gone so far that it was the general wish of Members that the measure should be referred to a Grand Committee—to either the Committee on Law or the Committee on Trade, as to which question the Government desired to express no opinion that evening. They desired to reserve any expression of opinion upon that subject, and they had no prejudice in regard to it in one direction or the other. But, looking at the fact that that was practically the last night on which it was possible to discuss a question of that kind before the Holidays, and that the time after the Holidays was very fully appropriated, he thought he gathered that the general desire of the House was that the Bill should be read a second time that night. If that was the wish, he trusted that hon. Members would be content to reserve any observations they might have to make for a future occasion, and especially until the Bill was sent to a Committee, when full opportunity would be afforded them to raise any question in which they took an interest. He thought it would be for the public advantage and for the convenience of Members generally that the Bill should now be read a second time.
  MR. JOHN MORLEYsaid, he quite agreed with the general views expressed by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith); but he did not quite understand when they were to hear from the Government, if the discussion closed that night, to which of the two Committees the Bill was to be referred. He thought there would be much greater willingness
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  on the part of hon. Gentlemen behind him to assent to the proposal to take the second reading of the Bill that night, if they had a clear assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that the Government would accede to the appeal which had been made by every speaker on the Opposition side of the House, and, he believed, on the other side, that the Bill should be referred to the Committee on Law.
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, there must be a distinct Motion on that question, and the Government would put down the Motion to refer the Bill to either the Committee on Law or on Trade on the Monday after the Whitsuntide Holidays.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: Are we to understand it is the wish of the Government that the Bill should be referred to the Committee on Law?
  MR. W. H SMITHsaid, he was not quite prepared to say that. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] They had no prejudice at all in the matter, and they would endeavour to gather the general feeling of hon. Members interested in the question on both sides of the House, and take the best means they could of ascertaining the views of the House generally. It was a matter on which they could form no decided opinion now; and, therefore, he hoped the House would permit them to leave the matter open until they reassembled.
  MR. MACINNESsaid, that the right hon. Gentleman had asked them to assist him in taking the second reading of the Bill that night. If they assented to the second reading now, he hoped that hon. Gentlemen opposite would give them credit for very considerable self-denial. Very many of them had taken a great interest in this question, and they had wished to have it fully and amply discussed in the House; but all the opportunity of discussion permitted to them had been the very short space of time from 20 minutes to 11 to 10 minutes before midnight, because the previous hour was occupied by two speeches—of course, very interesting—from Gentlemen upon the Front Benches. The mass of Members, especially his hon. Friends connected with the mining interest, who took especial interest in this matter, would have no further opportunity of taking part in the debate. There was much discussion as to whether the Bill should be referred

  671
  to the Committee on Trade or to that on Law; but to the great majority of Members that question was necessarily of no interest. It must necessarily be the case that the great majority of Members had not seats on either of those Committees; and, therefore, if the second reading was passed to-night, the vast majority of Members would have no further opportunity of taking part in the discussion on the Bill. If they did agree to the second reading then, he hoped hon. Members, when they met their constituents during the Holidays, would acknowledge that in this instance, as in other instances during the Session, hon. Members upon the Opposition Benches had shown no obstructive tendencies, as hon. Gentlemen sometimes wished to make out.
  MR. FENWICK: I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Fenwick.)
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, that he could not, of course, object to an adjournment if it was pressed by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway; but he would regret it very much, for he thought it would postpone the progress of a measure in which they took an especial interest. It was really impossible to say when it would be in the power of the Government to name another day on which the Bill could be taken.
  MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONsaid, he understood that the chief question now at issue was whether the Bill should be referred to the Committee upon Law or to that upon Trade. Personally, he thought that it would be better that the Bill should be discussed in Committee of the Whole House. As to the adjournment of the debate, he was opposed to the Friends with whom he usually acted. If they had prepared speeches, and wanted a sitting to-morrow, he did not want such a sitting, although he could come down just as well as they. Certainly, he thought they would be disappointed in the intention they had in view, because they would not have a House to-morrow, or, if they did, the vast majority of the House would be composed of the Government Supporters.
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  An hon. Friend of his suggested that the Question should be put; he did not object to that, because he only rose with the object of facilitating matters if he could. He had understood that this important measure, with which they all sympathised in principle, would be read a second time that night, and that there would be no need to come down to the House to-morrow. Of course, if there was a Division to be taken, he would vote with his hon. Friend who had moved the adjournment of the debate; but he should only do so from personal motives. If his hon. Friends were anxious that they should have another opportunity of discussing the Bill, he would support them in their endeavour to get it; but he promised them an empty House to-morrow and an inattentive country, whereas if they followed his advice, and agreed to some sensible arrangement, they might, at some future time, have a favourable opportunity of discussing all the points of the Bill.
  DR. TANNERsaid, that at an earlier hour in the evening the Closure was moved by an hon. Member upon the Opposition side of the House, and now, at that late hour, 4 minutes to 12 o'clock, it appeared the Government were not satisfied with their great exploits in the course of the present sitting, but wished to obtain an opportunity, if they possibly could, of bringing on a measure which stood in the name of the Chancellor of the Ex-chequer. He certainly thought the desire of those who took an especial interest in the Bill, and who had every right to be heard, should be acceded to by the Government. Without wishing to take up any further time of the House, he sincerely trusted that the Motion for the Adjournment would be accepted.
  MR. W. ABRAHAMtrusted the Government would allow the Bill to be adjourned till tomorrow.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Debate adjourned till To-morrow, at Two of the clock.

NATIONAL DEBT (SUPPLEMENTAL) BILL.— [BILL 264.]
(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr, William Henry Smith, Mr. Jackson)
NATIONAL DEBT (SUPPLEMENTAL) BILL.— [BILL 264.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
  DR. TANNERsaid, he thought it was most objectionable for the Government to attempt to rush through a Bill of that kind just before 12 o'clock.
  It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed upon Thursday, 31st May.

NATIONAL DEFENCE BILL.— [BILL 235.]
(Mr. Secretary Stanhope, Lord George Hamilton, Mr. Brodrick)
NATIONAL DEFENCE BILL.— [BILL 235.]

  COMMITTEE.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Committee be deferred till Monday 4th June."—(Mr. Jackson.)
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONasked, whether the measure would be taken as the first Order on the 4th of June?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H SMITH)said, it would be taken substantially as the first Order on the day named.
  Motion agreed to.

SITTINGS AND ADJOURNMENT OF THE HOUSE—THE WHISTUNTIDE RECESS.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH)said, it had been represented to him that it would be for the general convenience of the House if he now moved that the House, at the Sitting to be held To-morrow at two o'clock, should adjourn until Thursday, the 31st of May. He would, therefore, make that Motion.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House, on rising To-morrow, do adjourn until Thursday the 31st of May."—(Mr. W. H. Smith.)
MR. CONYBEARE: I object, Sir.
MR. BIGGARasked the First Lord of the Treasury, whether, if his hon. Friend the Member for the Camborne Division (Mr. Conybeare)
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withdrew his opposition and the Motion were agreed to, any Business would be taken at the Morning Sitting in addition to the Employers' Liability Bill?
MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he had no hesitation whatever in giving an assurance that no other Business would be put down on the Paper or taken at the Morning Sitting, as far as the Government were concerned.
MR. ARTHUR O'CONNOR: Not even Report of Supply?
MR. W. H. SMITH: No.
MR. JOHN MORLEY: I hope my hon. Friend will withdraw his opposition.
SIR WILFRID LAWSONasked, what reason the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) had for making the Motion now? It would be quite as safe to do it to-morrow.
MR. CONYBEAREsaid, he had two reasons for pressing his objection to the Motion. In the first place, he believed that it was most unusual to make such a proposition on the day before that on which the House was to rise for the Holidays; and, in the second place, it was clearly the intention of the Government to burk all discussion on the Motion. Several hon. Members had matters of importance to bring before the House upon the Motion for adjournment, and he should, therefore, certainly press his objection.
MR. EDWARD HARRINGTONsaid, he understood that if the hon. Member did press his objection the matter could not be discussed, but he (Mr. Harrington) thought he might venture to represent to the hon. Member that it had been generally understood, if not in a direct, at all events in an indirect way, that the House would finish its work that evening, and that if by any chance a Morning Sitting had to be taken on Friday, it would be only in reference to the unfinished debate on the Employers' Liability Bill. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) had just stated, in the most distinct way, that no Business of any kind, beyond the Employers' Liability Bill, was to be taken at the Morning Sitting.
MR. BUCHANAN: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I rise to Order. I wish to ask you whether, a Motion having been made after 12 o'clock, and

675
objection having been taken, it is possible to have any further discussion.
MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Not if the hon. Member persists in his objection. Occasionally hon. Members waive their objections.
MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON: On the point of Order I wish to ask——
MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no doubt that if the objection is pressed, the debate cannot be proceeded with.
MR. JOHN MORLEY: I would point out to my hon. Friend (Mr. Conybeare), that if he wishes to discuss anything, he can do so on the Motion for Adjournment to-morrow.
MR. CREMER: May I ask why the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. H. Smith) has made the Motion to-day instead of to-morrow?
MR. W. H. SMITH: It was represented to me by hon. Members on both sides of the House that it would be for the convenience of the House that I should make the Motion now. As far as I am concerned, I have no other object whatever in making the proposal. I must come down to the Morning Sitting, and so must my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews) to take part in the debate on the Employers' Liability Bill. It has been suggested to me that if the Motion is taken at the Morning Sitting instead of now, it must be put down first, and, therefore, must delay the debate on the Employers' Liability Bill. Of course, it is quite within the right of the hon. Member (Mr. Conybeare) to object.
MR. CREMER: Under the circumstances, and after the satisfactory explanation just given by the First Lord of the Treasury, I hope my hon. Friend will withdraw his objection.
MR. EDWARD HARRINGTON: On the question of Order, I have to ask you, Sir, this question. It having been represented to us that, if this objection is pressed, the question that must necessarily come on first will be the Question of Adjournment, and it having been decided by the House a few moments ago, that the first question otherwise to be taken should be the second reading of the Employers' Liability Act, I wish——
SIR WILFRID LAWSON: Is that really a point of Order, Sir?
MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Does the hon. Member for the Camborne
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Division (Mr. Conybeare) press his objection?
MR. CONYBEARE: Yes, Sir; I object.
Question not put.

PRIVATE BILLS.
Ordered, That Standing Orders 39 and 129 be suspended, and that the time for depositing Petitions against Private Bills, or against any Bill to confirm any Provisional Order, or Provisional Certificate, and for depositing duplicates of any Documents relating to any Bill to confirm any Provisional Order, or Provisional Certificate, be extended to Thursday, 31st May.—(The Chairman of Ways and Means.)
ULSTER AND TYRONE NAVIGATION BILL [Lords].
Mr. T. M. Healy, Mr. Macartney, Mr. Arthur O'Connor, and Colonel Saunderson nominated Members of the Select Committee (with Three Members to be added by the Committee of Selection).

COMMITTEE OF SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES) (SPECIAL RE- POR.
Ordered, That the Committee of Selection have leave to make a Special Report.
SIR JOHN MOWBRAYaccordingly reported from the Committee of Selection: That they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee on Law, and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, in respect of the Bail (Scotland) Bill: Mr. Haldane; and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Macdonald Cameron.
Ordered, That the Report do lie upon the Table.

MOTIONS.

  COURT OF SESSION AND BILL CHAMBER (SCOTLAND) (CLERKS) BILL.
  On Motion of The Lord Advocate, Bill to regulate the number and duties of the Clerks of the Court of Session and Bill Chamber in Scotland; and for other purposes, ordered to be brought in by The Lord Advocate and Mr. Solicitor General for Scotland.
  Bill presented,and read the first time. [Bill 269.]

  TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION BILL.
  On Motion of Sir William Hart Dyke, Bill for the promotion of Technical Instruction, ordered to be brought in by Sir William Hart Dyke and Mr. Jackson.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 270.]
  House adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock,