Sitting of 9 April 1889

MR. SPEAKER'S INDISPOSITION.
The Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, owing to 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.

INDIAN APPOINTMENTS.
MR. BRADLAUGHasked the Under Secretary of State for India (1) whether appointments in Native States where the persons appointed are not natives of the respective States are reported by the Agents of the Viceroy to the Government of India; (2) whether in the State of Rampur an English engineer has been appointed to supervise the buildings of the Nawab of Rampur, at a cost of Rs.1,800 per month, with a regular establishment; (3) whether the like work had been performed by an Indian engineer on Rs.100 a month and a clerk on Rs.10; (4) and whether such appointment has been approved, and on what grounds?
*THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Sir J. GORST,): (1) No; such appointments are not reported to the Government of India. (2), (3), and (4). The Secretary of State has no information on the appointment referred to.
MR. BRADLAUGH: Does the hon. Gentleman mean by the expression "not usually reported" that sometimes they are?
*SIR J. GORST: No, Sir; they are not reported.

THUGGEE OFFICIALS.
MR. BRADLAUGHasked the Under Secretary of State for India whether there was any truth in the statement that Colonel E. P. Henderson, for some years in charge of Thuggee investigations, had been put on special duty, including watching the Indian National Congress leaders; if so, would he state on what grounds loyal persons engaged in a moderate and constitutionally conducted reform movement were subjected to the espionage of an experienced Thuggee official?
*SIR J. GORST: The Secretary of State has no information which confirms the statement referred to in the question.

IMPRISONMENT FOR FIRST OFFENCES.
MR. HERBERT GARDNERasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had been called to the case of a woman called Sarah Dorothy Beck, who was lately sentenced to a month's imprisonment by Magistrates at Penrith Petty Sessions for stealing three hens value six shillings, and subsequently died in gaol; whether she was a person of weak intellect; whether any previous convictions were alleged against her at her trial; and whether he would consider the advisability of reminding County Magistrates generally of their power of fining instead of imprisoning for first offences?
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,): I am informed by the Justices, that this woman pleaded guilty to the theft, and was sent to prison for a month, and that she showed no signs of weak intellect when in the hands of the police, or when before the Magistrates, but was deaf, and quiet in her manner. There were no previous convictions against her. She died the morning after her reception in gaol from natural causes. I am not aware that County Magistrates are unmindful of the powers vested in them by law. On the contrary, I believe that the discretion of fining instead of imprisoning is largely resorted to by them.
MR. H. GARDNER: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at the

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inquest which followed the death of this woman, the doctor of the prison visited the deceased, and ordered her into the hospital, because she was suffering from mental disease?
MR. MATTHEWS: I have given the hon. Gentleman the exact statement which has been sent to me.
MR. H. GARDNER: Will the right hon. Gentleman make further inquiry?
MR. MATTHEWS: Yes.

GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.
MR. HANBURY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what Government contracts have to the present knowledge of the War Office been wholly or in part executed by Messrs. Ross since that firm was struck off the list of Government contractors; whether, when the contract with Colonel Wallace for Army accoutrements was given to him, any provision was made against his making sub-contracts with or employing firms struck off for supplying bad goods; and what is the precise provision now made on that point in this and other War Office contracts; what proportion of his contract was manufactured previous to the insertion of such provision, and what increase of cost has been entailed by the enforcement of such provision in the future; and why does it entail any increase of cost at all; was the contract given to Colonel Wallace before he had provided a factory of his own; what security was taken against sub-contracting and sweating in such contract; and why has Colonel -Wallace recently felt the necessity of raising his rate of wages by nearly one-third—viz., from 3¾d. to 4d. in the case of certain pouches, and from 6d. to 8d. in the case of others; is Colonel Slade a partner with Colonel Wallace in executing any part of the contract; and has a subsequent order been given for about 5,000 valises to the same person?
*THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. BRODRICK,): It is understood that Messrs. Ross & Co., since they have been struck off the list as contractors, assisted Messrs. Pulman in the execution of a contract for buff accoutrements, which was given out before they were removed from the list. They also made 500 Cavalry waist belts for Messrs. Almond, as stated by me last November in answer to the hon. Member for East
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Finsbury; and it appears from evidence given before the Committee on the Sweating System that they made 1,000 sets of equipment for Colonel Slade last June. The contract for accoutrements with Colonel Wallace provides against sub-letting, inasmuch as it requires all the work to be done in his own factories. No portion of the contract was carried out before this provision was made. On an inspection of Colonel Wallace's factory, it was found that he was buying his buff cut out and pricked from Messrs. Ross & Co. He was informed. that this was not contemplated in his contract; and ultimately, as he was able to show that he would be put to an. increase of cost in hiring premises to do the cutting out, and that he had not estimated for this in his contract, it was arranged that 9d. per set of accoutrements should be allowed to meet the charge. The contract was not given to Colonel Wallace before he had provided a factory of his own. Sub-contracting was forbidden, and sweating was prevented by fixing a scale of prices to be paid direct to the workpeople. Experience proved that some of these prices were too low, and they have been raised. Nothing is known in the War Office of any partnership between Colonel Slade and Colonel Wallace. An order for 3,000 valises has recently been given to Colonel Wallace.
MR. HANBURY: Was the contract given at Colonel Slade's request?
*MR. BRODRICK: Colonel Slade had originally a contract for 1,000 valises, and it was in regard to that that no course of action was taken.
MR. HANBURY: Is Colonel Slade, to whom the contract was virtually given, an officer on full pay?
*MR. BRODRICK: I was not aware that the hon. Member was going to ask that question, and I am unable to say whether Colonel Slade was at that time,. on full pay or not.
MR. HANBURY: Is he connected with the War Office, and a Member of the Small Arms Committee?
*MR. BRODRICK: I am not aware.
MR. HANBURY: I beg to give notice that on the Vote for the Director of Army Contracts I will move the reduction of the Director's salary.

ALBERT GATE.
MR. WEBSTERasked the First Commissioner of Works

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whether it had been called to his attention that the buildings in course of construction near Albert Gate were already higher than the adjoining buildings; and, whether he would take steps to make those responsible for their construction carry out the pledge they gave him last year, that they should not be constructed higher than the adjoining houses at Albert Gate?
MR. LAWSON: Is it not desirable for this purpose that legislation should be introduced similar to that proposed last year by the hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Whitmore) giving power to the public authority to limit the height of buildings in London?
*THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. PLUNKET,): The question which the hon. Member for West St. Pancras (Mr. Lawson) asks me is rather an abstract one, and I had rather not give off hand a definite opinion about it; but I think it is perfectly plain that if buildings in London are carried to a height that would cause serious inconvenience to neighbours or to the public generally, some steps should be taken to meet the difficulty. In answer to the question upon the Paper, I have to say that my hon. Friend is under a misapprehension when he states in his question that the builders of the new mansions at Albert Gate had given me a pledge that their edifice should not be carried to a greater height than the neighbouring buildings. What they did undertake was to reduce the intended height of their buildings from 130 feet to 100 feet, and from that undertaking I have no reason to think that they mean to depart Of course, I shall see that it is fulfilled.

THE LANARKSHIRE ARTILLERY VOLUNTEERS.
MR. JOHN WILSONasked the Secretary of State for War whether he was aware that the two batteries of the 1st Lanarkshire Artillery Volunteers were converted into "Field Batteries of position," and that this involves that officers be mounted; whether the Commanding Officer of the corps had received an Order from the War Office that officers must sign a specified certificate, to the effect the!: each officer undertakes to keep and maintain bonâ fide his own
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property a charger to be approved; whether it was the case that one officer had refused to sign such a certificate, and had been compelled to resign, after having served for 17 years; whether it was the case that in no other corps have officers in a similar position been required to sign such a certificate; and whether such an Order had been issued by the War Office, or only on the responsibility of the Commanding Officer of this regiment?
MR. BRODRICK: The Officer Commanding the 1st Lanark Artillery Volunteers, on his own responsibility, required his officers, before appointment to the two recently formed batteries of position, to sign an undertaking that they would keep and maintain a horse. This was not done by order from the War Office. The subaltern referred to declined to sign the undertaking, and claimed to be appointed to one of the batteries of position, and has declined promotion in a garrison battery till the question of his appointment to the position battery is settled. Nothing is known at the War Office of his resignation. I am not aware that any similar undertaking has been required in other corps.

BURIALS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
MR. OSBORNE MORGAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the right of interment in a churchyard or (subject to the approval of the proper authorities) in a church, as distinct from the right to a religious burial service, is not independent of the ecclesiastical status of the deceased person; and whether he is aware that the late Sir Rowland Hill, although an un-baptized person, was buried in Westminster Abbey?
*MR. MATTHEWS: I have no authority to give an opinion on a question of law, but I am advised that the Burials Act of 1880 gives the right of interment in a churchyard independent of the ecclesiastical status of the deceased person, but that this provision of the Act does not apply to burials in churches. The right to be buried in a church, depends on the consent or refusal of the incumbent, and in some cases is regulated by faculties granted by the ecclesiastical authorities. I am informed by the Dean of Westminster

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that there is no discoverable trace in the late Dean's paper that Sir Rowland Hill was an un-baptized person. There are no signs of the question having been raised.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN BOARD SCHOOLS.
MR. COBBasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the Rev. F. H. Watson, on the 22nd of March last, examined the children in the Board School at Snitterfield in the Apostles' Creed; and, if not, what was the creed in which he examined them; and whether the teaching of and examination in the Apostles' Creed in a Board School is a violation of the provisions of "The Elementary Education Act, 1870?"
*THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Sir WILLIAM HART DYKE,): The Creed in question was the Apostles' Creed, which, during the discussion of the Cowper-Temple Clause, was mentioned by the author of the clause as one which could be taught in Board Schools, on the ground that it was "not the property of any particular denomination, but belonged to all Christendom," and this view of the case has since obtained the sanction of and been acted upon by successive heads of the Department.
MR. COBB: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the universal impression among the Nonconformists of this country is that the Apostles' Creed is not to be taught in the Board Schools, and that if it is taught it is in violation of the provisions of the Education Act of 1870?
*SIR W. HART DYKE: I am not aware of any such impression whatever existing. I hold in my hand a Minute written by the right hon. Member for the Brightside Division of Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) when he was Vice President of the Council, in which he uses the very words of Lord Mount-Temple, and concludes by saying—
"Their Lordships are not prepared to interfere with the discretion of School Boards in the matter."
MR. COBB: Did I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say yesterday that this examination was not entered into by the direction of the Board?
*SIR W. HART DYKE: No. I stated what was the policy of the Education
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Department, as observed by the right hon. Gentleman when he was Vice President of the Council.
MR. DILLWYN: I should like to know by what authority and at whose selection the Apostles' Creed is chosen. Can any other Creed except the Apostles' Creed be selected?
The question was not answered.

STRAND UNION.
MR. CREMER: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he has appointed, or is about to appoint, Mr. Thomas Hill an ex officio Guardian of the Poor for St. Martin's in the Fields; whether he is aware that Mr. Hill has. within the last few days withdrawn from the pending popular election of Guardians, and announced his attention not to again appeal to the ratepayers for re-election; whether Mr. Hill has been Chairman of the Guardians for several years; whether the terrible condition of the children in the parish schools did not exist during his term of office; and, if Mr. Hill has been, or is about to be, appointed as a Guardian, he will state the reason for such nomination?
*THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,): It is the intention of the Local Government Board to nominate Mr. Hill as a Guardian of the Strand Union. Mr. Hill has been an elected member of the Board of Guardians for 21 years, and in. the case of most of the elections he has been returned at the head of the poll. For the past 16 years he has been annually elected Chairman of the Board of Guardians, and for many years he has represented the Union on the Board of Management of the Metropolitan Asylum district. Looking to these facts, and on the recommendation of the two Inspectors for the Metropolitan District, who have personal knowledge of Mr. Hill's services, he has been offered nomination as a Guardian. As regards the alleged "terrible condition of the children in the parish schools," I presume the hon. Member refers to the outbreak of ophthalmia. It is satisfactory, however, to me to learn that the specialist who was called in to examine, the children states—

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"As the general result of my examination, I was struck with the healthy aspect of the children, which showed they were thoroughly well fed and cared for. I do not, therefore, consider the state of the eyes of so many of them to be due to any want of attention on the part of either the surgeons, the master, matron, or nurses, but simply to the fact that there is insufficient accommodation, which is especially apparent in the dormitories and schoolrooms."
Plans for the extension of the schools are now before the Board.
MR. CREMER: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered one of my questions—namely, what are the reasons for the nomination of Mr. Hill as an ex officio Guardian? I would follow that up by another question, as to whether it is the policy of the Local Government Board to appoint as ex officio Guardians men who are afraid to face the popular verdict of the ratepayers?
*MR. RITCHIE: As to the reasons which induced the Local Government Board to appoint Mr. Hill, I have given sufficient evidence to the hon. Gentleman to show that in our opinion Mr. Hill was a proper person to be appointed. It was because we thought he was a proper person that he was appointed. As to the hon. Gentleman's statement of Mr. Hill being afraid to seek reelection, I beg to say that Mr. Hill only withdrew from the list of candidates after he had received a notification from the Local Government Board that he was to be offered the appointment.

THE VESTRY OF ST. PETER'S, THETFORD.
DR. TANNER: I wish to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the fact that Messrs. Stephen Oldman and Robert Brown were unanimously chosen overseers by the Vestry in the parish of St. Peter's, Thetford, County Norfolk; that the local magistrates have passed over the names of the selected overseers, and appointed in their place Messrs. Ditch and Holden; how many elective votes these gentlemen obtained; and whether it is the intention of the Local Government Board to sanction the election of Messrs. Ditch and Holden; and, if so, by what right and for what purpose are the elective votes of the Vestry to be superseded?
*MR. RITCHIE: The appointment of overseers vests in the Justices, and they
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are empowered to appoint any householders in the parish whom they think fit, without any previous nomination by the Vestry, or without regard to any such nomination. As regards the parish to which the question of the hon. Member refers, I understand that it has been the custom for the Vestry to submit to the magistrates a list of at least four names for selection. In the present year the list contained the names of two persons only, one of whom had already filled the office for two years. In the two previous years, also, the names of two persons only were submitted to the Justices. I am informed that the magistrates considered that, as a matter of courtesy, they should have had a list to select from, and they made their own selection without regard to the nomination by the Vestry. The appointments of overseers are not subject to the sanction of the Local Government Board, and the Board have no jurisdiction in the matter.
DR. TANNER: Is it not the fact that one of the magistrates who adjudicated on this matter was Chairman, or, at any rate, a very large shareholder, of a company that was appellant in a case against the parish in question?
*MR. RITCHIE: I know nothing of that. The hon. Member must give notice of the question.
DR. TANNER: Is it not the fact, as evidenced by communications which have appeared in the Norfolk newspapers, that more overseers have been nominated for the parish than are required?
*MR. RITCHIE: I know nothing whatever about what has appeared in the Norfolk newspapers, or about any of the statements of the hon. Member; and I think it is very much to be deprecated that questions should be put in this House casting reflections upon people.
DR. TANNER: I beg to give notice that when I come out of gaol I shall give this matter my most thorough attention.

IRELAND—PARLIAMENTARY FRANCHISE FORMS.
MR. SEXTON: I desire to ask the Solicitor General for Ireland whether any person is under a legal obligation to fill up and return any form relating to the Parliamentary franchise devised and issued by the Belfast

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or any other board of guardians, in addition to the form prescribed by the Franchise Law?
*THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,): No person is under a legal obligation to fill up and return any form relating to the Parliamentary franchise in addition to the forms authorized or prescribed by the Franchise Law. It is not accurate to describe all these forms as prescribed. The Representation of the People Act, 1884, and the Parliamentary Registration, Ireland, Act, 1885, do give certain forms. But the Poor Rate Assessment Act of 1869, which was applied to Ireland in 1884, while casting upon certain classes of owners the obligation of furnishing information, does not prescribe any precise form in which this information should be asked for by the overseers.

POLICE ESPIONAGE IN IRELAND.
MR. R. J. WILSON: I beg to postpone my question with regard to the police espionage to which I and my wife were subjected in Ireland, to a day when the Chief Secretary will be present.

THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD.
MR. JOHN TALBOT: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the two vacancies on the London School Board, caused by the unseating of two Members for the Westminster Division, have been reported to the Education Department; and, what steps will be taken to, take the representation of the division complete?
*SIR W. HART DYKE: The vacancies referred to has not been reported to the Department by the London School Board, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that any representation they make to me I shall be happy to consider.

TELEGRAM ADDRESSES.
MR. PROVAND: I wish to ask the Postmaster General if it is the case that, while in the Post Office, directories may be referred to by the clerks in cases of insufficiently addressed letters, postcards, or newspapers, in Telegraph Offices the clerks are forbidden to refer to directories in cases of insufficiently
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addressed telegrams, the owners of which cannot be found; and, whether he will explain the reason for the different treatment of mail matter and telegrams?
*THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (MR. RAIKES,): At page 310 of the Post Office Guide, paragraph 46, the public are informed that the addresses of telegrams should be sufficiently full to enable the Department to effect delivery without difficulty and without reference to directories. The distinction between letters and telegrams is that insufficiently addressed letters can be set aside for search to be made in a directory without their being appreciably delayed or the general treatment of the mails interfered with, whereas telegrams cannot be carried to directories without delay to themselves and also to those which have been fully addressed by the senders. Perhaps I may point out that the sender of a letter has no inducement to shorten the address, and is therefore supposed to do his best; whereas experience shows that the addresses of telegrams are purposely shortened to save expense. I have, however, given orders that, where a sender of a telegram has obviously done his best the Directory is to be searched to complete the address and every effort made to deliver the message. If instructions were given that Directories were to be searched in every case, I fear that telegrams generally would be insufficiently addressed, and that great delay would result to the senders as well as additional expense and loss of revenue to the Post Office.

BOARD OR SCHOOL OF FORESTRY.
SIR J. LUBBOCKasked whether the Government proposed to establish a Board or School of Forestry, in accordance with the unanimous Resolutions of a Committee of this House and of the Associated. Chamber of Commerce?
*THE FIRST LORD of THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,): The Government fully recognize the importance of the subject, and it will, I think, be their duty through the new Board of Agriculture, if we are fortunate enough in the course of the present Session to pass the Bill creating that Department, to take steps,

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if we can see our way to do so, to carry out the Resolutions of the Committee.
MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: I beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, seeing that the prospect of establishing a Minister of Agriculture may be somewhat remote, and that the question of forestry is distinct from that of agriculture, he will not consider the possibility of dealing with the establishment of a School of Forestry apart from the Minister of Agriculture?
*MR. W. H. SMITH: Looking to the business we have to do, and the slow progress made with our work, I am afraid I cannot undertake to make such a proposal as the hon. Member suggests.

TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION WITH LIGHTHOUSES, &c.
MR. JOHNSTONasked the President of the Board of Trade if his attention had been called to the resolution passed at a recent meeting of the Associated Chamber of Commerce in favour of placing Lighthouses and Coastguard Stations in electrical communication with the main telegraphic system of the country; whether in consideration of the fact that a vast amount of money value, and several hundred thousand persons passed Tory Island every year, he would endeavour to have this recommendation carried out with regard to it; and, whether the Government would take steps as soon as possible to complete a work of so important a national character?
*THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,): The question of telegraphic communication between Lighthouse, Coastguard Stations, and Lifeboat Stations round the coast is, as I stated last Session, a matter for the consideration of the Post Office and the Admiralty, subject to the Treasury, rather than for the Board of Trade. With regard to Tory Island, I would refer to the reply I gave to the hon. Baronet the Member for Hythe on the 26th June last. The Bill therein referred to has now become law as Lloyd's Signal Stations Act, 1888, and I am informed by Lloyd's that the question of connecting Tory Island under its powers is still under consideration, and that they are in negotiation with the proprietor of the Island for land for a Signal Station.

FOREIGN VESSELS AND BRITISH REGULATIONS.
MR. HOWARD VINCENTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether vessels flying a foreign flag, and plying from British ports are subject, as a condition precedent to obtaining letters of clearance, to such regulations as are laid down for British vessels in like manner as British vessels plying from foreign ports; and, in such case how many passengers the steam packet Comtesse de Flandre was authorized by the Board of Trade regulations to carry; how many she had on board at the time of her loss; how many life-belts and life-buoys she carried, and if the readily-detachable positions of those was ascertained by a Government Inspector; and when the Committee sitting under the Saving Life at Sea Act may be expected to present the rules as to life-saving gear which they recommended?
*SIR MICHAEL HICKS BEACH: Foreign vessels carrying passengers between a British and foreign port are not liable to survey by the Board of Trade. I am not aware how many passengers the Comtesse de Flandre had on board at the time of her loss, nor what appliances for saving life she was provided with. I am informed that the Life Saving Appliances Committee, to which the hon. Member refers, have very nearly completed their labours.
MR. HOWARD VINCENT: Do I understand that foreign vessels plying in a British port are not under the regulations of the Board of Trade?
*SIR M. HICKS BEACH: The Board of Trade can only act under the law. A foreign vessel plying between a British and a foreign port is not liable to survey by the Board of Trade.
MR. HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to give notice that I shall call attention to this matter on a future occasion.

BANKRUPTCY OFFICIALS AND COUNTY COUNCILS.
MR. WOOTTON ISAACSON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that Mr. Arthur Davies Berrington, the Chairman of the Monmouthshire Quarter Sessions, and Chief Inspector of Fisheries for England and Wales, has, by reason of his hold-

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ing such appointment of Inspector of Fisheries, been restrained from accepting a seat on the Monmouthshire County Council, although elected without opposition, and not as a candidate of any political Party, whilst Mr. George Henry Llewellyn, the Official Receiver in Bankruptcy for the Newport (Monmouthshire) District, although elected on strictly Party lines, and as the avowed candidate of a political Party, is allowed to retain his present seat upon the County Council, but with an intimation from the Board of Trade that he is not permitted to accept reelection; whether he sanctions the distinction drawn between the case of the Chief Inspector of Fisheries and an Official Receiver in Bankruptcy; and, whether the Judge of the County Court is himself restrained from holding a seat at the County Council, whilst this qualified permission has been given to the Official Receiver, who is an officer of the Court?
*SIR MICHAEL HICKS BEACH: I am aware that Mr. Berrington, the Chief Inspector of Fisheries, who holds the position of Chairman of the Monmouthshire Quarter Sessions, was elected to a seat on the County Council. Mr. Berrington, being a Civil servant of the Crown, paid by salary, comes within the terms of the Treasury Minute, like the Inspectors of the Local Government Board and Education Department, and was not, therefore, permitted to serve on a County Council. An Official Receiver in Bankruptcy, paid by fees like Mr. Llewellyn, is not a Civil servant, and persons holding these positions have always been allowed to undertake other work. In consequence, some of them have served as Mayors or Members of Town Councils, and Mr. Llewellyn's appointment as an Alderman of Monmouthshire was therefore not brought to my notice until after he had accepted it. Having regard, however, to the increasingly political nature of municipal contests, and the desirability that Official Receivers in Bankruptcy should not be mixed up with politics, all officers who hold such appointments have been informed that they should retire from County or Municipal Councils when their term of service has expired. County Court Judges are not under my jurisdiction.

STAMP DUTIES ON BONDS AND SHARES.
MR. MONTAGU: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will now state the amount of revenue derived from the recently imposed 1s. per cent stamp duty on bonds and shares to bearer, dividing the amount derived for the six months ending 31st December, 1889, and for the three months ending 31st March last, and whether he will give the same particulars with regard to the revenue derived from the 6d. stamp duty on brokers' contracts?
MR. GOSCHEN: The question rather anticipates the statement I shall have to make when I bring forward my Budget proposals. When the time arrives I shall be very glad to give the information which the hon. Gentleman requires.

THE NEW EDUCATION CODE.
MR. JACOB BRIGHT, asked the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether, in view of the desire expressed by a considerable number of elementary school teachers in various parts of the country, he was prepared to authorize the Education Department to publish the instructions to Her Majesty's Inspectors before the adoption by the House of the new Code?
*SIR W. HART DYKE: I have considered the subject with great care, and see no reason to depart from what has been the uniform practice of the Department in previous years.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
MR. LABOUCHEREasked the First Lord of the Treasury whether before Tuesday next he would take into consideration the fact in regard to the Easter holidays that by bringing the holidays to a close on Thursday, the 25th, instead of the following Monday he would only gain one day for the Government; and whether he would not think that for that gain it was hardly worth while curtailing the holidays by four days?
*MR. W. H. SMITH: I am very anxious to consult the convenience of the House. The suggestion of the hon. Member is that it would be convenient to the House to have four days' more holiday. But

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we are exceedingly backward with Supply, having regard to the number of days available. If, however, the interval between this and next Tuesday results in a very large amount of Supply being given, there may be a possibility of relieving the House and the Government from the necessity of coming down here on Thursday, the 25th. I am not able to give any other answer to the hon. Gentleman.
MR. LABOUCHERE: I will repeat my question on Tuesday.
SIR G. CAMPBELL: What business is to be taken before Easter?
*MR. W. H. SMITH: I have already stated that the business on Thursday will be Supply and the introduction of the Bill for giving effect to the Sugar Convention. On Monday the Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be taken, and we hope also to get Supply. The Naval Defence Bill will not be taken on Monday.
MR. CHILDERS: I beg to ask whether, when effective Supply is put down for Friday, the Government will take care to keep a House? We have lately had the House twice counted out on those occasions.
*MR. W. H. SMITH: I should be very glad to give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance if there was the least hope that effective Supply would be obtained. The right hon. Gentleman is aware that there were several Notices of Motion to be discussed between the Motion that was disposed of on Friday and effective Supply; and by the ordinary method by which we obtain information the Government were assured that there was not the least chance of obtaining effective Supply last Friday or the Friday previous. Hon. Gentlemen who take an interest in the Motions that were put down were apparently not at all unwilling to be counted out when the privilege of calling the Speaker's attention to the fact that there were not 40 Members present was exercised. The Government were independent, but hon. Gentlemen who take an interest in these questions did not think it necessary to be in attendance themselves in sufficient numbers to maintain a House. The right hon. Gentleman is well aware of all the circumstances under which these events occur. If he and his Friends will assist us to get effective Supply on
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Fridays, we will certainly do our best to maintain a House; it is simply absurd to maintain a House in face of the fact that Gentlemen who have Motions on the Paper do not think it worth while to attend in sufficient numbers to keep a House, but give us friendly notice that we shall not be allowed to reach Supply.
MR. CHILDERS: The remarks of the right hon. Gentleman do not refer to me, because I came down. The question I wish to ask is this. If there is no opposition to Supply on any evening, is it wise to alter the old practice, which is not to put down effective Supply? On both the Fridays the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned there was no hope whatever of reaching effective Supply.
*MR. W. H. SMITH: We were so informed at 8 o'clock.
MR CHILDERS: The arrangements are made before 8 o'clock.
MR. H. H. FOWLER: I should like to put it to the right hon. Gentleman whether it is not a well-established Rule of the House that while the Government takes upon itself no responsibility in respect to keeping a House on Tuesdays, it is responsible for keeping a House on Fridays?
*MR. W. H. SMITH: No, I am not aware of that responsibility. We are responsible for making and keeping a House on Friday for Government business, but I am not aware that the Government are responsible for keeping a House on Friday after a reasonable time has elapsed, and there is no hope whatever of getting to Government business. I am informed by my hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Jackson) that six Notices of Motion were put down at midnight on Thursday, possibly with the desire of considering them, but with the result, at all events, of making it quite clear that Supply could not be reached.
MR. CHILDERS: Then are we to understand that when the Government put down effective Supply on Friday they will keep a House, but that when they do not they will not undertake to keep a House?
*MR. W. H. SMITH: I cannot enter into any understanding of that character, because to do so would simply mean that having put down effective Supply, which was blocked by Motions put on the Paper very late the night preceding;

23
we would have the great satisfaction of sitting here to listen to Motions which possibly were not to be voted upon. Very likely there would simply be a conversation lasting the whole evening, with probably no satisfactory result to anyone except to some a consumption of time. Under these circumstances, I could not undertake that the Government will keep a House.
MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, order This is now generating into a discussion.
MR. SEXTON: Can the right hon. Gentleman state, for the information and convenience of Irish Members, that Irish Supply will not be taken on Thursday, the 25th, the day on which the House is to re-assemble?
*MR. W. H. SMITH: Yes; I will undertake that no Irish Supply shall be taken on the day.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL.—(No. 145.)
As amended, considered; to be read the third time To-morrow.
MOTIONS.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Long, Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to the Boroughs of Accrington and. Sunderland, the Local Government Districts of Altrincham, Brentford, Haworth, Heston and Isleworth, Swindon New Town, and Walton-on-the-Hill, and the Rural Sanitary Districts of the Belper, Chorley, and King's Norton Unions, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Long and Mr. Ritchie.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 191.]

  METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS (PENSIONS) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Pickersgill, Bill to invalidate certain grants of retiring allowances made by the Metropolitan Board of Works to its officers, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Pickersgill, Mr. Howell, Mr. Cremer, Mr. James Stuart, Mr. James Rowlands, Mr. Sydney Buxton, Mr. Causton, Mr. Octavius V. Morgan, Mr. Montagu, and Mr. Lawson.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 192.]

  FRIENDLY SOCIETIES' ACT (1888) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Tomlinson, Bill to amend "The Friendly Societies Act, 1888," ordered to be brought in by Mr. Tomlinson, Lord Francis Hervey, Mr. Burt, Colonel Blundell, Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Pickard, and Mr. Ainslie.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 193.]

ORDER OF THE DAY.

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

  CLASS I.
  (1.) £7,201, to complete the sum for Science and Art Department Buildings.
  MR. A. H. DYKE ACLAND: I should like to take this opportunity of asking the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Plunket) one or two questions concerning the Normal School, South Kensington. I desire to know what the condition of that School is at the present time, because, if we mean to have a Technical Education Bill, if we mean to turn to account the great Polytechnics which are being established in London with the assistance of the Charity Commissioners, we must provide capable teachers for the technical schools. The great centre for the training of technical school teachers is the Normal School, the condition of which I cannot help thinking is grievously unsatisfactory. Now, Sir, it is mainly a question of buildings. You have got some of the best scientific teachers—professors, whose names are well known in the world of science; you give them good apparatus—all that I fully admit; but your buildings are so choked that it is utterly impossible for the school to compare with any other great school—even with those at Manchester, at Leeds. or that supported by the Admiralty at Greenwich. If you go into the Chemical Department you will find such a crowd of students, and such an insanitary condition of things, that if it prevailed in any ordinary elementary school, Her Majesty's Inspector would at once reduce the number of passes on the ground that there was not a sufficient number of cubic feet of air for each student or child. I suppose the right hon. Gentleman is willing to admit that the industrial and commercial welfare of this country is considerably bound up with the important question of technical education. But, Sir, I would willingly see the Science and Art grants reduced, if the amount of the reduction could be devoted

  25
  to the improvement of our Normal School. I will make this suggestion even. I think there is a sum of £1,000 a year spent on a short summer course of lectures, lasting three or four weeks. I doubt whether that money is productive of very much benefit, and I think it might be laid out to greater advantage if the building were improved, say, at the outlay of the capital sum represented by an annual income of £1,000. When professors from other countries visit our Normal School at South Kensington, they are amazed that England in its great central school of teaching provides such an inadequate building. In 1852, in the Queen's Speech, it was said that we were to have the highest type of instruction and the most perfect training. I believe it was intended that that should be so, but the building is now not nearly large enough for all the subjects which are taught in it. Originally, I think it was intended to be devoted to one subject; but now we have taught in it physics, chemistry, mineralogy and astronomy, and, in fact, all scientific subjects. A little laboratory has been built on the other side, in which the Professor of Physics can teach the elementary students, and in regard to that, I may say that it is at one and the same time the cheapest, most simple, and ugliest of structures. It might have, been wiser, perhaps, to have spent money on a more permanent structure, and, at any rate, it must be admitted that the school cannot long be carried on in its present building. We have there the very best material for teachers; a professor informed me that there was a better class of students than could be found either at Owen's College, Manchester, or at the Victoria College at Leeds. Then you ought to give them good opportunities for pursuing their studies. At present it is impossible to carry out some of the higher physical experiments, and you do not encourage these students to follow up the more advanced researches in their fourth year, simply because there is no room for the purpose. I venture to say this is a penny wise and pound foolish policy. If we are going to provide technical instruction throughout the country, as we have been told twice in the Queen's Speech it is intended to do, we must not neglect the provision of teachers and of giving professors,
  26
  who are eminently capable men, every opportunity of doing justice to the young people who go to them for instruction. I know well enough that the Secretary to the Treasury will give us very little hope. I suppose he thinks the chief object and aim of man is to ask for nothing from the Treasury, but I have some hope that the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works will afford us some assistance—that he will bring to bear his unbiassed judgment upon educational matters, and will help us to make this Normal School even more successful than it has been in the past. I think there is some reasonable ground for asking for an improvement in the building in which the school is carried on, because it will relieve the professors, who cannot now do their duty towards the students and towards the country.
  *SIR HENRY ROSCOE: I wish to be allowed to add my confirmation to the remarks of the hon. Member who has just spoken. He has not said a word too much as regards the condition of the Normal School, and as regards the accommodation in that school compared to that which I know exists in schools of a similar character on the Continent. It is really a disgrace that we in England should have to put up with this condition of the Normal School. I know every corner of the place; I know in every department the students are crowded, and, indeed, the Professor of Chemistry told me he was almost ashamed to take high fees from the students when he could only afford them such poor facilities as regards accommodation as exist in the school. I trust the right hon. Gentleman will take this matter into his gravest consideration. Before long I hope we shall have a Technical Education Bill brought before the House, but of what use will it be unless we can obtain competent teachers? We cannot get such teachers unless we have proper facilities for training them. It must be remembered that in other countries, in almost every centre of population, Normal Science Schools exist, yet this is the only Government school of the kind in this country. It was built for one purpose, and it has been converted for uses for which it was not in the least fitted, and I do feel that the honour of the country is at

  27
  stake, and that we ought to put up with this state of things no longer. There is plenty of space for a proper building on the west side of Exhibition Road. As the right hon. Gentleman well knows, a portion of the land has already been offered to the Government; the site is an admirable one, and a really efficient School of Science might, at no very great expense, be erected. A large number of inquiries have been made into this subject by Committees of this House, and all have agreed that something should be done. May we not hope, Sir, that the Government will really attend to this matter, and say, whether, or not, they cannot put the Normal School in a satisfactory position? I do not think I can altogether support the views of my hon Friend the Member for Rotherham with regard to the summer classes. I believe they are of very great value, inasmuch as they are available for teachers who cannot come up at any other time, and who devote their holidays to attending this course of lectures. I do not think it would be a wise thing, in any shape or way, to reduce this most important work of the Normal School; but I believe if money were expended in erecting a suitable building, it would be well laid out, and would produce the best possible return. I trust the right hon. Gentleman will pay attention to this subject, and will impress upon the Government the great value which scientific men throughout the country attach to this matter.
  *MR. BARTLEY: I should like, Sir, to support the remarks of the hon. Members who have just spoken. I think it is a very discreditable thing that the buildings in South Kensington are not being completed with greater rapidity. When we consider that the Estimates for this year contain but a sum of £400 for work, alterations, and additions, it does seem to me a most unsatisfactory state of affairs that year after year these buildings should be left in the state in which they are. Now, Sir, it is part of a very much larger question than the mere Normal School; and in regard to that School, I must say I am very glad to have seen what a success it has proved. I think it is time a is matter was taken in hand, and that the School was placed in a proper building. think if it were
  28
  taken up by the present Government it would be a step in the right direction. There are many means by which the necessary money could be obtained. I cannot agree with the hon. Gentleman who suggests that the summer course of lectures should be discontinued in order to supply the funds. I agree with Sir Henry Roscoe, that they are a most important branch of the work which is being performed, but if we cannot have an additional grant, I would suggest that we might for a time stop the purchase of specimens and provide money in that way. There is one question referred to by the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, and that is the subject of fees in the Normal School. I venture to say that those fees are rather too high, and the subject ought to be very carefully looked into, for you must consider that we are supposed to be training men who shall teach in our various schools, and fixing the fees so high really precludes many from attending at all. Finally, I would urge most emphatically on the Government that they should boldly grapple with the whole subject, and not be afraid of spending a sum of, say, £200,000, which might be necessary to complete the magnificent building which we have at South Kensington.
  MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: Without going into the technical details of the question, I should like to support my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham in the description which he has given of these buildings at South Kensington. It must be quite evident that the accommodation there is wholly insufficient for the number of students; and, having regard to the increased demand for scientific education likely to be made upon the teaching staffs in the future, I think there should be no hindrances in the way of providing as much accommodation as possible. I do not agree at all with my hon. Friend, however, in his suggestion that any reduction should be made in the expenditure. I believe we ought to make up our minds to spend a good deal more upon institutions of this character. I do not see why, in this country, we should not have establishments equal to those at Berlin and Zurich; and I sincerely trust that this school will be taken in hand and finished upon some regular plan, and that we

  29
  shall have an institution worthy the capital of this country.
  *THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. PLUNKET,): I do not think this is the occasion to raise any debate on the general policy of the Education Department in reference to the South Kensington Institutions. I remember that last year the debate on this Vote had special reference to the physical laboratory, and, as a result, the Government took energetic action, and even presented a Supplementary Estimate on their own responsibility. It is admitted that the result of their efforts has been satisfactory to those who are interested in that matter; yet now it is attempted to make out a strong case against the Government for inactivity.
  MR. ACLAND: I did not intend to say that nothing had been done. My complaint was that the physical arrangements had completely broken down.
  *MR. PLUNKET: My humble duty is to provide what is ordered by the Government, and the hon. Member has no right to lay against me his complaints upon the general policy with regard to the increase of accommodation. He has asked if I myself have inspected the buildings. Of course I have. I have visited them several times; and I may mention also that the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Vice President of the Council, and others, made since these questions were discussed last year a most careful visit to every part of the building. One of the conclusions arrived at was that, before additional buildings were erected, it would be a good thing to get rid of a good deal of the material filling up the Galleries existing at the present time. Directly that suggestion was made we were, of course, met with protests from the authorities at South Kensington, but eventually a Committee was appointed to examine and report on what may be done in this direction. Before the buildings can be enlarged we ought to await the Report of that Committee. I can only add that as soon as the Education Department can persuade the Treasury that fresh buildings are necessary I shall be only too glad to give every facility in my power. But it must be borne in mind that the noble Lord the Member for South Paddington was already protested
  30
  against the large sums which have been expended at South Kensington, and the Government has to stand between financial reforms on the one side and enthusiastic advocates for the development of South Kensington on the other. They are, therefore, bound to go carefully to work. They will, however, give careful and respectful consideration to any suggestions which may emanate from hon. Members on both sides.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: I think the Government has adopted a wise course in appointing a Committee to investigate the condition of the Galleries on the western side of Exhibition Road, for I have always been of opinion that they are crowded with many objects of no very great utility. I should however, be glad to hear of whom the Committee is composed. With regard to the buildings on the other side of Exhibition Road, most people would be very glad to see them completed in a style worthy of the nation, because they contain collections of the greatest value and beauty, and it is discreditable to the country that they should be left in the condition in which they are. But some general plan should be decided on before the Government are asked to spend a large sum of money upon them.
  MR. BARTLEY: Are the Committee to have power to weed out both the Science and Art collections? Of whom is the Committee composed?
  *MR. PLUNKET: Mr. —, Lord F. Hervey, Lord Rayleigh, Sir Bernhard Samuelson, Sir Douglas Crawford, and Sir Henry Roscoe.
  MR. G. A. CAVENDISH BENTINCK: The right hon. Gentleman has not informed us if the Committee will have control over the artistic collections.
  SIR HENRY ROSCOE: Perhaps I may say the Committee is appointed to deal with the Science collections alone, not with the Art collection.
  MR. CONWAY: It is satisfactory to know that the Government are taking steps to investigate the state of affairs at South Kensington, and that hon. Members on both sides of the House are taking lively interest in the technical education of the country. But that is not all that is wanted. We know that all work and no play is just

  31
  as bad for the students as all play and no work, and I think we are bound to see that they are provided with suitable amusement. Now there are some good lawn tennis grounds. The inclosures are reserved for the permanent officials of the Department. I think it would be well if the Government, through the First Commissioner of Works, would at intervals give an opportunity to the students in South Kensington to avail themselves of these areas.
  MR. KENRICK: There is no doubt that the buildings on the east side of Exhibition Road are insufficient for the work done by the Department. The building from which is sent out all the objects lent to the local museums is a most miserable place, indeed, it is hardly weather proof. No merchant dealing in the most common objects would have such a miserable place from which to dispatch his goods. Again, at one time there was a Gallery specially assigned to the Exhibition of Works executed by Art students in what is called the National Competition. The object of the Exhibition is, of course, educational. Teachers in the Art Schools all over the country visit the Exhibition for the purpose of ascertaining the position other schools take in the National Competition, and to learn what the shortcomings of their own schools are. Now-a-days the Exhibition, instead of being in one room, so that the work of the various schools can be easily compared, is scattered about the ordinary museum. It is very difficult indeed for any visitor to form a general idea of what is sent up from the country. This is one of the points it is very desirable the Department should attend to. I very much regret there is no Representative of Art on the Committee which has been appointed, because Art is quite as important as Science.
  MR. CONWAY: I beg to ask for an answer as to the use of the lawn tennis courts by the students?
  *MR. PLUNKET: I will consult the Vice President of the Council on the matter, which does not come within my Department.
  *MR. F. S. POWELL: I sincerely hope the Government will not much longer delay the commencement of the work necessary to finish the buildings on the east side of the road. The incomplete state of those buildings is
  32
  no credit to the Administration of the country.
  DR. TANNER: I think my hon. Friend (Mr. Conway) is entitled to an answer upon the point he has raised. I know the Vice President of the Council was in the Lobby half a minute ago. Surely he can be consulted at once?
  *MR. PLUNKET: It is not a matter over which I have any control whatever, but I will make a representation on the subject to my right hon. Friend the Vice President.
  MR. M. KENNY: I see the Vice President sitting behind the Treasury Bench. If he would come forward and explain the matter, he would, no doubt, considerably facilitate business.
  *THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Sir W. HART DYKE,): I was serving upon a Committee upstairs, and left the Committee Room to answer three or four questions in the House. Having done that I returned to the Committee, and now I have had to leave again. I really have not the faintest idea of what has taken place in the House.
  MR. CONWAYrepeated his observations, whereupon
  *SIR W. HART DYKEsaid: I will make a thorough inquiry. Perhaps the most practical way of raising the question will be upon the South Kensington Vote. Between now and then I will make inquiries, and be prepared to make a statement to the House on the point.
  Vote agreed to.
  (2.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £8,847, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Maintenance and Repair of the British Museum and Natural History Museum Buildings, for Rents of Premises, Supply of Water, Fuel, &c., and other Charges attendant thereon."
  *MR. CREMER: The Leader of the House just now appealed to hon. Members to facilitate the progress of business by passing the Estimates as speedily as possible. Under ordinary circumstances I should be quite willing to accede to the request of the right hon. Gentle-

  33
  man, but I think the nation ought to be congratulated on the manner in which the Estimates are now being discussed, and on the very different state of things obtaining now to that which formerly obtained, when millions of money were voted by a handful of Members without any, or at least adequate, discussion. I think it is well for the country that there are a body of Members determined to deal with the Estimates as they ought to be dealt with. I beg to move the reduction of this Vote by £500. Under ordinary circumstances I should be exceedingly sorry to see the amount this House votes for the purposes of instruction reduced by one farthing. I am anxious to increase the amount we vote for the instructive and constructive forces, and to diminish the sum which we vote for the destructive forces. By the present reduction I desire to protest, as I have done for the last three or four years, against the system of sweating which obtains in our Government institutions. I complained last week of the system of contracting for human labour which is in force in this building. The same system obtains in the British Museum and in the Admiralty Department, and I said last week I should feel it to be my duty to continue to move reductions upon these Votes until our natural and just request is acceded to. I find I made a mistake last week. I was too generous towards the Government contractor. I said that the contractors supplied certain plant and tools, and that in consideration of this they were allowed to make certain deductions of from 16 to 20 per cent from the wages of the employés. I find, however, that the plant and tools are supplied by the Office of Works, and therefore there is not the slightest justification in the world for the continuance of this system of sweating, and I shall be exceedingly glad to know from the right hon. Gentleman the grounds upon which these contractors are allowed to make these deductions from the wages of their employés. Now, in addition to cleaners, dusters, gardeners and others who perform menial work at the British Museum, and who are employed through contractors. These are also the men employed in the catalogue department, and these men too are subjected to the sweating system. Messrs.
  34
  Spottiswoode have for years been permitted to supply a number of workmen and boys in the catalogue department of the British Museum.
  THE CHAIRMAN: That is not relevant to this Vote.
  *MR. CREMER: Then I shall be under the painful necessity of moving another reduction later on. I simply referred to the state of things in the catalogue in passing, to show that Messrs. Brass are not the only contractors at the British Museum who make large deductions from the wages of the men they employ. I have to complain that since I have brought this question forward two or three years ago, the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works has entered into another contract. I believe it has been made for three years with Messrs. Brass. Therefore, I cannot content myself with indefinite promises on the part of the right hon. Gentleman that he will consider the grievances of these workmen. I want a distinct assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that when the present contract ceases, he personally will enter into no further contract, either with Messrs. Brass or anyone else. Of course, he cannot pledge his successors, but if he will give a distinct pledge that the system of which I complain and the grievance under which these men labour shall be ended so far as he is concerned, I shall be perfectly satisfied, and will not press my Amendment to a Division.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item B of £3,300, for the Maintenance and Repairs, be reduced by £500."—(Mr.Cremer.)
  *MR. PLUNKET: The hon. Member has, in his opening remarks, said that the nation is to be congratulated in the way in which a handful of Members are determined to thresh out the Estimates item by item. Possibly that may be the hon. Member's view, but I hold a different opinion. I think the public are turning away with weariness and disgust from the proceedings of this House—["Withdraw"]—because of the way in which comparatively unimportant matters are discussed at great length, and the public time is deliberately wasted. I am not speaking of the action of the hon. Member on this special occasion; but I refer to the con-

  35
  duct of a handful of Members who, as they openly tell us, are determined to thresh out the Estimates item by item. And now I wish to deal with the particular point the hon. Gentleman has raised, and which he has stated with fairness. Let me, in the first place, remind the Committee what happened on the last occasion, when I think the subject was brought forward by the hon. Member for Northampton. The hon. Member suggested that I should make some endeavour to rectify the grievance complained of in regard to labourers and others employed within this House; and he pointed out that here we had special opportunities for rectifying the grievance, because we had a staff of officers by whose assistance it would be more easy than it would be in other places to carry out some change. I promised the hon. Member for Northampton that, so far as this particular set of employés was concerned, I would do my best to find out some way of escaping from the apparent anomaly which existed here. But that is a comparatively small question to the one the hon. Member for Haggerston has now raised. What does the hon. Member expect me to do? The contract with Messrs. Brass for general maintenance and repairs must run for two years. Even supposing I admitted to the full—which I do not—all the statements of the hon. Member, I have no power to interfere. There is no use in giving a vague promise that I will enter into no such contract in future. What I have undertaken to do—and it is the utmost any Minister can be expected to do—is that when this contract terminates the whole question of such employment by the Government shall be as carefully as possible considered with a view to giving, as far as we can, effect to the very natural feeling which has been expressed—namely, that no advantage should be taken of Government contracts to the injury of those who may be employed under the contracts. This is a very difficult matter to deal with. I have always understood that the system of contract by open competition was admitted almost universally a true, sound system upon which this kind of Government business should be transacted; and it is impossible for me to say it shall be changed until the question has been gone into carefully, as I promise it shall be. I trust that, under the circumstances,
  36
  the hon. Member will not think it necessary to go to a Division.
  MR. A. WILLIAMSI think the right hon. Gentleman has rather confused the matter. We are not now dealing with large works of construction, but with what may be called the domestic part of our Administration, with the daily work of the ordinary labourer employed by the State. As I understand my hon. Friend, he desires that the employés in Government institutions should be paid first hand, just as we in our own farms or places of business pay the people we employ. When we are charged with wasting public time because we inquire into these apparently minor matters, I have to answer the right hon. Gentleman that I have looked to the record for a year or two, and I find that time after time objections have been made and met in the same way as they have today. I declare when I find this so often repeated I feel tempted to interfere a good deal more in the future in these matters. I have looked at the report of the proceedings last year, and I find the same objections met with the same dilatory answer, that the matter should be looked into. Now, if the question is a difficult one, that is no reason why it should not be grappled with; it will not become easier by being put off. Are-we to have a categorical answer "yea" or "nay" to the question we put? Unless we have a decided promise that every contract when it ends shall not be renewed by the right hon. Gentleman—if he is in office then, as I hope he may not be—then I hope my hon. Friend will divide the House on this question.
  *MR. CUNINGHAME GRAHAM: I do not wish to trespass on the time of the Committee; but I am rather at a loss to understand whether a private Member is at liberty to moot such questions as this, if, in. Committee of Supply, he is to be accused of wasting time when he does so. The First Lord of the Treasury seemed. to indicate, a short time ago, that Members who put down Motions dealing with matters of this kind were simply doing so with a desire to obstruct public business, in order to prevent the Government getting Supply; and now, after a very indefinite promise, it is expected that this matter shall not be pursued. Now, I should like to

  37
  know what all this investigation into the system of sweating by the Committee of the other House is to result in We do not spend so much money and occupy so much of the valuable time of noble Lords simply in order to publish a Report; and I fail to see how a system we all condemn when exercised by private firms should be condoned when exercised by ourselves in our collective capacity. It is about time, I think, that we set an example in our State Departments. If we are not going to set the example ourselves, we have no right to point the finger of scorn at firms who are called "sweaters" upon evidence that comes out before the Committee sitting in "another place." What are we to understand in this matter? Are we always to be behind every other corporate body that exists in the Kingdom upon this matter. The County Council and the School Board of London were no sooner elected than they endeavoured to grapple with the matter, although they have not the authority we have. They have passed resolutions dealing with kindred matters to this. Are we, the House of Commons, ever to be
  "Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
  Like the poor cat i' the adage."
  I am exceedingly glad that the hon. Member, representing a working-class constituency, has seen fit to move in this matter, and he has my hearty support in what he has said. I venture to hope that all future contracts will be most severely overhauled, and, if possible, not only the hours of labour will be carefully limited by the Government, and the conditions made such as will not only satisfy capitalists and the State, but that the conditions as affecting the men who do the work will be considered.
  *MR. BRADLAUGH: I should not have risen, but that I do not think the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman should be allowed to pass unnoticed. The right hon. Gentleman's objection — and there is something in the objection—is that these discussions, taking item after item, will make the work of the Committee impossible in the House of Commons. Yes, but if that be so, what is our discussion of Supply to be? I agree that with the huge number of Votes to be disposed of, that if this
  38
  kind of attention is given to each vote it will render it impossible to take the whole number of Votes through Committee within the allotted Parliamentary time, but is there to be no discussion at all? Is it because the work will become impossible there shall be no such critical examination of expenditure? Does not the answer of the First Commissioner amount to this, that an investigation should be conducted by a number of small Committees dealing with these votes before they are submitted to the Committee of the House? Would not that avoid waste of the time of the House on each individual item? The Government have the means of setting up such machinery. We have not had the same amount of investigation as took place last year. Several Committees sat last year, and we were much indebted to their labours though, the Committees were, I think, too large, and necessarily occupied too much time to be useful in settling the current Estimates for the year. A number of smaller Committees dealing with these Votes would do the work much better, and there would then be no complaint of undue encroachment on the time by elaborate discussion in Committee of the House. I can understand the feelings of the right hon. Gentleman waiting here hour after hour, for the passing of Votes to which he does not attribute so much importance as some hon. Members do, but I do not think his language is justified, though I feel the difficulty of his position. Much of the old passing of Estimates in this House was in the nature of a farce; and I do not even now believe it is in our power to reduce a Vote. Our discussions are solely useful as illustrating some grievance, either against individuals or a system which we have no means of raising otherwise. I trust the right hon. Gentleman, in consideration for such Members as myself, will reconsider his censure, for I may truly plead that at no time, and under no circumstances, have I ever tried to waste the time of the House, or the Committee, but I conceive that I have a duty not to allow this to pass without challenge. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman may see fit to modify his phrase about weariness and disgust.
  *MR. PLUNKET: I rise without a moment's hesitation to assure the hon.

  39
  Member that I had no notion of referring to him, and that I think, of all Members sitting opposite, he is perhaps least open to any such charge. What I said was simply in answer to what appears to me the most misleading general statement of the hon. Member for Haggerston (Mr. Cremer), and I did not refer to the course taken in this instance. I expressly said on a previous occasion that this whole question should be considered, but that it was impossible for me to rescind or largely to modify these contracts. While I repeat my statement on the general question of obstruction, I wish to make it perfectly clear. I do not, for a moment, question the right of the Committee to discuss any item with the bonâ fide intention of bringing into prominence some particular view. What I deprecated was a system that would make it impossible to get through the Estimates properly at all. As to the suggestion that some classes of the Estimates should be considered in a preliminary way by small Committees, there is, in my opinion, much to be said in favour of that. Once again let me say that I had not the slightest intention of making any reference to the hon. Member for Northampton, who has just spoken; what I said was on account of the general statement of the hon. Member for Haggerston.
  MR. J. ROWLANDS: I am glad the right hon. Gentleman has somewhat amended the statement in his first speech. We can only use the machinery at our disposal for criticizing the rules submitted to us. We are not responsible for that machinery. If it is cumbersome, then no Government could be better employed than in its improvement, and in providing some method for facilitating this examination of Estimates, and forwarding the business of the House. The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to have clearly grasped the position taken up by my hon. Friend; he seems to confuse the question of contracts such as these with contracts in which the contractor has to supply technical knowledge and skilled labour, a large staff and plant. These contracts we are discussing are merely contracts for the employment of unskilled labour, that might easily be directed by officers of the Department. What would be thought of a proposal
  40
  to carry out this system to the extent of providing a librarian or attendant in the Library of the British Museum? Offer such employment to contract and the thing becomes ridiculous at once. But, except in degree of employment, the relations are the same between such employésand the Department and others employed about the building. Our objection is clearly defined. We object to this letting out of labour to contract when there is no work for the contractor to do, no supervision, no expenditure upon plant, no capital, and when no knowledge or skill whatever is brought to bear. Surely there is a clear distinction between giving cut contracts such as these and giving out contracts for work such as erecting a building or building a ship. All we want is a clear statement that the Government have arrived at an opinion that this system of contract for human labour is wrong. We have made up our minds, and intend to force home our opinion, for we know the importance of this matter to those employed under the system. No contradiction has been given to my statement last week that 4s. 6d. a week is in some instances deducted from a man's wages. Can hon. Members imagine what this means? Some of us have had to work for a weekly wage, and know what a serious inroad on much larger earnings than these men get such a deduction is. We have called attention to the evils of the system; we tell you from practical experience that direct employment can be given, that the effect of these contracts is serious deductions from the men's wages, and we ask that the Treasury shall declare that the system shall not go on when present contracts have ceased.
  *MR. H. H. FOWLER: I quite agree with the hon. Member who has just spoken that we can only make the best use of the machinery at our disposal, but I also think that we are responsible for the mode in which we use it for making it effective in a practical business-like manner. The hon. Member has clearly drawn the distinction between the two classes of contracts which I think the First Commissioner will appreciate. These contracts simply mean that the officers of the Board of Works are saved from the trouble of employing this unskilled labour, but at the expense of the

  41
  wages of the men who do the work. The right hon. Gentleman says that the point was not brought to his attention last year, but he is aware that a Committee of the Lords has been sitting for the last twelve months, and public attention has been drawn to the evils of what is called the sweating system in a manner it has never been called before. I think the time has come when the House of Commons should make its voice effectively heard on the subject. I am happy to say that the Committee engaged on the work of building the Imperial Institute have passed a resolution declaring that in no part of the building shall the "sweating" system be allowed. I see the difficulty of the First Commissioner; there are existing contracts that must be allowed to run out. Now, as I understand, a week ago he invited an expression of opinion from the Committee whether these contracts should be renewed on their present basis. Well, owing to the unfortunate mode in which our decisions are taken — Gentlemen crowding in to take part in a Division and knowing nothing of the conditions of the question—many Members voted entirely against their own convictions and desires. They thought it was an ordinary Motion to reduce the Government Vote, and they voted in support of the Government. I will venture to say that had it been really understood that it was not a question of a substantial reduction of a Vote, but the expression of an opinion that the Government had asked for, and which the House was prepared to give, disapproving of the "sweating" system and declaring that as soon as it could reasonably be done an end should be put to it in relation to the work in Government Departments, then I think the numbers in the Division would have been very different. But let me point out to the hon. Members who are moving in this matter that I do not think any particular good will result from taking a Division on this Vote. We have made our protest and ask that the First Commissioner should pledge himself that he will not renew these contracts without the distinct approval of the House of Commons? Having that I think we may be satisfied. It will solve the difficulty, and prevent the question arising on subsequent Votes, if the right hon. Gen-
  42
  tleman will promise that a Select Committee shall be appointed to consider the whole question of these contracts before they are renewed. A fairly representative Committee will come to a far better conclusion than the officials of the Board of Works. My sympathies are strongly with the hon. Member for Haggerston. The sweating system is one of the greatest evils of the day, and we should condemn it in whatever shape or form we find it. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to terminate this controversy by promising the Select Committee to which I have referred.
  *MR. PLUNKET: I should like to remove one misapprehension under which the right hon. Gentleman labours. What I said the other day was that I invited an expression of opinion as regards the persons employed about the Houses of Parliament, for I felt that if this House thought these persons should be employed directly by the Government, and not through a contractor, that was a question on which their views ought to have exceptional weight. But as to the general question of these contracts for maintenance and repair of all Government buildings, that is not so easy a problem to solve as some hon. Members seem to suppose. It has always until now been thought that it is the best and most economical arrangement to invite contractors by open competition to undertake work, and pains are taken to secure that the contractor employed should be respectable and solvent, and then we hold him responsible for the work. Another reason why the Government has been obliged, in dealing with those public buildings in London, to employ a contractor is that there sometimes occur sudden exigencies which require the putting on of a number of hands and engaging an amount of labour which my Department has no machinery for calling together for a short job which must be done at once, except at a. grievous expense to the country.
  *MR. CREMER: The workmen whose case I represented are not casual hands, but have been engaged, many of them, from five to 20 years.
  *MR. PLUNKET: I am replying on the general question raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler), who asked if I was prepared to state that the principle of carrying out these opera-

  43
  tions by contract should be abandoned, and I was stating some of the difficulties in the way. Again, we must realize this that—as soon as the Government become the direct employers of this labour, pressure will be put upon them at every point in dealing with the men. You cannot dismiss a man or engage another man in place of one who falls sick without pressure being brought to bear by Members of Parliament or through them on the Government to do this or that. I do not mean to say that such representations made might not in some cases be fair and just; but I do mean to say that the pressure which might be brought to bear by Members in many instances might not be beneficial, and not in favour of economical expenditure. Other difficulties would arise with which I will not now delay the Committee. I have, however, undertaken that the whole matter shall be fully and fairly reviewed, and that when the contract expires it shall not be renewed without the Government being prepared to justify the grounds on which they act. Every word used in this debate shall be carefully weighed and considered. I cannot pledge myself that no new contract shall be entered into; but the whole nature of the service, and the engagement of labourers to carry out the work, shall be carefully and fully gone into again. I can give no pledge until there has been this examination, for I do not know how the difficulties of the case can be met; but I think the pledge I have given should satisfy hon. Members.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman is not able to meet us half way. I think my hon. Friend would be willing to accept the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton; and if the Government would promise that before the contract comes to an end an impartial Select Committee shall be appointed to inquire into the whole question, the difficulty would be met and both sides of the House will be satisfied. There are difficulties in the way of working without these contracts; that is admitted; if there were not, there would be no need for this discussion. What we ask for is something more than a mere official promise upon which absolute reliance cannot always be placed,
  44
  though I quite acknowledge that the right hon. Gentleman and the Secretary to the Treasury have every desire to carry out what they undertake. The appointment of a Select Committee would be satisfactory, I think, on both sides, and our unanimous decision would be an earnest of the intention of the House of Commons to tolerate no introduction of the sweating system into Government work.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON,): I should like to satisfy hon. Members that the promises of my right hon. Friend are not what are called the mere usual official promises. The question is one which contains a good many difficulties, and since it was raised a week ago it has been the subject of very grave consideration by the First Commissioner of Works and by the Leader of the House and his colleagues. I think everyone must admit it is extremely desirable to avoid defining those particular cases to which the hon. Member for Haggerston refers. If the men have been employed continuously for twenty years—
  MR. CREMER: I did not say all—I said many.
  *MR. JACKSON: Those cases, I should think, it would be perfectly simple and easy to meet. I have given some personal consideration to this question, and have had some experience in dealing with questions of organization and with working men. The position in which we find ourselves appears to me to be one which has been forced upon us by the action of Members of this House—I do not say whether wisely or unwisely—and by the very strong desire which has been expressed in recent years that everything should be done as cheaply as possible, and, as far as possible, under the severest light of open and public competition. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Haggerston (Mr. Cremer) has seen the schedule of prices framed by my right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Plunket). That schedule contains a list of every article that can possibly be required by the Department as the result of the experience of a great many years; and the Office of Works, by means of its expert officers, has attached to the schedule the prices which are believed to be the market prices. Included in the schedule are

  45
  the prices of labour for different classes of work. It seems to be almost impossible, without committing the grossest extravagance, to avoid calling in outside labour to do particular kinds of work, but I think the whole tendency is in favour of all work for which a separate tender can be obtained being put up to public competition. All extra labour which is of a kind that requires constant employment may, of course, be met by adding to the staff of the Office of Works, and probably the class of men to whom the hon. Member has referred would come within that category; but when the Office of Works is called upon in an emergency, or requires for a short time a number of men belonging to a particular trade, it would be the grossest extravagance to keep them upon its staff after they have done the work required of them. I think a solution of the difficulty will probably be found in adding to the permanent staff what I will call the minimum number of men who are required to discharge certain duties, calling in from the outside, on reasonable terms, such as may be necessary to meet exceptional demands. What, however, I really rose to say was, that the hon. Member may be assured that my right hon. Friend (Mr. Plunket) in giving the assurance which the House has heard, has not done so lightly. The matter has been under the consideration of the Ministers of the Crown, and I think the Committee will admit that whilst it may relieve the Government of a great many difficulties, it is the duty of my right hon. Friend and his Department in the first instance to consider whether they can find a satisfactory solution.
  *MR. CREMER: I am sorry that the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) has not been acceded to by the Government. I have not yet exhausted the information which has been supplied to me, nor have I made out as bad a case as I could have presented. I could prove to the Committee that 25 per cent has been deducted from the wages of workmen, and 50 per cent from those of boys. I did not myself suggest the appointment of a Committee, because a great deal of the information that has been supplied to me has been supplied by the men themselves, who have a
  46
  great fear that their names may be divulged. They have, in fact, told me they have been threatened that if they make any statement they will be discharged from their employment; and they, therefore, approach the consideration of the subject with fear and trembling. The evils I complain of are, however, so general—extending to the Admiralty and the British Museum, and, I fear, to other Government Departments—that I shall be quite willing to accept an offer on the part of the Government to inquire into them, and I hope that these poor men will run no risks in the future by stating their case. The necessity for some inquiry will be apparent to anyone who has heard the conflicting statements made by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Plunket). It seems to me that the right hon. Gentleman does not understand the difference between ordinary and extraordinary contracts. We do not object to the ordinary, but only to the extraordinary contracts. The right hon. Gentleman says the question is surrounded with a great deal of difficulty. It seems to me, however, that he is not quite the proper authority to express an opinion upon that point, or to get rid of the evils to which reference has been made. A Committee of Inquiry might possibly help the right hon. Gentleman to a solution of the problem, and to remove from his mind the prejudice which, I fear, still lingers there, and which renders a solution in the interests of the men almost impossible. If the right hon. Gentleman will state that between now and the time when the Admiralty Vote comes on the Government will seriously consider the advisability of assenting to the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler), I shall not, on the present occasion, press my Amendment to a Division. I have endeavoured to meet the right hon. Gentleman in an impartial spirit, and I hope he will meet us in the same manner.
  *MR. PLUNKET: I think the hon. Member will see that I could not give the undertaking which he asks for without consulting my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House (Mr. W. H. Smith) and the Members of the Government. I can assure the hon. Member that it will be a great relief to me personally

  47
  to have the responsibility of settling this question taken off my shoulders. I can, however, under present circumstances, only say that I will submit his suggestion to my colleagues. If they should come to a conclusion unfavourable to his contention, it will, of course, be in his power to raise the question again on a future occasion.
  *MR. CREMER: Under the circumstances, I shall, with the permission of the Committee, withdraw my Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. H. GARDNER: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner of Works (Mr. Plunket) whether any decision has been come to with regard to extending the electric lighting in the British Museum, and also with regard to opening the Museum at night?
  *MR. JACKSON: It has been decided to extend the electric lighting in the British Museum, and to make the experiment of leaving the Museum open at night.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: I understood that a promise was made that the first experiment in opening after nightfall was to be in the Natural History Museum.
  *MR. JACKSON: No; it was not.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: Well, words were used which almost amounted to a promise. Before I sit down, I want to make one protest against the philippic with which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Plunket) commenced the discussion in reference to the alleged obstruction of the proceedings of the House. It seems to me that the occasion chosen by the right hon. Gentleman for making that speech was singularly inappropriate. Yesterday, hon. Members, in their generosity, assisted the Government to the point of dereliction of duty, and allowed a large number of Votes to pass without one word, in order to facilitate the progress of the business of the House.
  MR. CONYBEARE: This is not the first time that the right hon. Gentleman has chosen to deliver a philippic against us on the score of obstruction. We protest against such insinuations. I was last night only absent from the House for a short time, and I was perfectly alarmed when
  48
  I came back and found how much progress had been made. It may be very pleasant for the Government to rush through the Estimates, but it is not the business of hon. Members to allow Vote after Vote to be obained without consideration.
  MR. PHILIPPS: I wish to know whether the Item for Official Residences in this Vote is a very heavy one?
  *MR. PLUNKET: There is no exceptional change this year in connection with the Official Residences.
  *MR. CREMER: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question with reference to the supply of furniture and articles of a domestic character. I want to know who supplies the furniture? Last year there was some suspicion that the furniture was supplied by some particular firm who was favoured with the orders of the Government, and a pledge was given that in future the various furniture contractors should be invited to supply it by tender. I should like to know whether that promise has been fulfilled, and whether the same principle applies to all other Government Departments?
  *MR. PLUNKET: I promised last year that I would make out a list of firms who might tender. I had such a list made, but I have never been asked to produce it to the House.
  MR. HANBURY: The point is this. Is the supply of furniture open to competition or not? An hon. Member who is connected with a very large firm has told me that that firm was never allowed to be put on the list, and it seems to me that the list is founded too much on favouritism.
  *MR. PLUNKET: We are only too glad to have the competition of all the good firms. I can now, if it is desired, give the names of the firms that have been invited to tender, and I shall be glad to add the names of any other firms that the hon. Member may suggest.
  *MR. CREMER: I hear with some amazement that the system, though an improvement on the old one, is still that of a close corporation, and that the firms placed on the list are selected. All the firms should in my opinion be invited to tender.
  MR. CONYBEARE: Does the right hon. Gentleman refuse to state that he-will consider the possibility of advertising

  49
  in the ordinary manner, so that all the firms may tender? If so, will he give us any satisfactory reason why he considers that cannot be done?
  *MR. PLUNKET: Any firm of any strength or solvency that applies to us shall be added to the list; but I do no care about throwing the matter open to public competition, because we then might have tenders from insolvent firms.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  (3.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £23,702, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1890, for Diplomatic and Consular Buildings, including Rents and Furniture, and for the maintenance of certain Cemeteries Abroad."
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I think we are entitled to complain of the large sum, £4,200, required for the Embassy House at Paris, and it is a question whether we are wise in buying such buildings. I think we ought to make proper allowances to our Ministers abroad, and leave them to take what houses they like and furnish them for themselves. I have no complaint to make of Lord Lytton personally, but I find that whenever a new Ambassador is appointed he is not content with the Embassy House as he finds it, but requires structural improvements which are very costly. In this case there are three items—£2,300 for structural repairs; £500 for ordinary maintenance and repairs; and £1,400 for renewal of decorations and furniture. I do not know whether the Committee is aware that when a gentleman is appointed au Ambassador he receives an outfit. But for what does he receive It? It is in order that he may do up his house and make all necessary arrangements for occupying it. I think we ought to put our foot down upon this constantly recurring expenditure for alterations and repairs. If we give our Ambassador a house he ought to take it as it is, and do all that is necessary to repair and maintain it—having, as it were, a kind of repairing lease while he remains in it. The Embassy House at Paris is a very fine and large building, and costs the country an enormous sum of money. If sold or let it would realize £5,000 or
  50
  £6,000 per annum. For my part, if I could, I would do away with Ambassadors everywhere, but, under any circumstances, I do not think it is necessary to expend a large sum of money in keeping up houses for them. I beg to move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £3,000 in respect of the Embassy at Paris.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item I, Paris, of £4,200, be reduced by £3,000."—(Mr. Labouchere.)
  MR. A. WILLIAMS: Can the First Commissioner of Works give the Committee any idea of what the original cost of the house was? £4,200 is required this year to keep it in repair, but what was the original cost?
  *MR. PLUNKET: I cannot, at this moment, give the original cost. The date of the purchase goes back as far as 1814. But with regard to the point raised by the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), it is, no doubt, a question whether our Embassies generally should be provided with houses, or have an allowance given them to provide houses for themselves. But there are some capitals in which all are agreed that our Ambassadors should have houses provided for them, and such a capital is Paris. The French have provided their Ambassadors in every great capital with houses to live in and represent the country at the same time. As to the increase of the charge for the Embassy at Paris, it arises from the circumstance that the late Lord Lyons was a man of very simple habits, and he only made use of a very small part of the Embassy House. It was discovered when his successor was appointed that even the rooms which Lord Lyons had inhabited were in a very bad state of repair. I thought it right to send over to Paris two of my most experienced surveyors, and it was found that a great part of the house was in an absolutely dangerous condition, and was almost falling to pieces. Very considerable structural repairs were necessary, as to several of the floors and ceilings. The timber in some parts was found to be seriously affected by dry rot. That is the real explanation of the increased charge for repairs. Hon. Members may rest satisfied that the greatest possible care has been taken to reduce the expense.
  MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: The right hon. Gentleman has given the Committee a description of the repairs which have been executed, and it would appear that nothing has been done which was not actually necessary. It is absolutely necessary that a large amount of money should be expended, in order to prevent the decay of this very fine building, which was bought at the Peace of Paris. I believe that it is true economy to maintain the building property, and I shall be glad to support the Vote.
  MR. LEGH: Speaking from some experience, I may say that, unless a considerable sum is spent upon this building, it would, in a short time, tumble to pieces. The only alternative plan to the voting of large sums of money for structural repairs is that the present site should be sold. Posssibly as good a site might be obtained elsewhere. Personally, however, I should be very reluctant to part with the present Embassy House, which, both in its situation and in every other respect, is suitable to all requirements.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I hope that the Committee will not be deluded by the arguments which have been advanced. My hon. Friend says that this a very old house, and something must be done every year to keep it in order. The Committee ought to know, however, that a sum of £500 a year has been devoted every year to the maintenance of this house for a long term of years. By referring to the Estimate the Committee will perceive that a sum of £1,400 is required for the renewal of decorations and furniture, and last year a similar sum was expended for the same purpose, including ordinary maintenance and repairs. Surely that sum ought to have been sufficient to keep the house going, and if dry rot has got into the building somebody ought to be punished for it. What becomes of the money spent every year for ordinary maintenance and repairs and the renewal of decorations and furniture? The fact is, as I have said, that these houses cost too much. If you spend £500 per annum in keeping a house in structural repair, it ought to be sufficient. Whenever a new Ambassador is sent out upon a new mission there is always this expenditure. In this case we are told it is the dry rot;
  52
  but it is the Ambassador. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Legh) has thrown out an excellent suggestion, namely—that we shall sell this house if we can get £200,000 for it. In that event I should be willing to enter into a contract to lodge the Ambassador, and lodge him well, for £2,000 a year. The whole of this extra expenditure is due to the change of Ambassador, and I think we ought to protest against it. When an Ambassador is appointed he gets an outfit of £2,000 to enable him to purchase spoons, but it is a sum which really goes into his pocket, and, in my opinion, it ought to be done away with.
  MR. A. WILLIAMS: I should like to have some account of the cost of the German Embassy in London and the cost of keeping an Ambassador here. The charges imposed upon the country for our Ambassadors are, in my opinion, perfectly monstrous. We not only give our Ambassador at Paris a house, but we allow him £500 a year to maintain it and keep it in repair. That ought to be an ample allowance.
  *SIR J. GOLDSMID: I have had the opportunity of having considerable experience in maintaining large houses, and I think it is a wise policy to buy houses and not to rent them. The Embassy House at Paris was bought at an extremely low price, and is now of far greater value than the price we paid for it. It is suggested that we should sell it. That is not the principle on which we ought to proceed. Our Ambassador at Paris ought undoubtedly to be suitably lodged, and for keeping up this particular house £500 a-year is by no means excessive. Moreover, it must be remembered that the expenditure does not depend on the Ambassador, but on the gentleman sent over from the Office of Works, who has to decide from time to time what ought to be done. I think the sum asked for is moderate, and I do not think the matter is one which ought to be dealt with in a niggardly spirit.
  MR. H. GARDNER: Allow me to point out that the principal part of the Vote is for structural repairs and alterations, and only £500 for ordinary maintenance and repairs. I agree with the hon. Member behind me that it would be much better to purchase Ambassadorial residences than to hire them. I am afraid that

  53
  the hon. Member for Northampton would find it very expensive to hire residences for our Ambassadors. It is much better that the houses should, as far as possible, be purchased, and not hired.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: There is one weak point in the argument of the hon. Member for South St. Pancras (Sir J. Goldsmid). Although £500 a year may not be an excessive sum to pay for ordinary maintenance and repair, it ought to be sufficient, if properly applied, without necessitating further expenditure.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 121; Noes 228.—(Div. List, No. 68.)
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: The next item in this Vote is for the Embassy at Rome; and here we have another Ambassador who is putting the country to extra expenditure. The ordinary expenditure is £250 for maintenance and repairs of the Rom an Embassy, but here we have a charge of £500 for renewal of furniture and decorations, and a further charge of £250 for a new entrance and approaches to the Embassy House. I have watched this outlay in Rome for some time. If I remember rightly, when our first Minister went there, the charge was £500 a year for a house. But in course of time he became an Ambassador, and, as a matter of course, an Ambassador, having a large salary, wants to spread himself out. It was then thought necessary that he should have a special house, and we first of all bought the site and inclosed the ground. We gave a large amount for the site, and devoted a large amount for the house. Then we decorated the house and furnished it. After that the Ambassador cast his eye on a garden, that which was attached to the house not being deemed large enough. Then it was said that there was a wood near the garden, and somebody might build a house in the wood that would overlook the garden, and now we have the result of all this in the approaches—I daresay, through the woods. I think the time has come when a stop must be put to all this, and when we must bring home to the Foreign Office the necessity of telling our Ambassadors, when they are sent out to their Embassies, that they must
  54
  really accommodate themselves to the house, and not have the house rearranged in order that it may be accommodated to them. The expenditure here is very large, this year being £1,000 in excess of the ordinary outlay. I remember that when we bought the house we were told it was structurally so well built, and that the furniture was so excellent, that we had made a great bargain, and we should not be called on to spend any large sum of money on either for years to come; and yet, in a very few years, we are called on to spend £500 for renewal of furniture and decorations. All this is mere waste, and I, for one, do not share the opinion of the Chief Commissioner of Works that the country looks with indignation on those who move reductions of the Estimates. I do not know what the view of those who send the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House to Parliament may be; but I know that portion of the people of this country who send Radical Members to Parliament rather like us to look into the Estimates. I am not going merely to swallow gnats—I am going to strain at camels and gnats, too; and the view I take is the view of my constituents. If it were not, I should think it my duty to educate them to that view. The only way in which we can induce the Government to meet us in these matters is by constantly calling attention to them — not, perhaps, by taking Divisions, because we never win a Division against the Government; but we know that if we keep to our point, whenever an Ambassador wants to make au extra expenditure, the Government say to him, "Pray do not ask for it, or we shall be having a great deal of bother with those miserable Radicals." I beg to move, Sir, that this Vote be reduced by the sum of £1,000.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item J., Rome, of £1,250, be reduced by £1,000."—(Mr. Labouchere.)
  *MR. PLUNKET: There has undoubtedly been the increase which has been pointed out in this Vote, but I think I can satisfy the Committee that it is necessary. The fact is that the Embassy House at Rome happens to be in a part of the city in which there has of late years

  55
  been a great deal of improvement and building going on, and the entrance, which has hitherto been in the front, was in a very narrow street, and was found, under the altered circumstances, to be neither convenient nor suitable for those who had business at the Embassy. That is the reason why this extra expenditure in regard to the entrance has been incurred. With regard to what the hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton has said about the furniture, it must be remembered that that furniture was bought twelve years ago, and that is a considerable period. As the matter has been carefully looked into by the Surveyor, I hope the Committee will agree that the expenditure has been necessary, and will refuse to accept the Amendment.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: On the last occasion I voted with the hon. Member for Northampton, on the general principle, when in doubt vote against the Government. On this occasion I cannot vote with him, for I consider this a very moderate sum charged for the Embassy in Rome, in connection with which there is no unnecessary ostentation. Now, when I went to see the Ambassador, I must say that the approach to the Embassy was not of an extensive or ostentatious character; in fact, when I came to the door, I hesitated to knock, thinking I had made a mistake, and that it was not the door of the Ambassador. I do not think an expenditure of £250 or £500 is a large amount to spend upon the entrance to the Embassy in the country of our good Allies the Italians.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Twelve years ago we spent £250 in making that door, and now we have to spend £250 on another new door, in order that my hon. Friend may walk through it. I hope there was no attempt at a covert attack by hospitality on the virtue of my hon. Friend. But I am very much afraid that it is the case. I was brought up in the Diplomatic Service, and we were always pestered at that time by Englishmen coming, and they used to have letters from the Foreign Office. We used to call them soup tickets. We used to give them a dinner. We found that if we did not give them a dinner there was some trouble in the House of Commons. I hope my hon. Friend has not
  56
  been seduced from that stern virtue which characterizes him by one of these soup tickets. We have before us for the last 12 years all the expenditure in regard to these Embassies. The Chief Commissioner of Works admits that this expenditure would not have been incurred but for the change of Ambassadors. I believe it is admitted that while Lord Savile was at Rome he kept a very good Embassy; but if an Ambassador chooses to have an extra number of children or servants, I do not see why the country should pay for them. I suppose what was sufficient for the late Ambassador ought to be sufficient for the present.
  *MR. OSBORNE MORGAN: I, too, have been to Rome, and, like my hon. Friend, I went to the British, Embassy. I can assure the hon. Member that I did not enjoy, and, therefore, was in no way corrupted by the hospitality which he seems so much afraid of. But I am bound to say that there was a general opinion among the English there that their Embassy was the shabbiest in the place. I do not think the expenditure is at all extravagant, and that it meets strictly the needs of the case.
  DR. TANNER: Before this is put, might I draw a comparison between the expenditure at Washington and that at Rome? The expenditure we are called upon to pass in connection with the Embassy at Rome is £1,250; when we turn to Washington, the capital of the United States, I think that the simplicity which is practised in Washington should be observed at our other Embassies in the interests of the taxpayers of this country.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 102; Noes 246.—(Div. List, No. 69.)
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVREI wish to call attention to the item of £9.000 for building a new Consulate a Tangier. I observe that the old building is expected to fetch £4,500. I have never been to Tangier, but I have always been led to believe that the Legation is one of the best houses in the place, and perfectly suitable for the Consul General who resides there. It has been occupied for many years by Sir Henry Drummond Hay. Inasmuch as last year the Committee rejected a

  57
  proposal for building a new Legation at Cairo in place of the present one, and as I understand the present Legation at Tangier is a very good one, I move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £2,000, for the purpose of giving the First Commissioner an opportunity of explaining the item.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item S., £2,195, Tangier, be omitted from the proposed Vote."—(Mr. Shaw Lefevre.)
  *MR. PLUNKET: It is quite clear from the Report of the Surveyor—a most trustworthy and competent public servant — who has reported on this building at Tangiers, that it would be impossible to oblige the Minister to reside in the old house in its present state. The Surveyor reports that it is surrounded by high buildings; that some of the outhouses and the gaol are in an insanitary condition; that the office accommodation is insufficient; and that, structurally, it is not capable of improvement; that there is no suitable house or site to be had inside the town, and the only alternative, therefore, is to purchase a site and build a house on the high ground outside. That will cost about £9,000; but that sum will be reduced by the £4,500 which, it is expected, will be obtained for the old building. I may mention that Sir Drummond Hay had resided in a villa of his own outside the town while Consul General there, and did not live at the Consulate except for about one month in the winter.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: I do not wish to press the Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question again proposed.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I should like to ask the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs a question as to the meaning of Subhead "T," under which there seems to have been a large purchase of land adjoining the site of the Consulate of Zanzibar. Does it mean that Her Majesty's Government are going to have a larger Consulate, in consequence of their increased activity in that part of the world?
  MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: The item for a new building at Tangier is a large one; and I cannot
  58
  help thinking that every argument that can be adduced in favour of the State providing a permanent residence for its Ministers in North Africa applies much more strongly to the building at Cairo than to that at Tangier. There has been an amount of shilly-shallying on the part of Her Majesty's Government in their policy in regard to the establishment of a suitable residence for our Consul General at Cairo, which is not inconsistent with the character of their general policy in Egypt. A site was bought for a new residence, but it was not made use of, no buildings being erected upon it. The French Consul in Cairo lives in a palace, whilst ours has to hire a building as best he may; and. altogether, if there is a central locality in which it is desirable for the British Representative to live in respectable style, and where it is desirable that we should build a residence for him, I should select Cairo as that locality. With regard to the Consulate at Zanzibar, I should like to ask whether it is maintained there for any useful purpose? We see that Count Herbert Bismarck has just paid a visit to this country, and that Colonel Euan Smith has been recalled on leave, doubtless to consult Her Majesty's Government as to our policy in Zanzibar—
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order The hon. Member is not entitled, on the question of Consular residences, to enter into the policy pursued by Her Majesty's Government.
  MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: I was going to ask whether, under the circumstances, it was worth while maintaining Consular buildings at all in that part of Africa? However, I will not pursue that matter any further.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: In continuation of what has been said by my hon. Friend as to the provision of a residence for the Consul General in Cairo, I beg to say I am one of the last men anxious to make our residence in Egypt more permanent than it is at present. I should like to see Her Majesty's Government quit Egypt bag and baggage, but whether we leave it or not we have important interests in that country, and it is right that our Representative should be properly housed. Our Representative at Cairo lives in a hired house, of the unhealthiness of which he has reason to complain, his

  59
  wife and children having been ill there. The French Consulate—and I speak with knowledge on the matter, having made a visit to Cairo—is a magnificent palace; and though I do not desire to see this country attempt to rival French magnificence, I think it behoves us to see that our Representative at Cairo has a proper and healthy residence. Our position in Cairo is so difficult owing to the Capitulations and the difficulty of punishing foreigners, that it has been found impossible to establish a decent sanitary system there—
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order!
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: I think I have shown, Sir, that I am coming to the point. On account of the insanitary condition of Cairo, the hired house: there are all unhealthy. Our Consul General lives in one of these, with the result I have mentioned. I understand that a Vote was brought forward by the Government to test the willingness of the House to build a residence for the Consul General at Cairo, and why that residence has not been built I do not know. I do not wish to take up any position that would seem to imply that I favour extravagance, but having been in Egypt, and having visited the Consulate, I do think there is a primâ facie case for providing the Consul General with a respectable residence.
  DR. FARQUHARSON: I am able to speak from some experience of the insanitary conditions of the houses in Cairo, and especially of the house of Sir E. Baring, which is something of the whited sepulchre class, and which may, one of these days, contain dead men's bones. It is important that in Eastern countries some decent state should be kept up.
  SIR W. T. MARRIOTT: Some time ago Sir E. Baring might have had a piece of land at a very reasonable cost, but the opportunity passed, and now he lives in a very insanitary house. Our Representative, especially in such a country as Egypt, ought to be as well housed as the Representative of any other country.
  *MR. H. H. FOWLER: I trust that the Committee will not allow itself to be influenced by Gentlemen who have been recently in Cairo, and have probably enjoyed the hospitality of Sir E. Baring. The hon. Member for Kirk-
  60
  caldy must have forgotten his facts. This question was raised several years ago, and the Cabinet decided, after most careful consideration, that it would be unwise to build a house in Cairo. A change of Government took place, and negotiations were entered into for the purchase of a piece of land for £5,000, but, in view of the feeling in this House on the subject, the Government decided not to build a house, which decision met with the approval of both sides. It is now sought by a sort of side wind to raise a question which really involves the subject of increasing the Estimate. This matter has come upon us with surprise. With regard to it I hold a contrary opinion to the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I believe these houses are extravagant in their inception, their completion, and their maintenance. I remember fighting about the question of a house in Berlin. We were assured that £50,000 would be sufficient, but the £50,000 grew to £70,000, and that to £100,000. In every one of these cases it would be far better to hire a house. I am only expressing my own opinion in this matter, but, certainly, this Cairo question was fully considered and settled on a previous occasion.
  *MR. PLUNKET: I will not go into the question of a new Consulate at Cairo, which is not now the subject under debate, that matter having already been discussed last year, when it was, for the time at least, decided in deference to the strong expression of opinion on the part of the House. As to Zanzibar, the money asked for for the purchase of land has nothing whatever to do with the general policy of this country in that part of the world. The Consulate is situated close to the shore. There is a piece of land in front of it, which, if not acquired by us, would be acquired by other people, and, if it were built on, the sea breeze would be excluded from the Consulate, which in that climate would render it impossible to occupy the house.
  *MR. CHILDERSI desire to ask a question as to the item for cemeteries. There has been some difficulty with the Italian authorities in regard to the cemetery at Rome, and the subject is one in which many Members of the House take great interest. Will

  61
  the Under Secretary of State be good enough to tell us whether the matter is satisfactorily settled?
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON,): In the course of municipal improvement in Rome it was thought desirable that a broad road should be made, which required for its completion that a part of the Protestant cemetery should be taken. Representations were made to the municipal authorities on behalf of England, and these were backed up by Germany, who had sympathy with the desire of this country to prevent the remains of Keats and Severn, and other celebrated Englishmen from being disturbed. The Italian Government were appealed to and the municipality of Rome, and eventually it was arranged that certain remains would be removed with all respect, but that those of celebrated Englishmen would be enclosed suitably and handsomely. All difficulties being removed, Her Majesty's Government expressed their acknowledgments both to the Italian and German Governments in the matter for the assistance given in preserving memorials very dear to many people in this country.
  MR. A. PEASE: I should like to ask for an explanation of au Item under one of the sub-heads of this Vote—namely, for the Consulate in the Nyassa district at Zomba, the Item being £50. I am under the impression that there is no Consulate at Zomba, and that there has not been one there for some time past. As we are not likely to have one there in the immediate future I do not think the House should be asked to vote money in this way.
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: There is no intention to abolish the Consulate at Nyassa. It is somewhat of a Consulate in partibus, as we have no territorial jurisdiction, and do not exercise a protectorate, but it is thought desirable to continue the Consulate in order to maintain law amongst the British residents of whom there is a small community which it is hoped will continue to flourish. The Consul is, however, temporarily employed at Zanzibar. There are not only the ordinary Consular Courts there, but also a Vice-Admiralty Court, and great additional labour has been thrown upon
  62
  the Consular staff owing to the blockade and the operations which have been carried out for the suppression of the Slave Trade.
  DR. CAMERON: The impression prevails in Scotland that if ever a Consul could be wanted anywhere it is at Nyassa. There is no spot in the world where it is more important we should have a Consul than at Nyassa, and I think we ought to mark our disapprobation of the withdrawal of the Consul at such a juncture as the present by moving to reduce the Vote.
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: I am able to give an explanation which will, per-to haps, induce the hon. Member not move his proposed Amendment. The Consul at Nyassa had been allowed a short and well-earned leave of absence, and on coming back to his post he has been placed for a time at Zanzibar, for the reasons I have mentioned.. During his absence the duties of the Consulate at Nyassa are ably discharged by the oldest and a most respected resident, Mr. Buchanan. It is very often necessary in remote places that Consuls should be temporarily replaced by well-known and respectable residents, and I feel sure that British interests have not at all suffered by the temporary discharge of the duties by Mr. Buchanan. The hon. Member may rest assured that there is no intention of withdrawing permanently the Consul.
  DR. CAMERON: What is the status of Mr. Buchanan?
  THE CHAIRMAN: This discussion is quite irregular.
  DR. TANNER: I should like some explanation of the items under Subhead 7.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order That sub-head has been passed over. The hon. Member cannot recur to it.
  DR. TANNER: I should like your ruling, Sir, upon one point. We have discussed the cost of the Embassy at Paris. In the course of his remarks the First Commissioner of Works made certain statements as to money spent upon the Paris Embassy. While he was speaking I went to the Library to look up certain facts, and when I returned I found the matter had been disposed of. I should like to know whether it is not possible for me to

  63
  lay the facts and figures I have collected before the Committee.
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member cannot recur to the item.
  Original Question put, and agreed to.
  (4.) £8,286, to complete the sum for Harbours, &c., under the Board of Trade.
  MR. T. E. ELLIS: Upon this Vote I should like to ask the Government whether they have yet made up their minds with regard to the completion of the Holyhead Harbour? The work of constructing the harbour has been going on for 50 years, and has cost the nation something over a million and a half sterling. The harbour is a remarkably fine and even magnificent one. It affords every year refuge to between 2,000 and 3,000 vessels, but it is not yet finished, and its want of completeness greatly lessens its value as a harbour of refuge. It comprises 267 acres, but of these 50 acres are rendered completely unavailable for ships during storms, because the rocks at the entrance have not been removed. The clearing away of these rocks was part of the original design of the Government, and I think it has been repeatedly urged, not merely by the great Steamship Companies, but by the engineers of the Government, who have from time to time reported on the harbour, that the work should be taken in hand. I brought the question up two years ago, and in reply the then Representative of the Board of Trade admitted it would be a great advantage if the work could be completed in the manner suggested. The present President of the Board of Trade (Sir M. Hicks Beach) last year, in answer to a deputation, admitted it would be a great advantage if the work were to be undertaken. What I desire to ask the right hon. Gentleman is whether the Government will undertake that the work shall be taken in hand without delay? It may be an expensive matter, but the work will have to be done, and the sooner the better. The right hon. Gentleman has said that Sir John Hawkshaw estimates the cost of the work at £250,000. I have it on very good authority that this is an exaggerated estimate, and if the right hon. Gentleman still adheres to Sir John Hawkshaw's Report, I have to ask that he will lay it on the Table of the House, so that it may be examined
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,): I am sorry I have nothing to add to what I said on this subject last year. I do not at all deny that the removal of the rocks would be an advantage to the harbour of refuge at Holyhead, but I cannot admit that the removal of them can be effected for as little as the hon. Member supposes. My predecessor in office obtained an estimate of the cost of the work, and it amounted to a quarter of a million sterling. I cannot recommend that the work should be undertaken at such a cost as that. I have no reason to suppose that the estimate of Sir John Hawkshaw is too great, but, as I said to the deputation which waited upon me last year, if anyone can show me any ground for believing that the work can be more cheaply done, I shall be very glad to consider it. The estimate was made before I went to the Board of Trade, and I do not quite know the circumstances under which it was obtained.
  DR. TANNER: I should like some explanation of the item of £3,000 for the repair and maintenance of the wooden pier at Holyhead. This seems to be an expenditure which has been incurred annually, and I should like to know how long it has to last? Residing as I do in a seaport town, where there are a large number of such wooden structures, I know that they cost a good deal. The expenditure of this money annually seems to me to be wilfully throwing money away.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: in the case of the Dover Harbour, I see that the resident engineer gets a house, and salary and allowances, amounting to £900 a year. Besides this officer, there is a piermaster, and many other officials. We ought to be told something about this resident engineer. I do not see that at Holyhead there is a resident engineer, but I find a harbour master instead, who receives £450 a year. I should think the piermaster at Dover and his assistants could do all the work that is required.
  *SIR M. HICKS BEACH: The resident engineer at Dover has other work besides attending to the Pier. But if the hon. Member will look at the opposite page of the Estimates, he will see that the Dover Pier more than

  65
  pays for itself. With regard to the pointraised by the hon. Member for Mid-Cork, I am afraid that the expenditure of £3,000 upon the wooden pier at Holy-head is necessary, though it may seem very heavy.
  DR. TANNER: There is another item in regard to which I would like a word of explanation. There is at Holyhead a Superintendent of Works who receives £300 a year. There are no works going on there. Is this another sinecure for some supporter of Her Majesty's Government?
  *SIR M. HICKS BEACH: Holyhead is a very expensive harbour to keep up. The breakwater requires continual watching, and I am sure the salary of this gentleman is well earned.
  MR. O'HEA: All the items in this Vote seem to be very extravagant, and to indicate a strong tendency towards jobbery. I am perfectly certain that if there was no sum on the Estimates for the Holyhead Harbour, the London and North-Western Rail way Company would find it incumbent upon them and to their interest to keep the harbour up.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: It is no answer to us to say that Dover Harbour pays for itself. If it pays, so much better for us. I see that £1,200 is set down for repair to the harbour, gas, &c. I suppose we may safely take the repairs at £800; therefore we actually pay a resident engineer £900 for looking after repairs which do not cost more than £800. If that is not monstrous I do not know what is.
  Vote agreed to.
  Resolutions to be reported to-morrow; Committee to sit again to-morrow.

  SUPPLY—REPORT.
  Resolutions [8th April] reported.
CIVIL SERVICES.

  CLASS I.
  (1.) "That a sum, not exceeding £36,379, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Buildings of the Houses of Parliament."
  (2.) "That a sum, not exceeding £110,824, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Maintenance and Repair of Public Buildings in Great Britain, including various special Works; for providing
  66
  the necessary supply of Water; for Rents of Houses hired for the accommodation of Public Departments, and Charges attendant thereon."
  (3). "That a sum, not exceeding £4,500, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Extension of the Admiralty Buildings."
  (4.) "That a sum, not exceeding £12,800, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Supply and Repair of Furniture in the Public Departments of Great Britain."
  (5.) "That a sum, not exceeding £210,614, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Customs, Inland Revenue, Post Office, and Post Office Telegraph Buildings in Great Britain, including Furniture, Fuel, and sundry Miscellaneous Services."
  (6.) "That a sum, not exceeding £24,740, granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for New Buildings for County Courts, Maintenance and Repair of Courts, supply of Furniture, Fuel, &c., and for Charges attendant thereon."
  (7.) "That a sum, not exceeding £22,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st of March, 1890, for the Metropolitan Police Court Buildings."
  (8.) "That a sum, not exceeding £6,717, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for one-half of the expense of Erecting or Improving Court Houses or Offices for the Sheriff Courts in Scotland, and for the Government contribution towards the cost of Maintaining Courts so Erected or Improved."
  (9.)"That a sum, not exceeding £175,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1890, for the Survey of the United Kingdom, including the revision of the Survey of Ireland, Maps for use in proceedings before the Land Judges in Ireland, publication of Maps, and engraving the Geological Survey."
  Resolutions read a second time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the First Resolution:"
  *MR. H. H. FOWLER: I want to ask one question with reference to the re-arrangements for the convenience of Members which my right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works said yesterday he is going to

  67
  make in consequence of the alterations in Westminster Hall. All the First Commissioners of Works for many years past have been smokers, and therefore they have been predisposed to take a favourable view of the representations made to them by hon. Members who indulged in the habit of smoking as to the accommodation for smokers. But there are many Members of the House who do not smoke, and I should like to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether he will not have some compassion on such inferior beings in any rearrangements he may make. My right hon. Friend the late First Commissioner of Works, held out to us the prospect of a new room in the Lobby leading to the House of Lords; but he had no sooner made the promise than it was rescinded, and the room devoted to the purposes of a Grand Committee. There is really no reasonable accommodation for the non-smokers, and it has occurred to me that the present Tea Room might be converted into a News Room and the present News Room turned into a Tea Room. I know the right hon. Gentleman is most anxious to promote the convenience of all sections of Members, but he always seems to be overcome by the arguments of the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere), who sympathizes with smokers and who is so powerful on such questions as this.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I can speak quite impartially, because I am at once a smoker and a tea drinker; but I do protest against the suggestion that we should give up the Tea Room to my right hon. Friend to read newspapers in. We had a claim on that room and we gave it up on account of the late Mr. Beresford Hope. If the right hon. Gentleman would desire to see the place where the smokers are sent to he would realize the fact that the smokers are really worse off than the tea drinkers. I trust that if the right hon. Gentleman does consult the tea drinkers in any re-arrangements he will also consult the smokers, and if I can act as a go-between in the matter I shall he only too glad.
  *MR. PLUNKET: If it will facilitate a settlement of the matter I shall certainly avail myself of the invitation of the hon. Member for Northampton. I desire to consult with all the different sections of Members, and I will try to
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  make the new rooms go as far as possible.
  MR. W. M'ARTHUR: I wish to recur to a question I put to the right hon. Gentleman last night. I find in the Estimate for the Houses of Parliament there is a charge of £2,000 for oil lamps used in the building. As far as I can reckon the cost ought not to exceed £150 to £200. The right hon. Gentleman told me the great cost arose from the fact that we had to hire the lamps. I should like to know where the lamps are hired, and what is paid for their hire?
  *MR. PLUNKET: I have asked for information, and if the hon. Member will put a question in the House on the subject I will be glad to answer it.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I should like the right hon. Gentleman to endeavour to improve the accommodation afforded in the Ladies' Dining Room. The present accommodation for ladies is extremely inadequate. On one occasion when I was anxious to obtain the use of a table I found all the accommodation had been taken up a long time previously. There is no limit to the number of guests one Member may invite to dine in the room. I do not complain of that, but I think if there are any additional rooms to be placed at the disposal of Members it is only fair to Members and their lady friends that some better accommodation for ladies should be provided.
  DR. TANNER: I think we are entitled to some answer on the subject raised by my hon. Friend. I very seldom entered the Ladies' Dining Room until the present year. Now I have sometimes to make use of the room and I invariably find the tables are taken up by supporters of Her Majesty's Government. I suggest that a book should be kept to show who are the monopolists of the tables night after night.
  It being Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned.

MOTIONS.

  HOME RULE FOR SCOTLAND.
  DR. CLARK: In moving the Resolution that stands in my name let me say at once that that Resolution

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  does not mean separation. I have no desire to repeal the Union between England and Scotland, and I think that Union has been mutually beneficial—a good thing for Scotland, but a better thing for England. Since the Union our great Colonial Empire has been developed, and that Empire has been as much built up by Scottish blood and treasure as by English. More than that I, knowing something of our Colonies, have no hesitation in saying the present prosperity is to a large extent due to the industry and intelligence of Scotchmen in the Colonies. All I want is that we should keep all the benefits we have under the Union without any of its disadvantages, and I think we can attain this without affecting the Union in any way whatever. I frankly admit that, although my Motion is based mainly on practical considerations, there is a sentimental basis for the growing Home Rule movement in Scotland. We Scotchmen are all proud of our country and of our country's history. We do not think we have anything to be ashamed of, and even an English historian, anti-Home Rule Mr. Froude, gives praise to Scotland such as a Scotchman probably would not, when he coupled her name with Judea and Greece. An attempt is made here to ignore Scotch nationality. We hear of the English Government, and the Minister is not called to order for the expression. Why, only the other day the Secretary for War spoke of the English troops he was sending to Egypt, the Scottish Borderers. I notice the hon. Member for East Renfrew has an Amendment to my Resolution. I saw a report of a speech made last year to his constituents; and in that speech he speaks of Scotch Members feeling insulted by the way their nationality is ignored or treated with contempt. I only wish he would call some of his leaders to order when they so insult his nationality; and if he used here strong language similar to that he used when he addressed his constituents, then perhaps the attempts to ignore our old nationality would stop. I for one feel that there is no incongruity in the possession of these strong national feelings, with broad cosmopolitan sympathies. The main practical ground on which I urge this Motion is that Scotch business is neglected. In support of that conten-
  70
  tion I may cite the Education Question. Scotland had to wait until England had a national system of education before she could get her educational system revised, and then it was revised on English lines. In adjusting the local burdens it is the landlord who gets the advantage. Another important measure is the Public Health and Police Bill. We have confusion, anarchy, and chaos in mingled jurisdiction in Scotland, owing to the disgraceful state of our Public Health Law, but the House has never had time to deal with this subject, and so anarchy continues. There are thousands of preventible deaths every year in Scotland in consequence of our disgraceful Public Health Act. The Scotch Universities Bill, too, has been brought in last year for the sixth time, but not passed. No doubt hon. Members may say it might have been passed; but when? Between the stages of the Appropriation Bill, and on the terms that all the burning questions connected with it should be referred to a Commission altogether out of harmony with Scotch feeling on the subject. Not only has Scotland to complain of neglect of her business in that House, but she has also to complain that Scotch opinion is overwhelmed by uneducated English opinion. Hon. Members vote at the bidding of the Whips on Scotch questions when they know as much of Scotch politics as they do of the politics of the moon. Take another question which stands first on the Orders of the Day, and which probably will not be considered this Session, and upon which we have been unable to get a decision for five years. My hon. Friend in charge of the Liquor Traffic Veto Bill attempted to get a vote upon it, but it was blocked by an English Member. Probably, even if we had a discussion, the settlement would be upon English lines, our views on the Scotch Liquor Question being overridden. Another question is that of Church Disestablishment. Whenever this comes up, as it does in the form of abstract Resolution, we find Scotch opinion in its favour represented by 38 to 18—such were the figures last year, but we are overwhelmed by the votes of English Members, who vote for the continuance of what they, as Episcopalians, must consider a schismatic Church. There are many such instances, but an affection of the throat from which I am

  71
  suffering prevents me doing justice to the subject. But I must say a word on the financial relations between England and Scotland. Here we have been treated very badly. We cannot complain of being taxed more per head than Englishmen, because that is due to the high tax on our whisky; but on that point, too, we are unfairly dealt with, for while Scotch whisky is taxed 10s. on the alcoholic gallon, English whisky is taxed 2s. 6d. only. We have not the advantages Ireland has, we have no camps and no docks in Scotland, although we could build ships in half the time and at half the cost on the Clyde. Nor is there any arsenal, although I believe there is to be one established near Stirling. The sums voted for local purposes, the sums paid to officials are on a lower scale than in England, though we are going to have some redress on this point at last, and the Lord Advocate is going to devote the money he receives from the Probate Grant to Free Education; but if Scotland received from the State for local purposes as much proportionately as England and Ireland got, Scotland could give Free Education, and would have money to spare for other purposes. But I want the House to look at this question from a broader standpoint. Supposing we had no grievance at all, supposing that instead of being treated unfairly, we had been treated on equitable terms, what is our position? It must be admitted that the House does its work very badly and inadequately, and that something is required to be done to enable Parliament to discharge its duty to the whole country. Every year more work is thrown upon Parliament, and the probability is that the aggregate amount of the work that ought to be done will go on increasing. Everybody, even old Tories on the other side, must admit that some change is necessary. Then what is the remedy to be? It must, I think, take the form of devolution. The Government themselves propose some devolution in their Local Government Bill, referring Private Bill legislation inquiries to a local Commission. For my own part I think that is a bad system, and I do not think it will save the time of the House. It is possible even that more time will be occupied, for probably the Committee discussions
  72
  would be resumed in this House on the Report stage of Private Bills. I think the only solution of the present state of affairs in this House is to have devolution upon lines of nationality, to devolve on each of the national elements of which this great Empire is composed, its own local or national business. This devolution should be two-fold. First legislative. Give to your National. Parliaments, or your National Councils—I do not care what you call them—give to these bodies, not an indefinite something, but something well defined by an Act of this House, the Imperial Parliament still remaining the High Court of Final Appeal in all matters concerning the Empire. But devolve on these National Bodies the powers and functions parallel to those you are going to devolve on County Bodies, and such as you have long devolved on Municipal bodies — powers to act in their own business and with a free hand. If those bodies attempt to go beyond this, the Imperial Parliament can veto the proceedings, but, so far as their powers are conferred, they should have a free hand. As to what these powers shall be, I think we must come to the conclusion that they should consist of the powers which are now possessed by the Scotch Secretary, others that are possessed by the Board of Trade and others by the Board of Works. But, in addition to that, you must give executive responsibilities to these bodies, or you will have this condition of affairs, that the men carrying out the laws passed by these bodies would be under the control of the Imperial Parliament. Now I think, this question of the executive is made a bugbear in the minds of some; but I see no reason why it should be. We do not want an elaborate Executive. I think the Scotch Secretary, supported by the Scotch people, would be sufficient, and the Lord Advocate might be left to devote more time to his practice at the Bar. There must be a Board of Supervision, a Board of Trade and Agriculture, an Education Board, and heads of these departments of course. I think this would be sufficient for carrying on the national work. This seems to me the only solution of our present difficulty—you should do it on the lines of Nationality. The Scotch are a separate nation; we have our separate laws, our

  73
  separate methods of jurisprudence and administration, and our special technical language, which English lawyers cannot understand. Now, is it not far better that our business should be transacted by a body which has some knowledge of these matters than by others who frankly admit they have no knowledge at all on the subject? You have passed special Bills for Ireland, and the claims of Wales cannot be long neglected. The Welsh people will make their demand before long, and you will be no longer able to settle their affairs on English lines. This question of Home Rule can be settled in one of two ways, on the principle of dualism, or by the method of federalism. I have no hesitation in saying that dualism as a basis can never be carried through, and I hope no attempt will be made in that direction. The only solution is that which Mr. Butt proposed many years ago, and it was that proposal which converted me to his Home Rule views in 1874. I am strongly of opinion that the solution of our difficulty lies in the adoption of Mr. Butt's lines. There are several questions that have to be considered in relation to this Home Rule question. The country will never consent to Irish Members being driven out of this House as a consequence of Irish Home Rule, but at the same time I do not think the country would submit to Irish Members, while settling their own National affairs, having a finger in the Scotch and English pie. So under the circumstances it seems to me that we are logically bound, and I have long held this view to have Home Rule all round, and a Federal Parliament representing every section of the Empire. I know Home Rule in Scotland is growing and will grow, though many people try to retard it, and some of our Scotch friends think that pushing forward Scotch Home Rule will retard Irish Home Rule. But I would keep back Home Rule in Scotland for half a-century rather than put off Home Rule in Ireland for a year. Ireland has much more need of it, she has suffered more, and the Irish evil is a national evil to be averted. At the same time, with a growing feeling in Scotland, we can flash the movement. A great number of hon. Members opposite will only look at the Irish Question through their prejudices, but without flatter-
  74
  ing Members, I think I may say they would consider our claim from an intellectual standpoint with less prejudice and more reason. The Home Rule feeling is growing strongly in Scotland as it is in Wales and Ireland, and I hope the time is not far distant when this Parliament will be freed from the discussion of such questions as whether a Scotch Railway Company should have an hotel in Edinburgh, or Belfast have a system of drainage. Other great and Imperial questions will then have a chance of discussion. We have an immense responsibility. We are responsible for the government of a third of the human race—three hundred millions of people look to the House of Commons for guidance. I trust that in the consideration of Home Rule propositions we shall still preserve intact the great Anglo-Saxon Union that has done so much for civilization, that has so much still to do.
  Motion made, and Question proposed
  "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that arrangements be made for giving to the people of Scotland, by their representatives in a National Parliament, the management and control of Scottish affairs."—(Dr Clark.)
  MR. HUNTER: I beg to second the Resolution. There is no question of a political character which has made such extraordinary and rapid progress as this question of Home Rule for Scotland. On August 20, 1886, I think the question of Home Rule for Scotland was raised for the first time, and somewhat casually, in the debate on the Address; but it is remarkable that since then there has been nothing of a sustained agitation in its support by public meetings or in the Press. It has been rather out of sympathy with the general tone of Radical movement, and yet it has an amount of public opinion in its favour that would astound those who have not had the opportunity of ascertaining this. Sir, having made up my mind that Home Rule for Scotland would be beneficial to the country, I decided next to explain my views to my constituency in Aberdeen. I had not the remotest idea how they would receive it, but I discovered very quickly that the constituency was ahead of myself, and that the mass of the people had been tending in the direction of Home Rule to an extent which I should not have thought pos-

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  sible. Indeed, I believe that we shall not have 10 Members returned for Scotland at the next General Election unless they are pledged to Home Rule for Scotland. I do not expect hon. Members opposite to agree with me in that, because the idea is one not altogether pleasant to them. But let me point to the fact that some of the acutest intellects in Scotland at the time of the Act of Union pointed out the great dangers likely to arise from the incorporation with England, and now we are experiencing these dangers and evils. Those who have studied the history of representative institutions—those who have considered the evils and dangers incident to democratic government—must, I think, have come to the conclusion that the Federal form of Union is the one which gives the greatest hopes of obtaining the objects of representative institutions in the future, and also of avoiding the perils of democratic government. Nothing can be more remote from the Radical idea of government than the idea of the disintegration of the United Kingdom; and so far are we from desiring the disintegration of the United Kingdom that we, the friends of Home Rule, look forward to the day when England herself shall be merged in a higher unity, and when, although we may not live to see it, there will be established that which would be the greatest blessing to the world—namely, the United States of Europe. That is the direction of our ideas and aspirations. But, Sir, the point of view from which Scotchmen look at the question of Home Rule is that which has been stated by the Mover of this Resolution. It is not so much one of national sentiment, it is not merely a gratification of that, but it is a conviction which is being borne in upon Scotchmen more and more every day that the business of Scotland could be better managed in Scotland, and the business of the Empire could be better managed in London, if there were separate Parliaments for the two countries. It is for the better management of Scotch business, and of the business of the United Kingdom, that we advocate the establishment of a Legislative Assembly in Scotland. Now, Sir, the people are hardly aware of the prodigious increase which there has been
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  during the present century in the work of this Imperial Parliament. Anyone who takes a glance at the Statute Book, and marks the progress of legislation before the year 1832, between 1832 and 1867, and from 1867 to the present time, can fail to observe the enormous increase, not only in the volume of legislation, but in the diversity of the subjects dealt with, and in the importance of the subjects. In fact, the work of the Imperial Parliament of the present century has increased several fold, and in addition - during the same period there has been an enormous increase in the British Empire—I cannot say by how many thousand square miles, but anyone who compares the map of the Empire in 1801 with one for the present year would be startled to find what a steady and continuous and prodigious increase of area there has been—an increase which devolves upon this House large additions to its present responsibilities. In 1858 there was added the enormous territory and population of India. I cannot say that the House well discharges its duties and responsibilities in respect of India; but certainly those responsibilities add to the labour of this House. But that is not all. In the work of administration, the introduction of the household suffrage has completely revolutionized the condition of Government in former days; and now, compared with 40 or 50 years ago, there is an enormous increase in the demands of constituencies upon Members, with a. corresponding demand by Members on the time of this House. Now, Sir, let us look for one moment at the work which has to be done in a somewhat similar Assembly—I mean the Congress of the United States of America. That Congress has little idle time on its hands; and yet it has been relieved. of all that kind of work which it is now proposed that the House of Commons should be relieved from by the establishment of Home Rule and the creation of Legislative Assemblies in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Remember, also, the Foreign and Colonial questions which this House has to deal with from time to time, and that vast amount of work is outside the scope of the Congress of America. Then, with regard to the details of administration, here is no comparison between the American Congress and this House so

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  far as regards the minute supervision of the duties of Government Departments. Again, while we have unlimited powers of legislation, the Congress is limited within certain bounds as to the nature of the legislation it may undertake. Yet, although Congress is relieved of much of the work which devolves on this House, it finds, with all its cleverness, that it has as much work to do as any Legislative Assembly can fairly undertake. Now, Sir, why is it that Scotch business is so badly attended to in the House of Commons? It is that the majority of the Members of that House have a want of knowledge of Scotch affairs, and, naturally enough, do not take an interest in them. When a Scotch question is under discussion the English Members leave the House to seek more interesting places of retreat, and when the division bell rings they come in, and without having heard a word of the debate, and often without knowing what is the question on which they are going to vote, they overrule the Scotch Members. When I first entered the House I understood that an arrangement existed by which, as regarded Scotch measures, English Members practically left us to manage our own affairs, so that we had virtually, though not formally, the substance of Home Rule; but before I had been here long my experience disabused me of that delusion. The superstition was cleared away after a few months experience. Certainly since 1886 the reverse has been the ease. The Crofters Act of 1886, which was brought in by a Liberal Government, was cut down so as to conform to the requirements of English prejudice. This, be it remembered, was a measure brought in by a Liberal Government. Still it was not a measure up to the standard of Scotch opinion, and it was cut down; and although the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian has always found that the Scotch Liberals are among his most loyal supporters, we, nevertheless, time after time found that we had a majority against us in the Lobby on questions raised in Committee—time after time the Scotch Members were in one Lobby, and the majority of the House in another. Since then another Government has come in, and these occasions, which were rare under a Liberal Government, are now of fre-
  78
  quent occurrence—indeed, they are almost uniform. I have taken some pains to examine the votes of Members of this House, and it is remarkable how rarely it happens that the majority of the Scotch Members are found in the same Lobby as the majority of the Members of this House. We had instances only in the month of December last. There was a question raised as to whether the Secretary for Scotland should be a Member of the House of Commons. On that question 37 Scotch Members voted against the Government, and 15 with it. A few days later there was a debate on another subject of great interest to Scotland—and that was with regard to the conduct of certain Crown officials. On that occasion there were 28 Scotch Members on one side and 11 on the other. In the Division on the Vote on Account of Scotch Prisons there were 33 on one side and nine on the other; and in all these cases, without exception, Scotch opinion was overruled by the obedient majority which the Whips are able to bring into the Lobby when they desire. There can be no question that the separation of Scotch Executive work from English Executive work has led to some very good results; but the value of the office of the Secretary for Scotland is very much impaired by the fact that the holder of the office does not sit in the House of Commons. An overwhelming majority of Scotch Members have declared in favour of his having a seat in this House, and the Government can find but few Members, to express a contrary opinion. If it had been an English question the Government would have been bound to act on the opinion of English Members but they set aside and despised the views of the Scotch majority. I thank the Government for the concessions which they made last night, and I believe they will thereby gain credit and popularity, for allowing the appropriation of the Probate Duty to the abolition of School Fees. But we must bear in mind that 55 out of 72 Scotch Members were pledged to support this appropriation, and if the Government had refused it and challenged a division, I do not believe they would have been supported in the Lobby by five Scotch Numbers. I do not propose to trouble the House with any details of our Home

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  Rule proposals. I do not believe that there are any other means than Home Rule by which Scottish opinion can be given the control of Scottish business. But I am not bigoted in my opinion. If anyone can point out another scheme which would have such an advantage I will support it. As long as the ends are attained the means are of secondary importance. One advantage which will be gained by a Scottish Legislative Assembly will be the improvement in the personnel of the Scottish representatives. At present Scotland is to a large extent represented by hon. Members who have no abiding home in Scotland; and local Scottish candidates cannot be readily obtained because there are in Scotland very few of the idle rich class, of those who can afford the time and money to spend six months of the year in London. We have many men of moderate wealth, and some with large fortunes, but those who have fortunes are generally immersed in business of their own, and very few men in business find it possible to sacrifice their business and break the threads of it in order to spend six months in London in the Imperial Parliament. Now, the leading merchants and manufacturers in Scotland would form the best material for dealing with local affairs of Scotland, and they are a class of men sparingly represented in this House. Yet they are precisely the men you would have sent to a Legislative Assembly in Scotland. I believe the whole business of the legislative administration of Scotland—if we might judge from the experience of other States—could be easily accomplished in the space of eight weeks with sittings, say, on four days a week. Therefore, we should have a great improvement in the personnel of representatives of Scotland, and I believe we should easily enough find members to represent Scotland, not only in the Imperial Parliament but in the Scottish Assembly, and in the case of the latter body you would bring into public life a valuable class of men who have an intimate knowledge of the wants of the country. And, now as to the alternative for Home Rule. There has been witnessed during the last few years a continuous diminution of the liberties of Members and of Parliament itself. There was a time when the word closure was heard with horror by Members of this House; now, like
  80
  vice, we have become familiar with it, and it forms our daily bread. In another direction we have witnessed most extraordinary innovation and destruction of the liberties of Parliament in the way of passing Bills through the House without the House having an opportunity of dealing with every clause in Committee. This is a novel principle in the constitutional history of this country, and one very dangerous and far reaching in is effects, because if you may stop a discussion on a Bill at its third clause why not stop it on the first clause, or why have any second reading debate? It is a principle which must prove fatal to the integrity and the dignity of the House of Commons, and it is but one of the effects of Parliament attempting to do work beyond its power. It requires no prophet to foretell that if the House of Commons continues to exercise all the powers hitherto exercised by it a further curtailment of the privileges of the House is inevitable, and the House will be converted from an assembly for discussing the affairs of the nation into a mere registering machine of the will of the Government of the day. I entirely share the opinion of my hon. Friend that those who support the Motion before the House are throwing no obstacles in the way of Home Rule for Ireland. Home Rule for Scotland can well afford to wait until the other scheme is out of the way, if there is any real inconsistency between the two. If that satisfaction were given which the people of Scotland earnestly desired, it would be possible to frame a scheme of Home Rule equal for all four divisions of the United Kingdom while maintaining absolute the sovereignty of Parliament. By a purely historical accident Parliament is really sovereign, and so a very large devolution of powers could safely be made, while the best division for such devolution will be found in following national lines. I believe that Home Rule would work more smoothly in Scotland with her peculiar and independent system, and laws and institutions than in either England or Ireland. Although we do not expect a majority of the House on this Motion, we have nevertheless opened up a question of great interest to the mass of the people, and one which at no distant d ay will be ripe for treatment by Parlia-

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  ment. I beg, therefore, to second the Motion.
  *MR. SHAW STEWART: Sir, as to the Motion brought forward by the hon. Member for Caithness, there can, I think, at any rate on this side of the House, be only one feeling, that of satisfaction at having an opportunity of hearing his proposal discussed, and of ascertaining how much or little merit there is in it. I confess that hitherto I have regarded the question of Home Rule for Scotland as somewhat hazy and mysterious, and the speeches of the hon. Members for Caithness and Aberdeen have not done much to dispel that haze and mystery. The hon. Member who seconded confessed there was no sign of a desire on the platform or in the Press for Home Rule, but he said there was an astounding desire for it in Aberdeen. The hon. Member who submitted this Motion disclaimed any intention of bringing about a repeal of the Union between England and Scotland; and I have no doubt that he is sincere in that, but it is somewhat remarkable that his arguments to-night were exactly the arguments used when there was a proposal for separation brought forward in the Scottish Parliament in 1703. During the debate on the Act of Security, which as hon. Members well know was practically an act of separation, the arguments were that the interests of Scotland were uniformly sacrificed, and that if the Scottish Parliament was neither obstructed nor interrupted by the English Council, the grievances of the Nation would be redressed by the execution of its own laws. The hon. Member for Aberdeen distinctly said that he would utterly decline to discuss any details of the measure of Home Rule for Scotland, and he then went on to say that it was difficult to get good candidates for Parliament at the present time. Sir, it is quite possible that intelligent Scotchmen are not so easily found to adopt the principles of hon. Members who sit on the opposite side of the House, and that they may be obliged to come to seek for candidates among English gentlemen about whom the Mover of the Motion said something not very complimentary in respect of their want of education. I do not think, on the Unionist side of politics, it is difficult to find intelligent Scotchmen who are willing to come forward in support
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  of the Union. But if it is difficult to get Scotchmen to come forward to represent constituencies in the present Parliament, how will they find it easier to get candidates to come forward to represent them in the Imperial Parliament which they still wish to retain in the future? The Mover of the Motion alluded to the Liquor Question as one of those questions on which they were continually over-ruled by the action of English Members. But what happened last year with regard to this very question of the Liquor Bill? There was ample opportunity for discussion of that measure, but for some reason best known to themselves hon. Members opposite chose to pass the Second Reading of the Bill without any discussion whatever. The hon. Member also alluded to financial questions, and he argued that they would be treated with greater dispatch and more effectiveness in a Parliament in Edinburgh than here. But surely if a Parliament in Edinburgh is not to deal with Imperial matters, I fail to see how they can deal with finances which certainly are matters of Imperial interest, both to this country and to the whole of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Then the hon. Member made the astounding assertions that the Bill brought in by my right hon. Friend the Lord Advocate n respect to Private Bill legislation would add to the work which this House would have to do. He brought forward very little in support of that assertion and I still think that hon. Members must be of opinion that if some of the work in connection with Private Bills is taken out of this House its labours must of necessity be lightened. The proposals of the hon. Member have not been put before us in any detail, but he proposes to set up a Parliament in Edinburgh.
  DR. CLARK: I never made any such proposal. I never mentioned the word Edinburgh.
  *MR. SHAW STEWART: I apologize to the hon. Member, but at any rate he must mean that a Parliament is to be instituted somewhere in Scotland—I think it ought to be Glasgow if anywhere. This Parliament would entail offices, appointments, and departments, and a considerable expenditure in salaries. Now, I think that is rather a startling proposal to come from the quarter of the House in which the hon.

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  Member sits. Will he persuade Members who sit round him to vote increased supplies to meet those salaries? I think he offers a rather large camel to be swallowed by those whose business in life it is to strain at every gnat they can discover in the Estimates. The hon. Member for Caithness may, by his eloquence, persuade hon. Members around him to vote those supplies, but I do not think he would persuade the people of Scotland that a National Parliament would he of the slightest benefit to them. They know that a Parliament established in Edinburgh or anywhere else in Scotland, would absorb the functions of local life, and instead of stimulating would kill it. It would be centralization in its very worst form, because either the Parliament must be so limited as to deal with purely local matters, and so deprive local communities of the management of their own affairs, or else it would have larger powers and so trench upon matters of Imperial interest. I will not go into the question whether the people in the West of Scotland would approve of a Parliament in Edinburgh, because it has not yet been settled by hon. Gentlemen where this Parliament is to be established; but I would venture to remark that if it were in the West, the people of the East of Scotland would be dissatisfied, or if in the East, the people of the West would be discontented. I cannot deny that there are demands from Scotland which ought to be satisfied—grievances, if you like, which ought to be redressed. There is, first, the demand for the extension of local self-government; second, the demand in respect of Private Bill legislation—demands which I believe will be amply satisfied by the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Lord Advocate; and the third demand is that the Secretary for Scotland should be in the Cabinet. In my opinion that is a question which we should continue to press upon the Government. I dare say the measures of my right hon. Friend will not satisfy hon. Gentlemen opposite. But would anything satisfy them? It is a point of honour with my hon. Friends below the Gangway to be satisfied with nothing. I think that the spirit which animates my hon. Friends is embodied in the advice given by an old Scotch Radical to a young man about to enter
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  Parliament—"Be aye asking, and when ye get onything, be aye complaining that ye canna' get mair." My contention is that the measures of the Government, which are bold and comprehensive,. will satisfy the Scottish people, and that they will prefer them to a second rate Parliament, limited in its scope and feeble in its powers, such as that which has been shadowed forth, and only shadowed forth in the proposal of the hon. Member opposite.
  *MR. A. ELLIOT: What the House of Commons is now asked to do is to set up in Scotland a National Parliament. After listening to the speeches of the hon. Members who moved and seconded this Resolution, I am astounded at the weakness of the peg on which they have suspended so enormously serious a proposal. When we are asked to set up a National Parliament in Scotland, are we to be so invited because there is something wrong in the calculation of the Medical Vote, however much that matter may be of special interest to the Mover of this Motion? Why, Sir, we should make ourselves the laughing-stock of the country if we were to allow such two-penny-halfpenny considerations to weigh with us in discussing a proposal to destroy the Union. The hon. Member who followed the Mover of the Motion soared to considerable heights in the language he employed, and even spoke of the "United States of Europe." We are acquainted with the poet's dream of the time to come when we are to see "the Parliament of man, the federation of the world;" but it is new for the House of Commons to be asked seriously to debate a proposal to reconstruct the British Constitution with respect to such a very distant state of things. I look upon this question as a. deeply serious one, and I look on it not so much as a mere Unionist, nor as a Liberal belonging to one of the great Parties of the State, but as a Scotch-man. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the frankness of the terms of his Motion. We know we are asked to vote "for giving to the people of Scotland by their Representatives in a National Parliament the management and control of Scottish affairs," I cannot conceive that there will be any one who, on such a question, will not be able to make up his mind. I cannot conceive that Gentlemen representing

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  Scottish constituencies do not know whether they wish Great Britain to be governed by one, two, three, or even four Parliaments. At all events, what we are asked to vote about is plain and clear. But if the proposal is a clear one, I am bound to say the hon. Gentleman's speech in moving it was not so frank as I could have wished it, and he tried to minimize its importance. It is, at any rate, a proposal to set up a separate Executive for Scotland; and I would ask what must that Executive be? Not, as the hon. Member suggested, some mere re-arrangement of the functions of the Scotch Secretary. It is fortunate that I have made myself acquainted with some of the previous utterances of the hon. Member, and it will not be wasting time if I lay before you the proposals of the Scottish Home Rule Association, of which the hon. Member for Caithness (Dr. Clark) is President. There are six Members of Parliament who are office bearers and vice-presidents of the Association, and I will ask, is it the case that they merely mean to set up a re-arrangement of the office of Chief Secretary? The rules of the Association are published in the names of the hon. Members for Caithness, East Aberdeenshire (Mr. P. Esslemont), Dundee (Mr. J. B. Firth), North West Lanarkshire (Mr. R. Cuninghame Graham), East Perthshire (Sir John Kinloch), and Ross and Cromarty shires (Dr. Macdonald). These proposals are therefore worthy of serious consideration coming from such a source. I have often heard it said outside the House by those who follow the lead of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Gladstone), that there is hardly a sensible man in Scotland who would like to establish in Scotland a Scottish Parliament and Executive Government; but let them then stand up here and say so now that the present proposal is made. These are three of the Rules. The first is—
  "To promote the establishment of a Legislature in Scotland, with full control over purely Scotch qnestions, and with an Executive Government responsible to it and the Crown."
  The second is—
  "To secure to the Government of Scotland, in the same degree as at present possessed by the Imperial Government, control of the Civil Service, Judges, and other officials, except in the Military, Naval and Diplomatic Services, and in collecting the Imperial Revenue."
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  And the third is—
  "To maintain and protect the integrity of the Empire, and insure that the voice of Scotland should he heard in the Imperial Parliament as fully as at present when discussing Imperial questions."
  These Rules involve five distinct propositions. In the first place a distinct Legislature; secondly, a separate Executive Government dependent upon that Legislature; thirdly, a distinct Civil Service for Scotland; fourthly, apparently a separate Treasury; and, last of all, they contain an admission that Scotland shall henceforth have no voice in the Imperial Parliament, except upon what they are pleased to define as Imperial questions. Perhaps the hon. Members to whom I have referred may be said not to have had any very great experience of this House, but there are others, and among them, I am sorry to say, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Edinburgh (Mr. Childers', who has given a very uncertain sound on this question. It was with astonishment I read the other day knowing that these are the views being promulgated in Scotland, and that the right hon. Gentleman must have been aware of them, a letter from the right hon. Gentleman, who, on being appealed to on the subject, wrote a letter, in which he declared that "at all events Scotland was entitled to claim a legislative body." Not a word of repudiation of these ideas that are floating about. The mere terms in which this declaration is expressed show that although the right hon. Gentleman is a Scotch Member he is not a Scotchman. He says "Scotland is entitled to claim." Scotchmen do not claim any favour from England; our claim is that we are part and parcel of the United Kingdom and have joined the Union on equal terms. There is no way in which we can maintain equality with England except on the terms of the Union; we must choose between equality by means of a Legislative Union, or something like the position of a dependent State. What does my right hon. Friend mean when he says we are entitled to claim a legislative body? Does he mean a body to make laws—not mere regulations or bye-laws, but laws which will bind persons and property, laws which will deal with the rights of persons and the rights of things? For the first time since the

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  Union it is proposed that this great change should be made—that instead of having one engine for making the laws of the Kingdom we are to have two, and that henceforth laws are to be passed not by the Imperial Parliament, but by different local Legislatures. Well, Sir, I presume my right hon. Friend contemplates that this Legislature shall be elected on a very democratic franchise. Does he imagine that in that case it will be possible to keep separate from it all sorts of executive authority and power? You must, if you have a legislative body at all of that kind, give it control over some portion, at all events, of the executive functions of Government. I put this forward to show that, if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Edinburgh is willing to grant a legislative body for Scotland, he cannot expect it to stop short of acquiring some executive authority. Well. Sir, I think I have pointed out already that this demand is a somewhat peculiar one. I have said that it is a demand for the repeal of the Union. I do not think anyone will deny that. Article 3 of the Treaty of Union of 1707 runs as follows:—
  "That the United Kingdom of Great Britain shall be represented by one and the same Parliament, to be styled 'The Parliament of Great Britain.'"
  Whether hon. Gentlemen who bring forward this Motion are Unionists in heart or not I do not know, but I say that they are in terms proposing to repeal the principal section of the Treaty of Union. The Act of Union has been and can be amended, but to attempt to destroy the good work of those statesmen who passed the Act, which has been so beneficial to Scotland as well as to England, upon the case shown to us by hon. Members is to make the House of Commons ridiculous. Why, after all, is this demand made? What are the reasons for it? One of the reasons advanced is the delay which exists in the passing of Scottish business in this House, and special reference is made to the Scottish Universities Bill. I read what was said by my hon. Friend the Mover of the Resolution the other day in Edinburgh — that the Scotch Universities Bill had not become law because, forsooth, Parliament was full of English Members who did not take an interest in the matter. Do you not know why the Scotch Universities Bill did not
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  pass? Do you not know that it wag because it was opposed by those very Scotch Members who bring forward and support this Resolution, some of whom actually went down to Edinburgh and there declared that it was the fault of the English Members? Another ground which has been advanced is, that the Scottish Members are outvoted in the Lobbies. Well, I am very glad to have an opportunity of saying a word on that point to Scotch Members. The same thing never occurs, I suppose, to other nationalities! Are the English, the Irish, or Welsh Members never outvoted? Has it never happened that the Government of the day are solely dependent on a majority composed largely of Scotch and Irish Members? And does not the character of the laws passed mainly depend on the Party to which the Government belong? If you have a Union at all there must be some outvoting, and, I think, perhaps one great object of the House of Commons is to discover and outvote minorities. I do not know whether the Member for Carlisle was present, but no more striking case can be found than that in connection with the prohibitory measures in the Liquor Laws. We had Sunday Closing in Scotland under the Forbes-Mackenzie Act 30 years ago, and we had it not because it was thought right by the English, Irish, and Welsh Members, but because it was thought right by the Scotch Members. That was done in deference to Scotch opinion. But I would point out what occurred a few weeks ago. There was an English Sunday Closing Bill. It did not deal with Ireland, Wales, or Scotland, but were the English Members allowed to decide it by a majority? I will give the figures, which are, I think; a little striking. For the Bill there were 179 votes, and against it 157, or a majority of 22 for the Bill. But deducting the Scotch, Irish, and Welsh votes, which numbered 77, I find that 102 English Members voted in favour of the Bill, while deducting the 13 Scotch, Welsh, and Irish votes on the other side there were 144 against the Bill, or in the result a majority of 42 English Members against the Second Reading of a purely English Bill which, however, was carried, as it was quite right it should be, by a majority of Members

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  of the United Kingdom. Now, that is worth consideration, for it shows that English Members are outvoted on occasion by the Scotch and Irish votes. It is right that it should be so. I am standing up for the Union, and for our right to take part in the work of Parliament. I have no wish to exclude any part of the United Kingdom from taking part in Scotch business. Well, Sir, we are given as another reason that Parliament cannot find time for Scotch business. I say that that is not an argument which Scotch Members should admit. I would point out to the Scotch Members that the grievance of which they complain is equally applicable to other portions of the Kingdom. The way in which the time of this House is wasted astonishes everyone. I may refer to yesterday by way of illustration, when some hours were spent in a debate on the hiring of oil lamps for the use of Members — a matter which, if raised in a club, would have been settled by some small committee. The right way to deal with the House is to try to keep it to its proper business, to try and prevent the waste of time, not to admit that there was no time to attend to legislation for Scotland, on questions which are perhaps of enormous importance to the Scottish people. I have always maintained that equality can only be obtained through the Union. We have had experience of various sorts of government in Scotland. Scotland was originally a separate nation, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of the world. Afterwards the Crowns were united, but we retained our separate Legislature, and I must say that was the time Scotland showed at its worst. We had less sense of national dignity, we had no actual separate existence, and we had not that equality which we afterwards got from the Union. As Burton, the latest and one of the best historians of the Scottish Union said—
  "The great security for Scotland consisted in that community of interest which divided the Scottish into the same political divisions with the English representatives, and made Members vote as Whig and Tory and not as Scotch and Englishmen."
  Neither the Mover nor the Seconder have pointed out in what way a Scottish Parliament is to legislate better than this Parliament? Can they show
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  that it would be more wise, more just than the Parliament of the United Kingdom? But they do not and they cannot show what is more important still—that the Scottish Parliament would be as powerful, or nearly as powerful, as the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It might be wise and just, but it must have power at the back of it, and to suppose that a Parliament sitting in Edinburgh would have the same strength at the back of its decisions as attaches to the Imperial Parliament in which sit Members coming from the length and breadth of the Kingdom is a proposition which cannot be maintained. No wonder, then, that hon. Members did not try to sustain it. Again, if you have different Executive Governments and separate Parliaments you will probably have different political Parties prevailing in the two countries, and you must expect that the legislation of each will tend to diverge, and that the legislation fostered and promoted by one Party in Scotland will necessarily tend more and more to differ from legislation promoted and fostered by a Government belonging to another Party in England. And when you once start a system which produces this divergence it becomes a very serious business, Looking at the question from the Scottish point of view, I think the utter fallacy of these Home Rule proposals lies in the suggestion that Scotchmen ought to have no influence over English legislation, and, in short, that it does not matter to Scotchmen how England is governed, or what legislation is passed for that large portion of our Island. Are the people on the Borders to be told that it does not matter to them what kind of legislation is in force between the Cheviots and Land's End? I say that is an absurd proposition. Local considerations are not everything, and Scotchmen live under a Union to which they mean to stick. They are determined to assert themselves not only as Scotchmen, but as citizens of the United Kingdom. The whole proposal is, in fact, based upon entire fallacy; and we will not consent to be told that English matters are of merely local interest, for England, after all, is three-fourths of Great Britain. We Scotchmen are proud of our nationality. We have reason to be proud of our ancestors, who for long years defended

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  their liberty and independence. But are we to consider that we ceased to be Scotchmen in the year 1707. Why since the Union we have also done much to be proud of as Scotch-men, and have maintained our nationality in the way in which it ought to be preserved. But we must not sacrifice the substance for a shadow or false sentiment which has no basis in reason or fact. It is time for right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen to speak out. We are asked to vote for or against a Scottish Parliament. The term Parliament implies the performance of important functions, and no body which cannot levy a tax or make laws, or choose and control the Executive, can be called by that name. We have a simple question before us, and no hon. Member should hesitate to express his opinion by his vote. I will refer once more to the Borders, with which I am intimately connected. I know the extraordinary benefits which the Borders have received from the Union. That district, which was formerly placed between two hostile and jarring nations, became by the Union the centre of a large and peaceful Kingdom. The period when under one King there were two Legislatures was the period of least independence and least good government, and it should be a warning to Scotland not to recur to such a horribly unsatisfactory state of things. By all means let Scotch opinion have due weight in all Scotch business; let us have the same respect for English opinion in England, Irish opinion in Ireland, and Welsh opinion in Wales, but let us never weaken, by dividing into fractions, the legislative authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Let us rather maintain the unity of Parliament and let us maintain also unimpaired the control of our National Executive over the length and breadth of the land.
  *MR. DONALD CRAWFORD: The proposal of my hon. Friend is to establish a National Parliament in Scotland, and we have been challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh to express a definite opinion upon the issue which has thus been raised. I think that the challenge is a fair one, and, for my part, although I hold that the discussion to-night is by no means a convenient
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  one, I shall certainly not shrink from expressing my opinion upon the question before the House. Now, I confess I cannot support the proposal for a National Parliament. My hon. Friends the Member for Roxburgh and the Member for East Renfrewshire, in the speeches in which they supported the two Amendments which were to have been proposed, showed a very inadequate appreciation of the strength of the case which has been made by my hon. Friends the Mover and Seconder of this Motion. Not only was the Motion before the House recommended—if I may take the liberty of saying so—in speeches of very great ability; but it was also supported by arguments of very great weight, and those arguments, I think, have not received the due attention which should have been paid to them. There is no doubt that two or three years ago it would have been wholly unnecessary for any Member sitting on this, or the other side of the House, to give reasons why he was unable to support a Motion of this kind. But the state of things has very greatly changed. There is no doubt that my hon. Friends have in no degree over-stated the case when they said that there was a very strong feeling in favour of a greater measure of self-government for Scotland—something in the nature of what is called Home Rule, though, in my opinion, it is unhappily and infelicitously called Home Rule. This movement is a growing and powerful one in Scotland, and it is one with which the Government will have to reckon in my opinion, sooner or later; and they will not only have to reckon with it, but also satisfy it. But, Sir, this is a very different thing from proposing a National Parliament for Scotland; and, in passing, I may say that no such proposal has been made in the case of Ireland. The word Parliament" has never been used in the case of Ireland; it has been most carefully avoided, and it was avoided in what was called the Home Rule Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian. Now, Sir, when I say that there is a very strong feeling growing up in Scotland in favour of a proposal of this kind. I seek for the reason why there is this great change in a comparatively short space of time, and I do not think it is difficult to find that reason, because the business of Scotland has been entirely

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  neglected by this House. I do not care whether this neglect is due to contempt or merely to impotence on the part of the Government to deal with Scotch business under existing conditions, but let us take last Session as a specimen of our complaint, when we had two great measures before the House—the University Bill and the Burgh Police Bill. The Burgh Police Bill was a measure with an unpretending name, dealing with an ordinary subject, but involving very great labour and results of great importance to the country. A strong Scotch Committee, consisting of more than 20 Members, was appointed, and it spent over two months last summer in the consideration of the Bill. I venture to say that if a Member of the Government connected with England had sat on the Committee, he would have taken care that some effect was given to their deliberations; or if the Secretary for Ireland, who has a very free hand in the disposal of the business of the House, had had anything to do with the Bill, we might have been sure that the Government would have made a point of dealing with it when it again reached the House. But, because it was a Scotch Bill, we were allowed to amuse ourselves with it, and when it was returned to the House it was dropped, as a matter of no importance whatever. And the same was the case with regard to the Universities Bill. That was a Bill which concerned the highest educational interests of Scotland, and we know that Scotland is a country in which education is thought very much of. The Universities of Scotland had for years been making arrangements and entering into negotiations with regard to this Bill, and we thought the time had come when the matter was ripe for legislation. But then, because, forsooth, we did not agree to pass the Bill without discussion through the House, we were refused any time for considering it, and we were told that either we must take the Bill as it stood or it must be dropped, as there was no time for discussing it. The history of these two Bills is only a specimen of what occurs in relation to many Scotch subjects which are ripe for legislation. There is for instance, the Licensing question. We cannot induce the Government to give any attention to this subject; and
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  even when a Local Government Bill is introduced we find that the licensing question is entirely left out of it. When Scotch opinion is so nearly unanimous, as it is on this matter, I think it is very inconvenient that the Government should neglect to deal with it. But, while we must not allow Scotch legislation thus to be neglected, I must say I cannot, as at present advised, come to the conclusion that the remedy proposed by the hon. Member who has introduced this most inconvenient discussion is the right way of meeting the growing and deep dissatisfaction in Scotland with the existing state of things. Right hon. and hon. Members opposite are in the habit of representing the Scotch and the Irish case as identical, and they say that what you do for Scotland you must do for Ireland. I submit that it should be regarded as a fundamental principle in dealing with this question, that there is no presumption whatever that Scotland is to be treated in the same way as Ireland. I demur to the proposition that the cases of Scotland and Ireland stand on all fours. There are the plainest historical reasons, and the plainest reasons of fact why that is not so. It is true that Scotland of late years has not got those measures which she desires, though I believe that in former times she was not nearly so badly off, and that she got many of the measures she desired. But the complaint is not, as in the case of Ireland, that those measures are forced upon her which she abhors and detests. That is the historical case of Ireland, and it is a case which requires entirely different treatment from that of a country which has never been oppressed or insulted in the same way, but which has merely, owing to the neglect of Parliament, not got as much legislation as she requires. I think that we not only require to give Ireland a measure which shall secure that her business is done by the Irish people, but I certainly go the length of saying that some measure of pacification should be passed, which should pay a tribute of atonement to the injured nationality of Ireland. In Scotland no such question arises. The time may come, undoubtedly, when we may require to make special provision for the transaction of affairs in Scotland, but we shall only require to look for a business

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  assembly, and there is no necessity for making any complaint that the nationality of Scotland has been insulted, because our national spirit has always been able to take care of itself. My hon. Friend below me asked that the Liberal Members should speak out on this question, and I say I do not think that is an unfair challenge. The constituencies of the country are now established on a very democratic basis, and I have never disguised from myself that occasions might arise from time to time in which there would be a temptation for Liberal Members to take up and follow a popular cry, when it would rather be their duty to point out the difficulties that lie in the course that is suggested for the moment. I consider that this is an occasion of that kind. My own constituents have never urged me upon this point; but I am well aware that if I were to vote to-night for the establishment of a National Parliament in Scotland, I should go down to them with no fear of incurring any reprobation for my vote. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that in one quarter or another I may meet with some criticism for stating my objections to the proposal in the extreme form in which it is made. But now that the drag has been taken off the Liberal Party by the withdrawal from its ranks of the Party to which the hon. Member for Roxburgh (Mr. A. Elliot) belongs, it is all the more incumbent upon the Members of the Liberal Party to discuss with extreme frankness the difficulties that attend any course which for the moment may be favoured by a popular cry. I think we must sooner or later come to an arrangement for the transaction of Scotch business—it may be as little as a Grand Committee of Scotch Members, or as great as an assembly for business purposes in Scotland itself—but there are some special difficulties attaching to the proposal before the House. I should like to ask my hon. Friend (Dr. Clark) whether he proposes that if a National Parliament be established in Scotland the Scotch Members are to sit in this House or not? I suppose my hon. Friend does mean Scotch Members to sit here. If so, is this House to continue to transact the business not only of the whole Empire, but of England also? I take
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  leave to say that if Scotch Members are only to be introduced into this Assembly for the transaction of exclusively Imperial business, they will be placed in a position of inferiority. I have never disguised from myself or from my constituents that the important and just demand which Ireland makes implies some sacrifice, as well as some advantage, to this country. In return for the autonomy which it is proposed that Ireland is to receive, she gives up something, and it is her interest to give up something with such a history as she has. But she would not, in my opinion, have the same influence in the Councils of the Empire as she has on paper at this moment. On paper she gives up something, but in reality she gives up nothing, because her Representatives have been treated as pariahs, and no attention has been given to their voices. That is not the case with regard to the Scotch Members, who have exercised a just and fair influence in the deliberations of this Assembly. They and their country would, in my opinion, be placed in a position of inferiority if they were to be elected to this Assembly for the special purpose of deliberating and voting on Imperial questions. If you say that this objection is a just one, and that you will have a separate Parliament for English affairs, my answer is that that is a very large proposition. We, as Scotch Members, have no right to assume that England will consent to it. If a general system of devolution—and I think that something of the kind may very likely have to be adopted—were carried out, and. England were divided into North and. South England, that would be a question of an entirely different kind. I also quite recognize the possibility of a larger Imperial federal scheme one day coming into the horizon of politics, but that is a distant thing, and I would warn my friends in Scotland that the very great inequality in size between the two countries would make the federal bond one that they ought to look at with considerable jealousy. England is seven or eight times as large as Scotland, and London is, under conditions which we cannot alter, not only the political. but the commercial capital of the country. The bounds of Scotland are too narrow for Scotchmen. She sends thousands of

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  her sons into all parts of England, and I should like very narrowly to inquire into the conditions of any federal bond between the two countries, for fear that Scotland would suffer by the arrangement. It is certainly in no hostile spirit to the powerful growing feeling that the conduct of Scotch business in this House has fostered and reared and brought to a vigorous height within a short time a movement in favour of a more direct and practical manner of doing our own public business—it is in no hostile spirit that I have ventured to point out what appears to me the insuperable difficulties against accepting the Motion in the form in which it has been presented, bearing in mind in particular that in proposing a National Parliament for Scotland my hon. Friend has proposed something which no one yet has ever proposed even for Ireland.
  *MR. CUNINGHAME GRAHAM: I wish in a very few words to support the Motion of the hon. Member for Caithness, but I wish to do it on vastly different grounds and reasons from any of those which have been urged by hon. Members who have spoken to-night. I do not wish to support this proposal specially on national grounds. I thoroughly agree with an observation that fell from the hon. Member for Caithness when he said that though there is a great and growing feeling in favour of Home Rule in Scotland it runs on other lines than those of the Radical programme. I do not wonder at that, because, personally, I never could find out what were the lines of the Radical programme. I believe, Sir, that there is a great and growing demand for Home Rule in Scotland, but it comes, in my opinion, from no sentimental grounds whatever, but from the extreme misery of a certain section of the Scottish population, and they wish to have their own Members under their own hands, in order to extort legislation from them suitable to relieve that misery. That may seem an extreme proposition to' state in this House. Hon. Members from Scotland are often fond of representing Scotland as a sort of Arcadia, but I think that, in face of the misery existing in -the Highlands and Islands, that we have women in Aberdeen to-day toiling
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  for 6s. or 7s. a week; that we have 30,000 people in Glasgow who herd together in one room; and in face of the fact that we have a Socialistic agitation on foot in the East and West of Scotland, I must say I do not think the condition of the poor in that country is one very much to be envied. I think it will be found that the same reasons which impel a certain section of the Scottish people to be dissatisfied with the legislation served out to them from this Parliament are not the reasons which have been alleged by other hon. Members. On many public questions public opinion is far riper for legislation than in this country. Not one Member who has spoken—although it must be patent to all hon. Members—has referred to the rising opinion in favour of land legislation in Scotland. I should like to ask the hon. Member for Roxburghshire whether he could go down to his constituency and speak to the free and independent electors there, and say much against the theories of Henry George, for example? And I would like, furthermore, to point out to the House that on the question of labour legislation in Scotland we are much farther advanced as a country than in England, especially on the eight hours' question. In the matter of free education and many other questions, the people of Scotland are greatly in advance of those of England, and it is for these reasons, and not for sentimental or national ones, that I think this House will soon be called on to face the demand for a Legislature for Scotland. We have an absolute detestation in Scotland of all propositions dealing with the solution of the land question by means of emigration. It would not, I fancy, tend to enhance the popularity of any hon. Member in Scotland to go down to his constituency and propose to emigrate the crofters en masse. He would soon be met by the suggestion that some of the landlords and capitalists of the country could be emigrated with much greater benefit to the country. It has been said that in the event of the institution of a Scottish Legislature we should largely be represented by the merchants of the country. To that statement I say, God forbid! I believe I speak the feelings of a large section

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  of the Scotch people when I emphatically state that, were such a Legislature ver created, we should find the working classes much more represented than is the case here. Thus, I think that, taking into account the large expression of opinion that has undoubtedly been given to-day by the Scottish Members, and taking into consideration the great pressure that will soon be brought to bear from social causes upon this House from the electorate of Scotland, we have not come here with an absolutely futile or fatuous proposition when we have, for the first time, endeavoured to press the cause of Scottish Home Rule upon the House of Commons.
  MR. GLADSTONE (Mid Lothian): I am sorry that the Government has not as yet found itself in a condition to state to the House what is their view of the Motion before the House. But in the absence of any guidance from that quarter, which I really think we were entitled to look for before the debate reached its present stage, I feel it to be my duty in the double character of a Scotch Member, and likewise of one who acts on behalf of the Liberal Opposition—so far as I presume myself to possess their confidence—I feel it right that I should no longer delay stating what occurs to me upon this interesting and important and also difficult question When I read the Notice Paper of to-day I felt that we possessed this advantage, that we were sure to have, or likely to have, before us the subject of debate in each of its main aspects. My hon. Friend the Mover of the Motion pronounces in the most emphatic and perhaps in the largest terms that have ever been used on the question of Home Rule, his views in this House on the question of a Parliament in Scotland and the management and control of Scotch affairs. No one can complain that he does not raise broadly and clearly the principle involved in his Motion. The hon. Member opposite gave notice of a restraining Motion intended to supplant the principal proposal, and which practically bad very much the character of "the previous question." Irrespective of the particular reasons given in the Amendment, the practical effect of it was not to condemn outright and in principle the proposal of a Legislature for Scotland as a
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  thing that would under no circumstances be entertained, but stating that under present circumstances it was not ripe for consideration. Unfortunately, the hon. Member had not the courage of his opinions—though the field was open to him — sufficiently to propose his Amendment. But he opened the field for my hon. Friend behind me, the Member for Roxburghshire, who framed an Amendment embodying, as might be expected, I think, from him, the minimum of concession and the maximum of reservation. He was so full of courage and chivalry that he would not accept the mode of escape offered to him by the Amendment that was to have been moved from the Opposition Benches. He was not content to say that this was not the time for entering upon the question; but he denounced the principle of Home Rule under any circumstances or conditions for Scotland, and he exhibited his zeal in this debate by formulating an Amendment that appears to me to be a literary curiosity. I have heard much said of the necessity in questions of Home Rule of contemplating the general transfer of the affairs of one of the portions of the United Kingdom to a local legislature, and we have heard much of the necessity of maintaining the authority of the Imperial Parliament. I do not recollect that the Lord Advocate, in the excellent speech which he made yesterday on the subject of local government, made any reservations at all for the authority of Parliament. It did not appear to him that the authority of the Imperial Parliament was brought into question by his proposals, and I confess I entirely agreed with him. But my hon. Friend behind me is so jealous of the authority of the Imperial Parliament that I suppose if he gave a charter to a burgh he would give it in terms which would imply that the unity of the Empire was to be maintained, and possibly when he came to the consideration of Parochial. Boards in Scotland he would say, "Oh, yes, let us have Parochial Boards by all means, but let us take a jealous care that those Boards do not interfere with the authority of Parliament or break up the unity of the Empire." He goes further still than this, and he sniffs danger even in legislation on. Scottish Private Bills. He is willing to

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  give some facilities for the conduct of Scottish Private Bills, but he will only allow Private Bills to receive additional and local facilities provided they are not permitted to impair the effective control over the whole United Kingdom of the Imperial Parliament. His jealous care for the authority of Parliament, which is an admirable thing to observe in its proper place, is carried very nearly, indeed, if not quite, to the borders of the ridiculous. However, my hon. Friend, whilst valiant in his speech, has not proposed the Amendment of which he has given notice, therefore we have only the exposition of his opinions. I must frankly own for myself that, while I am very much tantalized by the withdrawal of those interesting Amendments from any practical issue before us, I am in the same condition as was so well described for himself by my hon. Friend the Member for East Lanarkshire, that I do not feel myself to be in a condition to deal with the question at the present moment definitely and on its merits. [Ironical Cheers.] I presume that all those who cheer opposite have no difficulty at all of that kind, they are prepared to be very decisive in the expression of an opinion, but I think those hon. Members almost to a man are not Scotch Members, or the Scotch Members are very poor indeed. I make the observation almost to a man, because I know that it is a Scotch Member on the other side who has given notice of an Amendment which in no manner touches the principle of the question, and in so far as it has any principle at all, adopts the position I have indicated when I say I do not think that we have yet reached the situation when the circumstances are ripe for an ultimate and final consideration of this question on its merits. The principles applicable to the solution of this question are, however, by no means obscure or difficult to understand. I hold that Scotland and Ireland are precisely equal in the face of England with respect to their moral and political right to urge on the Imperial Parliament such claims as they may consider arise out of the interests and demands of those respective countries. They are precisely equal in this right, so that if I am to suppose a case in which Scotland unanimously, or
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  by a clearly preponderating voice, were to make the demand on the United Parliament to be treated, not only on the same principle, but in the same manner as Ireland, I could not deny the title of Scotland to urge such a claim. Moreover, I am bound to say that I have a perfectly sound conviction that if such a claim were made in the manner I have described as the clear and deliberate declaration of Scottish opinion, Parliament would accede to it. It is quite true that the country in 1886 denied that right on the part of Ireland, and the Parliament elected in 1886, what-ever the opinion of the country may now a subject into which I shall not now enter—still continues to deny the claim of Ireland. But a similar claim coming from Scotland never would be denied. The English are a very brave nation, but they also possess that prudence which is the better part of valour, and which would prevent them from placing themselves in conflict with the deliberate and thoroughly formed Scotch opinion upon a case of this kind. As far as I may venture to form an opinion, in point of abstract right, Scotland and Ireland are upon a precisely equal footing, but the cases from a practical point of view are exceedingly different, as has been well shown by my hon. and learned Friend behind me. The mere physical difference, the mere fact of geographical continuity in the one case and not in the other is fraught with very large consequences. But the political and historical differences between the two cases are enormous. It would take hours to unfold these differences, and I will not now attempt to do so. As to the Union between England and Scotland, and that between England and Ireland, which are sometimes superficially imagined to correspond together in substance, there is this one difference, if no others, that the Union of Scotland and England was not forced by England upon Scotland—whether the Scottish Parliament in assenting to the Union followed Scottish opinion or not, it at any rate was not by English force or fraud that the Scottish Union was carried, whereas in the case of Ireland it was the English Executive which, by a combination of fraud and force, and tyranny and cruelty, hardly

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  to be equalled in the pages of any Christian history ["Oh!"], forced the Union upon Ireland. I hope that hon. Gentlemen who interrupt me with cries of dissent will not tempt me to occupy the time of the House by proving at length the truth of what I have said. Should I do so, the penalty would be that I should detain them much longer than I have any intention of doing. I say that, though there are immense differences between the cases of Scotland and of Ireland, which, as I believe, will weigh very powerfully with the people of Scotland in determining what their final claims shall be on England, still, whatever claim is made by the people of Scotland—providing it is consistent with the supremacy of Parliament and the integrity of the Empire—will he admitted, in my opinion, without cavil or ill blood between the countries. And now let me make a confession to my hon. Friend who moved the Resolution, a Resolution which it will be gathered from what I have said I am not prepared to support. I admit that a sentiment as yet vague and unformed, in embryo, but really of considerable extent, has grown up in Scotland of late years with very considerable rapidity in favour of something that in a shadowy manner is represented to the minds of those who consider it by the name of Home Rule for Scotland. I think the main cause of the growth and extent of this feeling has been correctly described by the hon. Member for North East Lanark (Mr. Crawford), that the Scotch people are not satisfied with the present arrangements for the conduct of Scotch business, and see no hope of bettering it. They see, on the contrary, taking the matter not as merely of a given time in a given Session, but judging for a period passing on from Parliament to Parliament, that their case is getting not better, but worse. The arrear of legislation, owing to no fault of anyone in particular, is becoming heavier and heavier, and as it becomes heavier and heavier the more is the truth of the homely phrase being exemplified, that "the weakest goes to the wall." The hon. Member for Roxburghshire has pointed out that if English Members influence Scotch legislation, the Scotch Members have the same influence over English legislation. Does he mean that 70 Members from Scotland will exercise
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  as much influence on the determination of English business, or are as likely to determine English questions in a sense adverse to English opinion, as the 400 odd Members from England are likely to exercise on Scotch questions, and in determining Scotch questions against Scotch opinion? Such is not according to my arithmetic. I see a very serious difference, though to my hon. Friend it seems but slight, between the sums of 70 Members and 470 Members. I hold gravely—I hope my hon. Friend will not consider it altogether an absurd opinion—that the 470 Members have rather more influence upon the operations of the 70 than the 70 have upon the operations of the 470. Without asking him to commit himself to that proposition, I put it forward for my hon. Friend's reflection. My hon. and learned Friends are right in holding that Scotch business is neglected. I am not prepared to lay the fault upon anybody in particular, or on this or any other Government; but the case is bad, it is growing worse, and it requires a remedy. But I am bound to say that, in my opinion, we are indebted to hon. Gentlemen opposite and to their allies, and more than allies, on this side, for creating, or rather presenting, this development of manifestations in favour of Home Rule for Scotland. It was not the proposal of Home Rule for Scotland, but the very vigorous opposition, and for the time the successful resistance they have made to that proposal, which has made the question enter more deeply into the minds of the people of Scotland, that for the first time brought home to the perception of the people of Scotland the breadth and importance of the subject. If I were in the place of the Mover of this Motion I should thank Her Majesty's Government and the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale and their followers for having matured public opinion in Scotland in favour of Home Rule. Undoubtedly there are many signs of the progress the question is making in Scotland. I am not prepared to take upon myself the responsibility of either dictating or indicating to Scotland what it should do in a matter of such gravity. I take my stand broadly upon this proposition—the mind of Scotland has not been declared in respect of the ultimate claims it may

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  have to make upon the United Parliament in regard to the management of Scotch affairs. My hon. and learned Friend has said the demands may he larger or smaller—and I cannot undertake to prognosticate whether they will be larger or smaller—but in one thing I differ vitally from hon. Gentlemen opposite who scoffed when I said I was not prepared to pronounce on the merits of this question. I understand that they are prepared to pronounce and to trample upon Scotland in this matter. ["No, no."] Well, then, I should like to know what the meaning of the ambiguous utterance was. Some day they will have to deal with the question; and the boldest of them will not look Scotland in the face with a denial when she makes her final well-considered and deliberate demand, with due regard to the authority of Parliament and the unity of the Empire. They will not look Scotland in the face and say "No" to the demand. Therefore, they are a little premature if they think they are now going to dispose definitely of this question, although at this time we do not know what the mind of Scotland is. The declaration made does not amount to a national and Constitutional declaration; it will become one when it has taken effect in the return of a large majority of Scotch Members. But as yet that declaration is not made, and I am not prepared to go in advance of it. I adopt the same attitude as the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale did when he was in charge of the Leadership of the Liberal Party with regard to the question of Disestablishment, which, he said, must be decided by the views of the people of Scotland. A like doctrine is equally sound with respect to a measure of Home Rule for Scotland, which must satisfy one paramount, overruling condition—that it does not endanger the supremacy of this Parliament and the unity of the Empire. When I speak of not endangering the supremacy of Parliament and the unity of the Empire, I differ entirely from my bon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh, who thinks that devolution of authority tends to weaken Parliament. That, I understand, was the effect of his speech. He feared that parting with any of the authority of Parliament weakens that
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  force which, I agree with him, is absolutely necessary to the efficiency of its discussions, and to give weight to its authority in the form of law. I do not think that judicious devolution weakens Parliament; I say it strengthens it. Are you going to weaken the authority of Parliament by passing the measures the Lord Advocate has introduced? On the contrary, you will confirm it. Do not suppose I am pledging myself to the Bills as they stand; they may be made more comprehensive and more worthy of the ability of the speech by which they were introduced. I hold that all judicious devolution which hands over to subordinate bodies duties for which they are better qualified by local knowledge, and which at the same time sets free the hands of Parliament for the pursuit of its proper business, does not weaken it but strengthens it, gives vitality to it, and makes the people more than ever disposed to support the supremacy of Parliament. I believe, though I am not quite certain, that this is the first occasion on which the proposal of Home Rule for Scotland has been submitted to Parliament in a form so broad and so comprehensive. The effect of passing this Motion would be to place Home Rule in the van of all Scottish questions in the House of Commons. If the Liberal Party—I will not say the House of Commons in which we are a small, though a growing minority—were to vote in favour of the Motion of my hon. Friend it would, in my opinion, have the effect of throwing into arrear and into the shade every other Scotch question on which the national opinion of Scotland is entitled to bear sway. I am not disposed to run that risk without seeing what the result would be. Take the question of licensing in Scotland. The moment we declare for Home Rule in Scotland we are open to the observation that such a question as that of licensing ought to stand over for the consideration of a Scottish Legislature. I take another question which is rather more burning—that of Scotch Disestablishment. It will not, I think, be denied that at this moment the question of Disestablishment in Scotland has made considerable progress towards maturity for Parliamentary decision; and I own that I am not prepared to give any vote on Home Rule or on any

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  other subject that would have the effect of thrusting that question aside, and of enabling it to be cast in our teeth that by setting forth as ripe for decision the question as to a Scottish Legislature we have pointed out that a Scottish Legislature would be the proper organ for disposing of the subject of Disestablishment. There is another objection that I take to a Motion of this kind. I am not casting the smallest reflection on my hon. Friend who made the Motion. I have not the least doubt that he and his Seconder and those who have supported him have in their minds perfect earnestness on this subject, and desire to carry forward with all practical speed the proposition which they announce in an abstract form, and to make it a practical resolution, not an abstract Resolution which there is no prospect of carrying into a practical measure. It may be an antiquated Parliamentary idea of mine, but I am not fond of these abstract Resolutions. They mean teaching the people to live, not on our performances, but on our promises; and my desire is that they should live, not on our promises, but on our performances. A proposal in an abstract form of some kind or another is an exceedingly popular thing. It may be supported either for the sake of popularity out of doors or for the convenience of a Party indoors. I may quote an example which I am afraid few of those who sit here have in their own personal recollection, but of which I have a lively remembrance. There was the case of the paper duty, Great credit was gained by the Tory Party in supporting, about the year 1858, an abstract Resolution declaring that the paper duty ought to be abolished. In 1860 a Liberal Government, the Government of Lord Palmerston, proposed a Bill for the abolition of the paper duty, but the fiercest antagonists of that measure were the Tory Party. It was not carried without a great struggle, and even, I think, after a conflict between the two Houses. The position of Scotland in regard to the important question of a domestic legislature for the transaction of Scotch business is, in my opinion, a thoroughly healthy and thoroughly favourable position. Scotland will never make any
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  demand except one that is consistent with the unity of the Empire, and tending to consolidate and strengthen the fabric of the Empire and the authority of the Imperial Parliament. Subject to that limitation, Scotland may rest assured, and I believe will rest assured, that her demands will be considered in a favourable spirit when they are clearly ascertained and fully brought forward. On the other hand, this subject is one which, as we know from the Irish case, involves large and numerous matters of detail. I doubt whether the mind of the House of Commons or even of the country sufficiently realizes the multitude of various and complicated details that are associated with this question. But Scotland will have the advantage—and in my opinion the inestimable advantage—of seeing the question, according to the expressive old phrase, bolted to the bran; and the whole subject will be worked through and through on the Irish points. Scotland will reap the advantage of that; so that if there be some delay, as there must be, both for her to make up her mind and for Parliament to approach the question, Scotland will be richly rewarded by the increased facilities she will have in advancing her claim. Under these circumstances I feel no shame in saying, but, on the contrary, I freely admit, in the face of my kind, indulgent, and generous constituency, that I do not think that this question is ripe for our decision; and, until it is ripe for our decision, I should forfeit any title I may have to the favourable attention and kindness of the House and the confidence of my constituency were I to support the proposal which is now brought before the House.
  *THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The right hon. Gentleman began his speech by making some complaints against Her Majesty's Government for not giving any clear and definite utterance upon what he describes as the important and difficult question which is now before the House; and he went on to criticize the action of those Members of the House who had put down Amendments to the Motion of the hon. Member for Caithness (Dr. Clark), because they had withdrawn their Amendments and had not had

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  the courage to put before the House the Resolutions which they had upon the Paper. The right hon. Gentleman forgets, or perhaps he was not aware, that the hon. Member for Caithness has materially altered the form of his Motion since it first appeared on the Paper. He has stiffened and strengthened it until it is too difficult even for the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends to swallow. Amendments that might have been, and probably were, appropriate to the original and weak form in which the Motion of the hon. Member for Caithness originally appeared on the Paper became in the opinion of the intending Movers, and certainly in mine, wholly superfluous, where we had to deal with a definite proposal to establish a Scotch Parliament. I am glad that the hon. Members have withdrawn their Amendments; for I desire the House should have the opportunity of voting definitely "Aye" or "No" on the question. And I, at all events, speaking for my right hon. Friends on this Bench, and, I believe, for the whole of the Party behind me, am prepared to give a clear and definite reply to the challenge thrown down by the hon. Member for Caithness, without any of the ingenious qualifications with which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone) is himself going to modify the effects of the vote he is to give to night. 'The right hon. Gentleman has told us that the sentiment in favour of Home Rule is growing rapidly in Scotland. I doubt that fact. I entirely admit that you cannot have a discussion like that with regard to Home Rule in Ireland—the one solitary topic of political controversy on every platform— without raising some pale reflection of the controversy with regard to Scotland. But I do not believe that in the minds and hearts of the Scottish people there is anything in the nature of a sentiment growing up in favour of the scheme which is known as Home Rule, and which it is proposed to apply to Ireland. And if there be in the minds of any small section of the Scottish people a feeling of that kind, who is their spokesman? The right hon. Gentleman followed to-night in debate the hon. Member for Lanark (Mr. Graham). Oddly
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  enough, he did not make one single allusion, however distant, to the speech preceding his own.
  MR. GRAHAM: Yes, he did.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I failed to catch it, and I do not think it can have gone beyond some empty compliment to the hon. Gentleman in question. Because, what was the argument of the hon. Gentleman? He said in the clearest language—he does not deal, like right hon. Gentleman, in circumlocution and ambiguities—what he wanted, and why he wanted it. The hon. Member for Lanark, speaking in the name of his constituents, told us that he wants Home Rule for Scotland because be wants Socialism in Scotland. ["Hear, hear," from Mr. GRAHAM.] He admits, therefore, that I have not misrepresented or exaggerated his sentiments.
  *MR. GRAHAM: I always stand by my words.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: He wants Home Rule because he wants Socialism. I want to know whether, when the right hon. Gentleman talks of the growing feeling in Scotland in favour of Home Rule, he is alluding to the sentiment which the hon. Member for Lanark so courageously represents? That sentiment may, I admit, be growing in certain parts of Scotland. I believe that much of this Irish agitation is a Socialistic agitation. I believe that the reflection of the Irish agitation is also a Socialistic agitation. And I should have desired that we should have had some utterance from the right hon. Gentleman as to whether he observes with satisfaction the growing sentiment in Scotland not merely in favour of Home Rule, but in favour of these Socialistic opinions which we have been told by the hon. Member for Lanark are the real basis and root of the Home Rule cry in Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman told us that, in his opinion, Scotland and Ireland stood on a perfect equality on this matter in principle; and whatever Ireland asks for in principle, Scotland has the right to ask for in principle. I accept that entirely. And whatever Ireland has a right to ask for in principle, Middlesex has a right to ask for in principle. And what-

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  ever Middlesex asks for, Yorkshire has a right to ask for. That I entirely grant. And by the cheers of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Morley) I presume that he accepts that statement.
  MR. J. MORLEYindicated dissent.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Then I should be glad to know on what basis a distinction is drawn between Yorkshire and Middlesex on the one hand, and Ireland and Scotland on the other. Take the case of the Highlands of Scotland. We are accustomed rightly to regard Scotland as in some respects a great unity. But I venture to say that the Highlands of Scotland are more unlike the Lowlands of Scotland in every essential particular than the Lowlands are unlike the North of England. Linguistically, ethnologically, in the character of the people, in the social habits, in every single thing of essential moment, I boldly state that the line of division is not the division between England and Scotland, but some line to be drawn far north of that. I want to know, therefore, if the Highlands, conscious as they are of being separate from the Lowlands in race and in social habits, traditions, and history, and conscious, as they also are, that they have been separated from the Lowlands by centuries of warfare—if the Highlands were to ask for Home Rule for the Highlands, are they to be regarded as on an equality with Ireland? This is a question which ought to be presented to the mind of every man discussing this question, and I hope it will be presented to the minds of the people of Scotland by this debate and others which will probably follow it. But the right hon. Gentleman, while he is good enough to say that Scotland is on an equality with Ireland in principle in this matter, says that there are two broad distinctions between the cases. The first is founded on geographical considerations. It appears that Home Rule may be safely deferred in the case of Scotland, because it is not separated from England by St. George's Channel. I never travelled over to Ireland without entertaining a strong feeling of gratitude that I have not, when going home, to cross four hours of tempestuous ocean. But I never knew
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  before how much I had to be grateful for. I never knew that it was owing to the fact that Ireland was an island that Home Rule was to be conferred on Ireland, but that this blessing may be indefinitely withheld in the case of Scotland, because Scotland is not an island. That is the geographical reason of the right hon. Gentleman. He then came to the historical reason. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the Union with Ireland was the result of force, fraud, brutality, and bloodshed. Apparently he thinks that the Union with Scotland was constructed by methods which every statesman may look back upon with pride and satisfaction. The right hon. Gentleman is always bringing bad history to the rescue of bad politics. I think he has greatly, grossly exaggerated the historical incidents, many of them unhappy, many of them regrettable, which accompanied the Union between England and Ireland, and that he has minimized and disguised the incidents which were associated with the Union between England and Scotland. Is it not perfectly notorious, is it not the commonplace of English and Scottish history that there never was a more unpopular measure in Scotland than that which united the fate of Scotland, as I hope for all time, with England? Is it not the commonplace of history that it was only after long experience had convinced the people of Scotland that all their highest interests, material, moral, and political, were bound up with the great Act of Union that they became what, I believe, they have ever since remained, firmly attached to the Union with the larger country? Then the right hon. Gentleman said the boldest among us would not dare to look Scotchmen in the face when Scotland makes a deliberate claim for Home Rule, subject, as he said, to Imperial control. I grant if that should ever occur it would be a phenomenon of the most serious character, which no man can regard with indifference or equanimity; but supposing Scotland, supposing Ireland, were to ask for a Parliament not subject to the control of the Imperial Parliament, what is the boldest going to do then? That is a question of vital importance. When Scotland has developed her views on this question, if no one, according to

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  the right hon. Gentleman, is to have the courage to resist the claim to a Scotch Parliament subject to the Imperial Parliament, what is the boldest going to do when the inevitable demand is made for a Parliament which will not be so subject? The right hon. Gentleman then said that if you pass this abstract Resolution you will throw into the background all those great and important questions upon which Scotland has set its heart.
  MR. GLADSTONE: That was not my expression at all.
  *MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Well, throw into the background the questions concerning Scotland which are now in the foreground. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned particularly Licensing and Disestablishment. I wonder the right hon. Gentleman could use this argument without a smile, because it amounts to this—that Scotland is to wait until all the important Scottish questions are settled before she is to have a separate Parliament in order to settle them. Does he not see that if all those interesting questions are before the Scottish people, now is the time to give Scotland Home Rule, and the sooner the better? Then Scotland will, indeed, have a chance of having the Licensing and Disestablishment Questions settled. "Not at all," says the right hon. Gentleman, "we in the Imperial Parliament, we in this overworked and overloaded and incompetent Parliament, are to settle Disestablishment and Licensing, and when those difficult questions are disposed of then give Scotland Home Rule if she wants it." I cannot help thinking that when the right hon. Gentleman was occupied in the difficult task of at once making a speech which will satisfy the national aspirations for Home Rule in Scotland, and which will give sufficient reason why he is going to vote against a Resolution to give Home Rule to Scotland, he used an argument he had better have left alone. I think I have now gone through all the topics mentioned
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  in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. I will only say, in conclusion, that surely we should be mad if at the time when every nation in America and in Europe is drawing closer the bonds which unite separate parts, we were to scatter and divide. Should we not be especially mad if we engaged in this task with regard to Scotland, about which it can be conclusively proved that the fruits of the Union have been an unmitigated blessing, as I believe, to both countries, and especially to Scotland? The Union found Scotland poor, despised, and oppressed among the nations of Europe. Great as has been the progress in England since 1707, it has been absolutely insignificant, trivial, and contemptible compared with the improvement that Scotland has made in everything which makes a nation great. Are you really going to lay sacrilegious hands on institutions which work so well? I speak, as I have a right to speak on this question, as a Scotsman, and I say that if I found, or believed, that the Union between England and Scotland had destroyed anything which is valuable or characteristic in our national life, I should feel sorely tempted to vote with the hon. Member. But it has not been so, and the whole history of Scotland proves that it has not been so. We have not been overshadowed by the larger nation. We have not had our national life crushed by the life of England. We have not suffered in any essential particular of our civilization from its being attached to the civilization of the neighbouring country. We have, on the contrary, gained the inestimable privilege of feeling ourselves citizens of one great community, and of taking our full share in the management of this great Empire. I will not be a party, and those who sit near me will never be parties, to anything which can, even in the smallest degree, tend to diminish the great heritage which has been handed down to us.
  MR. R. T. REID: I am not going to occupy much of the time of the House, but I must say it is somewhat characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, the chief champion of the Union in the House,

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  not to be aware of the date with which his own country entered into that Union I cannot congratulate the right hon Gentleman on his historical accuracy. But I desire to express my entire concurrence with the right hon. Gentleman in one thing which he said—namely, that if this Motion tended in the smallest degree to withdraw Scotland or Scotch business from its full share in the proceedings of this House and the Imperial Parliament, I for one would readily vote against it. I do not believe that any of my countrymen would tolerate for a single instant the withdrawal from this Parliament of any portion of Scotch influence here, but that is not the question raised here to-night. We are dealing with a practical grievance which must be acknowledged to exist, and that is the habitual neglect of all Scotch business. Is there a Member on the Tory Benches who can deny that proposition? Is it not the case that during the past few years Scotch Members have been habitually out-voted on questions thoroughly affecting Scotland by English Members? We have no hostility to English Members, but we do most deliberately object to being obliged to come hat in hand to the English Members to ask them to give us an opportunity for considering our Scotch Bills which are required in the interest of our people. I will only give one illustration. Who knows Scotland and does not know that it is scourged with the evil of drink? Who does not know that many, even Conservative Members, are anxious to see that evil removed? But anyone who watches the proceedings of this House knows thoroughly well that we have no chance whatever of dealing with the matter. Now, what is remarkable about the speech of the Chief Secretary is this, that he does not offer, on behalf of the Government, the smallest hope to Scotland or the Scotch Members of ameliora-
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  tion in this matter. He has heard the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, and he has heard the speeches of the other Scotch Members, and yet he does not deny the allegation. He admits the grievance, and holds out no prospect whatever of any remedy. These are serious facts which are under the consideration of the House. The hon. Member for Caithness has been cruel in placing many Scotch Members in a dilemma; but for myself I have no hesitation as to how I am going to vote. I am going to vote for the Resolution. If I believed it meant what was described by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, I should not support, it but I consider that it means that Scotch business ought to be managed by Scotchmen, and in Scotland, without interfering in any sense with this Parliament, or indeed with our presence here as we are. It is in that sense and that sense alone, that I will support the proposal of my hon. Friend. I go further, and say that even if I were not prepared to accept the full words, and the full extent of the Resolution, I think the grievances are so great, and the hopelessness of a remedy, after the speech of the Chief Secretary, has become so marked, that I should be disposed to stretch a point a little in order to indicate by my vote on this occasion the supreme resentment I feel—and it has been expressed by men of both Parties in my constituency—at the neglect, the habitual and scandalous neglect, of Scotch business in this House.
  *MR. HOZIER: If this were the first Parliament summoned under the original Act of Union between Scotland and England, I can well imagine that the hon. Member for Caithness would have a very substantial ground of complaint; for, according to that original Act of Union, Bute and Caithness had only the right to send a Member to Parliament alternately, and Bute had the first turn. If that arrangement were still in force, the Member for Caithness would at this moment be gnashing his teeth in outer

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  darkness, and panting for the opportunity of pouring forth his winning words to a listening and delighted Senate. But he would n it hive the only, or the chief ground of complaint, for the vast majority of the Members of this House would also have a very just ground of complaint. We should all be looking forward with dismay to the prospect of having in the next Parliament to exchange the magnificent eloquence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bute (the Lord Advocate) for the sort of oratory with which the hon. Member for Caithness is so very fond of favouring us. Happily this double grievance, like many other grievances, has been removed, and for many many years Scotland has, under the Act of Union, thriven and prospered exceedingly. Let us look for a moment at the real meaning of the present Motion. It is brought forward by the hon. Member for Caithness as the spokesman of the Home Rule Association of Scotland, and it ought to be remembered that the Scottish Home Rule Association emphatically decline to accept any Local Government Bill such as is ordinarily meant by the term. In a letter of the 5th of December last to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, they say they decline to accept any Local Government Bill, on the ground that it ought to be preceded by Home Rule legislation, and we are therefore led to the conclusion that what is meant is some such scheme as that which was introduced in the case of Ireland. On this point I am certain that no Scotchman would accept any scheme that would exclude the Scotch Members from the Imperial Parliament; and if you once admit the Scotch Members there, then arises the difficulty of distinguishing between Imperial and Scottish business, which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian distinctly said, when speaking of Ireland, was a difficulty which it passes the wit of man to overcome. But, even if any such distinction could be made, we must remember that in the vast majority of Bills it would
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  be absolutely necessary that there should be uniformity between the two countries. Take such cases as the Factory Acts and Mining Acts. I believe I am more advanced on Labour questions than almost any hon. Member on this side of the House, and probably more than most of those on the Opposition Benches, but there is no one who can appreciate more distinctly the great difficulty and danger that would he caused by any distinction between Scotland and England in such cases. Further, I should like to ask the hon. Member for Caithness, whether, among the powers he proposes to give the Scottish Parliament he would include power to deal with such questions as those relating to Church Establishments and Religious Endowments. I understand the hon. Member to say "Yes." Then I say that he goes far further than did the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian with regard to Ireland, because in the Bill of 1886 such questions were specially taken away from the Irish Parliament. But if so, why? Does he mean that he is quite willing and even very anxious to trust the Protestants of Scotland, but that he declines to trust the Roman Catholics of Ireland? The hon. Gentleman professes to be an advocate of what he calls religious equality. Is that the hon. Gentleman's idea of religious equality? We know that among those who at present profess Home Rule principles there are many waverers. The hon. Member for the Luton division of Bedford (Mr. Cyril Flower) who won a race on Saturday that some of us had the pleasure of witnessing, is not the first Member of the House who has brought two horses to the start, one called "Home Rule," and the other called "Sultan," or something else. He is not the only man who has hesitated up to the last moment which of the two horses he should ride. He is not the first, and he will not be the last, to finally reject the horse called "Home Rule," and to ride and win on the other. And then calls the horse "Home Rule" after all! I have noticed that most of these waverers have a way of following the lead of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, and the right hon. Gentleman has given them the advice

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  contained in two lines of a comic opera—
  "Let us see how things may go
  That isn't quite yes and isn't quite no."
  So we know exactly the spirited course which they will pursue. For my part I will venture to take this opportunity of saying that I most cordially welcome the measures of Local Government which were last night introduced by the Lord Advocate with so much credit to himself and with so much prospective advantage to Scotland. I trust the people. I believe in the people. And I have far too great confidence in the good sense and wisdom of the people of Scotland to imagine them capable of being led astray to break down the Union which, whatever may be said, has done, and is doing, an enormous amount of good, not to England only, not to England chiefly—but both to Scotland and to England combined and united.
  *MR. WALLACE: I regret that I have to rise, even at this late hour, for the purpose of proposing an Amendment to the Resolution of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Caithness. That Amendment is to add to the Resolution of my hon. Friend the words, "at such time and of such a character as may be desired by the Scottish people," so that, if my Amendment be carried along with the Resolution, the Resolution would read as follows:—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that arrangements be made for giving to the people of Scotland, by their Representatives in a National Parliament the management and control of Scottish affairs, at such time and of such a character as may be desired by the Scottish people."
  I have said I regret to move an Amendment of this kind, because until to-day I was perfectly satisfied with the form of his Motion, which I regarded as meeting a necessity such as in my opinion does exist for giving expression to the profound and constantly growing dissatisfaction of the Scottish people at the apparently incurable neglect of their
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  business by the Imperial Parliament, and their increasing conviction that there must be some decisive and radical change. But on coming down to the House, I found to my surprise that my hon. Friend's Resolution had assumed an entirely different form by which it would commit me to a precise and definite plan, with respect to which I do not understand that the Representatives of Scotland at the present moment hold any mandate from their constituencies. To my mind, it would be as fatal to our democratic principle to force Home Rule in the shape of a National Parliament on an unwilling people as it would be to refuse it to them when they desired it; and having no authority from my constituents, and knowing none from my country, to support my hon. Friend's Motion, I feel bound, for my own protection, to interpose an Amendment which will make my duty to the Scottish people plain to them and to this House, and to my own mind. I feel satisfied that if the time should come when the people of Scotland, having maturely reflected. on the matter, desire anything in the nature of a domestic Government such as is shadowed forth in this Resolution, it will be a reasonable and proper demand, and one which may be safely conceded by Parliament; but until they have given their voice in the matter I do not feel myself authorized to take up the position which my hon. Friend and his Seconder consider themselves justified in. taking to-night. I believe that the attitude of the people of Scotland in regard to the question of Home Rule is in a state of formation. I agree with what has been stated as to the condition of the mind of Scotland with regard to the way in which its affairs are treated, or maltreated here; but whatever may be the conception of the remedy which exists in the Scottish mind, I wish to impress on the House this fact, that the attitude of Scotland towards the question of Home Rule within its own borders is determined at the present

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  moment by its attitude towards the question of Irish Home Rule; and that the simple reason why there is not greater excitement manifested in the shape of Petitions to this House, and of enthusiastic and crowded public meetings in Scotland on the question of Scotch Home Rule, is to be found in the circumstance that they consider it a national duty to devote -their strength in the meantime to the promotion of Home Rule for Ireland. I know it would be out of order to enter on the question of Irish Home Rule on this Motion, but in order to indicate the attitude of the Scottish mind on its own Home Rule question I must be permitted briefly to state what is the attitude of the Scottish mind towards the question of Irish Home Rule. The mind of Scotland is, as a whole, fully made up on this question. The Scotch people regard the demand for Irish Home Rule as sincere, and also as safe and certain to be fulfilled. They regard it as sincere. They do not look on the excitement in Ireland on this matter as some do, as merely a factitious demand created by agitators. They regard the question of Irish Home Rule as perfectly safe. They are not disposed to accept the teaching of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, who comes down to their first seat of national learning and seeks to teach that national organization is equivalent to Imperial disintegration. And they are not disposed to believe that nations are moved by irrational and insane considerations, and, therefore, they believe that Ireland, even if she had the power to separate herself from the British Empire, would not, apart from lunacy, seek a separation from which she would have nothing to gain. Once more, I say that the Scotch people are of opinion that Irish Home Rule is certain to come. They do not believe that the policy of Her Majesty's Government can be successful, even if persevered in. They do not believe, taught by the traditions of their own country, that mere force can suppress a novel force like national aspiration, or that it can be even touched by physical violence, unless resort is had to those bloody methods of extermination, which I do not believe even Her Majesty's Govern-
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  ment would attempt in the present day. They do not believe that plank beds are a refutation of political truths or of historical facts. Accordingly, they are content to await what they believe to be a certain victory, when this matter comes to the point. But they, at the same time, know that victory will not be obtained except through a struggle, and they do not object to a hard struggle, either in this or in any other matter, because when their blood is up they are rather fond of a fight than otherwise. At the same time they know that it will be a hard struggle. They think that to carry Irish Home Rule is not unlike pulling a camel through the eye of a needle. They know that is a difficult operation, although they also believe that, with a long pull and a strong pull and a pull all together, it can be done. But they have sense enough to see that the pulling of two camels simultaneously through the eye of the needle could be done by nothing short of a miracle. And, therefore, they do not expect to be able to carry Irish Home Rule and Scotch Home Rule simultaneously and successfully through. So they have at once the wisdom and generosity to be content that their own question shall for a time stand by until, with their help, and with the help of the friends of the cause, the question of Irish Home Rule shall be settled in that successful way in which it is certain to be settled eventually, both because they believe that the necessity of Ireland is greater than their own, and also because they recognize the fact that Ireland was first in the field. Therefore it is, Sir, that I am not able, without the words of the Amendment which I have suggested, to agree with the Motion of my hon. Friend. I may further say that I am not quite certain that, in the condition of mind of the Scotch people now, they will regard with entire satisfaction the language of the Resolution, because it is worded so as to exclude a Scottish Executive, of which he makes no mention whatever. I rather suspect that the Scottish people will regard that as possibly an unintended but not the less a decided smack in the face to Ireland; because if, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midlothian has said, national aspirations are equal in their rights all over the world, it may be in-

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  ferred that, as Scotland is equally a nationality with Ireland, Ireland can do without an Executive if Scotland can. Therefore, I rather suspect that this Motion in that respect will not meet with favour in Scotland; and it would have met with a different reception had it been otherwise worded. And I think that in another respect this Motion will nut meet with the complete approbation of the Scottish people in the frame of mind which they now maintain towards the Irish people, because it speaks in the most vague and undefined way of the nature of the legislative power which is to have control of Scottish affairs.
  SIR C. DALRYMPLErose in his place and claimed to move "That the question be now put;" but Mr. Deputy Speaker withheld his assent and declined then to put that question.
  *MR. WALLACEresumed: You know it is the fact that it uses the word "Parliament," and I venture to submit that the word "Parliament," or even the phrase "National Parliament," is not definite. It may mean a Council of any description, with undefined powers, and it is not necessarily identical in character with the Imperial Parliament. It simply means an assembly for the purpose of legislative discussion. If that be so, the Scottish people do not know what sort of a Council, or National Council it is that my hon. Friend is driving at. For anything we know, it may be akin to one of those numerous Councils which are springing from time to time from the incessantly parturient brain of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham—a Council which may have possibly to report its proceedings as if it were in the nature of a subordinate Committee to the Imperial Parliament, and not anything in the nature of an independent Parliament. I know very well that the offer of such an assembly, call it by what name you please, till not create any enthusiasm in the Scottish mind. I do not think
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  I shall be performing my duty as a representative of the Scottish people if I were to give my support to the Motion of my hon. Friend. But while this is so, I know that there is the utmost dissatisfaction in Scotland with respect to the condition of its business in this Parliament, and that being so, without going over the ground travelled by other Members, I desire to submit to the House the Amendment which I now propose to add to the Motion of my hon. Friend the words "At such time and of such a character as may be desired by the Scottish people."
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: I rise for the purpose of seconding the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for East Edinburgh. I do so because it correctly expresses the views which I hold on the question now before the House.
  DR. CAMERONrose in his place and claimed to move "That the Question be now put."
  Question, "That the question be now put," put, and agreed to.
  Question put accordingly.
  The House divided:—Ayes 79; Noes 200.—(Div. List, No. 70.)
  It being after One of the clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without question put.

HORSEFLESH (SALE FOR FOOD) BILL. (No. 41.)
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Thursday the 2nd of May next.—(The Barl Beauchamp.)
DRAINAGE AND IMPROVEMENT OF LANDS (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.—(No. 32.)
Read 3a (according to order), and passed.
NATIONAL DEBT REDEMPTION BILL. (No. 39.)
House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without Amendment; then Standing Order No. XXXIX. considered (according to order), and dispensed with. Bill read 3a, and passed.
TOWN POLICE CLAUSES ACT (1847) AMENDMENT BILL.—(No. 33.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for Second Reading read.
  *THE EARL OF MILLTOWN: My Lords, the Bill which I now ask your Lordships to read a second time is extremely simple in its provisions. The Bill proposes to amend the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847, which was passed with the object of consolidating all the Acts giving to Local Authorities the control of the police. That Act contained, inter alia, a number of clauses with respect to the regulation of hackney carriages. Clause 38, after defining what is meant by "hackney carriage," enacts as follows:—
  "Provided always that no stage coach used for the purpose of standing or plying for passengers to be carried for hire at separate fares, and duly licensed for that purpose, and having thereon the proper numbered plates required by law to be placed on such stage coaches, shall be deemed to be a hackney carriage within the meaning of this Act."
  That Proviso has been held to extend

  3
  to omnibuses, and the consequence is that the Local Authorities in many towns are powerless to regulate the traffic of omnibuses, which wander about at their own sweet pleasure, causing very serious obstruction and annoyance to the inhabitants. Several towns have proceeded by private Local Bills to give themselves these powers; amongst others, I may mention Birmingham, Accrington, Bristol, Cardiff, Huddersfield, Liverpool, Nottingham, Preston, Salford, Sheffield, and probably many others. The object of this Bill is to save the time and expense of thus proceeding by separate Local Bills, by amending the Act of 1847, and giving the necessary power to all Local Authorities. The reason probably why omnibuses were not included in the Act of 1847 was, that at that time omnibuses as public carriages were hardly known; but I need hardly remind your Lordships that at the present time public omnibus traffic has enormously developed all over the country. I may add that tramcars are not included in this Bill, because the various Acts under which tramways have been constructed have always contained the necessary powers to the Local Authorities. That, my Lords, is really the whole of the Bill. It has been supported by both sides in the Rouse of Commons. It was brought forward by Mr. Pieter', the hon. Member for Leicester, and seconded by my noble Friend Lord Granby. It received no opposition from Her Majesty's Government. At one time it certainly was blocked in the House of Commons, but that, I understand, was for purely personal reasons, as an hon. Member, with that public spirit which distinguishes certain Members of the other House, had blocked this Bill because somebody who sat near the hon. Member who proposed it had previously blocked another Bill in which the blocking Member was interested. Eventually, however, the Bill passed through the House of Commons in the absence both of the blocker and blockee.
  *VISCOUNT TORRINGTON: The Towns Police Clauses Act, 1847, contains in Sections 37 to 68 a series of provisions with respect to hackney carriages. An omnibus standing or plying for passengers to be carried for
  4
  hire at separate fares is not a hackney carriage within the meaning of those provisions, and the object of the Bill is to extend such provisions to omnibuses, so far as they may be applicable. Under the Bill, power will be given to license omnibuses, &c., and to make bye-laws for the regulation of the conduct of their proprietors, drivers, and conductors, and for other matters connected with the management and use of such carriages. Some slight Amendments have been made in the Bill in the House of Commons, and the Government have no objection to the Bill, as amended. Indeed, the Local Government Board have in several instances amended Local Acts by Provisional Order so as to give effect to proposals similar to those contained in the Bill. These Orders, however, are, of course, in force only in the districts of the Sanitary Authorities whose Local Acts have been thus amended. The Bill would be in force in the district of every Urban Sanitary Authority.
  Bill read 2a (according to order), and committed to a Standing Committee.

  COMMISSIONERS FOR OATHS BILL. (No. 6.)
  House in Committee (according to order); Amendments made; the Report thereof to be received on Thursday next.

  STANDING COMMITTEES.
  Ordered, That two Standing Committees be appointed, the one for the consideration of Bills relating to law and courts of justice and legal procedure, and the other for the consideration of all other Public Bills, that may be committed to them by the House, and that the first of such Committees be designated "the Standing Committee for Bills relating to Law, &c." and the second of such Committees "the Standing Committee for General Bills." —(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
  LORD DENMAN: The debate as to the Larcency Bill shows the inconvenience of its being necessary to move for a Committee of the Whole House, instead of its being needful to move specially for reference to a Grand Committee. In fact, there were two debates on the principle of the Bill. I wished to have said that if a burglar deterred by the Bill carried no firearms, he showed that he had no intention to murder. Grand Committee was only named after the debate.
  Resolution agreed to.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—THE EASTER ADJOURNMENT.
  In reply to Earl GRANVILLE,
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I understand that there is no business after Thursday next, and that we might adjourn on Thursday. It is usual to meet in the week after Easter week; but I am told it is not usual to meet on the Monday. If there is no objection, we might meet on the Tuesday afterwards.
  House adjourned at a quarter before Five o'clock, till Thursday, a quarter after Ten o'clock.