Sitting of 24 May 1889

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  SHORTLANDS AND NUNHEAD RAILWAY BILL.
  Order for consideration, read.
  MR. STUART (Shoreditch, Hoxtosaid there were some objections against the Bill which it would be necessary to state.
  MR. SPEAKERIf the Bill is opposed it cannot be taken to-day.
  Consideration of Bill deferred until Monday, May 27.

PETITION.

  A POINT OF ORDER.
  COLONEL SANDYSpresented a petition, signed by 22,225 inhabitants of suburbs of London, calling attention to the growth of conventional and monastic institutions. The hon. Member was proceeding to read the petition at length, when
  COLONEL NOLAN (Galway, N.)rose to order, and asked whether the hon. Member was regular in reading the petition?
  MR. SPEAKERWhat is unusual is that the hon. Member should read the terms instead of merely giving the substance of the petition.
  COLONEL SANDYSThen I will simply explain that the petition prays for a Commission to inquire into the condition of convents and monastic institutions, and for the passing of a law to secure the liberty of the subject.
  MR. S. MAC NEILL (Donegal, S.)May I ask the hon. Member—
  MR. SPEAKEROrder, order!
  The petition was ordered to lie on the Table.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL. (No. 187.)
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [23rd May], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  Question again proposed.
  MR. HUNTER (Aberdeen, N.)I propose to ask the attention of the House to one of the questions raised in this Bill—namely, the provisions which deal with the application of the Probate Duty to free education in Scotland. The House will remember the position in which we stand in reference to that question. Five days before the prorogation in December last, a Bill was introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the distribution of the Probate Duty in Scotland. We took objection to that Bill on the ground that it applied the money in Scotland, as has been done in England, to the reduction of rates, whereas we held that a more worthy and proper object was the reduction of school fees. The Chancellor of the Exchequer on that occasion gave three pledges to the Scotch

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  Members—first, that he would confine the Bill to the 31st March, 1889; that pledge has been kept. The second was that he would introduce his proposals in the Local Government Bill; that pledge has been redeemed also. The third pledge was that the Government and the House should remain entirely uncommitted to the principles of the Act then passed by the House. It was agreed on all sides to waive any criticism on the Bill at that time, on the distinct understanding that neither the Government nor the House were to be pledged as to the distribution of the money. That pledge has only been partially redeemed, and I propose to offer to Her Majesty's Government some considerations which may induce them to redeem that pledge in a full and satisfactory manner, I will not trouble the House at any length upon the question of free education, for the reason that in Scotland there exists an all but unanimous opinion in favour of free education, and the only obstacle to its adoption is the reluctance of the people to throw the cost upon the rates, because half the rates are paid by the owners of property, who will hardly obtain any advantage from its adoption. There is an opinion prevalent that the state of education in Scotland is highly satisfactory. I regret to say that is not the fact, because the figures given to us by the Government show there is an educational destitution of a serious character. There are 833,000 children of school age, and of these only 622,000 are on the register of any public elementary school. Only 75 per cent of the children of school age are on the register, while the average attendance is only 58. It is true that even with these deficiencies Scotland is slightly ahead of England, but the difference is only a small one, and measures are required to remove the educational destitution that now exists. I believe that the existence of excessive fees prevents children from being sent to school, and also prevents the School Boards from stringently using their compulsory powers, and thereby compelling parents to go in forma pauperis to the Parish Authorities. A bright side of the matter is the efficiency of the teachers in Scotland. This cannot be more clearly brought out than by comparing, the average earnings per head, and these in Scotland are
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  18s. 4d. as against 17s. in England. That results in the very substantial gain to Scotland of £34,000 a year more than is gained by England for the relief of the rates. The best schools are those of the Free Church, which make 2s. 1¼d. a child; next came the Board Schools, 18s. 5d., then the Roman Catholics with 16s. 7½d., and then the Episcopalians 16s. 3½d. It is a remarkable fact that in Scotland the Episcopalians Schools are 3s. 10d. behind the Free Church Schools, and in England the Church of England Schools earn only 16s. 7¼d. as compared with 17s. 5d. earned by the children at the English Board schools. Not only is it satisfactory to find the earnings are so high, but they have been increasing, and still continued to grow. During the last fifteen years they have grown from 9s. 2d. to 18s. In the first triennial period the Government grant was 9s. 2d., in the second 14s. 8d., in the. third 16s. 9d., in the fourth 17s. 5d., and in the last 18s. Thus there has been a continual growth. That is a satisfactory circumstance. I believe the Government is able, if it chooses, to abolish school fees, not only in respect to the first three standards, but for the higher also in all schools in Scotland. The Government are in a position to do this for four years, on the assumption that there is no increase in the Imperial grant over that of 1886–7. The total fees that have to be paid in the current year amounted to £310,000, of which. £290,000 will be paid by the parents, and £20,000 by the Parochial Boards. That can be met very easily. The Government had at their command £557,000 from the Probate Duties and from licenses. The grants in 1886–7 amounted to £287,000. That leaves a balance of £270,000. If the Government adhere to the basis of the grant of 1886–87 they will have at least £260,000 of that £270,000 that they might apply to free education. Supposing they postpone the abolition of fees until 1st January, 1890, three-quarters of the financial year would give them a sum of £190,000 in hand, and that would suffice to pay all the fees for four years There are some grounds on which the House should press the Government to devote the whole share of the Probate Duties to fees. For instance, they are adopting only a half

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  measure, in allocating the entire sum neither to rates nor to the abolition of fees. In doing this they will give satisfaction neither to the ratepayers nor to those who pay fees. They should take the whole of the money for one purpose or the other. One reason why the fees should have a preferential claim on any money coming from the Probate Duty is to be found in the educational condition of Scotland, as it existed from the Reformation till 1872, during which period the land was liable to contribute towards the maintenance of the parish scholars. The real argument against the scheme of the Government, however, is this: that by applying this money for the rates they produce a result which is absolutely inappreciable to nine-tenths of the population. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Government devote £100,000 to the relief of the poor rate in Aberdeen, the proportion in that city being very much the same as in other Scottish towns. By giving £100,000 to the poor rate, out of a total of 22,000 ratepayers, 7,700 will get an average benefit of 1½d. per annum; 9,900 will get an average benefit of 3¾d. per annum; 3,470 will get 7d.; 1,200 will get 1s. 4d.; 360 will get 2s. 10d.; and 38 will get a little more. When, therefore, they place such a result as this in competition with the abolition of school fees, the proposal of the Government appeared to be absolutely ridiculous. What is the result of abolishing school fees? To a man, say with three children, the benefit of abolishing fees is £1 19s. a year, whereas under the scheme of relieving the local rates a benefit of only 1½d. would be obtained. I think also there are grave objections to stopping relief at the Third Standard, and great inconvenience must arise from it. If we have to make a choice, I think that, from an educational point of view, we should remove the fees from the higher rather than the lower standards. One of the traditions of Scotland is that parents have always made great sacrifices in order to give their children as good an education as they possibly can, That is a noble tradition, and there is nothing more prejudicial to its maintenance than lowering the recognized standards as it is now proposed to do. Selfish parents would take advantage of the arrangement and keep their children in the lower standards instead of
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  urging them on to the higher. The Government scheme certainly gives an interest to keep children back—it gives a motive and direct incentive to retard their educational progress. How is the scheme going to affect the School Boards? In the last 15 years the amount of Government grant has doubled. To a large extent it has been earned by the higher standards, and if, under this scheme children are taken away from these standards, School Boards may actually in the end lose more money by the diminution of the grant than they would by paying the fees out of the rates. There is one duty to be thrown on the School Boards, to which I take great objection. The Parochial Boards are no longer to pay the fees of children whose parents are unable to pay, but when the children reach the Fourth Standard it will be necessary to make some provision for the children who formerly received their fees from the Parochial Boards. That is to be done by the School Board. They are to hold an inquisition and select the children whom they will educate without fee. I do not envy them the discharge of that duty; it is casting upon them a difficult and inviduous task that it will be impossible for them to discharge with universal satisfaction. It is casting on them a duty they might well be spared As to the position of the poorer children, it is estimated that £155,000 would be required for the three standards. For the present that might be enough, but it is very doubtful whether in the near future it will be sufficient, for it was possible the School Boards may not be so stringent and exacting as the Parochial Boards. That leads me to mention a fact of a most alarming and instructive character in regard to education. It is this, that during recent years there has been an enormous and rapid growth of the sums paid by the Parochial Boards, and a large increase in the number of pauper children. During the last 12 years the average attendance of children at the Board Schools has increased by 3 per cent per annum That is satisfactory, because the natural increase of the population has been only 1 per cent, and it shows that we are overtaking our educational destitution. But while the annual increase in average attendance

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  has been 3 per cent, the increase in the number of pauper children has been 11 per cent. Between 1874–76 the average amount paid was £3,801, and the number of children 10,114; in 1886–88 the amount was £17,198, and the number of children 31,437. That melancholy fact is explained by the growing amount of the fees and diminution of the self-respect of the parents. Contact with the Parochial Board is not a salutary education. I think there is only one reason that would justify the Government stopping short at the three standards, and that is that they have not the money to go further. How does it stand? The Government can easily pay the whole fees if they adopt the plan I have suggested, and make no new grants. They have since 1887 introduced new grants to the extent of £85,000. £20,000 of that went to the Parochial Boards. That in itself is about one of the most unobjectionable grants that can be devised, but it is nearly equal to the sum paid by the Parochial Boards to the School Boards in respect to pauper children. If the Parochial Boards were relieved of the payment of the £20,000 it might well be said that they should not get the grant from the Imperial Exchequer. The next grant was that of £30,000 for the Highlands, which is one of about the most monstrous kind that could be suggested, but it has gone down because "Highlands" and "grant" seem to some minds to naturally go together. I complain strongly of the Government that up to the present time when they are asking the House to assent to the Second Reading of this Bill, they have withheld all detailed inquiries with respect to the distribution of this £30,000. My hon. Friend the Member for the St. Rollox Division of Glasgow (Mr. Caldwell) induced the Government to agree to a Return, but I imagine the figures will not be in our hands for some weeks yet—until we have concluded the discussion upon this Bill. It is, therefore, difficult to indicate with precision how the £30,000 has been disposed. £2,721 has been given to the Scotch Education Department, who have given it to the schools in the Highlands. It has been given as a bribe to weak-kneed School Boards to hand over the control of education to the Government Inspector, and
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  to substitute the Government Inspector for the School Board. The School Board are to appoint a Committee of two persons to act with Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. It is, however, provided that if there is any difference of opinion between the Inspector and the other two members of the Committee, the opinions of the majority is not to prevail, but the question is to be referred to the Education Department. In the next place, £22,000 is to be given for the relief of the poor rates. What I complain of is that the Government do not give us the figures to enable us to understand who are the persons who are going to get this money. I am left to make a conjecture, and the conjecture I make is based upon the four parishes which are mentioned in the Crofter Commissioners' Report, and which are supposed to be typical of the parishes in the Highlands, and I find that of the £22,000, £11,000 goes at one fell swoop into the pockets of the landlords, £5,250 goes, in the first instance, to the large sheep farmers, but of course when the leases expire this sum also goes to the landlords, and £2,000 goes to the shooting and fishing tenants in the first place, but ultimately, of course, to the landlords. Of £22,000, therefore, you are giving £18,250 to the landlords directly or indirectly. The remainder goes to the crofters. The reductions of rents by the Crofter Commissioners in the two years of work amount to £7,342. It will be admitted under these circumstances that the Government are doing very well for their landlord friends in the Highlands. I ask what ground can there be for the landlords in the Highlands coming in an eleemosynary fashion, begging alms in the respect of money which belongs to the whole of the Scottish people. I know of no claim which either the shooting tenants or the landlords or the big farmers have except that they are a perpetual source of disturbance in the Highlands, and a considerable cause of disorder and confusion. I invite hon. Gentlemen opposite to consider the position they will be in when they have to face their constituents at a General Election. You have not abolished the school fees for the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Standards. Why? Because you want the money to make a gift to the landlords in the Highlands. So much for

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  the grant to the Highlands. The next grant which the Government propose to give is upwards of £34,000 to the roads, £30,000 to the counties, and £4,000 to the burghs. It is a remarkable fact that although we have had two speeches from the Government Bench, we have not heard a single argument in favour of the grant to the roads. The road grant was originally introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone), and 1882–3 was the first year it appeared in the Local Taxation Return. The concession which was made by the right hon. Gentleman was a concession, at all events, to necessity if not to conviction. A Motion had been carried by Sir Massey Lopes in favour of a Government grant to local rates, and I daresay that if he had been willing to do so the right hon. Gentleman was not strong enough to resist the cry of the rural landlord for a subsidy from the State. If we were to do justice to the people of Scotland we would take that £34,000 and give it in aid of education. It is most important if you propose new grants to consider how the existing Imperial grants stands in relation to owners and occupiers and to the distinction between burghs and counties. If you have any Imperial grants at all they ought to be distributed impartially between owners and occupiers, counties or burghs. We find a remarkable contrast. In the counties substantially the whole of the rates are paid by the owners of property; in the burghs nearly the whole of the rates are paid by occupiers. What is the proportion of the Government grants to the counties respectively? 39 per cent to the counties and 7 per cent to the burghs. The figures are these:—County rates paid by owners, £156,000, by occupiers £7,000, and Government grant £68,188; burgh rates paid by landlords, £183,000, by occupiers, £1,165,000, and Government grants, £93,000. So that you have a proportion of 7 per cent in the burghs as against a proportion of 39 per cent in the counties. Therefore, at the present moment the counties have actually 4½ times more than their fair share of Imperial grants. It is the same with regard to the police. 48 per cent of the entire cost of the police in the counties is paid by the Government grant as against
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  40 per cent in the burghs, although the ratable value in the counties is much higher than the ratable value in the burghs. The same disproportion is observable with regard to the roads. You give nearly £31,000 to the counties and only £3,400 to the burghs. The proportion of the Government grant in respect to the roads in 1886–7 was, in in the counties 9 per cent and in the burghs 2.5 per cent, so that the counties, got almost four times as much in proportion as the burghs. But that is not by any means the worst of it, because I am omitting the expense of the streets, which are to the burghs precisely what the roads are to the counties. When you take the streets into account you find that the proportion of assistance given to the burghs for the maintenance of the roads is 73 per cent, whereas in the counties it is 9 per cent. In other words, it is 13 times as much in the counties as in the burghs. I venture to think that even the Government, when they come to look at the thing, will hesitate before they ask the House to adopt such a strange distribution of the money. I wish to touch upon the question of what are erroneously called the denominational schools. The distinction in Scotland is not between denominational schools and undenominational schools, but between schools under popularly-elected Boards and schools under private management. With some exceptions, I think all the Board Schools are denominational. On the other hand, some of the schools which have private managers are undenominational. I mention the distinction because, probably, it does not exist in England, and it is important to bear in mind, that we are not dealing with the question of denominational education at all, but with the contrast between those schools which are controlled by the public and those which are controlled by private individuals. There is another marked distinction between the schools in England and those in Scotland. In Scotland 82½ per cent of the children attend the Board Schools, and only 17½ per cent are to be found in other schools. In England the proportion of children in Board Schools is only 36½ per cent. The schools not under School Boards in Scotland may be divided into three classes—namely, schools which are increasing in number, schools which are

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  stationary in number, and schools which are diminishing in number, and being constantly transferred to the School Boards. The last class—the excellent schools, the best schools in Scotland—belong to the Established Church, the Free Church, and to the class called undenominational. A marked feature about this excellent class of schools is that the process of transferring them to the School Boards has been going on spontaneously and uninterruptedly for the last fifteen years. In 1874 there were 883 schools of this character under private control, and this year there are 300, and the proportion of these schools to Board Schools, which was 65 per cent in 1874, is now only 11 per cent. These are the crack schools of Scotland, but they are characterized by high fees, and would, therefore, receive very little benefitfrom the scheme of Her Majesty's Government. I will just refer to the case of the Free Church Schools to show that the amount of the voluntary contributions in Scotland has diminished both absolutely and relatively—absolutely from £40,000 to £29,000 in 15 years, and relatively in this way, that the proportion of the income of the schools derived from voluntary contributions is every year getting smaller and smaller. The Free Church Schools are an extreme example of this tendency. In the Free Church Schools only four per cent of the entire cost of education is obtained by voluntary contributions. Another important fact is that during the 15 years there has been a continued tendency to increase the fees, and both in the voluntary schools and the Board Schools the whole energy of the managers has been directed towards the increase of the Government grant, so that in the one case they may spare the rates and the other spare the voluntary contributions. Thus, while the fees have increased steadily during these years, the voluntary contributions have diminished every year at the rate of 2.8 per annum. This has been a constant decrease. These are some of the reasons why I think that by the end of four years the schools may have been entirely transferred to the School Boards. The reason why I fix on the term of four years is not because I suggest that it would be right to pay denominational schools for four years and not right to pay them afterwards, but because, in the peculiar circumstances
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  in which Scotland stands at the present time, you have influences at work which are gradually solving the question of voluntary schools without any assistance from Parliament. Then comes the question of the Episcopalian and the Roman Catholic Schools. There are some reasons why we may hope that even these schools may ultimately be brought under the control of the ratepayers. Though the voluntary subscriptions are diminishing in these cases, still those subscriptions form a considerable amount of the incomes of the schools. These schools are less efficient than the ordinary schools, and their average attendance is not so high, whilst the teachers have lower salaries. Under these circumstances, I think these schools will be pressed on the one hand by the competition of the Board Schools and Free Schools, and on the other by the burden of the voluntary subscriptions and by the want of efficiency. There can be no question that if these schools were transferred to the School Boards they would become as efficient as the Board Schools are at the present time—that is to say, their efficiency would increase by 12 per cent. The Episcopalian Schools are stationary in number, and the Roman Catholic Schools have doubled in 15 years. Let me inquire into the reason for this. I find that out of the total number of children attending the Roman Catholic Schools no less than 21 per cent pay no fees whatever—that is to say, that the Roman Catholic schools are actually competing with the Protestant Schools at the present time by offering 21 per cent of their accomodation free of charge to the poor children Fourteen per cent of the remaining fees are paid by the Parochial Boards, and it is a most remarkable fact that the Roman Catholic Schools display a marvellous skill, in the first place, in inducing the Parochial Boards to pay for so many of the children, and in the second place in inducing them to pay more for the poor children than is paid for the children whose fees are provided by the parents. It is a most remarkable fact that while the Roman Catholics in Scotland obtained 12s. 5d. per child from the Parochial Boards, the School Board only got 10s. 8d. for the same class of children, notwithstanding the fact that whilst the School

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  Boards charge parents an average of 13s. 11d., the Roman Catholics charge parents only 10s. 8d.—a difference of more than 3s. Therefore, while in the Board Schools the children whose fees are paid by the Parochial Boards may be regarded as almost the paupers of the Schools, in the Roman Catholic Schools the children whose fees are so paid may be looked upon as the aristocracy of the schools. There is another fact still more extraordinary, and that is that in the rapid growth of the sums paid by the Parochial Board, the Roman Catholics have more than the fair share. While the amount paid to the ordinary schools has only doubled, it has in the case of the Roman Catholics trebled, so that we have come to this, that no less than 35 per cent of the fees paid in the Catholic Schools are paid by the parochial funds or out of voluntary subscriptions. It is remarkable that with an inferior class of schools and an inferior average attendance, the Roman Catholic Schools do as well as they do. Under all these disadvantages they actually earn a trifle more per head from the Government grant than the Church of England Schools in England. Now, I think it is important that the Government should have fully before them the financial effects of their proposals, and the reasons that induce us to press upon them that they should give the whole of this grant for free education. Public opinion is not only generally, but strongly in favour of the application to fees of all the money the Government may fairly apply. I think the Government may take their stand upon the Imperial grants of 1886–7, and taking their stand on that they are in a position to abolish fees for four years. Then, at the end of that period what is to happen? I do not fear to face the question. In the first place, I apprehend by increased attendance and by other causes earnings from the Government grant will be much larger than they are at the present moment; but if at the end of four years they are not quite equal to the amount of fees, then let the balance be made up from the rates. £50,000 a year is only a farthing in the £, and thus a £10 occupation would only mean twopence halfpenny in the £ a year; therefore the increase of the school rate, if it were required—and I am not certain that it would be required—would be so small
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  that it is not worth taking into account; and I am perfectly sure that if the Scotch people have known the advantages of free education for four years, they are not to part with it or scruple to take the necessary balance from a school rate. I am sorry to have detained the House so long, and am grateful for the indulgence shown me. I trust the Government will deal with us in the amicable spirit in which we have dealt with them. I have not used language of a threatening or an intimidatory character. I have appealed entirely to facts that are known, that are, at all events, within the knowledge of the Government, and I trust they will be able to give way as to the three higher standards as for the three lower, and the Government may rest assured they will not suffer in popular estimation in Scotland by so doing.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIF,No one, I am sure, can complain of the way in which the hon. Gentleman has dealt with this question, which we all know he has much at heart, in the speech delivered to-day; and although he apologized for the length of his speech, I do not think we have any grounds for complaint, looking at the large number of points he had to allude to. It is, of course, very satisfactory to the House to know from the opening sentences of the hon. Gentleman's speech that the condition of education in Scotland is of so satisfactory a character; and for myself, as a Scotchman, I take pride in the knowledge that we have no reason to fear comparison in this respect with our neighbours in England or elsewhere. The proposition of the hon. Gentleman is that the whole of the available money over and above the grants for the year 1886–7 should be devisable for educational purposes, rather than that it should be limited to the amount of £171,000, such as we propose to appropriate to that purpose. I was rather anxious for the hon. Gentleman to come to the point at which he was to explain at once how he would deal with the question when he comes to the end of the first four years, for he started by asserting that even if we took the whole of the money it would not be available under present circumstances for a longer period than four years. At the end of his

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  speech the hon. Gentleman explained—and broadly, I may say, his explanation amounted to this—that he expected that at the end of four years voluntary schools would probably be abolished.
  HUNTERI drew a distinction between the Established Church and the Free Church denominations which might possibly be transferred, and the Episcopalian and Roman Catholic Schools, of which I am not sanguine.
  MR. RITCHIENo; I expect the hon. Gentleman in his reference to Roman Catholic Schools was influenced by political considerations somewhat. I can understand the difficulty he would have been in had he attempted to advocate the abolition of Roman Catholic Schools. But I do not care whether they are Roman Catholic Schools or other schools so far as I am concerned. I should regard any system which would abolish denominational education with a very considerable amount of regret. I do not imagine that the general bulk of the community would regard with satisfaction any system which would put an end to the voluntary system of education. Certainly so far as we in England are concerned, I should regard such a consummation with apprehension and alarm. Passing away from that particular question, I will endeavour to deal with some of the points raised by the hon. Gentleman. I am sure he will not expect, nor will the House expect, that I should enter into the great mass of detail he entered into, and which from his point of view he was justified in doing, for it is clear to me that if we are to make progress with the debate at this stage, we must apply ourselves generally to large principles not devoting an undue amount of time to minute particulars more properly to be dealt with at another stage. The speech of the hon. Gentleman advocated in the strongest possible form the principle of free education, and I will only say at once that is not the point of view from which the Government regard what has been done in reference to their proposal. As the House knows our original proposal was to allocate the whole of the balance to the relief of the ratepayers, following in that respect the method we have pursued in reference to England. Now, it is well known that for years past there has been a great cry in all parts of England as to the burden of local rates,
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  and as to the fact that the great bulk of the burden rested upon the shoulders of a particular kind of property owners. Every year the demand has been raised, and I think with the assent of the great majority of the people, that the rates should be supplemented by contributions from personal property, and that was the principle we followed in reference to the grants made in England. We allocated a certain sum of money, all derivable from personal property, in aid of local rates, and thus yielded to the demand made in England for many years. We felt that the proper course in dealing with a similar condition of things in reference to Scotland was to follow the precedent we had set in England. It was well known, in regard to our proposals of last year, we were following the general wish in allocating the whole balance which might arise to the aid of local rates; but we cannot disguise from ourselves that the feeling which has undoubtedly been great in England with reference to relief from local taxation, and to the sources from which it should come, does not exist to anything like the same extent in Scotland, and, while we felt, and still think, that the proposal originally made was perfectly sound and justifiable, we could not, and did not, feel ourselves able to resist the demand made upon us—and not from one part of the House only—by Members representing Scotch constituencies, that it would be more acceptable that whatever balance should exist should go to the relief of school fees, and so from that point of view we have dealt with the money, not because we wish to propose any great scheme of free education, but because we are driven to the criticism which is forced upon us, that the Scottish people prefer to have the balance go to school fees rather than to the relief of the local rates. But I am not at all sure whether a feeling such as that which exists towards a sum of money which has never been in the pockets of the ratepayers at all, which is, as it were, something newly discovered, would also exist in reference to a large sum to be taken out of the ratepayers' pockets. It is one thing to allocate a new gift with the assent of the ratepayers, but it is another thing to take away a large sum pre

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  viously enjoyed and applied by the ratepayers to the relief of their local rates. I view with apprehension the growth of the practice of children going to the Parochial Board for relief from school fees, while I am glad to think that, so far as the proposals we have made are concerned, the taint of having to make application to Parochial Boards for relief will be altogether removed. It is a mode of dealing with the question with which nobody is satisfied, and it is a matter of great satisfaction to us that the Bill provides the means by which this contamination, as it has been called, will cease. The hon. Gentleman gave figures by which he showed that the amount of relief for fees had trebled in 14 years, but the honourable Gentleman must not suppose that anything like the number of children who now go to the Parochial Board will go to the school managers for relief for fees, for I am sure he knows perfectly well that the enormous majority of children who go to the Parochial Boards for relief fees are above the Third Standard. When it is remembered that in the ordinary Board School about two-thirds of the children are below the Third Standard, it will be seen that even taking the average number of children in the schools as a criterion, not more than a third of those who go to the Parochial Board will have to go to the school manager and demand the inquiry which the hon. Member deprecates into their ability to pay or not to pay. But even this one-third is considerably more than are likely to go under ordinary circumstances, because no doubt the great majority of these children are in the poorer schools; but at any rate this is undoubted, that out of this large number of 31,000, which the hon. Member says now go to the Parochial Boards, certainly not more than 10,000 will go under the circumstances of the Bill, and in all probability not nearly so many. The hon. Gentleman, in telling us how this money should be found, deals first with the item of £30,000 for the Highlands, and a good deal was said about this yesterday. I do not think any hon. or right hon. Gentleman advocated the abolition of this grant altogether; but what they did advocate was that, instead of it coming from Scottish money, it should come from Imperial money; that if the need is shown in these Highland
  972
  districts, and that need arises from poverty, then relief should come from the Imperial Exchequer, not from the local funds of Scotland, and this, I find, receives assent in this quarter of the House as well as that. But I think there is a strong argument why this money should come from local, not Imperial funds. It will be seen, when the House is in possession of how the different counties will be affected by the giving up to them of the Licensing Duties, that while, as a whole, there will be a gain of £28,000—the hon. Gentleman said, I think, that the licenses would equal the grant, but that is not quite so —it will be seen, taking Scotland as a whole, that while the great majority of counties will gain rateably, at the same time some of the counties, instead of gaining, will absolutely lose by the substitution, because the licenses collected in these particular counties are not proportionately so large as the licenses collected in an ordinary county, and it will be found that these are the very counties which participated in the grant of £30,000 to the Highlands. This giving of £30,000 will be putting these counties in the same relative position as the other counties will be in. If that be true, surely it is a strong argument that the £30,000 should come out of the common purse for Scotland, that purse being made up by amounts for distribution in lieu of grants to the Scottish people. I do not see how the philanthropic views of hon. Gentlemen can meet that argument and claim that this £30,000 should come from the Exchequer. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hunter) went on to criticize one or two items in this £30,000 severely, and one of these was the grant in aid of education, which he stated—and there he departed, I think, from the general tone of his observations—was given to weak-kneed School Boards in order to secure Government control, and also in relief of the poor rate. But I think he must be aware of the fact that the schools were in a hopeless state of insolvency. I am not going to enter into the question of how it arose. Perhaps it might be shown, and I think there is good reason for thinking it could be shown, that it was mainly in consequence of the extravagance of the School Boards themselves. However it may be, it looked as if the

  973
  cause of education had come to hopeless ruin, and the Government thought to prevent such a catastrophe it was desirable to give a grant, and, of course, with that they were bound to take care the money was properly administered. Now, so far as the landlords are concerned, no doubt—looking at the fact that the landlords, owing to the hopeless condition of these particular districts, had the weight of the rates—as the hon. Gentleman must be perfectly well aware, the condition of the landlords in some of these Highland parishes was deplorable in the extreme. Speaking in February last year my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland made this statement—
  "The rates in the parish of Lochs, supposing them to be paid, would be 11s. 6d. in the £ on the present rents, including the shooting rents. If they abolished the latter the rates would rise to 21s. in the £; and if they were, in addition, to destroy every farm above £30 rental, the rates would rise from 11s. 6d. to about 24s."
  That is à propos of what the hon. Gentleman said in reference to the shooting rents. Therefore, whether regarded from the point of view of the rates or relief of the burden thrown by the poverty of the district on the landlords, or in reference to the shooting, I maintain my case is absolutely unanswerable. The hon. Gentleman then proceeded to say that if we are only to give the money which we are now giving for the relief of school fees, then he would rather begin at the top of the standards than at the bottom. Well, that is not our view. It is the poorer class of poor parents who would feel the relief most, and it is among the children of this class that there is the greatest difficulty of. securing school attendance. If we were to adopt the theory of the hon. Gentleman and apply the grant to the higher standards, there would be no relief to the poorer class, who most need it. Another item the hon. Gentleman desired to lay hold of was the £34,000 for roads. I do not propose to go into all the various items he criticized, but with reference to this I maintain what I said at the commencement of my observations. We do not think we should be justified in dipping into the ratepayers' pockets and advocating for other purposes sums which have gone to the relief of their local burdens. The hon.
  974
  Gentleman suggests that we should take the £34,000 from roads for education, and he draws attention to the amount of difference in the relief to burghs and to counties so far as the grant is concerned. I am prepared to admit that the relief to counties is larger than the relief to burghs, and so it has always been in England. There are many towns in England that for years past have not derived any benefit at all from the grants given for road relief, but it has been recognized in England, and I cannot for the life of me see how it can possibly be denied; that the great roads through the country are as much for the convenience of the towns as for that of the country districts.
  MR. HUNTERThe streets of a town are as much for the benefit of the surrounding country as for that of the inhabitants of the town.
  MR. RITCHIEI do not admit that at all. If you take the ratepaying farmer in the country, and estimate what his liabilities are in connection with roads, you will find that what he has to pay is infinitely more onerous than the payments of the ratepayers in town, even taking into account all the streets of the town. But this is not the time to pursue these details. As every point the hon. Gentleman has raised against our proposals was put forward in favour of free education, we have endeavoured to fairly allocate the balance at our disposal, allowing the ratepayers to retain the relief they have always received. We do not feel it is possible for us to go further. And now I must allude to some of the speeches made last evening. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stirling, while on the whole he was inclined rather favourably to criticize the main proposals of the Government, somewhat unnecessarily endeavoured to minimize he general effect of the Bill. I must say I was astonished at the capacity he evinced for legislation when he complained that along with the four Bills the House is called upon to deal with, we have not submitted the Burgh Police Bill with its hundreds of clauses.
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANI merely quoted the expression of the Government themselves.
  MR. RITCHIEYes, but the right hon. Gentleman expressed himself as disappointed because we had not pro

  975
  duced that Bill. The broad principle of our Bill is that we transfer the government of the counties from representatives of property to representatives of all classes of the ratepayers. That of itself is a sufficiently great change to deserve the commendation and approval of the right hon. Gentleman, but I find, looking to the speeches which have been delivered by hon. Members opposite, that that is not at all sufficient for their purposes. They are not satisfied with that. They want the government of counties transferred, not from one class of ratepayers to another, but from the ratepayers to non-ratepayers. ["No, no."] I would like to understand this. The right hon. Member for Berwickshire told us that three-fourths of his constituents were service voters.
  MR. MARJORIBANKSI said that three-fourths of the new voters were service voters.
  MR. RITCHIEThe increase, of which the right hon. Member says three-fourths are service voters, is very much larger than the original number. Therefore, looking at the rapid increase to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, we can very easily find out when the service voters will be in a majority, if that moment has not yet arrived. I understand from the right hon. Gentleman that that period has already arrived. The proposal with reference to the service voters is that they should be empowered to deal with the ratepayers' money, they themselves not being in any shape or form liable to the rates. I should like to know how it is possible for the service voters to feel the rise and fall of the rates. After all, the great test, as far as the administration of the rates is concerned, is whether those who have to administer the affairs for which the rates are necessarily liable feel the rise or fall which may be attributable to any step they may consider it necessary to take. I do not know that it is altogether impossible, if the landlords desire that the service voters should be admitted to the franchise, for them to make arrangements which would secure that end. I think it may very well be that, if the landlord is to be relieved of the greater portion of the rate, he should add something to the service voters' wages to enable the service voter to undertake the increased liability. In
  976
  that case the service voter would feel the rise and fall of taxation, and that is absolutely necessary if you are going to entrust him with the power of making rates. Great objection has been taken to the constitution of the Standing Committee, which is to administer the affairs of the police and to have a voice in capital expenditure. I think the question of the police may be divided into the two subjects of expenditure and the maintenance of law and order. With reference to the expenditure, it must be remembered that the whole cost of the police in the county falls upon the owners. That being so, it does not seem to be a very extraordinary thing that we should provide that one-half of the new body that is to control the expenditure should be composed of those who pay the whole of the rate. The question has been asked, "Why not, as you do in the burghs, give the control of the police to popularly elected bodies?" It is quite true that in the burghs the Town Councils, which have the control of the police, represent the occupiers. But, then, the whole control of the police in burghs is borne by the occupiers. With regard to the question of law and order, I am not myself disposed to regard with equanimity the handing over of the discharge of law and order from a body that has for years done its work well to an entirely new body, constituted in an entirely different way. Here, again, I do not think the analogy of the burghs holds good. In the burghs you have a small and homogeneous body that has been for years past accustomed to the administration of justice, and in the counties you have a widely-scattered population held together by no such bonds as the population in the burghs, and which has not been accustomed to deal with questions of this kind. So that, whether you regard the question from the point of view of the maintenance of law and order, or from the point of view of expenditure, I say that the proposal to transfer the control of the police from the owners to a body composed half of owners and half of occupiers, is a broad and liberal proposal, and I am bound to say that from that proposal we cannot recede. I know my right hon. Friend opposite strongly objects to the Sheriff being Chairman of the Committee. My right hon. Friend

  977
  knows, however, that the Sheriff is at present by Statute a Member of the County Police Committee, and, further, that he is the officer who is responsible for law and order in the county, and that he has the control of the police. We did not think it an unnatural thing that a gentleman occupying that position by Statute should also preside over the Police Committee. I do not suppose, however, that this is a matter of the greatest importance. Now, Sir, I do not propose to go into the mass of detailed criticism brought before the House yesterday, because I regard most of the points raised as matters for discussion in Committee. Having dealt with the three main objections raised against our scheme, I revert to what I said at the beginning of my remarks. The Bill we have introduced is one of a far-reaching character, and although the powers we propose to transfer may not be as great as some hon. Members desire, what we have to do with is the constitution of a body that will undertake the powers which it is thought ought to be transferred. It was stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks) that there was no enthusiasm about the Bill in Scotland. But perhaps the enthusiasm which would be created by the adoption of his suggestions in one part of the community would be counterbalanced by a very different feeling in another part of the community. The Government do not think it militates against their proposals because they are not received with enthusiasm. We have dealt plainly and in a straightforward manner with the whole subject, and have endeavoured to keep out the sensational element altogether. We have been particularly anxious not to overload the Bill unnecessarily by introducing such questions as that of licensing, which would have raised much discussion and difference of opinion, and might have very seriously imperilled the passing of the measure. The Bill is founded on a broad and popular basis, and, as such, the Government believe it will find acceptance at the hands of the Scottish people.
  MR. J. B. BALFOURIn dealing with the first of his three points, it appeared to me that the right hon. Gentleman, who has just sat down, transgressed the canon
  978
  laid down by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stirling Burghs, and accepted on his own side of the House by the Secretary for Ireland that the question should be viewed from a Scottish and not from an English standpoint. At least three times in the course of his speech the right hon. Gentleman, in dealing with education, told the House that the genesis of the allocation of the grant was an English precedent. He said, in the first place, that a certain amount of dissatisfaction had been felt in England at the pressure upon the ratepayers, and, following that precedent, that it had been at first proposed in Scotland to make an allocation that would relieve the Scotch ratepayers in a manner analogous to that in which the English ratepayers had been relieved; but finding that Scotch opinion had a different destination for the money, the Government now proposed so to allocate it to education by way of concession to that opinion. What the Lord Advocate laid down as to this matter appeared to me to be a much safer standard and guide. He said that in England the pressure of taxation was felt by a particular class of persons, and that an analogous pressure was not felt in Scotland, but that another burden was severely felt there, to wit, the education rate, and that where the shoe pinched the relief would be given, though the grievances of the two countries differed. I think that a sound canon to apply. We do not complain of having got so much as we have—we are glad of it; but what the hon. Member for Aberdeen contended for, and what, I think, is a sound contention, was, that the same principle should be carried a little further, because, as it happens, it stops short of the more important point and leaves a large part of the existing grievance with fresh difficulties and grounds of complaint not present before. It was on that question that the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen was based. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has not met the points raised by the hon. Member in his admirable speech, which, I trust, will appear in a form which will enable the statistics contained in it to be readily referred to in Scotland hereafter. The right hon. Gentleman spoke as if other requirements were to be first satis

  979
  fied, and only the unallocated balance was to go to education. I venture to think it would be more sound, still applying the same canon, to give relief in the first place in those directions where it is most required, and to apply the balance, if any balance remains, to the other purposes mentioned. The figures seemed to show that, without going to the rates at all for free education, the application of the total grant, with some handling, by no means difficult, would, for a measurable number of years, practically give free education, This plan would not be open to the objection of merely dealing incidentally and accidentally with the appropriation of the grant towards freeing education, but would carry out consistently and completely the principle which has been largely conceded on this point. The Chief Secretary for Ireland said last night that there were £171,000 available under the proposal of the Government for school purposes, but £155,000 of that, I think he said, would be needed to cover the first three standards, which would leave £16,000 available for freeing the other standards as far as it would go, but very far short of freeing them entirely. There was one part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech with which I agree, though I draw from it a different conclusion from that which he founded upon it. He said, and said truly, that in Scotland it has been felt a misfortune that it should be necessary to go to the Parochial Boards for the purpose of asking them who should have free education. The right hon. Gentleman used in connection with this the word "taint"—a phrase not uncommonly applied, as it is felt by many of the industrious poor that to go to the Parochial Board for relief from school fees, infers a contact with pauperism. I agree with him in that. But the plan by which, under the Bills, certain free places are to be provided in the standards above the third will throw upon the School Boards a new function for which they were not brought into existence and for which they are not well adapted. Under the present system, it is the duty of the Parochial Board, for their own purposes, to wit, the administration of the Poor Law, to inform themselves of the circumstances of parents and to make that information available for deciding who
  980
  shall get relief from school rates. Under the proposal explained by the Chief Secretary, a precisely analogous function is to be thrown on the School Boards, and they are to say who shall be the recipients of the free places and who shall not. How is the School Board to get that information? Is it to go to the Parochial Board? Or is the School Board to set up a machinery to inquire into the circumstances and ability of parents to pay for their children in the higher standards? The balance of this money—the £16,000—would go a long way towards obviating this difficulty. Moreover, I object to the plan on the ground that it would give a kind of Parliamentary sanction to the notion that the Third Standard is high enough. If the State provides money for education, why should it stop short at the Third Standard? Surely the fact of its stopping there would have the effect of injuring the higher standards by inducing parents to keep their children in those standards which are paid for, instead of stimulating them to rise to those which are not paid for. I say nothing more on that head. I should now like to make a few general remarks upon these Bills as we have them before us, indicating the lines on which it appears to me they should be amended—for it seems to me the duty of all hon. Members, to endeavour to render the scheme as perfect as possible. Now it appears to me that if the County Council is to be an elective body, it should be altogether elective, and the duties with which it should be entrusted should comprehend the management of all local, as distinguished from national or Imperial, affairs. If there is to be Local Government, let it be Local Government. Instead of having one broad, simple, and popular electoral body, what is the net result of the proposals contained in these Bills—I mean, of course, in the three? These Bills relate to Local Government. There will be three electorates, three local bodies, and a considerable number of persons who will not be elected at all. The three electorates are—first, the Parliamentary electorate, plus women not labouring under certain disabilities, but minus the service vote. This electorate is only to be entrusted with the election of a body exercising

  981
  exceedingly minor functions. The next electorate is a somewhat singular one—consisting in part of the Commissioners of Supply, who are to be kept alive to choose seven of themselves, and in part of the County Council, which also will choose seven of its members, so as to constitute a Joint Committee. That strikes me as being a very complex and curious kind of body. Then there is a third electorate, under the Parochial Boards Bill, which is to consist half of owners and half of occupiers—which is a very anomalous sort of body. I submit that it would be far better to allow the first electorate to be the sole electorate, and do away with these complex proposals of the Government. As I have said, there is to be a fourth class of functionaries, who are not to be elected at all. If the system is to be elective, it does seem strange that it should be permitted under Clause 10 that the Convener or Chairman of the County Council may not only be elected from among the County Councillors, but may also be chosen from among all the persons qualified for the office of County Councillor. This, of course, requires that he shall be a county voter, and therefore one who shall have a certain connection with the county; but I ask why, when you are dealing with a system of election, should you not go through with it consistently, and leave this body and all the other bodies to choose their own Chairman for themselves? What would you think if in any burgh, say in the Royal burghs, the Councillors were allowed to elect their Provosts from outside the municipal bodies? The Chairman is the chief person in the elected body, and one who, of all others, should have stood the test of public approval if he is intended to be a deliberative and voting member. If he had been merely a sort of assessor I could have seen some reason for the proposal, but this is not to be his position under these Bills. Surely it is driving a great wedge into the principle of election to say that even the most popularly constituted body may go outside to choose its chief. The hon. Member for Kirkcudbright (Mr. M. Stewart) gave instances in which he thought it would be hard if persons not elected to the Council were not eligible for the office of Convener, and he pointed out that there
  982
  might be someone who was too old to stand the work of a canvass, but whose experience might make it desirable that he should be chosen. If, however, a man is too old to stand the strain incidental to an election, he would also be too old for the work attaching to the office. I certainly think the Government would do well to strike out the last four or five words of the clause so as to leave the Convener to be chosen from the body of elected Councillors. The Convener of a county is at this moment chosen from the Commissioners of Supply, and it was never proposed that the Commissioners of Supply should go outside its own body. Reference has been made to the Parochial Boards Bill to show that in that case there is a larger latitude. The Chairman of the Parochial Board is to be elected "by the Parochial Board from among the Parish Councillors or other fit persons," which would seem to mean some one who need not have the qualification for election as a Parish Councillor. That is a very large proposal. I desire to say a few words as to what we on this side of the House regard as a grave defect in the definition of the electoral qualification—namely, that it excludes the holder of what is known as the service franchise. Now, this matter has assumed an entirely different position from that in which it would have stood prior to the Acts of 1884 and 1885. The service man has been admitted to the Parliamentary franchise, and in that capacity has the means of giving a mandate to persons whose duty it is to deal with matters of the utmost magnitude and importance. A great deal has been said about his not contributing to the rates; but that is merely the old argument that was adduced against every enlargement of the Parliamentary franchise. It was said, "If you divorce representation from property"—this argument being the foundation of the old property qualification—"you will allow men by their representatives to vote money which they do not contribute to provide." There have been many arguments of this sort urged, not only against the service franchise, but also against the lodger franchise. The lodger was the person upon whom this argument was last concentrated, and it was pointed out that if he neither

  983
  smoked tobacco nor drank Excisable liquors, he would not contribute either directly or indirectly towards the taxation of the country. Nevertheless, he was admitted to the franchise, no doubt upon the broad and clear principle that he was a citizen of the country, a man fulfilling all the duties of citizenship, one who was interested in the prosperity of the nation and who would share in that prosperity if it were rightly administered, or in its adversity if it were misgoverned. The view did not prevail that in dealing with a question of this kind you ought to strike a ledger balance between contribution to the taxes and the concession of the rights of citizenship. I do not say that this is absolutely identical with the case of local rating, but I ask is there any sufficient difference between the two cases to exclude the general principle to which I have referred? If so, what is it? Primâ facie, one would suppose that the considerations applicable to Imperial rates and to local rates are analogous, if not identical. It was alleged that if the working classes were allowed to be represented in Parliament they would be extravagant and would approve, or at least not object to a lavish expenditure of money to which they contribute only a very small share. But what has been the result? The contrary has proved the case. The experience we have had of the householders both in the towns and in the counties, as well as of the service men and the lodgers, proves that there has been no indication of anything like a tendency to extravagance on their part. We have seen that the more Members who are returned to this House as representatives of the working class constituencies, the more closely and vigilantly is attention directed to the Estimates, and the more strenuous are the efforts to enforce economy in the public expenditure. Why is it, then, that the service man is not to be allowed to vote in regard to matters concerning his own locality? Matters affecting sanitary condition of the locality, touching the health of himself and his family, and other similar matters are to be confided to the action of the County Council, and he has as direct an interets as anyone else in seeing that such affairs are rightly administered. I suppose the view of the Government must be that if
  984
  you give him a vote, he will be careless as to the expenditure of the rates to which he does not contribute and will bring ruin on the locality by sheer extravagance. But I would put it to the House is there any ground for this argument? Although he does not pay rates directly, he contributes to them indirectly; because if he paid rates directly he would receive more wages, and the landlord would make other and different arrangements with him; indeed, we find that in this very Bill such a case is pre-supposed, because it is provided that the service man shall be allowed to buy his vote by paying his proportion of the rates, and in that case there is to be a severance between the rate, in the first instance, laid on the property upon which he lives, as between the principal tenant and himself. The right hon. Gentleman who spoke last—the President of the Local Government Board—said this was a matter concerning owners; but I say that it is not a matter concerning owners; the owner's position is fixed whether the service man is let in or not, and the division of the rate provided for is not between the owner and the service man, but between the occupier and the service man. It is not because of the ownership, but because of the occupation that this portion of the rate is imposed, and this, for good and sufficient reasons. I submit, then, that the exclusion of the service man is utterly indefensible, unless some exceedingly strong reason is put forward in its favour. Now that the service man has got the Parliamentary franchise, there will undoubtedly be a very sore feeling excited in his mind if he has not the analogous right conferred upon him of helping to choose the Council who are to have the management of his own local affairs. It appears to me that another grave objection to this proposal, is that it puts upon the person on whom the right is to be conferred the obligation of having virtually to pay for it. The aim of every recent electoral reform and every amendment of the, system of registration has been to make the system work automatically, and with much care directed to this end it has now been made to work very well indeed. My hon. Friends from Scotland know that we have

  985
  an admirable basis for making up the register, and that is the valuation roll, which contains, practically, all the information required for that purpose. When in 1884–85 we were framing the Bills extending the franchise to counties, and making the consequential alterations upon the registration laws, we provided that though there should be a Schedule having an entry of the houses occupied by service men, that they were not to be rated. Accordingly, the assessor in making up his list gets all the information he needed from the valuation roll. That will not be the case under this new system. From the point of view of the Government it must be provided that the money value of his house shall be placed against the name of the service man, which was not provided in the last Act.
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. P. B. ROBERTSON,Yes.
  MR. J. B. BALFOURThe assessor, however, in making up his list for County Councillors, has no valuation roll to work upon as regards service men. The service man has to claim, and the collector has to be provided with a number of forms of which, on application, he is to give one to the service man. So that instead of having an automatic system, no service man will be put upon the County Council Register who has not claimed. To give the service man a vote under such conditions is very much the same thing as not to give it to him at all; because very few would be sufficiently interested in the very limited powers conferred upon the County Councils to take the trouble of claiming. I altogether object to the principle of saying, "If you care to do certain things and make certain demands, you shall have a vote." Again, a possible danger from these conditions is, that they might be used towards the creation or non-creation of votes. A great employer of labour might—at all events, I do not see anything to prevent him—pay a wage intended to cover the rate, and you might in that case have the creation of a large number of votes; whereas another person might not wish that his servants should have votes, and might offer no facilities, in the matter of wages or otherwise, or might even put obstacles in the way of their obtaining them. It is a great pity that this exception of service men should
  986
  be made, and I hope, on re-consideration, the Government will see their way to strike it out, and thus at once enlarge and simplify the electoral body, I would like to know, further, how the domestic relations of the ladies are to be found out, because it does not appear from the valuation roll whether a married woman is living apart from her husband or not. But I have no doubt some provision will be made for that. I further desire to point out that under these Bills we shall have a very complex system of registration. There will be four registers for every locality—the Parliamentary register, the County Council register, the School Board register, and the Parish Council register. I do not know whether there will be a Commissioners of Supply register; but at all events, there will be four registers. As far as possible we should in this matter aim at simplicity, because simplicity means inexpensiveness, and if you multiply machinery you must multiply costs. That is what I have to say with regard to the larger County Council, and I hope the Government may see their way to obviate some of the objections stated. The next body is the Joint Standing Committee, and I certainly feel a very strong objection to the proposals with respect to it. The Commissioners of Supply stand upon the property qualification, and there has not hitherto been that remarkably nice weighing-out of power in proportion to taxation which is proposed by this Bill, because the Commissioners of Supply are all the owners of property in the county, but only those of over £100 annual value, and the eldest sons of owners, of £400, who have not yet come into possession, and, of course, pay no rates. All the proprietors under £100 would, under the system to be brought into operation by this Bill, as hitherto have no voice in the administration of the rates, while the eldest sons who have no property would continue to have a voice in that matter. What are the duties for which the Commissioners of Supply are thus proposed to be kept alive? To elect seven of their number to constitute, along with the seven elected by the County Councillors, the Trust Committee proposed to be created by the Bills. And what are the powers proposed to be confided to this somewhat anomalously constituted body? They are,

  987
  first, to deal with capital expenditure, and, secondly, with the police. Now, this principle of confining the power to dealing with capital expenditure to limited class, different from the general administrative body, is, so far as I know, unprecedented, except in the case of the Roads and Bridges Act. Therefore, it has neither the merit of antiquity nor of custom. The section of the Roads and Bridges Act to which I refer slipped through in 1878, and there may have been some considerations which justified it. There had been in times past enormous debts contracted by the land proprietors for the formation of roads. These debts were very burdensome, and I can quite understand that a special case might be made out in regard to the power of assessing the proprietors for their payment. But what I want to point out is this, that in so far as capital expenditure was provided for by the Roads and Bridges Act, it was to pay debts—that was the past capital expenditure; and it simply made the proper debtor pay his own debt. If you had introduced anybody else, you would have made one person pay the debt another person had already contracted. Accordingly, in that case, Parliament may have said—"We will deal with the matter of capital expenditure, past and future, in a broad way; we shall not divide the liability, and we will give the administration exclusively to the persons liable." But by the proposals of the Bills with respect to this Joint Committee, you really withdraw from the elective County Council that which is most valuable and most important. Such things as roads and bridges, water supply, and other matters most vitally affecting the health and life of the community are not to be confided to the County Council. The proposal practically is to give this Joint Committee power to stop the improvement of the country. If you disallow capital expenditure, except with their sanction and at their instance, it seems to me it would be quite possible to retard the development of the country and to prevent the sanitary arrangements, which are now so necessary, from being made. I wish to say a word about the capital expenditure in burghs. In the burghs you have got a popularly-elected body which deals with all such questions. The great peculiarity of this proposal is
  988
  that the truly elective Council is only to be allowed to maintain but not to extend or improve. There will not be one body which can take a general view of the question. That, I say, is a most serious defect. It is a defect which does not exist in the burgh administration. I am quite alive to the view upon which the proposal was founded—namely, that much of the capital expenditure in the counties is made by the proprietors, whereas, in the towns it is made chiefly by the occupiers. In burghs, I believe, about one-sixth of the rates are divided between the owner and the occupier, and five-sixths fall upon the occupier alone. But I never heard that because the owner and occupier divided some of the rates there ought to be separate administrative bodies with powers proportioned to the precise contribution of each. Then, again, there are some of the Commissioners of Supply who do not want to be kept alive. That is so in one of the counties which I have the honour to represent. I do not wonder that such a feeling should exist in the minds of the Commissioners of Supply seeing that it is a very poor duty, which they are to be kept alive to discharge, and they think that it is better to abolish them if you give them nothing better to do. In regard to the administration of the county rate, I will say a word as to what is called the stereotyping proposal. Undoubtedly, it is an important and difficult question how that rate should be dealt with. The proposal, I understand, is to fix as a guide for future payments the amount which has been paid on the average during the last five years. Some of my hon. Friends have suggested that it would be better not to stereotype anything, but to allow existing leases to run out, and then divide the charge between the owner and the occupier. I cannot say that, but it is clear to my mind that this would be just. Hitherto the county rate has generally been discharged upon the land, and a large part of it is the lineal descendant of what used to be called "rogue money." If a tax of this sort is stereotyped, whether the value of land goes up or down, the impost remains the same. If the land rises in value the generic contribution would not go up, and if the value of land goes down it will be the same; it would still be stereotyped at the same figure. The land tax

  989
  which in olden times bore a material proportion to the value of the land, does sot do so now, and the transference of a burden which has always formed a charge upon the ownership of land, from land to labour, would be open to objection. The question is, what proportion of the aggregate of local rates does the land pay now? Is it so large in proportion to other contributions that it might not well be thrown into the mass of a consolidated rate? If it were large, I could understand the proposal; but compared with the rates generally, it is very small. I have not been able to obtain the amount of the contribution last year. No local taxation Returns are as yet issued for a later date than 1886–87, and in that year the county rate levied by the Commissioners of Supply throughout Scotland amounted to £163,717. A very valuable Return was issued this morning which gives the rate per pound of each local charge in Scotland, but it does not specify the total amount of each. From another Return, however, it appears that the total amount of the rates levied with the poor rate down to August last year in the Scotch parishes and counties was £853,173, and in the burghs £521,411, making altogether £1,374,584. That example shows how enormous the rates generally are as compared with this particular contribution, and I submit for the consideration of the Government and of the House whether it is worth while to have the complexity of stereotyping for separate administration so relatively small an impost. Would it not be better to let it go into the consolidated rate? Then, in regard to the control of the police force, I say that unless some strong reason can be assigned there ought not to be a less power given to counties than is now, and have long been, possessed by burghs. The inhabitants of a rural district are as much interested in the protection of life and property within that district as are residents in a burgh. From time immemorial the burgesses themselves performed the police duty, "watch and ward," and when provision was made for the establishment of a regular police force, that force was placed under the charge of the elected members of the municipality. I entirely agree in what has been said of the Commissioners of Supply
  990
  that they have acted conscientiously and well as far as the matters with which they have had to deal are concerned, and the proposal now made does not arise from any dissatisfaction with them, but from a feeling that there is room for a much larger and wider administration, and that the field they covered was a very small one. As to the management of their police by the burghs, we have had a large experience. The County of Lanark has 262 police, besides ten extra men, making 272; but the City of Glasgow has 966, with 111 extra men, making a total of 1,077 police administered by a great democratic city, as against 272 administered by the county. Having that experience, what is there to lead to the conclusion that the County of Lanark could not by a popularly-elected Council administer its 272 police as well as the City of Glasgow does by its popularly-elected Council administer its force of 1,077 police? This is a very important matter, and I hardly think, after the speeches which have been made upon the question, that the Government will refuse to allow the County Councils to have the control of the police. Reference was made yesterday to some northern counties in which a spirit of lawlessness, which everyone must lament, had manifested itself. This is a subject which I admit deserves the most serious consideration. No one had graver or more constant anxiety than I had for some years when in office in regard to the condition of the localities referred to, and in any opinion I venture to express I fully recognize the character of the difficulty that may be supposed to exist there. But there are some points which I would ask the House to bear in mind in considering this matter. Unhappy as the disturbances among the crofters were, they did not occur among a population which can be described as criminal. No part of Scotland is more free from what may be called ordinary crime. It may, therefore, not be too much to express a hope that the causes which led to these disturbances were temporary in their nature; and it certainly would not be fair, on the experience of a short period of trouble in certain Highland counties, to found legislation which should be applicable to the whole of Scotland. I quite admit that this is a question

  991
  on which the special information in the possession of the Government places them in a better position to form an opinion than hon. Members who do not possess such information, but I may remind the House that the disturbances in question did not prevail over the whole of the counties in which they occurred, and I cannot say that anything came to my knowledge which would lead me to suppose that any Committee elected from a county, as a whole, would be adverse to the maintenance of the law, or desire that there should be any part of the county in which the Queen's writ would not run. But there is another consideration which I feel ought also to have great weight. If responsibility is thrown on a locality, the locality will respond to it; and I think, unless the Government possess some information leading them to suppose that there is a permanent spirit of insubordination and disregard for the law pervading the counties referred to so largely that the County Council, as a whole, would decline to enforce the law, they would do well to re-consider their decision on this point and endeavour to remove a grave inconvenience. It should also be borne in mind that there are various checks in the hands of the Government which would enable them to defeat any action on the part of County Councils in the direction of declining to provide such a police force as might be requisite for maintaining law and order. If, for instance, the Central Government found that insufficient provision has been made for these essential objects, they would have power to stop the Imperial contribution to the pay and clothing of the force. But if the Government, in the exercise of its responsibility, think that these considerations are inadequate, and that there are circumstances so exceptional in a particular locality as to induce them to believe that it would be unsafe to give the charge of the police to that locality, such an exceptional condition should be met by an exceptional remedy, but it would not constitute a good reason for placing the whole of the counties of Scotland under the like disability as regards the administration of their own police. As my right hon. Friend the Member for the Stirling Burghs (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) has pointed
  992
  out, if the people of Scotland are satisfied that the County Councils may be entrusted with the management of the police, that management and control ought to be placed in their hands. I therefore hope that the Government may reconsider the matter of police in order to see whether they cannot grant to the counties powers which have been exercised so long and with so much success by the towns. It would stimulate a proper amount of interest among the electors in the action of the Council, and would induce many persons possessing the requisite qualifications to come forward and stand as candidates The duties which by this Bill are not confided to the County Councils are, in the first place, education; secondly, lunacy; thirdly, the administration of the Poor Law; and lastly, the control of the capital expenditure. I do not think it can be disputed that the duties not confided to the popularly-elected body form by far the largest and most interesting portion of Local Government. A number of duties are enumerated in the Bill, but it appears to me that there is not so much substance in them as one would like to see; they are not of such a character as either to stimulate interest in the electors or induce them to come forward. The non-elective part of the Council has by far the largest portion of the duties connected with local administration. The bulk is saved to the non-elected, and but very little is given to the popularly-chosen body. The administration of the Contagious Diseases Act, although it is of importance in certain localities, is not a very stimulating and interesting duty for a popularly-elected body to discharge. Then, again, the Public Health Act would have been important if it had not been for the provision in regard to capital expenditure, which will make it impossible for the popular body to enter into any schemes for drainage, water supply, and road extension. The exceptions practically reduce the Council to the position of having to maintain things which other people are to provide. The only things really left to them uncontrolled are gas meters, explosive substances, weights and measures, habitual drunkards, wild fowls, and the registration of the rules of scientific societies—a somewhat hetero

  993
  genous mixture. While the general intention with which the Bill started was exceedingly good, it would have been better had the intention been kept up, and if the Government had seen their way, or can now see their way, to strike out the exceptions to which I have referred. I trust that on further consideration the Government will consent to extend a more generous confidence to the county population of Scotland. I had desired to say something on other matters, but I have taken up so much of the time of the House that I will refrain from doing so. I will only add, in conclusion, that I have pointed out what I conceive to be the defects of the Bill; not in any spirit of hostility, quite the reverse, but with a desire to see it extended to a sphere of greater and wider usefulness. It has been said that the powers of Councils might be afterwards enlarged; but it would be much better that the legislation in this important subject should not be merely provisional, but that from the first these popularly-elected bodies should have such powers as to make them strong, respected, and useful.
  MR. CRAIG SELLARThe hon. Gentleman the Member for Caithness stated yesterday that, in his opinion, this is not a Second Reading debate, and I think that if he had been here to-day he would have admitted that the long speeches we have had have dealt with matters of detail rather than principle. Still, I think the House is greatly indebted to the hon. Member for Aberdeen for his speech and for the manner in which he has martialed his statistics. His speech, however, did not touch on the principle of the Bill; it was aimed at a single Sub-section of a single clause in one of the two Bills. Still, the speech will prove of value to us when we get into Committee on the Bill. Now, with regard to the principle of the Bill. I think we are practically agreed. There is no great divergence on either side of the House. Where we do differ is chiefly on matters of detail, and I therefore hope, when the Bill gets into Committee, the House will gain from the elaborate discussion on the Second Reading by the shortening of the debates in Committee and the consequent diminution of the labours of hon. Members. In con
  994
  sidering the Bill, I put to myself this question: I said, if it is to be satisfactory to the people of Scotland it should fulfil three requisites: first, it should be as popular or as democratic as the English Bill; secondly, that taxation and representation should go together throughout the Bill; and thirdly, that the machinery of the Bill should be of such an elastic character that if it does not now embrace various methods which are called Local Government in Scotland, it may in time be expanded so as to include them. Now, in my opinion, the Bill does sufficiently fulfil these conditions; but, in one or two particulars, not quite so fully as I should like. First, is the Bill as popular as the English one? We have heard a great deal from my right hon. Friend below me (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman), and from the Chief Secretary, to the effect that there should be no reference to the English Bill in this debate; that the latter Bill is an unclean thing which we in Scotland ought not to touch. I cannot agree with that. In origin and intention both the English and the Scotch Bills are identical. The origin of the English Bill was a desire to have a more democratic form of government in the counties. It was held that as the householders were the men who now returned Members to Parliament, as the householders in towns elected men to manage their Municipal affairs, so in counties the householders should have equal power in the management of their local business. Well, a precisely similar demand in Scotland has produced the Scotch Bills. Again, as to the intention of the two Bills being alike. The English Bill was intended to transfer the management of county business from an ex officio body to an elective and representative body. The same is the case in the Scotch Bill; precisely the same thing is proposed to be done—except in this, that, whereas in England there are Councillors selected by the Council, in Scotland there are no selected Councillors. But, Sir, in saying that, and in giving my entire agreement to the exclusion of selected Councillors, I am bound to say, that so far as I understand, the matter, selected Councillors have answered well in England; they have given a certain stability to the County Councils which otherwise they might not have had, because men of experience have been

  995
  chosen as the selected Councillors. Now, in a county in which I spend a good deal of my time, it happened that two Gentlemen equally experienced in county matters, men of the same Party and same complexion in politics, and both desirable candidates, stood for one division and ran a tie. The Returning Officer gave his vote in favour of one, and the first thing the County Council did was to elect the other one as an Alderman. The power of selection in that case was usefully exercised; still, notwithstanding that, I cannot regret its exclusion from the Scotch Bill. My right hon. Friend, the Member for Berwickshire (Mr. Marjoribanks), took exception to the fact, that four nominated or ex officio members are to be elected for the first County Council. My opinion is, that if we do not have selected Councillors, and if there is no way of having men of experience to manage county affairs, it is desirable to have at the start the four ex officio members whom the Government proposed. I should like to ask the Lord Advocate what is to be the numbers of the County Councillors in each county. I am aware that according to the Bill the Scotch Secretary is to decide the number, but I think it would be a matter of interest to the House and the people of Scotland to get some idea as to what the number in each county is to be. In my opinion it should be a large Council, because a large Council would represent a large body of public opinion, and there are many functions, independent of the administrations of the counties, which this large Council might discharge. When Scotch Bills are introduced into this House, it would be very desirable that they should be sent down to the large County Councils, who would be able to express a valuable opinion upon them. So much for the first requisite. The second requisite is that the principle of taxation and representation going together should be maintained in this Bill. I am surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stirling Burghs say that no doubt that principle had done good service in the past, but apparently he considered it is obsolete in the present time. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Berwickshire accepted the principle which he said has been won from the other side, but he added
  996
  that, in preference to such a principle, he went now for manhood and womanhood suffrage out and out.
  MR. MARJORIBANKSWhat I intended to say was that I considered that the suffrage on the part of man and woman at this moment rested upon the fact that the man and woman are citizens of this great Empire, and as such have a right to a voice in the management of its affairs.
  MR. CRAIG SELLARThat is exactly what I said. It may be or may not be a sound view, but it does not appear to me that, even upon this great principle of humanity, we should throw over the principle of taxation and representation going together—which undoubtedly is a good and sound principle. I consider that this principle is violated in the proposal which stereotypes the contribution hitherto paid by the Commissioners of Supply. The objects of that contribution, the average of which for five years is to be stereotyped, are to meet the daily and continuous expenses of the county and to form a Sinking Fund to pay off the debt which has been incurred by the Commissioners of Supply. It may be right enough to stereotype contribution for the first of these objects, but it cannot be right to stereotype the second. In the County of Lanark the contributions to be stereotyped amounted to something like £27,000 a year, of which £17,000 is contributed for the daily and continuous expenses connected with the county, and £10,000 towards the Sinking Fund, in order to pay off a debt which is rapidly diminishing, and in a few years may disappear altogether. Assuming that the debt does disappear altogether, it surely is not fair that it should be stereotyped and continued for ever. There is another matter which requires consideration. In certain of the northern counties within the last five years, there have been incurred expenses of an exceptional character, and it is scarcely fair that these exceptional years should be taken in calculating the average to be stereotyped. Ten years, or some other period, should rather be adopted. As a matter of fact, however, it would be better to get rid of this stereotyped contribution altogether. Another violation of the principle of taxation and representation going together is the treatment of the

  997
  service franchise holders. I regard as sound the contention that the rates are practically paid by the service franchise holders, and that if the ploughman did not receive £40 and a free house, he would receive £45 or £50 as wages. I believe that, as a rule, the owner would pay the rate for the service franchise holder. If that rate were ten shillings—half paid by owner, half by occupier—the owner would increase the wages of the serviceman by five shillings to meet his portion of the rate. If that were so, is it really worth while to go through all this elaborate process to take 5s. out of one pocket to put it into another? I consider the service franchise holders as the cream of the electorate in many counties, and I should be exceedingly sorry that they should be prevented from exercising the franchise in the election of County Councillors. So much for the second requisite. Now as to the third. In my opinion, the scheme of the Government is sufficiently elastic to enable further functions, in course of time, to be entrusted to the new bodies. And now, Sir, I come to the question of the duties to be performed by the new County Councils. I have heard no reasons yet why the work now done by the School Boards, the Parochial Boards, the management of the roads and bridges, and all sanitary matter, should not be undertaken by one County Council. I am glad to think the Lord Advocate contemplates extending the powers of the Council. Of course, these bodies must creep before they can walk, and walk before they can run, and it might be a dangerous thing to put too many duties on them at once. These new duties will come in time, and the scheme will expand to meet them. Now, I consider it most important that the principle of free education has been conceded. I know that this proposal has in a sense been sprung upon us, but I think that, in spite of some defects, the scheme is as good as any likely to be proposed. The difficulty is that we have only £171,000 to deal with. I should have liked if we had had money enough to make a clean sweep and have free education entirely, and I hope if there are any other sources from which money can be got for the purpose that a clean sweep will be made. I wish to consider the matter now in reference to the £171,000. How is that to be disposed
  998
  of? The money is to be paid to the Education Department, which will hand, it over to the School Boards or school managers, who are to provide free education for children attending certain, schools. £155,000 is to be expended in this way, and as the cost per week per child is 2d., the number of children provided for is about 446,000. If that be so, a difficulty arises. The bulk of the fees at present are over 2d. The latest return shows that 23 per cent of the children pay 2d. and below 3d., 26 per cent pay 3d. and less than 4d., and 25 per cent pay 4d. and less than 6d. That is a difficulty to which I think the Government should give its attention. A great deal has been said about pauperizing children by compelling them to apply to the Parochial Board, and the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. A. J. Balfour) has told us that the Parochial Board is to be altogether eliminated. Are we to understand that the School Board is now to take the place of the Parochial Board, and is the School Board to make inquiries with regard to the ability or inability of the parents to pay fees, because, if so, the School Board must simply go to the Parochial Board, for there is no other means of getting the information? That is a difficulty, and I do not see how it is to be met. In arranging that children shall have free education up to the Third Standard and have their fees paid in the higher standards if their parents are unable to pay the fees, we are in a sense reverting to the old parochial system; for under that system it is well known that while some children paid their fees, others—children of "pregnant points," to use the words of the old Scotch Statute—got their education free. That system worked well in the past. I do not see why it should not work equally well in the future. Hitherto the Parochial Boards have paid £20,000 a year in fees. Will that grant continue? I assume it will not, and if it does not the £20,000 is gained. Again, under the Endowed Schools Act from £10,000 to £15,000 has been given in relief of fees. Will that continue? I assume it will not. Then there is the nest egg of upwards of £190,000 which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberdeen (Mr. Hunter). We should like to know

  999
  how all this money is to be disposed of; it might with advantage be spent in re-establishing and improving the system of higher education in Scotland. That system has never had fair play in Scotland. It has been starved. I should be glad if some of the money saved under this scheme could be given to the higher education. But the freeing of the lower standards is, perhaps, the first necessity. I assume that the object of the Government is, in the main, to diminish the pressure which is felt by the compulsory clauses. I have always hoped free education would come out of the taxation, but in this instance it is to come out of money which is a kind of windfall. I am not inclined to look a gift-horse in the mouth, and therefore I gladly accept the £171,000 in the hope that the financial genius of the Government will be able to devise a satisfactory scheme for its application. It is unnecessary for me to say much upon the question of denominational schools. It seems to me we must make up our minds, whatever our previous conviction, that all schools must be embraced in the scheme, that denominational schools, as well as public and Board Schools, must receive advantages equally. There is just one other point I desire to refer to. This Local Government scheme as introduced consists of four Bills. My right hon. Friend the Member for the Stirling Burghs (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) stated yesterday that in his opinion the Private Bill Procedure Bill would not be passed this Session. I hope it is not the Government's intention to drop that Bill because of all the matters connected with the Local Government scheme. I believe that measure is as popular, if not more popular, than any of the others.
  MR. W. SINCLAIRI desire to say a very few words upon this Bill. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. J. B. Balfour) occupies a high position, but that position carries with it corresponding obligations, and I believe I only express the view of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House j when I say we should like from hon. Members who occupy high positions a greater amount of condensation and a greater amount of arrangement in their
  1000
  speeches than was displayed by the hon and learned Gentleman. If we got that, a good deal more time would be allowed to non-official Members to speak upon subjects which interest not only themselves, but their constituents. Now, I am glad to find that the debate so far has not been characterized by any Party recrimination. There has been evinced on. both sides of the House a desire to recognize that this subject has been approached by the Government with a wish to settle this question as far as they can in accordance with Liberal principles, in accordance with the views of the Scotch people. I must express regret that the creation of Local Government, which is the birthright of the Liberal Party, has not fallen to their share; but in doing so I heartily congratulate the Conservative Government in having had the courage of the convictions they have more recently formed. I believe the object of the Bill is to lay stable foundations upon which Local Government can be well and properly carried on for the advantage of the Scottish people. I do not intend to travel over all the subjects touched upon in the course of the discussion, but only to refer to the question of the application of the Probate Duty grant for the purposes of education. The problem to be solved is how best to devote the £171,000, the amount available, to the relief of fees, and at the same time give the greatest relief to the ratepayers. My belief is that the Government have commenced at the wrong end in proposing a remission of fees in the lower standards rather than in the higher standards. We must take it for granted that there is a great inclination on the part of parents to take their children away from school at an early age, in order that they may reap some advantage from the wages the children may earn. That tendency is one that has been fought against by the Scottish people, and I think we ought to endeavour to encourage by legislative enactments the retention of children at school until they have passed all the standards. We must remember that it is part of the parent's responsibility to provide education for his child up to a certain standard just as much as it is part of the parent's responsibility to provide maintenance and clothing for his child up to

  1001
  a given age. If relief is to be given to the ratepayer who has children at school, it stands to reason that the school fees are heaviest while a child is attending the higher standards. The object of the Government, therefore, in relieving the ratepayer will be better effected by remitting the fees in the higher standards rather than in the lower. I sincerely hope the Government will find a means of abolishing all school fees, but failing that, I trust they will remit the fees in the higher instead of in the lower standards.
  SIR H. MAXWELLI beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.
  Debate further adjourned till Monday next.

  POLITICAL OFFICES PENSION ACT (1869) REPEAL BILL. (No. 77.)
  Order for Second Reading, read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Bradlaugh.)
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,I think that before this Bill is read a second time we ought to have some explanation of its provisions.
  MR. BRADLAUGHThe Bill only contains one clause. It proposes to repeal an Act under which certain pensions of a political character have been granted. The matter was discussed in 1888 in the debate on perpetual pensions, and I do not think the House at this hour can wish to be troubled with any remarks upon it.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir R. WEBSTER)I certainly do not think it is desirable that this Bill should be read a second time without the policy of the measure being discussed. The hon. Member has suggested that it is covered by the discussion which took place the other night.
  MR. BRADLAUGHNo; last year.
  SIR. WEBSTERI understood the hon. Gentleman to say just now that it was covered by the debate which took place the other night; but he now says it was covered by a discussion which took place last year. That strengthens the observation I made, that it seems that this Bill ought cer
  1002
  tainly not to pass without full discussion. The Bill proposes to repeal the Act of 1869, and to prevent any further pensions being granted.
  MR. BRADLAUGHThere is a Saving Clause as to existing pensions.
  SIR R. WEBSTERIt seems to me we must consider this matter with reference to the circumstances under which pensions are granted. It is quite impossible by a mere vote of the House now, even assuming the hon. Gentleman to be successful in obtaining the Second Reading, to decide the principle involved. I do not even know that the hon. Gentleman explained the matter at great length last year, but I am quite certain of this, that if he did explain it he did not succeed in getting the assent of anything like a majority of the House to the views he expressed.
  MR. BRADLAUGHThe Resolution of the House was unanimous.
  SIR R. WEBSTERIt was not unanimous that we should repeal the Political Offices Pension Act (1869). I certainly would suggest that the debate be adjourned.
  It being ten minutes to seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed upon Friday next, at two of the clock.

  CORPORATE ASSOCIATIONS (PROPERTY) BILL. (No. 209.)
  Order for Second Reading, read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Howell.)
  SIR R. WEBSTERThe Bill has a most seductive title, but I cannot help regarding it rather as a wolf in sheep's clothing. It will alter the whole law in respect to corporate property.
  MR. HOWELLIt is practically based on the Report of the Royal Commission.
  It being Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Second Reading deferred till Tuesday next at Two of the clock.
  Attention called to the number of Members present. House counted and 40 Members found in their places.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

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

  PENAL SYSTEM AND CONVICT DISCIPLINE.
  MR. PICKERSGILLI rise to move—
  "That the inequality and the irregularity of the sentences pronounced by our Criminal Courts require the immediate and serious attention of the Government, and that an humble address be presented to Her Majesty praying for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire as to the best means by which greater equality of sentences, and the more systematic punishment of repeated offences may be secured."
  My original intention was to make my Resolution wider in its terms, so as to embrace the character of the punishment as well as the period of its detention, but upon reconsideration, and consultation with others, I have decided to restrict my Resolution within its present limits for two reasons. In the first place, the most pressing scandal in the administration of our Criminal Law at present is undoubtedly the inequality of sentences; and in the second place, so far as I am aware, no public inquiry has ever been directed to this particular topic, whilst on the other hand we have the Reports of many Royal Commissions on the treatment of felons in prison. But I have also another reason. The learned Solicitor General (Sir E. Clarke) recently in debate used very remarkable language. He said—
  "There is a great deal of crime among us, and as one remedy I look in the direction of making our sentences more equal. Let us have more certainty of detection, with known and equal punishments."
  "Known and equal punishments"—that is the text supplied by the hon. and learned Gentleman, to which I desire to call the attention of the House. In the first place, there is probably no system in the world—I doubt whether there has ever been at any period of the world's history—a criminal system which has left so wide a discretion as our own to Judges in the apportionment
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  of punishment. Probably my hon. and learned Friends will tell me, that it is necessarily so, and in the present condition of the law I agree with them. But why? Simply because our definitions of crime are so wide that in one particular definition you embrace offences that are in nature and quality essentially different. I will give the House a single illustration. Suppose a band of marauders armed to the teeth in the dead of night break into a lonely dwelling-house, closely bolted and barred, and carry off thousands of pounds worth of property. Well, that is burglary. Then, on the other hand, suppose this case:—At five minutes past nine on a summer evening a poor, hunger-driven woman lifts the sash of baker's window and takes a penny worth of bread for her starving child. Well, that is burglary also. Yet in the one case the gravity of the offence would scarcely be adequately punished by penal servitude for life, whilst in the other case many of us think that a day's imprisonment would be too severe a penalty. I might give similar illustrations under any grave head of crime, rape, bigamy, perjury, and perhaps the most conspicuous illustrations of all would be under the head of manslaughter, but I need not occupy time with such illustrations. One of the suggestions I would submit to the consideration of a Royal Commission is this, whether it is not desirable, and if desirable, whether it is not practicable, so to recast our definitions of crime that one particular definition shall not embrace offences which in nature and quality are absolutely different. If that could be done then you would restrict the discretion of the Judges and would secure one desideratum to which the Solicitor General referred—namely, that the punishment would be know within narrower limits than at present. But, for argument's sake, I will suppose that it is impracticable to restrict by legislation the discretion of Judges, or, at all events, impracticable to restrict it in any material degree, then I say there is the more imperative necessity that we should erect in this country a Court of Criminal Appeal. Several cases lately brought before the House have shown how necessary it is we should have a court to which appeals against convictions may be possible, but it

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  more concerns my present purpose to point out that where the Commission of the offence is not itself in question, it is still imperatively important there should be under proper conditions the right of appeal for the revision of sentences. I desire to speak with all respect of Her Majesty's Judges, at the same time I feel bound to say that no sensible, no candid mind can doubt that if the sentences of learned Judges were liable—I will only put it so high as that—were liable to be canvassed and criticized by a superior Court in the same way as the judgment of a Judge almost at every point of a civil action is liable to be canvassed and criticized by a superior Court, then I cannot doubt that sentences would be pronounced with a very different sense of responsibility, and that sentences would, in many cases, be very different from those which too often startle and disgust the public conscience. I desire to quote two cases which I have selected because I am extremely anxious the attention of the country should be called to them. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman (the Home Secretary) gives me his attention, and I hope Her Majesty's clemency may be extended to these cases, because, of course, under the present law, that is the only resource in these and similar cases. At the Liverpool Summer Assizes last year, four lads, aged about 17, were found guilty of robbery from a poor woman of the sum of 3s., the robbery being accompanied by personal violence. It was a most dastardly offence and richly deserved a severe punishment. But what was the punishment actually inflicted? Penal servitude for 14 years, on lads of 17! I am not surprised that the Report of the proceedings says the severity of the sentence caused great surprise. With the permission of the House I will quote a few words from the language used by the learned Judge in pronouncing sentence. He said:—
  "It is truly intolerable that a set of rascals like you, just between boyhood and manhood, should be allowed to become the terror of all decent people."
  Does not this language on the face of it supply evidence of the impulsive impressionable character of the sentence pronounced in hot blood—a sentence which, if it could happily come up for revision before a full court of Judges, would not be allowed to stand? There is
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  another case, a still more notorious case, to which I will call the right hon. Gentleman's attention. It is a case in respect to which an evening newspaper, with which I seldom agree, performed a great public service by continually bringing it before the public notice. I mean the well-known case of the boy Osborne, 17 years old, convicted at the Central Criminal Court, of an attempt to blackmail a gentleman by threatening to accuse him of an odious crime. Of course the crime committed by Osborne was a crime of the most serious character, a crime which requires to be treated with heavy punishment. But what was the sentence pronounced by the learned Judge on this lad of 17? No less a sentence than penal servitude for life! A few months afterwards, at the same Court, but before another Judge, a man was convicted of a similar crime, a crime which the Judge who pronounced sentence said was one of the worst possible description of its class, and he concluded by passing a sentence of ten years' penal servitude. Since that time, at the same Court, again and again, men have been convicted of the same crime certainly not under more aggravated circumstances, and in no case has a heavier sentence than 10 years' penal servitude been pronounced. I know the attention of the Home Secretary has been called to the case and I do hope that he will take it into his very serious consideration, because I can assure him of this, that there is a very considerable section of the community who regard the sentence as vindictive, and of extremely unjustfiable severity. I spoke just now of a sentence being pronounced in hot blood and perhaps I may be permitted to remind the House that some years ago the writer of a leading article in the Times made a suggestion that is worthy of consideration. It was suggested that, where the crime was of a very serious character, which must from any point of view necessitate a severe sentence, the sentence should not be pronounced by a single Judge and on the spot, but should be deferred, and should be pronounced after consideration by the learned Judge who had tried the case and two or three other Judges, to whom the former would have to explain and justify the

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  sentence that he proposed to pass. As a somewhat analogous illustration I may mention that some 25 or 30 years ago three Judges used to sit together at the trials of the Central Criminal Court, and I have heard Mr. Poland say that the plan had an excellent effect. All the Judges in turn passed through a sort of school at the Central Criminal Court with this result, that the Central Criminal Court set up a kind of standard for criminal sentences, and the Judges when they went on circuit adhered very much to that standard. That system as the House knows probably, exists no longer; we have now only one Judge at the Central Criminal Court, and he sits on an average only for two or three days, and we have therefore lost that valuable standard which according to the opinion of one of the most eminent criminal lawyers of the day once existed. I desire to avoid if possible every remark of an invidious or provocative character, and do not therefore propose to dwell at length on the sentences which are pronounced at Quarter Sessions, but I think I may at all events say this, that some of the most unjustifiable sentences passed are pronounced in those Courts, although I do not wish to point out cases. I may take the fact as sufficiently established. There is, however, one class of punishments in our Criminal Code as to which the superior Judges and the Courts of Quarter Sessions seem to be at cross purposes. I refer to the addition to sentences of penal servitude of what is called police supervision. Judges have exhibited a great objection to this police supervision, while Quarter Sessions order this addition to sentences in the most lavish spirit. It is a subject on which there may fairly be considerable difference of opinion, but I think all will agree with me that in similar cases it ought to be equally applied by all our criminal courts. But what are the facts? I find that out of 720 cases in which sentence of penal servitude was pronounced, 240 sentences were passed by Judges, and of these in only nine cases did the Judges order the imprisonment to be followed by police supervision, but of the remaining 480 sentences passed by Quarter Sessions no fewer than 209 were to be followed by police supervision. In other words, while the Judges ordered this addition to less than 4 per cent of their sentences, the Sessions
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  adopted it in 43 per cent of theirs. I think that is a subject to which the attention of the Commission might properly be directed. If the Judges will not order police supervision then I think it would only be reasonable that Quarter Sessions should he precluded from passing such sentences. As I have referred to the Magistrates I may be permitted to point out the gross inequality in respect to sentences pronounced upon children by courts of summary jurisdiction. Now, we had thought—at least, I had thought—that imprisonment of very young children had practically ceased, and I must say I was astonished by the revelations of Mr. John Hutton, a Yorkshire Magistrate, last year, who showed that 40 children under 16 years of age had in the previous 12 months been committed to Northallerton Gaol, and he mentioned also the fact more immediately pertinent to my present purpose, that 17 of these 40 children had been committed by one Magistrate. I find also from the last Return that upon the 31st March last there were seven children under 12 years of age in Her Majesty's prisons. Now what does this mean? I may here use a very short quotation:—
  "Those only who have seen, as I have seen, a little creature of 8 or 9 years of age crouching in a corner of a cell and crying for its mother, can fully realize what must be the amount of misery inflicted by such treatment."
  Now that is not the language of a sentimentalist addressing a public meeting, it is taken from a semi-official communication addressed to the Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire by an experienced, and perhaps I may say without offence, a case-hardened Police Magistrate, Mr. Kinnersley, of Birmingham. I rejoice in the fact that a Bill has been introduced for the "Prevention of Cruelty to Children." I shall rejoice still more if it passes into law, but at the same time I would for a moment ask the House to consider whether there is not a very considerable degree of cruelty practised upon children in the way I have indicated under the sanction of the law by cruel or thoughtless Magistrates. One of the contrasts which most impress the public mind is the extreme severity with which crimes againt property are punished, as compared with the leniency, I might almost say the callous leniency, in some cases exhibited in

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  sentences for crimes against the person. It is not necessary that I should give the House more than one or two illustrations, because any newspaper which contains a report of criminal trials shows the contrast upon which I am now insisting. I will take, however, one or two cases. B, a weak-minded man who had once been sent to gaol for a minor offence—of course, it must have been a felony, was for stealing a shirt sentenced to five years' penal servitude, and five years' police supervision. Here is another:—C had been committed to gaol four times for petty offences, then for stealing a rabbit-gin he was sentenced to 7 years' penal servitude, and 2 years' police supervision, and again for stealing a garden fork to 10 years' penal servitude and 5 years' police supervision. And now here is a case to which I ask particular attention, that of a man convicted—a first offence—of embezzlement and sent into penal servitude. I have no right to complain of that, embezzlement is a most serious crime; I do not know the facts of the case, I assume that he was properly sentenced. He came out of prison and for 16 years he lived an honest man. Then he stole some candles, was convicted of that, the previous conviction was raked up against him, and he was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude, and seven years' police supervision. Now, I do pronounce that a scandalous thing—("Where?") I give the case as I find it in this book published by Mr. W. Tallack, the Secretary to the Howard Association, which I think will carry weight with my hon. and learned Friend. It does not say where this sentence was passed, but no doubt I shall be able to supply my hon. Friend with the information later. In the Roman Law they had cumulative sentences as we have, but if an interval of three years elapsed between the termination of one period of punishment and the commission of a second offence, then the first offence could not be raked up to aggravate the sentence for the second offence. There is a humane and proper spirit in such an enactment. Now I come to the last case with which under this head I need trouble the House. At the Autumn Assizes at York, in 1887, a distinguished Judge—there is no reason why I should not say it was the Lord Chief Justice—had before him a woman who had already undergone
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  10 years' imprisonment for stealing a door mat, and was then charged with the theft of a piece of linen. The Lord Chief Justice sentenced her to three weeks hard labour and made the following observation—
  "I do not know what is to become of punishment. If people are to be sent to 10 years' penal servitude for stealing a door mat, what is to be done with men for half killing their wives?"
  The fact is we punish petty offences against property in cases of a second felony with such disproportionate severity that there is absolutely no margin of difference left for the punishment of crimes of personal violence, hence it is that we have corporal punishment so often advocated in such cases. As long as the law practically teaches that a man's person is far less sacred than his property, and that the smallest theft is to be regarded as more criminal than the grossest cruelty, so long shall we have as a result a big crop of crimes of violence and brutality. I have no doubt my hon. Friends opposite will be disposed to say, as many of them have said in the press and elsewhere, that the public find fault with sentences because they do not understand them. Let this be granted, and even so my case will be proved up to the hilt, for if the public conscience is revolted by punishments which are excessive in some cases and callously lenient in others, then I say great mischief is done and one of the chief ends of punishment is defeated, because you have not carried the opinion of the country with you. There is one case which I well remember. It occurred in 1881, in the Central Criminal Court, and excited great public attention and much unfavourable animadversion. It happened that on the same day—in the summer of 1881—a very distinguished Judge tried two men for the terrible crime in each case of kicking a woman to death. In one case the woman was the mistress of the man who committed the crime, and in the other she was the wife of the criminal. The sentences passed were—in one case six weeks' imprisonment, and in the other five years' penal servitude. By an unhappy fatality it happened that the sentence of five years' penal servitude was passed in the case in which the woman was the mistress,

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  whilst that of six weeks' imprisonment was awarded in the case in which the woman was only the wife. Well, Mr. Speaker, I will for argument's sake grant that it is conceivable that the offence of kicking a wife to death in a fit of drunken passion can be adequately punished by six weeks' imprisonment, although I think that that is a very large concession to make. But, at all events, I say that such a sentence ought not to have been passed upon the spur of the moment as the result of the impression made upon the mind of a single Judge, however eminent, but ought to have been passed after consideration by a Court at least as strong as the Court which tries Crown Cases Reserved. Probably my learned Friends will say with regard to my remarks about the severity with which crimes against property are punished that a person is not sent into penal servitude because he steals a shirt, or a garden fork, or a pennyworth of herrings, or three pennyworth of candles, but because he has repeatedly committed offences against society. Well, there is a good deal in that objection, and I quite admit that the case of habitual offenders is one of the most difficult problems which confronts us. There are two classes of habitual offenders who give the greatest possible trouble to conscientious Judges before whom they come. One class is guilty of repeated petty misdemeanours, the other of repeated petty felonies. The old law draws a wide, and in many cases very irrational distinction, between felonies and misdemeanours, and to one of the distinctions which still exist I desire to call the attention of the House. In the case of repeated felonies, of however trivial a character, the law allows the cumulation of sentences. For a second felony a heavier sentence can be passed than for a first, but the same principle of cumulation is not permitted by our law to be applied to misdemeanours. The result is that you have a considerable number of persons in this country upon whom scores of contemptible sentences of a few days or weeks have been passed. I saw reported a little while ago the case of a woman who had been convicted as many as 150 times, and readers of newspapers occasionally come across cases in which men and women have received these small sentences 50,
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  60 or 70 times. Now, it is perfectly evident that persons of that class are not afraid of prison, and, what is perhaps of still greater importance and significance is that the contempt which they feel for prison they spread through the society in which they move. As long ago as 1872 the Liverpool Magistrates made a move in this matter. They approached the Home Secretary and strongly urged that it was desirable that the cumulative principle of sentences should be applied to the punishment of all crimes, whether misdemeanours or felonies. I am disposed to think that great good would result from a change in the law of that character, and I think it is one of the subjects which might with great public advantage be referred to the Commission for which I ask to-night. As I have said, the principle of cumulation does apply to felonies, but it is applied in the most absurdly capricious and cruel manner. The proposition cannot be too frequently insisted upon, because all experience proves the truth of it, that the efficacy of punishment consists not in its severity, but in its certainty. I hold in my hand a book recently published by Mr. William Tallack, the Secretary of the Howard Association, entitled, "Penological and Preventive Sentences "—rather a forbidding title for a singularly interesting and most useful book. It is a book that has gained the warmest encomiums from men of the first eminence both in this country and abroad, and it seems to me most amply to deserve all the praise it has received. Mr. Tallack says—
  "Whenever a first brief imprisonment has failed to secure its object it should never be repeated. The same ground should never be gone over again Every subsequent conviction should involve some definite increase of detention. It is of comparatively minor importance if the amount of an additional penalty is but small so long as it is certain to be greater than anyone previously undergone by the same individual. It can hardly be too often repeated or recognized that the main element in the repression of crime is not severity but certainty, and in order to render this the more practicable it must involve moderate and patient gradation."
  I commend these observations to the very serious attention of the Government and the House. The cardinal rule which, it seems to me, should be observed in the administration of punishment, is never merely to

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  repeat. On the other hand, the cumulation of sentences, operating almost with the certainty, the inexorable certainty of natural laws, can hardly fail in the majority of cases to impress the minds of the offenders and produce the most salutary results, as, in fact, wherever it has been fairly tried it has produced satisfactory results. It would be too hopeful to expect that even under such a plan you will in all cases succeed with old offenders. You will still have to keep penal servitude in reserve. Penal servitude should, however, only be given in cases where every other remedy has been tried, whereas, at the present time, as the cases I have put before the House show, penal servitude is frequently imposed most unjustifiably, in the case of conviction for petty felonies. There are some who seem disposed to do away with the difference which the law has hitherto established between mere imprisonment and penal servitude. For my own part I do not sympathize with these views. I think that the gulf which is fixed between the longest term of mere imprisonment and the shortest term of penal servitude is a wise provision, and I think it would be a mistake to endeavour to get rid of it. I hope the Government will lend a favourable ear to the appeal I am making to them. If they do not respond I hope I may make an appeal to the House. But in any case I am so firmly convinced of the practicability of some of the suggestions I have ventured to make, and especially so convinced am I of the salutary effects which would follow from the plan—the credit of which is not mine but Mr. Tallack's—of gradual and moderate cumulation of punishment, both for misdemeanours and felonies, that if I should be so unfortunate as to fail to-night I shall certainly revert to the subject on the first opportunity. I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, in order to add the words
  "That the inequality and the irregularity of the sentences pronounced by our Criminal Courts require the immediate and serious attention of the Government, and that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire as to the best means by which greater
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  equality of sentences and the more systematic punishment of repeated offences may be secured."—(Mr. Pickersgill.)
  MR. FORREST FULTONThe question of the inequality of sentences is one which I think is well worthy of the attention of the Legislature. There can be no doubt at all that there is a wide divergence in the action not only of Judges, but of Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, in the views they take of the particular crimes on which they have to pass sentences. Having had some experience of the administration of the criminal law, I have over and over again been struck with the fact that the sentences passed by one Judge are much more severe than those passed by another in the same court. At the same time I do not agree with my hon. and learned Friend that this is a subject which ought to be referred to a Royal Commission. I think that is about the most unsatisfactory way of dealing with it which could possibly be adopted. We known that when a Royal Commission is appointed on any subject, as a rule nothing whatever is done. My hon. and learned Friend has given us cases in which he says very unequal sentences have been passed. He has referred to the case of a man named Osborne who was sentenced to penal servitude for life for threatening to accuse somebody else of a crime. No doubt that offence has always been regarded by Her Majesty's Judges as one of the most serious offences known to the law, and I understand my hon. and learned Friend to say he also considers it to be a very serious offence. It has always been classed by the Judges with the sending of threatening letters and has practically always been visited with a term of penal servitude. It has been a matter of astonishment to me that when lists of Irish outrages have been commented on in this House the sending of threatening letters has always been pooh-poohed and treated as if it were not a serious offence. Penal servitude for life is a very serious sentence to pass on a boy of 17, and I say without hesitation, and in all humility, that so far as my own opinion is concerned I certainly agree with the course uniformly pursued by the Lord Chief Justice of England of dealing with exceptional leniency with first offences, or

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  first offences committed after previous convictions, where the previous convictions have taken place a long time ago. When a crime has been committed 10 or 15 years ago, and punishment inflicted, the conviction ought to be wiped out, and the wretched man who has committed another crime after such interval should be allowed to have a fresh start. The sentence on the boy of 17 years to which the hon. and learned Gentleman has referred was a most exorbitant punishment if I may use the expression, and one, the full particulars of which, I should like to hear. The case must have happened a long time ago.
  MR. PICKERSGILLIn 1886.
  MR. FORREST FULTONI am sorry to hear that. I should have thought it would have been more likely to have happened in the year 1826. I entirely agree with my hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Pickersgill) that this case should receive the serious consideration of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. But this is only a detail. My hon. and learned Friend suggests certain remedies. He suggests that there should be a Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the subject, and he throws out other suggestions of a practical character. He says that three years ago three Judges were in the habit of sitting at the Central Criminal Court to lay down rules which were followed in that Court and by Chairmen of Quarter Sessions.
  MR. PICKERSGILLNot by Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, but by Judges.
  MR. FORREST FULTONWell, I object altogether to that. My experience of what is called the uniform sentences of Judges is that the system has worked unsatisfactorily. I will give an instance. I happen to have the honour to be the senior Counsel to Her Majesty's Post Office in the County of London. There has been a practice for some time of passing in every case a sentence of five years' penal servitude on Post Office servants committing a certain class of offence. I am very glad to say that that rule, though it used formerly to be adopted by the Judges, is now more honoured in the breach than the observance. I am glad to think that the departure from the course which was formerly pursued by the Recorder of London and the Common Serjeant is
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  one that meets with the approval of Her Majesty's Postmaster General. I do not think it would be desirable that there should be a rule laid down by the Judges as to particular cases, for you must rely upon the Judge who tries the case to a very large extent. My hon. and learned Friend refers to newspaper reports of criminal cases. A man steals a trifling article and is sentenced to a very serious and exceptional punishment, and the circumstances of the case are hurriedly reported in the press, the full facts not always appearing. Although the members of the Fourth Estate are very praiseworthy in some respects, the hon. Gentleman will agree with me that they are never so incorrect as in reporting criminal cases. They are seldom near the facts of the case. The reports are hurriedly prepared, and it is impossible for the public to form a true conception of what occurs from the reports that appear in the public press. From my experience in the Metropolis, I must say the sentences are carefully considered by the Judges. The Recorder of London is a man who takes infinite pains in the sentences he passes. He is remarkable amongst all the Judges for the carefulness of his sentences and their lenient description. With regard to the Judges who attend the Central Criminal Court, they do differ no doubt very much as to the view they take of particular crimes. For instance, in regard to the offence of bigamy, some Judges think it a crime of a most serious nature, and of course, it may be most serious. Where a man pretends to be a single man and marries a woman, I have always contended that in substance he commits the offence of rape, and ought to be punished by penal servitude. But on the other hand, there are crimes which are only technically bigamy—in the case, for instance, where the woman knows that the man is married and yet desires that he should marry her for the sake of her status amongst those in the midst of whom she lives. In this latter class of cases most Judges pass sentence of one day's imprisonment, but others condemn the man to a long term of imprisonment, or even to a sentence of penal servitude. The practical question is, Is there a remedy for this state of things? I believe there is, and I believe it is to be found in a properly

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  constituted Court of Criminal Appeal. But a properly constituted Court of Criminal Appeal, as it has hitherto been proposed by Members of this House, and lawyers of position, is to give an appeal on questions of law only, and that, of course, would not meet the case which the hon. Member has brought before the House. But I see no reason why the question of the adequacy or inadequacy of a sentence should not be brought before such a Court. Throughout the whole of England we have had a very remarkable example of the way in which the Summary Jurisdiction Act has been worked in the matter of summary offences. There is in this country an appeal in every case of conviction by a Magistrate to the Court of Quarter Sessions, and during the two years that I had the honour to act as Counsel to the Treasury, there were constant appeals to Quarter Sessions, where the only ground of appeal was that the sentence passed by the Metropolitan Police Magistrates was excessive—that it should have been a fine instead of imprisonment, or where it was imprisonment, that it should have been for a less term. I did not know until this morning that my hon. and learned Friend intended to bring this matter forward, and I am therefore speaking from memory, but I should think that in 10 per cent of the cases the sentences were reduced from terms of imprisonment to a fine, and terms of imprisonment reduced say from three months to one month. So that we have here a practical illustration of the value of an appeal against a severe sentence. But the matter does not rest there. A Quarter Sessions Appeal is a new hearing; the whole of the case is gone into again and the whole of the witnesses are examined. I do not suppose it would be possible for a Court of Criminal Appeal to re-hear cases and re-examine witnesses. They could have before them written depositions. That is a fair guide of what the facts were at the trial. A case could be stated setting out any fresh circumsntaces or evidence adduced at the trial, or the Judges notes could be referred to, and upon this material without going through the form of a re-hearing, the whole case might be re-investigated so that a proper and satisfactory result might be arrived at. I may here say that I am not disposed
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  to be so reticent on the subject of Chairmen of Quarter Sessions as the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite. Having had experience of Quarter Sessions in Essex and Hertfordshire and other counties, I think that Quarter Sessions sentences are exactly the sentences we ought to deal with. The Chairmen of Quarter Sessions do undoubtedly pass much heavier sentences than the Judges, and they constantly refuse bail in cases were bail might properly be allowed. There are flagrant cases before both the Chairmen of Quarter Sessions and the Recorders of Boroughs, in which it would be very desirable to overhaul the sentences. One of the objections taken to this suggested revision is, that the Court of Review would be flooded with appeals, and the Judges would be constantly called upon to decide whether a sentence should have been five years or five months; but I think there can be little doubt that if it were thoroughly understood that any defendant who has been convicted before a Judge or Chairman would appeal against the sentence passed upon him to a properly constituted Court of Criminal Appeal, much greater care would be exercised by the Judges or Chairmen than is exercised under existing circumstances. It is notorious that the Judges do not like being overruled; what an anomaly it is that a man who brings an action to recover £20 can go up to the House of Lords, if he thinks it necessary, in order to have the verdict set aside, and that no appeal is permitted in regard to criminal sentences. With reference to the proposal to refer the matter to a Royal Commission, that appears to me to be unsatisfactory; but at the same time I hope this discussion will help to bring about some practical result with regard to the question of police supervision. I have always entertained a very strong opinion that the House of Commons never intended, when the statute was passed, that this power of supervision should be exercised in the way it is, the result being that when a man has served a certain time and has been released on a ticket-of-leave he is so dodged about by the police that he is frequently prevented from getting an honest living. I feel assured that this sort of supervision was never intended to be exercised, unless

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  under very exceptional circumstances, and mainly with regard to receivers of stolen goods; for men who are convicted of this offence constitute one of the most dangerous classes in the community; and in such cases police supervision is a very excellent thing. In the way however, in which the power has been used, it has proved most mischievous, and I hear on all hands that, instead of exercising a wise and beneficial influence on the interests of accused persons, it has had exactly the contrary effect. Under these circumstances, though I am unable to support the Resolution of the hon. and learned Gentleman in the form in which it has been brought forward, I am glad that the matter has been brought under the attention of the House, and I hope it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to make a proposal which will in some way meet the object in view.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERI quite agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down, that the House is indebted to the hon. and learned Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Pickersgill) for bringing forward this grave and important question, one that in my judgment has long demanded the attention of Parliament. I hope that this evening will not be allowed to pass away without some indication from the Government that a practical result will follow the debate in which we are now engaged. The hon. and learned Gentleman who has just spoken has agreed in the main with the case which has been made out by the hon. and learned Member for Bethnal Green, but I would point out that we ought not to confine the consideration of this question to the mere severity of the sentences that are passed; we ought also to consider the other points of the Motion on the Paper —namely, "the inequality and irregularity of the sentences pronounced by our Criminal Courts," and "the more systematic punishment of repeated offences." My hon. Friend, in introducing this subject, did not indicate that there was any great growth in the amount of punishment inflicted, or any great increase in our criminal population. It is a matter upon which the country may congratulate itself that there has been for many years a steady decrease, not only in the
  1020
  prison population, but also in the convict population, and that at the present moment there are proportionately fewer people in average prison life, and also fewer prisoners undergoing penal servitude than have ever been known since statistics have been obtainable on the subject. If we go back for a period of 20 years we find that the average prison population was 17,500, and to-day it is 14,500, although the population has increased 5,000,000. In 1871 the number of persons under sentence of penal servitude was 11,700; the number last year had come down to 6,900. We may, I think, congratulate ourselves that in a population of 28,000,000, our convict population is below 7,000. Although we are obliged to my hon. Friend for having drawn attention to this question, I cannot but admit that it is a very difficult one for Parliament to deal with. I am a strong advocate for drawing a very sharp line between the action of the Legislature and the action of the Judiciary; and it is only in extreme and grave cases that Parliament should interfere with what I may call the regular action of the Judges. But with reference to the infliction of sentences, that is a power invested in the Judges by Parliament. We have given an enormous breadth of judicial discretion, and there is no country in the world in which so vast an amount of discretion is entrusted to the Judiciary as in this country—a fact which becomes more serious when applied to the case of trials at Quarter Sessions. Moreover, there is in this country a complete absence of any system or standard of punishment such as other systems of jurisprudence have. In the Continental Codes we find a system of fixed punishment with only a very small margin of discretion; whereas we are without any system at all, for unless it be that the Judges have an understanding among themselves, of which I am ignorant, I know of no rule except that under which all offences against the Post Office are treated with exceptional severity. Another discouraging feature in the jurisprudence of this country is that we have no Court of Criminal Appeal. I think the motion is justified on three grounds—namely, the breadth allowed to judicial discretion, the absence of a fixed code of punishments, and the

  1021
  want of a Court of Criminal Appeal. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite has admitted the disproportion constantly observable in the sentences passed by different Judges for the same kind of offence, as well as the extraordinary severity of some of the sentences passed. I have no wish to give the names of particular individuals, nor to bring forward particular cases, because this House could not have all the facts before it that were brought before the Judges at the time, and upon which they were induced to act. But I will take a class of cases which came under my knowledge a few years ago. One of the learned Judges who were associated with them is now dead, and the other learned Judge has been remitted to another sphere; but those two Judges were sitting at the same time at two different assizes—one in the county of Stafford, and the other in the county of York. They were trying a certain class of offences. The Judge at Leeds was inflicting, for this particular kind of offence, a punishment of two years' hard labour; but the Judge at Stafford was imposing for the same offence 20 years' penal servitude. Now, it is evident that either one sentence was absurdly small or the other was grotesquely severe. Again, you may notice an enormous disproportion in the punishments inflicted for bigamy and other offences against the person, with regard to which there are some Judges who hold very strong opinions, while there are other Judges who hold strong opinions as to offences against property—each class of offence being treated by these Judges with exceptional severity. Taking what is the course pursued to-day, as a whole, we find that the punishments are far more severe where property is involved than where offences against the person are involved. It may be said that after all this is only the survival of what was a reasonable practice 100 years ago when society was accustomed to defend itself against acts of violence by acts of violence. It was an essential part of a gentleman's costume in those days to wear swords, with the intention to use them, and they did use them. While there was then a protection against personal violence which does not now exist, property is at the present time
  1022
  much more efficiently protected than it was then. Then there was no organized police or detective force, and society inflicted terrible penalties against sheep-stealing, horse-stealing, and other offences against property in order to protect itself. The main offences against property now are of a petty character, whereas, on the other hand, it is a sad fact that offences against the person are increasing, and offences against the person are not as severely punished at the present day as they ought to be. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green has mentioned some cases of severe punishments, and I mention one other, that of a man who was sentenced to 12 years' penal servitude and seven years' police supervision for stealing a piece of canvas. Altogether that man had, at different times, been sentenced to 34 years' imprisonment and penal servitude and seven years' police supervision. These are sentences which no reason can justify in a humane and Christian country. With regard to the sentences in Post Office cases, I remember a very learned Judge telling me that nothing would induce him to pass the sentence of five years' penal servitude simply because it was a Post Office case. I am delighted to hear that this meets with the approval of the Postmaster General, because there has been an impression that the legal advisers of the Post Office pressed for these severe punishments. With regard to embezzlement cases, bank robberies, and the graver cases of breaches of trust, it is contended that severe sentences are justified. What is wanted is to deter others from committing the same offence, and also, no doubt, to mark the gravity of the crime the particular offender has committed; but I wonder whether hon. Members realize what such sentences as seven, 10, or 15 years' penal servitude involve? A man who commits any of those offences loses his character, his prospects are ruined, his wife is condemned to an awful widowhood, and his children are orphans. To condemn that man to 10 or 15 years of slavery in addition is an excess of punishment which cannot be justified. I remember when I was at the Home Office a very learned Judge, now not alive, was conducted over

  1023
  Portland Prison, and when he saw what penal servitude really was, he learned what penal servitude really was, and he stated that if he had known what that punishment really was he should not have passed some of the sentences he had inflicted. In my opinion long terms of penal servitude ought not to be passed on habitual offenders. Reference has been made to sentences passed at Quarter sessions, and the hon. Member who has just sat down has referred to their severity. The official statistics show that in 1887 there were 1,806 sentences passed at Quarter Sessions exceeding six months' imprisonment with hard labour, and of those 331 were sentences of penal servitude. Perhaps, standing by itself, that, compared with sentences at Assizes, may not be a disproportionate average. What struck me most were the sentences in cases of offences against property committed without violence, for which last year there were passed 245 sentences of penal servitude. For simple larceny alone 140 sentences of penal servitude were passed. That shows a case for inquiry as to whether there are facts in connection with cases of simple larceny in this country which justifies such sentences. We have to consider the effect of those sentences. upon society itself and upon the criminals. I would call the attention of the House to what has been going on in Liverpool during the last three years. Mr. Hopwood was appointed Recorder of Liverpool three years ago, and at the commencement of his duties there he laid down a principle which he intended to adopt of imposing much milder sentences than had theretofore been the practice. He was exposed to much public criticism in consequence of the opinions he then expressed. We have now got statistics for three years, and I think the House will admit that is a fair period in which to test the working of his plan. Mr. Hopwood gives a review of the last three years. The total number of prisoners during the preceding three years—that is the three years before Mr. Hopwood was appointed—was 1,889, the total punishment of whom was 1,681 years, 3 months, and 7 days, or an average of 10 months per prisoner. One-third of these 1,889 prisoners pleaded guilty. During the
  1024
  last three years, where these milder sentences have been passed the number tried has been 1,608, a reduction of nearly 300, and the punishments inflicted during the three years has amounted to 408 years, or an average of 3 months against 10, the number who pleaded guilty being one-half. Mr. Hopwood says—
  "If the total imprisonment of the later three years be deducted from the additional imprisonment of the three former years, then there is this large reduction of punishment, which represents a saving of human misery which anyone may estimate for himself, and a saving of any actual charge to the nation of £20 per head per annum. Of the total of prisoners during the last three years 600 had been previously convicted, and had returned from sentences inflicted in earlier years, and were not, therefore, the product of the system now adopted."
  The argument of Mr. Hopwood is practically this, that by his milder sentences crime has been reduced and not increased, and I think that is an end the House wants to reach. But, Sir, we have been talking to-night exclusively about penal servitude. A short time ago a well known correspondent of the Times, who is supposed to be a Law Lord, stated that two years' imprisonment with hard labour was about the extreme punishment which the ordinary man could bear. According to the present authorities, five years' penal servitude, which is reducible by good conduct to something like three years and nine months, is not so severe as two years' imprisonment under our present system. I cannot defend that state of things. I do not think there ought to be those variations in the nature and extent of the punishment. I think a great deal may be said in favour of the consolidation of punishment so as to have something like similarity of treatment. But now I want to come to the practical question, because I do not know whether hon. Members are going to dispute the position taken up with so much force by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green—namely, that disproportionate sentences are passed by different Judges, and that we have no uniformity of punishment. What is the remedy? My hon. Friend asks for a Royal Commission. The hon. Member below the Gangway suggests the establishment of a Court of Appeal. The Solicitor General, when he had not

  1025
  the responsibilities of office upon him, expressed himself in this House in very clear language on this question the last time it was brought before him, in favour of a Court of Criminal Appeal. He said:
  "Sentences of penal servitude were passed with a light heart by Judges who sometimes did not know the amount of misery they were inflicting upon the unfortunate creatures they sentenced. He was sure that this point in the administration of the Criminal Law brought a great deal of anxiety upon the Secretary of State who was implored to consider the terrible sentences that had been passed, and there can be no reason why appeals in such cases should not be allowed."
  The Solicitor General was followed in the debate by the then Home Secretary, who pointed out that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Plymouth had admitted that one of the great misfortunes and scandals of our criminal jurisprudence was the inequality of sentences given by criminal Judges for the same offence. What has been the result of appeal in civil cases? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bury in 1883 told the House that during the six preceding years 44 per cent of the decisions taken to the Court of Appeal were reversed, and only 56 per cent confirmed. That is a strong proof of the liability of Courts of the First Instance to err. My right hon. Friend the then Attorney General, and now Member for Hackney, said that 25 per cent of the applications for new trials were granted. No doubt the Home Secretary will point out the difficulties there would be in constituting a Court of Criminal Appeal, owing to the large number of cases that would come before it. I do not deny that there are difficulties attending the constitution of a Court of Criminal Appeal, but I believe that advantages would vastly outweigh the drawback. There ought to be something like uniformity of punishment; something like a distinct understanding that a certain measure of punishment should be inflicted for a certain class of offence, and it is because I see the difficulty of dealing with the question of disproportionate sentences, unless we get the sympathy and support of the Judges in carrying out the reform, that I support the Motion of my hon. and learned friend for the appointment of the Royal Commission. The question is
  1026
  one well worthy of grave and judicial inquiry. Some of the best legislation we have had has been the result of inquiries by Royal Commissions, and I think the Judges should have brought before them, and the country should have brought before it, the actual working of our judicial system. I think that a Royal Commission will afford far better means of securing this end than speeches in this House. I am satisfied that our present judicial system is not humane; we are inflicting for certain offences punishments which are inflicted in no other civilized country in, the world. The Motion is one which should command the sympathy of the Government, and I am sure the matter is well worthy of complete, judicial, and accurate inquiry.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS, Birmingham, E.)The hon. and learned Member for Bethnal Green has suggested that in some better kind of Penal Code offences might be marked off from one another by a sharp line of definition; but I know of no Code so perfect as to completely distinguish between all the different degrees of the same crime. The definition of burglary—"entering by force a house at night"—is as simple as can be; but how can any limitations prevent its including offences really of a most trivial character? If confusion between crimes of various characters is to be prevented, it can only be done by a Committee of Judges or some such body, and not by a Royal Commission. Taking the Criminal Law as it stands it would have to be reformed from top to bottom if no discretion is to be left to the Judges. It is the English system to leave—and the confidence has been fully justified—to those who administer the law the largest amount of discretion in order that they may fit punishment to the infinitely varying circumstances of crime. There is only one instance in the Criminal Code where a minimum of punishment is fixed—namely, the period of ten years of penal servitude for certain unnatural offences. Generally it is the maximum of punishment that is laid down, and as far as my experience goes that one minimum penalty of ten years' penal servitude has wrought very great mischief. If a

  1027
  large discretion is vested in the Judges, it follows that their decisions cannot suit all tastes. Nor would a Royal Commission necessarily help the hon. Member for Bethnal Green; for it is the Royal Commission of 1864 which added to the severity of punishments. Nothing but the teaching of experience will by degrees bring Judges of all classes to discover by tentative process what scale of punishment is the most efficacious in preventing crime. It must be generally admitted that only such a degree of punishment ought to be inflicted as is sufficient for deterring a man from repeating a crime or others from committing it. A single day's imprisonment beyond the necessary period is a great injury, not so much to the prisoner as to his wife and family who are dependent upon him. I think that the right hon. Gentleman went a little too far when he cited the authority of the learned Recorder of Liverpool as conclusive on that matter. I do not think that such experience as we have had of his mode of administering punishment is sufficient to demonstrate that his plan is entirely right. But this much, I believe, is demonstrated by the figures which appear in their judicial statistics, that the existing system during the last 10 years has not been a bad one for the general purposes of society. There has been an extraordinary diminution of crime, which is most satisfactory, since the Summary Jurisdiction Act of 1879 was passed. As a result of the passing of the Act of 1879, you have a decrease in the number of offences tried by indictment. In 1879, 12,500 persons were convicted on indictment, and, in 1887, only 10,380. Summary convictions at first increased, but the general result of the system has been to diminish crime in a most satisfactory way, and ultimately there has also been a remarkable decrease in the number of persons summarily convicted. Tried by its fruits the present system certainly does not deserve wholesale condemnation. I will not enter into the individual cases to which the hon. Member has referred. It is difficult, no doubt, to understand how anything could justify the passing of a sentence of penal servitude for life on a boy. But what the hon. Member seems to treat as
  1028
  his main point was that he would like to introduce a system of graduated penalties beginning from one month and rising to two months, three months, and so on; and only after a long series of offences arriving at the ultimate penalty of penal servitude. That, no doubt, may sound very reasonable, but it would be impossible to lay it down as a cast-iron rule for every case. A first offence might be a burglary, and the second the stealing of an apple; and the punishment for the second offence in such a case must be lighter than the sentence passed upon the first. But in 99 instances out of 100 the Judges already follow substantially the rule which the hon. Member has pointed out as being desirable. In the vast majority of cases they deal with first offences by light sentences, and with subsequent offences by heavier punishments. I know of no more heart-breaking problem than that of how to treat a class of people who pass their lives in criminal courses. These miserable creatures have no resources when they get out of prison and no faculties apparently but to commit offences such as petty larceny. Such persons cannot be allowed to go on without punishment of some sort. And yet the repetitions of slight punishments seems to have little or no effect upon them. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the last Return of the Prisons Commissioners he will find no indication of dealing too severely with persons who have been convicted more than once. The total number of persons who were committed to local prisons in the year ending March 31,1888, was 104,000 odd males and 31,000 odd females. In the next Table he will find that no fewer than 51,000 odd males and 25,000 females had been convicted before, either once, twice, thrice, or more than 10 times; and he will also observe this remarkable fact—that whereas the women who had been previously convicted more than once in all the columns except the last were less numerous than the men, when they came to persons convicted more than 10 times there were 5,700 odd men and 8,600 odd women. With regard to the imprisonment of children, the case of every child under 10 years of age who is sent to prison is specially brought before the Home Office and considered at once. In the

  1029
  Reformatory and Industrial Schools Bill, which will be before the House of Lords in a few days, and which I have spent a considerable amount of time in preparing, I have endeavoured to suggest a variety of alternative modes of dealing with juvenile offenders so as to avoid sending them to prison. With respect to the sentences which the Judges pass in Post Office cases, I do not think that these, any more than the sentences of former days in forgery cases, ought to be viewed with too much severity by the House. In a country like this where the credit of commercial instruments is of snch immense importance to the community it must be protected by punishments that are likely to be deterrent. I had a Post Office case before me the other day in which a sentence of
  five years penal servitude had been passed. In this case a woman of previous exemplary character had concocted a series of deliberate frauds, altering savings bank books, forging receipts, and robbing her neighbours of their little savings. That appeared to be a case in which a severe punishment was deserved. I may add, I think it well to keep down sentences to that point at which they may be considered to be deterrent. I think that five, or six, or seven years is terribly deterrent, but if you go beyond that the punishment often ceases to be deterrent. I think the suggestion of a Court of Appeal in the larger sense used by the right hon. Gentleman opposite for retrying cases on their merits is not practicable. I do not think, however, that it would be an impossibility to have a Court of Appeal which should simply revise sentences and act, so to speak, as a sort of sieve.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERThat was my suggestion.
  MR. MATTHEWSThen I beg pardon. I thought the right hon. Gentleman's proposal was that the Court of Appeal should re-try cases on their merits, which would be impracticable. At the same time there are a great many matters that must be weighed on both sides, before the other suggestion can be adopted. I am afraid that the great Judge would no longer be feared as he now is in the Assize towns, if it were known that his sentences were subject to revision. When we are asked
  1030
  for a Commission to inquire into these matters, I cannot help pointing out that a Commission seems to be useless, as the facts are not in dispute. There is really nothing for a Commission to inquire into. All they could do would be to examine a great number of experts, and ask them the best way of making sentences uniform. That is not an inquiry which in my opinion could be usefully trusted to a Royal Commission. The Government itself ought to be able to make up its mind as to whether any of the changes suggested by the hon. Member should be carried out, and I doubt very much whether they could derive any assistance from a Royal Commission. Therefore, although I am in sympathy on many points with the hon. Member, I am bound to differ from him in his main conclusion, and to say we could not consent to the appointment of a Royal Commission.
  MR. NEVILLEI have listened with the greatest interest to this debate, and I only rise to point out to the House that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews) has, I think, given us the strongest possible illustration of the inequality of the Criminal Law as it exists at the present time, and of the necessity, at all events, of an inquiry to see whether something cannot be done to alter and ameliorate it. The right hon. Gentleman gave us the case of a young girl who was properly convicted by a jury of burglary. He says, and very accurately, that this is one of the results of the extreme simplicity of the definition of burglary in our law. That is just the point. Where you have these extremely simple definitions you necessarily include in them an enormous number of offences of greatly varying magnitude. And what is the result? The girl whose sentence to a day's imprisonment not only affects all the audience in the Court but moved the Judge himself to tears, was convicted of precisely the same offence as the man who, with others, armed with revolvers, comes into your house, robs you of your goods and is prepared to take your life either for the purpose of securing his booty or avoiding apprehension. Surely the state of the Criminal Law must be wrong if in the eye of that law these two offenders are guilty of precisely the

  1031
  same offence. Though it is quite true that the Judge in criminal cases must exercise a discretion, it cannot be right that the discretion should be so enormous that by the sentence he imposes he is to mark the distinction between the offence of the young girl and the armed burglar, while the law itself makes no distinction between the two. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the Judges must try to see what sentence really is deterrent and how far in severity they need to go. I venture to think that judicial life is much too short for such an inquiry and it shows the necessity of the sentence appropriate to any particular offence being decided not by one Judge but by a Bench of Judges, so that the Judge should have something to guide him as to how particular offences should be met. It seems to me that these are matters which ought to be carefully and judicially considered by a Commission. I cannot think we have arrived at the height of human wisdom in our present criminal system. I think it is capable of improvement, and I think the best way of arriving at that improvement and amendment would be to grant an inquiry by a Royal Commission.
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES,I should not, perhaps, have intervened in this debate had it not been for the reference made by more than one speaker to the case of Government Office offences, which have been cited as illustrations of the worst evils attending on our present system of criminal sentences. I have been anxious, as far as I myself concerned, to give to the House the most positive assurance that I have felt the extreme unpopularity and undesirability of the uniform system of severe sentences which have in former days followed offences against the Post Office. Almost immediately after I took office I read in a newspaper that a learned Judge, in passing sentence at some assizes in the country, had said that whatever might be his own view as to the amount of punishment due to the offence, he felt himself bound, by the views he believed to be entertained by the Postmaster General, to follow a fixed standard of punishment, and inflict on the offender a sentence of five years' penal servitude. I am rather inclined to question the
  1032
  propriety of a Judge fortifying his own decision in a particular case by referring to the supposed views of the Post-master General, and I think I was, in the circumstances, justified in addressing a letter to the learned Judge to assure him that he was misinformed as to the views of the Post Office, and that so far from believing that a uniform sentence of five years was a protective to the public and the Post Office, I believed, on the other hand, that, by the disinclination which it produced on the minds of jurors to convict, such a sentence was most detrimental to the interests of the public, and subjected employés of the Post Office to the most serious temptation. Since that time I am glad to say the Judges have exercised a much more general discretion in the sentences they have passed. For my own part I have always felt that, where the offence is a first offence and without circumstances of aggravation, a much less punishment may be sufficient to protect the public and to deter Post Office servants from any of these crimes. I felt it was perhaps right I should say this as the question of the Post Office offences has been so prominently brought forward in the course of the debate. But I must confess that the interest I take in this subject is not at all confined to my experience in my present official position. It has been my fortune for many years to act as a Magistrate and to sit as Chairman of Quarter Sessions, though I have never held the proud position of permanent Chairman. I have therefore seen something of the way law is administered by Magistrates and by Quarter Sessions, and I should like at the outset to say a word with regard to the point raised by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Mr. Pickersgill) as to police supervision being viewed in a different manner by Judges and by Quarter Sessions. So far as my experience goes I should say that where the police supervision has formed part of the sentence, it has almost invariably been with the view of reducing the sentence. The arguments have run over a wide field, but it is not difficult to deduce from them that more than one train of thought has been working in the minds of hon. Members on both sides. We have been told that it is very undesirable that we should

  1033
  give the Judges the extended discretion which at the present they exercise, and almost in the same breath, and by the same speeches,we have had illustrations given of Judges who have been commended for the extremely light sentences which they have thought it their duty to pass. More than one hon. Member has really had in view quite as much a reform of the Criminal Law, as the question of rendering uniform our present code of punishment by some Procrustean means. I cannot help thinking that if some such system as appears to be intended by Mr. Tallack, some regular scheme of punishment graduated so as to meet all sorts of cases, were adopted, the hon. Gentlemen who have come down to the House to protest against the discretionary power of the Judges would be the first persons to protest against that Procrustean system, which would not allow the discretion of the Court in dealing with particular circumstances. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary (Mr. Matthews) has expressed the views of the Government upon this question, and therefore I speak for myself only when I say I have for many years been inclined to share the views of those who think the Criminal Law is a great deal too severe in dealing with small offences against property. I have felt and seen how extremely cruel has been the operation of the system of cumulative sentences in many cases. I remember, many years ago, sitting in the Second Court at Chester, trying some prisoners, and among others a man charged with stealing a goose. The man had just come out of penal servitude and had been twice or three times previously convicted. When the jury had convicted him I said to the clerk, "I suppose there is some regular and recognized system by which the Chairman of Quarter Sessions sentences prisoners under such circumstances?" The clerk said— "We always expect a prisoner under these circumstances to have five years' penal servitude." I said—"Do you really and seriously suppose it is possible I should sentence this man to five years' penal servitude for stealing a goose?" He, of course, had to submit to the views of the magistrate, and I gave the man six weeks or two months. It really does not appear to me to be con-
  1034
  sistent that hon. Members should denounce the severity of the law, and yet at the same time, also denounce the system which gives to the Judge or Chairman the power of mitigating the operation of the law. These are two quite separate issues which ought to be kept entirely distinct. The hon. Member suggests the appointment of a Royal Commission. That is merely a Parliamentary way of saying that something ought to be done. I think it will be admitted that there is a disposition on both sides of the House to recognize the imperfection of the present administration of the Criminal Law. There is no question between us on that point, but there is, no doubt, very considerable difference of opinion as to how far we should be justified in referring a question of this sort to a Royal Commission. It seems to me that a Royal Commission would have to be armed with extremely wide powers if they were to be able to give effect to the suggestions which have been brought forward. I do not see that we could refer the whole question of the reform of the Criminal Law to a Royal Commission. That appears to me to be a matter which falls within the responsibility of the Government of the day. If the law requires to be altered, it is the duty of the Government to take steps to alter it. To hand the consideration of the question over to a Commission would merely have the effect of protracting and delaying the settlement of a matter which is really of urgent and serious importance, and of weakening the responsibility of the Government, and making it less likely that we would obtain a serious and satisfactory amendment of the law. There was another subject touched on by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Ham (Mr. F. Fulton), and also by one or more of the other speakers, and that was the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal with regard to sentences. I confess that while I entertain very grave doubt as to the utility or the effect of a Royal Commission on this question, I entertain the very greatest objections to the institution of a Court of Criminal Appeal as regards sentences. The system of appeal which prevails in civil cases where an appellant is not restricted from going to a Court of

  1035
  Appeal if he thinks he would be better off there than in the Court below, appears to be distinct and separate from a system of appeal relating to criminal cases. A man who has been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment for a criminal offence has nothing to lose by going to a Court of Appeal, and there is nothing to prevent every prisoner from appealing. It is said a system might be established by which the Court of Appeal could increase sentences. I do not think that that is possible or that public opinion would support such a system. Without such a power the Court of Appeal would be reduced to the position of a Court of Review simply, and we have at present a most efficient Court of Review in the Home Secretary for the time being. The sentences are reviewed by the Secretary of State not from a purely legal point of view; and the Secretary of State has the assistance of the Judges who tried the cases which come before him. The decisions of the Home Secretary are not influenced by articles in newspapers or by counsel, and I consider the tribunal a very efficient one. We undoubtedly have in the prerogative of mercy, administered by the Secretary of State in the name of the Crown, an excellent corrective for extravagant and cruel sentences; and I doubt whether any Court of Appeal would constitute a more satisfactory tribunal to review the decisions of the Courts below. But when I say this I do not for a moment wish to minimize the scandal which is caused by the extraordinary differences in the sentences passed by Judges; but I believe that the Home Office, encouraged as it is likely to be by debates of this sort, will more and more venture to exercise a controlling influence upon such sentences without the apparatus and pomp and apparent efficiency of a Court of Appeal. Judges like other people make serious mistakes; but I am inclined to think they are less likely to make mistakes under the present system than under the system of a Court of Appeal composed of Judges who will have a natural desire to affirm the decisions of the Court below. And let me remind the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) with regard to the statistics as to appeals
  1036
  of which he quoted, that all the decisions the Civil Courts below did not come up for appeal, whereas we may be certain that all criminal sentences will be appealed against in the event of the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal. I cannot help thinking that if hon. Gentlemen analyze their own feelings, they will find that they are founded on a vague dissatisfaction with the state of the Criminal Law, and I do not think their origin is due to the exercise of discretion by the Judges. The punishment of a great many offences is felt to be too severe, and I believe any Parliament, any Ministry, will deserve well of their countrymen who take into most serious consideration the present incidence of punishments in Courts of Law in regard to offences both against property and person, and the disproportions therein. A Parliament which succeeds in dealing satisfactorily with this question, will have a stronger claim to the gratitude, of both contemporaries and posterity, than those who accomplish some showy and demonstrative legislation.
  MR. SHIRESS WILLNo one who sympathizes with the Resolution of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green can complain of the speeches delivered from the Front Bench, and, indeed, I think the speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Raikes) affords the strongest possible argument in favour of issuing the Royal Commission asked for. The right hon. Gentleman told us, from his experience as Chairman of Quarter Sessions, how, consulting the clerk as to the sentence on the poor creature in the dock below, he was advised that five years' penal servitude was the proper sentence. Fortunately in this case the right hon. Gentleman was able to bring his better judgment to bear, and the unfortunate criminal got off with six weeks' imprisonment. I do not think anything could be more clearly in favour of the Motion. Some of us who have experience of the law, perhaps some little experience of the Criminal Law, have wondered why it is that the law

  1037
  has said, that if a man commits a felony the punishment shall be imprisonment up to two years, or else penal servitude for five years or more. Why is it? There is another marvellous discrepancy. Suppose a man has committed a felony once and is then convicted of a second felony,the Judge has discretion to sentence that man to penal servitude, but he cannot do it for less than five years. But he may sentence him to a month's imprisonment. Look at the marvellous gap between these extremes. The Judge is not required to sentence him to penal servitude, but this vast discretion is given the Judge, and there is no one to review the decision. It has been said that one of the reasons why we cannot have a Court of Appeal in criminal cases is because there is no power to give costs against the persons who appeal. Why we all know, or we have read of the injustice that has been sometimes done by wrong convictions on what is called circumstantial evidence. Let me take one case out of hundreds that might be mentioned. Eliza Fleming, a poor servant girl, was convicted of administering poison to the family for whom she worked She was sentenced to the gallows, and she went there calm and serene as an angel, and she died innocent. Ought such a one to be refused an appeal because she could not pay costs? Is this the ground on which this House would refuse the common justice of an appeal? There is one point I wish very strongly to urge on the Front Bench in support of this claim for a Royal Commission. It is over and over again said of people who are of the criminal class that they are convicted again and again; they are gaol birds, habitual criminals and all the rest of it; but does anybody ever try for a moment to enter into their minds and see what it is that influences them? Does it ever occur to hon. Members—I am sure it does—that sometimes
  1038
  these people become hardened from a sense of injustice; that sometimes, though rarely, they are wrongly convicted, but more often sentences are inflicted unfitted to the offences committed, and they go away with a burning sense of wrong in their hearts? Is this the way to redeem them. Ought there not to be some Court of Criminal Appeal? Why if it is a question of a debt of £100 a man may carry his case to the Court of Appeal and again to the House of Lords; it does not matter whether he be rich or poor, he has this right of appeal. The Court has some discretion as to costs which I need not enter into now. Is it to be said that liberty is of less account than property? Is it to be said a man's life, or 20 years of his life, are of so small account that you allow him no appeal from the sentence of, it may be, an angry Judge? Judges, after all, are but men, and many a time a Judge is apt to be angry because he believes an offence is greater than it really is, and so is apt to make his words and his sentence the more strong. Is there to be no appeal from these errors of judgment? The Motion of my hon. Friend has shown once more that here are matters requiring very careful consideration. Those outside this House who to-morrow read the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) will understand how it is we have this state of the law; they will see that it is because in the past our desire and our efforts have been in the wrong direction; we have been trying to protect property instead of liberty. My right hon. Friend has pointed out more clearly than I have ever known it done before, how in the past, before we had a proper system of police, we were anxious by punishment to deter from crime against property; but now our efforts should be to wean people from crime. I am quite sure that both sides of the House are equally alive

  1039
  to that, and will be willing to devise for the future some system by which the wide discretion of the Judge shall be limited by some means of appeal. For committing a felony a man may be liable to a penalty of a day's imprisonment or penal servitude for life. This wide discretion is too much to leave uncontrolled to any man. You cannot expect men, even when Judges, to be archangels, and we must devise some safeguard, leave open some means to revise these momentous decisions. I will not sit down without acknowledging the fair and sympathethic manner in which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has addressed himself to this question. I am perfectly sure that every case that comes before him will never lack labour bestowed-upon it. No man who knows his generosity of heart, his capacity for work, his sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, will doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will give to every case brought before him a full and candid consideration.
  MR. C. W. RADCLIFFE COOKE (Newington, W.)I confess that I am a little confused by the observations that have fallen from two distinguished occupants of the First Bench below me, and am led to ask for some further explanation from that quarter. Seeing that the Under Secretary of State for the Home Office has been taking notes, no doubt he will supplement, explain, or reconcile the diverse opinions expressed by his official superiors. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Matthews) stated in pretty clear terms that it was the intention of the Government to establish some sort of a Court of Appeal to revise criminal sentences. [Mr. MATTHEWS dissented.] Then I misunderstood my right hon. Friend even more than I thought I had. At any rate, he conveyed to my mind the impression that the Government had in contemplation something
  1040
  of the kind. I do not think if my right hon. Friend reflects on what he said:—
  MR. MATTHEWSWhat I said is of less importance, but as expressing the intention, and speaking on behalf of the Government I do not wish to be misunderstood. All I said was that the subject of a Court to review criminal sentences had been carefully considered by the Government.
  MR. COOKEI suppose, Sir, with some object. I should like to hear what was the result of that consideration, because at present we are left in a very doubtful condition. I supposed after hearing these observations from my right hon. Friend, that either from his lips or those of some other Member of the Government we should hear a little more on the subject; but when the Postmaster General so completely set his foot down on a Court of Appeal or a Court of Review of any sort or kind, then I felt I was thrown entirely upon the Motion of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green, with no course open to me but to accept it and support his demand for a Royal Commission; for if the Government have had under consideration the question of a Court of Appeal and have done nothing, and if the Postmaster General thinks it is impracticable to appoint such a tribunal, then there is not much hope from the Front Bench that independently of external initiative that Court of Appeal will be appointed, which by common consent of both sides seem s to be desired. When the hon. Member for the Exchange Division of Liverpool (Mr. Neville) rose to address the House, I hoped, knowing the constituency he represents, and the feelings entertained in that part of the world with regard to the views of Mr. Hopwood, that possibly he might have corrected to some extent the inferences drawn from the conduct of

  1041
  Mr. Hopwood by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. H. H. Fowler). Those who read the Press of both sides in Liverpool, the Conservative as well as the Radical, will find that there is by no means a concensus of opinion as to the advantage of the working out of Mr. Hopwood's ideas of what he considers his duty, but, on the contrary, a very strong view that he has acted wrongly in his method of procedure. It has been suggested, indeed I do not know whether it may be the fact, that the diminution in the number of prisoners brought before him is because committing Magistrates do not send prisoners to Mr. Hopwood's Court. I will not say whether this is the explanation or not, but the inference the right hon. Gentleman draws from Mr. Hopwood's conduct cannot be accepted without a little further investigation. The right hon. Gentleman also gave us a very interesting account of a visit paid by a learned Judge to the convict prison at Portland, and how experience thus gained taught that learned Judge some part of his duty with which he was unacquainted before. Well, last week I visited the convict prison at Portland, and if it is valuable to a Judge's experience, then it is a qualification for office I venture humbly to present to Her Majesty's Government. I can, at all events, confirm the right hon. Gentleman in one thing, the great diminution in the number of prisoners in convict prisons. I was told that the inmates were less than they had ever been before, and the officials informed me that this was also the case in other similar establishments in the country. A good deal has been said in regard to the definition of offences, and the discretion of Judges. For my own part, I think the precise definition of offence is a great safety to prisoners, almost as great as the discretion allowed to Judges. But
  1042
  if we do not accept the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green, and have nothing else from the Front Bench, we shall have a state of things continuing by which Judges gain experience in the exercise of their discretion at the expense of prisoners. It was once said, "Wretches hang that jurymen may dine," so now Judges will send prisoners to Portland in order to learn when not to send them there. Surely my right hon. Friend did not mean that. If there is to be a review of sentences by the Home Office on a very much larger scale, we shall want several additional Home Secretaries. Unless we have something more clear and definite from the Front Bench in reference to the appointment of some Court to review sentences, in favour of which there seems to be a general opinion on both sides, I shall be compelled logically and inevitably to vote for the Resolution before us.
  MR. AMBROSEI do not agree with my hon. Friend that there is a general concensus of opinion on this question. I have listened attentively to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green, and he assumed rather than proved the inequality and irregularity of sentences pronounced in our Criminal Courts. What were the bases of the statement he made? He did not tell us, in one single instance, from what source he obtained his information; but we know that it could not have been from any other source than the newspapers. Well, we all know what newspaper reports are of cases that are tried before Judges. Speaking for myself, I may say that I have read reports of cases in which I have been engaged the previous day, and, but for the names, in many instances I should not have recognized them. Yet from newspaper reports—necessarily condensed and frequently incorrect—we are called upon to condemn Her Majesty's Judges or Chairmen of Quarter Sessions in regard to sentences passed from time to time. The ob-

  1043
  jection applies equally to this Motion for a Royal Commission. It would be, in some sense, a reflection on the administration of our Criminal Law; and it is one of the last things the House ought to do to cast doubt on the fairness and propriety with which the Criminal Law is carried out. If you have a Royal Commission, is it to investigate sentences, and say whether there have been these irregularities and inequalities spoken of? How could a Commission do it, unless the Commission re-tried every case, and had every circumstance before it which was before the Judge when he arrived at his decision and passed his sentence? You could not, after lapse of time, have all the attendant circumstances forthcoming as they were originally presented to the Court. Sentences are necessarily unequal and irregular, because crimes are unequal and irregular. You do not have the same offence committed under the same circumstances, and the Legislature has, therefore, wisely invested Judges with a wide discretion. If you have a hard and fast line in reference to the punishment for particular offences, then you must compel Judges to inflict sentences from which they would shrink and which might be cruel in the extreme. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green gave an illustration which tells against the position he assumes—a case of housebreaking or burglary. He put a case of housebreaking under circumstances in which the highest penalty would not in the least degree be too severe, and then he put the case of a starving person, who, immediately after the technical hour, nine o'clock, lifts a window and steals a loaf, and he says this is equally burglary. This is exactly what legislation has provided for, and for which the Judge has discretionary power. If you establish a hard and fast line, and say that as soon as an offence answers to a description in the Penal Code, then a particular penalty shall attach, you
  1044
  will immediately have outcries from hon. Gentlemen opposite as to the hardships and inequalities of the law because a case comes under the definition of a heavy offence, though attendant circumstances demand a more lenient consideration. I have failed to discover in any of the speeches that have been delivered that there has been any abuse on the part of Judges of the discretion allowed them, though there may be this difference, that one Judge takes a more serious view of one particular offence than another; that is inevitable; but I fail to see that there is any real injustice. I admit it is important to have certainty of punishment, but still it must be determined by the Judge according to attendant circumstances. I have referred to the remedy by Royal Commission. I have said that it must cast a slur on the administration of justice and be ineffective for the purpose for which it is intended. As to the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal, I have no objection in the world to that, and should be prepared to support any measure for that purpose, but the House should remember that it will involve a very considerable cost because of the addition to the number of Judges. If the House is prepared to incur that cost, I should say that the same right of appeal should be given in criminal as in civil cases. But as soon as ever the Government shows a disposition to undertake a measure of this sort, we shall be involved in questions of economy. For these reasons I shall vote against the Amendment.
  MR. CONYBEAREPerhaps I may be permitted to take a little interest in this subject by reason of the fact that I am probably the only Member of the House at this moment who is able to speak as a convicted criminal. And I should like to say that I think it would be a very good thing if all hon. Members could speak with the experience of convicted criminals—as persons who have passed the mill—because I entertain a very strong opinion that if hon. Members, especially those who sit

  1045
  behind the Ministry and take an active part in the administration of rustic justice, had suffered the penalty they are constantly in the habit of inflicting, we should hear less than we do at present of "Justice's justice." I am not going to suggest that any sentences inflicted at Quarter Sessions, any more than those inflicted by the Judges of the land, must necessarily be harsh; but I am convinced that if Members who have to frame the law and to administer it when framed knew something by practical experience of the results of the penalties they inflict, they would be much more careful in their punishments than they are. The impression which has been conveyed to my mind by this debate is that while on the one side ample reason has been shown for a change in our present system, no cogent, convincing argument has been presented by a responsible Member of the Government against the proposed reform. The proposals are twofold. One is in the nature merely of a means to an end—namely, that a Royal Commission should issue for the purpose of investigating and taking evidence upon the whole subject. That proposal will certainly have my support unless some more expeditious method of dealing with the matter is proposed. The other proposal is that the Government in its responsible capacity should take the matter in hand with a view to the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal. The responsible Member of the Government in these affairs is the Home Secretary, but he meets us on both these points with a blank non possumus. He considers that a Royal Commission should not issue, because the facts are known and admitted, and, therefore, an inquiry would be useless. Nay, more than that, he says, or suggests, that a Royal Commission would diminish the responsibility of the present or any Government that might be called on to undertake a
  1046
  great reform which he seems to think would be desirable. With respect to the first argument, that the facts are known, the observations we have heard from the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Harrow Division (Mr. Ambrose) rather negative the assumption of the Home Secretary. The hon. Member, so far from regarding the facts as admitted, began by saying that there was no concensus of opinion in the House on the subject, and then went on to say that a Royal Commission, if issued, must review every sentence, and would have an endless and impossible task before it. Now, I am not of the same opinion as the hon. Member for the Harrow Division. It seems to me that it is clear that the Royal Commission would in no sense have to review sentences passed in individual cases, but, taking the particular proposition that the sentences imposed are irregular and uncertain and that too great a discretion is allowed to the Judges for the liberties and lives of our fellow citizens to be safe, it would be perfectly possible by an examination of records and criminal statistics to prove that some remedy is necessary. It is said that it is not necessary to have a Royal Commission to consider the irregularity and uncertainty of sentences, because crimes themselves are irregular and uncertain. But one case presented, I think, by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton completely disposed of that argument, because it was proved that you had one Judge in one district punishing a certain crime with two years' imprisonment and another Judge in another district punishing the same crime with twenty years' imprisonment. It seems to me that that entirely disposed of the somewhat airy arguments advanced in opposition to the view that sentences are irregular and uncertain. Then we are asked to believe that a Royal Commission would cast a slur upon the adminis-

  1047
  tration of justice. I cannot conceive a more idle argument than that you are to refrain from investigating the question of the mal-administration of that part of the law upon which, more than upon any other, the happiness of the people depends, simply through fear of the susceptibilities of the Judges. If this argument is to be weight, it seems to me that we might as well at once shut our eyes and ears to all claims for the redress of grievances in this country. We are not complaining that the Judges of the country do their duty badly. I believe we may say that our Judges in this country are, as a rule, the highest class of officials in such a capacity that the civilized world can show. At any rate, I sincerely entertain that views The Judges themselves would, I am sure, welcome such an inquiry as is asked by the Motion, and would rejoice at the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal. The hon. Member who uses the argument that such a Court would be costly, mistakes the temper of Englishmen, if he thinks that a niggardly consideration of that sort would prevent them from taking steps to prevent injustice and judicial murders. The argument for such a Court is analogous to that so often urged for the existence of a Second Chamber. Judges, like others, are subject to panics, under the influence of which they give hasty decisions, and are tempted to impose unduly heavy sentences. By the time an appeal could be heard, in most cases, the panic would have subsided. The Trafalgar Square riot, on what is now known as Bloody Sunday, November 13, 1887, affords a good illustration of this. George Harrison was convicted of stabbing a policeman with an oyster knife on purely circumstantial evidence, and sentenced to five years' penal servitude, whilst the hon. Member for Lanarkshire (Mr. Cuninghame Graham) and his sturdy supporter, John Burns, only got six weeks' imprisonment, although, save for the oyster knife incident—which was supported by evidence on which one would not have hung a dog—theirs was
  1048
  precisely the same offence as Harrison's. The severity of the sentence on this man made so remarkable an impression on the working men of the Metropolis that they are supporting the unhappy man's wife and children by small subscriptions of a penny, sixpence, and so on. This case may be classed with those already quoted to the House, and will also serve to show the necessity for some system of reviewing the sentences passed by Judges in times of panic. You are not, I think, likely to further the ends of justice by allowing the public mind to become impressed with the belief that the sentences passed by Judges are unduly harsh and severe. In olden times juries have been known to forswear themselves rather than, for petty offences, condemn their fellow citizens to the gallows. I maintain, moreover, that irregularity and uncertainty in the matter of sentences produces contempt of the law on the part of the criminal classes. We have recently seen the spectacle of a number of noble Lords and others being arrested for gambling in gambling clubs. What has been the result of the prosecutions? Why, owing to an extraordinary condition of law, not one of the gentlemen found gambling has been punished—at any rate, to any appreciable degree—whereas the keepers of the clubs and the menials found in them have been subjected to heavy punishments. There is a decided irregularity observable in these cases. The gentlemen who were found gambling had broken the law—and broken it in what most people regard as a disgraceful manner. I suppose most honest people not afflicted with a passion for visiting Monte Carlo during the Christmas holidays, will recognize gambling as not only an offence technically against the law, but as carrying with it a moral stigma, otherwise I do not understand the rationale of a law which interferes with the pleasures of a noble Lord or anyone else. But we find that under British Law the offence of gambling is not punished in the case of those who ought to be held primarily responsible — namely, those who have committed the offence, but that secretaries, croupiers, and so on have inflicted upon them the same penalty which some of us on this side of the House have endured from calling

  1049
  "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign." I want hon. Gentlemen to understand what this means. If it does not display uncertainty and irregularity in the law, and if it is not calculated to produce contempt for the law, it passes my comprehension to know what is uncertainty and what is likely to produce contempt. Under the Coercion Act in Ireland there have been 23 convictions against hon. Members of this House, in consequence of which these Members have been subjected not only to the harsh discipline of the plank bed and the other indignities that common criminals have to endure, but to brutalities which are a disgrace to the country. Members have been tortured—as in the case of Mr. Carew, whose health has been nearly ruined—for technical crime, which no one outside the Tory Party looks upon as other than an honour and a glory to commit. These sentences are being inflicted not merely upon Leaders of the Irish Party, but since my own conviction there has been one miserable peasant sentenced to six months' imprisonment for the same offence—that of saying "Three cheers for the Plan of Campaign. Now I ask, where is the principle in a system of law which allows people to be sent to prison for six months for a technical offence of this kind, and yet allows a Magistrate to punish a man in England or Scotland with a month's imprisonment, or a paltry fine, for kicking his wife to death? You must strike at the root of this enormity. It is said. "You cannot have a Court of Criminal Appeal." But there is a Court of Criminal Appeal in Ireland—a miserable one, certainly, especially when you consider that it sometimes increases sentences instead of reducing them. The Postmaster General told us that the Home Secretary is the very best Court of Appeal we could have, as he is not subject to outside pressure; but every one knows that whenever there is a conviction, as to the justice of which there is the least doubt, especially where the prisoner has been sentenced to death on circumstantial evidence, the greatest pressure is brought to beer on the Home Secretary to induce him to let the man off. I may quote one case which I think reflects credit on the action of right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary.
  1050
  I allude to the case of the Jew, Lipski. There were many of us who thought he was innocent, and we used all the influence we could to induce the right hon. Gentleman to grant him a reprieve. So anxious was the right hon. Gentleman that there should be no mistake or miscarriage of justice that a reprieve was granted; although I am bound to add that we were at fault, and that the right hon. Gentleman was right in the conclusion he had at first come to, because Lipski, before he went to the scaffold, admitted that he was guilty. That is not the strongest case we can take, but it shows that the right hon. Gentleman in his official capacity, as a Court of Appeal in himself—if I may use such a phrase—is open to outside pressure, a fact which entirely destroys the argument of the Postmaster General as to not having a Court of Appeal. There are numerous cases in which strong proof has been forthcoming that innocent men have been kept in penal servitude for years—in one instance, the innocent person was thus detained for ten long years—and surely, if hon. Gentlemen could realize what it is to serve such a slavery as that of ten years' penal servitude, they and every other thinking man would unite in urging the necessity of establishing a Court of Appeal. I am sorry to say that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary used one argument that was hardly worthy of him. He spoke of the dramatic effect produced by the Judge in his red robes as a sufficient reason for not disturbing his decision by the action of a Court of Review, or Appeal. But here, again, the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is himself a Court of Appeal cuts the ground from under him, because it is well known that cases of murder are liable to be brought up for revision by the Home Secretary. Are we, then, as a sensible body of men, forming part of the Legislature of the country, prepared to admit that there is any force in the argument that a red-robed Judge constitutes a spectacle producing such an effect as is likely to deter persons from committing future offences, and that if he is conscious that his decision may be reversed by a Court of Appeal, he will, therefore, be invested with less dignity? No one can go to an Assize town and

  1051
  see all the ridiculous flummery attendant on the passing of the Judges from their Chambers to the Assize Courts, accompanied by their javelin-men, and heralded by trumpeters making the most hideous and discordant noises, without becoming aware of the farce to which the whole system would be reduced if it is only looked at from the dramatic effect point of view. For Heaven's sake let us get rid of these absurdities before we talk of insisting of maintaining the dignity of our Criminal Law system! The arguments we have heard from the other side of the House, so far as they have been directed against the Resolution of my hon. and learned Friend, are, in reality, not worthy of serious attention on the part of this House. Therefore, without going into them, I will only say in conclusion, that I thank the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary for what he said when he spoke in sympathetic tones of the poor wretches who spend their lives in penal servitude as an expiation for petty crime. It is well known that there are many so-called criminals who, merely by the state of hopeless misery in which they are plunged, commit the crimes for which they are sentenced in order to obtain the shelter, clothing, food, and warmth which are obtainable in our gaols. It must, indeed, be recognized that in this country poverty is a crime—although, perhaps, the same thing may be said of too many other places—but, whatever you may do in the way of establishing a Court of Appeal, or otherwise altering the English system of criminal jurisprudence, you will never truly solve this great and important question until you take that much wider subject—the condition of the people—into due consideration, with the view of seeing how far you can get rid of the terrible misery which, here and elsewhere, is the most prolific parent of crime.
  MR. MILVAINWith regard to the Resolution of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite, I believe it would be absolutely impossible to draw up a Code that would make sentences equally applicable to all classes of criminals, no matter what the offences may be. This is a matter which must
  1052
  very largely be left to the experience and discretion of the Judge who tries the case, and that may be the reason why, he has a discretion varying in misdemeanour and a great number of felonies, between short terms of imprisonment or mere sureties of peace, to penal servitude of greater or less duration. A Judge—with the critical eye and experience belonging to every Judge on the English Bench—ought to be able to take in at a glance, independently of all the circumstances, what is the physique of the prisoner, so that he may properly adjust the amount of punishment to be endured. The Judge ought also to be able to make this general distinction in the sentences he passes—that each sentence shall be such as to induce sympathy with the law, instead of sympathy with the prisoner. For my part, speaking of the administration of justice in this country, I am prepared to maintain that public sympathy is almost invariably with the law, and very seldom, if ever, with the criminal. The fact impresses upon me the conviction that the public have full confidence in the administration of justice. I now turn to the question, What course would be taken if a Royal Commission were appointed? Would you have the Judges brought before the Commission to answer questions as to the reasons which influenced their minds when they passed this or that sentence in this or that particular case? Or would you have all the witnesses whose evidence had been given at the trial of certain cases called before the Commissioners so that the latter might determine as to the circumstances under what particular punishments were inflicted? Or would you go to the extent of calling the criminals themselves, so that the Commissioners might judge of their physique and nervous temperament? To my mind it would be absolutely ridiculous and absurd to expect a definite

  1053
  conclusion as to anything like equality in the sentences passed on prisoners. Of course, there have been cases—and I am glad there are so few—in which there has been miscarriage of justice, and it has been suggested that the establishment of a Court of Criminal Appeal would be the proper mode of meeting such cases. The Edlingham burglary case has been quoted as an instance and used as an argument in favour of such a Court of Criminal Appeal. But what would have happened if that case had been heard in such a Court? The criminals would be arraigned before the Court, and their own testimony would not be admissible. The same witnesses would be examined against them, their conviction would have been affirmed, and they would still have been suffering the punishment to which, if they had been guilty, they were very properly sentenced. In my opinion, the Home Secretary is a more satisfactory tribunal of inquiry. He is not bound by the technicalities of the laws of evidence, but inquires into all the circumstances, and upon them determines whether the conviction or sentence is satisfactory. If the Edlingham, burglary case is quoted as a reason why a Court of Appeal should be created, I would quote it as a reason why it should not be created. In looking for a remedy for cases of this nature, I cannot but think that the Home Secretary is the best tribunal; and I would suggest that his jurisdiction might be enlarged and strengthened to this extent: that where any case arose in which grave doubts were entertained as to the propriety of the conviction and the consequent sentence, the Home Secretary, upon good cause being shown that there ought to be further inquiry, might be empowered to grant such an inquiry, the Commissioner whom he might appoint to conduct it being authorized to administer the oath and take such evidence as might be forthcoming. I cannot but think that if the present discretionary power of the Home Secretary were so strengthened you would be enabled, in this way, to meet all the evils and get rid of all the difficulties which have been brought before the House, on the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Bethnal Green.
  MR. CUNINGHAME GRAHAMI had not intended to have spoken in this debate, and I am fully aware of the difficulty in which any Member is placed who offers to stand between the House of Commons and a Division at a quarter to one o'clock. I have, however, been prompted to rise by a sense of duty, and I only intervene in consequence of some remarks that have fallen from the hon. Member for Camborne (Mr. Conybeare.) In supporting the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Bethnal Green the hon. Gentleman brought before the House the case of George Harrison, who was sentenced to five years' penal servitude for an occurrence a year and a half ago. I am not now going to rake up the old story. I hope that the feeling which existed in this House at that time has subsided, and' that the House is now content to let bygones be bygones and to argue the question on its merits. That case, in my opinion, presents the most cogent and forcible argument in favour of the creation of a Court of Criminal Appeal, this man, George Harrison, having been sentenced on such evidence as you have heard from the hon. Member for Camborne, during a period of great public excitement. I think that every Member of every section on both sides of this House will agree with me when I say that had the case of that man, based on the evidence which was then brought forward, been presented before a Judge of this country at the present moment the result would have been a very different one. I want to ask every Member of this House to try and realize what a sentence of five years' penal servitude is to a working man in receipt of 18s. or 19s. a week. I want to try and emphasize the state of things that must happen when such a man, who at least is the bread-winner for his wife and family, is in prison. I do think that it is not a matter for congratu-

  1055
  lation that the responsibility of such a sentence should rest finally, as it must rest in the present state of the law, upon the head of the Home Secretary. I know that most probably the Home Secretary would, if it were possible to do so, mitigate the sentences of these men. But it is impossible for him, holding the position that he does hold, to express an opinion against the opinions expressed by the Judges of the land. I do think that if the. hon. Member for Bethnal Green had searched the criminal jurisprudence of this country from one end to the other, he could not have found one argument of greater force than this case of George Harrison, whose sentence was inflicted with circumstances in view that were in no wise brought about by himself, and whose sentence should speedily be reversed.
  MR. STUART WORTLEYI cannot allow the debate to conclude without entering my protest against the description which has been given of the evidence against Harrison.
  MR. CUNINGHAME GRAHAMI think the right hon. Gentleman will allow that the policeman for whom this man was sentenced was not off duty more than three or four days. Therefore he could not have received any serious personal injury.
  MR. WORTLEYThe question is, whether the description given of the evidence by the hon. Member for Camborne was a correct description. He said that no witness saw the blow inflicted for which Harrison was convicted. That is not the case. He was seen to go through the motion of stabbing and to throw away a weapon; and the weapon was immediately afterwards found close at hand.
  MR. CONYBEAREWith reference to that point—
  MR. SPEAKEROrder, order!
  MR. WORTLEYWe cannot re-try the case. I merely wish to enter my word of protest against the exceedingly inaccurate description of the case.
  MR. CONYBEAREI deny it.
  MR. WORTLEYIn view of the most minute and laborious examination of the circumstances of the case which was made by the Home Secretary, I believe a sound conclusion was arrived at. On the general question, I would ask the House to remember that in the few recent instances in which the House has been asked to limit the discretion of the Judges, it has steadily refused to do so Only the other day it extended the discretion of the Judges by accepting the Second Reading of the Bill with regard to corporal punishment, and two years ago it refused to adopt a minimum for sentences in case of armed burglary. I submit that recent instances show that the general tendency of modern feeling is to preserve the system which prevails of giving the widest possible discretion to the judiciary by imposing the maximum limits of punishment and not attempting to draw anything like a minimum line.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 122 Noes, 53.—(Div. List, No. 126.)
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question proposed, That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  SUPPLY—Committee upon Monday next.
  It being One of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put.
  House Adjourned at One o'clock till Monday next.

BRIBERY (PUBLIC BODIES) PREVENTION BILL. (NG. 90.) FRIENDLY SOCIETIES ACT (1888) AMENDMENT BILL. (No. 91.)
Brought from the Commons, read 1a, and to be printed.
COMMITTEE OF SELECTION FOR STANDING COMMITTEES.
Report from, That the Committee have added the Lord Stanley of Alderley to the Standing Committee for General Bills for the consideration of the Hares Preservation Bill [H.L.]. Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
ARCHDEACONRY OF CORNWALL BILL. (No. 12.)
House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without Amendment; and to be read 3a on Monday next.
CUSTOMS AND INLAND REVENUE BILL. (No. 78.) NATIONAL DEBT BILL. (No.79.)
Read 2a (according to order), and committed to a Committee of the whole House on Monday next.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES ACT (1855) AMENDMENT BILL. (No. 50.)
Report from Standing Committee received (according to order): Moved that the Bill be not recommitted to a Committee of the whole House: On question, agreed to; Bill to be read 3a on Tuesday next.
THE STANDING COMMITTEES.

  QUESTION—OBSERVATIONS.
  THE EARL OF MINTOin rising to ask the Chairman of Committees if he will state to the House on what principles the new Standing Committees on Public Bills are constituted, especially as regards the admission and exclusion of Peers who are not of judicial or official or ex-official standing; also, whether as regards Scottish legislation these Committees are to remain constituted as at present; also, whether, in his opinion, the words of the Standing Order No. LIV. (to the effect that "at any Committee of our own" any Lord, though not of the Committee, is entitled to come in and to speak but not to vote) are applicable to the case of the new Standing Committees, said: I had some hesitation in putting on the Notice Paper the quèstions I am about to ask—as they may appear to be of a somewhat invidious character. But in what I propose to say, no susceptibilities shall be wounded. In fact, I take no exception to any of the names that appear on the list of Members either of the Committee of Selection or the Panel of Chairmen, or of the Standing Committees. On the contrary, the House has chosen a Committee of Selection, and has chosen well. The Committee of Selection in its turn has chosen a Panel of eight Chairmen, and has chosen well; no men of greater ability and better business habits could have been found. Again, the Committee of Selection have chosen 98 Peers to serve on the two Standing Committees, and on the whole has chosen well. I find no fault with the materials of the new organization. If it is, in some respects, defective, the faults are those not of commission but omission. Again, as regards the new system. I think it

  911
  probable that a well-chosen Committee, presided over by a good Chairman, may transact the business committed to them with great efficiency. But it must be remembered that the greater the efficiency, the greater the confidence felt in the proceedings of these Committees, the less will be the disposition to scrutinize Bills in Committee of the whole House, so that virtually the Committee of this whole House stage in the passage of Bills through Parliament will be largely superseded. Moreover, to consign Bills to a limited number of Peers is to derogate from the theoretical equality of the rights of all Peers in matters of legislation. The change in the House of Lords by the adoption of this new system is much more sweeping than what has been done in the Commons. In the Commons the only Bills that are referred to the Standing Committees are those connected with law and trade. In the Lords all public Bills are to be referred, or are capable of being referred, to the new Standing Committees. I have made an analysis of the composition of the Standing Committees as at present constituted, dividing them into three categories. The first category consists of all the Law Lords; the second, of all Peers who are now holding office or who have formerly held office. The list includes not only those who hold or have held high office, but those also who have held subordinate posts in the Administration. The nomination of Peers in these two classes is virtually of an ex officio character. The third class consists of the residue of the Peerage—men who have never been connected with office. There are now two Standing Committees—one for legal Bills, the Members being 40 in number; the other for General Bills, numbering 60—but as two Peers belong to both Committees, the actual number of Peers appointed to serve on them is 98, not 100. Here is the analysis—

  For Legal Bills.

  General Bills.

  Totals.

  1st. Law Lords

  10

  2

  12

  2nd. Official and Ex-official

  20

  38

  58

  30

  40

  70

  3rd. Unofficial

  10

  20

  30

  40

  60

  100

  (2 being counted twice.)

  912
  Thus, while the legal and official and ex-official elements (58 Peers in all) are a large majority of the whole, and are in fact of an ex officio character, only 30 Peers out of the whole body have been chosen who have been unconnected with office. Some of the omissions are particularly noteworthy. 1st. The whole Bench of Bishops; 2nd, the whole of the Representative Peers of Scotland, 16 in number, with the exception of one of the number who now holds office. Some 44 in all are omitted from the Committees. As regards Scottish legislation it is proposed in the House of Commons that there shall be a Grand Committee for Scottish legislation, consisting exclusively of Scottish Members. This I think objectionable. But in the case of these new Standing Orders in the Lords, the composition of the Committees is not what it ought to be. The Peers connected with Scotland on these Committees are as follows:—

  Legal Bills.

  General Bills.

  1st.One Law Lord

  1

  1

  2nd. Two Official and Ex-official

  2

  8

  One Unofficial

  1

  1

  4

  10

  Total 14; but one has been counted twice. Therefore, the actual number is 13.
  THE EARL OF MORLEYMy Lords, I scarcely understand why this question is addressed to me, because I am not ordinarily responsible for the composition of these Committees, except so far as I am ex officio Chairman of the Committee for selecting Peers to serve on the Standing Committees; but as the noble. Lord has referred to me, I will do my best to answer. It is difficult to lay down any distinct principle on which noble Lords are chosen for the Standing Committees. As your Lordships are aware, the new Standing Order provided that there might be four Committees, and that the aggregate number of Peers that might be appointed upon them was to be 150. Having that number in view, with only two Committees to be appointed, it seemed to the Committee of Selection that if they appointed 100. Peers and distributed them between the two Committees that would in spirit be consistent with the Standing Order, and would perhaps be a little more liberal than the House intended to be. I need

  913
  not say that by limiting the number of Peers on the Committees it is impossible to avoid the omissions to which the noble Earl referred. It is of the essence of a Standing Committee that it should not be a Committee of the whole House. As to the omission of right rev. Prelates, no doubt in certain classes of Bills their presence would be not only useful, but I may say almost indispensable. With the view of meeting a case of that kind, it was laid down by the Standing Orders that the Committee of Selection should have the power to add to a Standing Committee a certain number of Peers not exceeding ten for the consideration of certain Bills. This power has been exercised to a large extent with reference to the Bills already referred to the Standing Committees, and I am quite sure the Committee of Selection will only be too glad to exercise it to the fullest by adding to the Committees noble lords who are specially interested in any Bills. It appears to me that this is one way of meeting the question of omission raised by the noble Earl. It is hardly to be expected that the Members of the Episcopal Bench would have time or inclination to devote themselves to the details of many of the Bills sent to the Standing Committees. As to the omission of Scotch Representative Peers, I never myself, and I doubt very much whether any of my colleagues on the Committee of Selection had any particular regard to the fact whether the Peers selected were or were not Scotch Representative Peers. The principle, if I may call it a principle, which guided us was this. We went through, with the help of noble Lords of experience on both sides of the House, the list of Peers, and as far as we could, we appointed those Peers who generally attend to the business of the House, and who would, in our belief, desire to serve on the Committees. In doing so, I have not the slightest doubt that we have omitted some noble Lords who would be very useful, and I am sure that the Committee will only be too glad hereafter to remedy any mistakes they had been guilty of, and to add as far as they can to the appointments already made. What I said with regard in the omission of right reverend Prelates also seems to me to apply to Scotch Members. I understand the noble Lord to state that
  914
  there are 13 Scotch Peers on those Committees; and the addition of ten Scotch Peers, which would be made in the case of important Scotch Bills, would appear to give a fair and adequate representation of Scotland. This elasticity is specially provided in the Standing Orders, and with all submission it appears to me that that elasticity obviates the necessity for any special constitution of the Committees, for the discussion of Scotch or ecclesiastical or any other Bills. As regards the last point of the question of the noble Lord, I have no hesitation in saying that the Standing Order No. 54, under which any Lord, though not of a Committee, is entitled to attend and speak, but not to vote, does apply to Standing Committees. as it does to every other Committee; but I should doubt whether such a noble Lord, not of the Committee, would be entitled to move an Amendment, although he would have power to speak on any subject before the Committee, or on any Amendment moved by a Member of it. I think that as far as I can I have answered the question put to me by the noble Lord. I am sure that if there is any Bill in which he is especially interested which is referred to one of these Committees, the Members of that Committee would be glad to add his name to their list.
  THE EARL OF BELMOREI wish to put another question to the noble Lord opposite (the Earl of Morley) upon this subject of Standing Committees, and I may mention the reason that I address the question to him is because I have been. informed by a Member of Her Majesty's Government that he is the proper person to answer the question. I wish to know whether arrangements cannot be made to enter upon the Journals of the House the proceedings of the Standing Committees, and also the attendance of noble Lords on those Committees. When a Bill goes into Committee of the whole House, if anything of importance is done in Committee it is recorded in the journals, with of course, as the Committee sits in the same appartment as the House, the attendance of noble Lords. Now, we send many of our most important Bills to another room. It is arranged that both the Standing Committees shall sit concurrently with the House, and almost all noble Lords who pay constant attention to our business.

  915
  are engaged on either one or other of the Committees. Last Tuesday one Committee sat a little earlier than the House, and the other at, I believe, the same time, and on inquiry from a noble Lord, whose duties required him to be here, as to how many Members there were in the House, I was told that there were only about seven. As we cannot be in two places at once, and as it is obvious that the work of the Standing Committees is more important than the business which is put down in the House on the days when they are meeting, I think it is only reasonable that the names of those noble Lords who attend should be recorded. With regard to the recording of the proceedings of the Committee what I am suggesting would be no in novation at all, because as I have pointed out, proceedings in Committee of the whole House are already recorded, and I think is if of historical importance that what takes place in the Standing Committees should equally be recorded in a permanent form.
  THE EARL OF MORLEYI think the noble Lord has brought forward a subject which may be usefully discussed by your Lordships. I quite agree that there ought to be a record of the proceedings of the Standing Committees. The only doubt I have, after making inquiries, is exactly the form in which they should appear. The Journals only record proceedings of the whole House, and the Reports which are submitted to the House by the various Committees. If you introduce into the Journals the proceedings of the Standing Committees they can only form part of the Report of those Committees to the House. Now, it would obviously be inconvenient, and would make the Journals bulky and difficult to refer to, if they were burdened with matter foreign from the work of the House itself. What I venture to suggest is that the proceedings of the Committees should be reported and placed in an appendix at the end of Journal.
  THE EARL OF BELMOREBut in the book itself.
  THE EARL OF MORLEYYes, in an appendix to the journals, so that that portion may be bound separately if desired. There is good precedent for appendices. Up to the year 1850 the appendices to the journal formed a
  916
  considerable part of the whole volume, which was very much thicker then than it is now. If the House will agree to that, I would suggest that the proceedings of the Committee and the attendance of the Peers should be printed in an appendix at the end of the volume, including of course, any Amendments that are proposed to the various Bills.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYI venture to hope that the House will not make any change until it has had full experience of the working of these Committees. For the present, I think the more simple the record of the proceedings the better. As time goes on we shall find out whether it is desirable to have fuller records in the Journal, but let us be guided by experience, and not by mere theory, and let the arrangement go on to the end of the Session before making any further change.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONI do not know whether my noble Friend who has just spoken is aware that the House came to a Resolution on this subject some few days ago, and that, in fact, the proceedings of the Standing Committees are recorded and circulated with the daily Minutes of proceedings. That certainly applies to the Standing Committee over which I have the honour to preside to which are referred all general Bills. The question was raised in that Committee at one of our meetings whether it was not desirable, as the Committee was in effect substituted for Committee of the whole House, that some record of the proceedings should be taken, and in consequence a Resolution was moved in this House and was agreed to, that the proceedings of the Standing Committee should be printed and circulated with the Minutes. I wish further to point out that in doing this the House has followed the practice which has been adopted by the House of Commons. I doubt very much whether the attendance of Peers ought to be printed under any circumstances with the Minutes. It would be an innovation on the constant practice of the House, and I for one should be sorry to see it. At the same time your Lordships will remember that inasmuch as these Committees have taken the place practically and almost nominally of the Committee of the whole House, it does seem that it would be a misfortune not to have a record of

  917
  the attendance of Peers. I believe we are the only Assembly in the world of which it can be said that for centuries the attendance of each individual Peer has been almost without break or variation recorded in the Journals; and, as a matter of antiquarian and even historical interest it would be a great misfortune if there were now to be any break.
  EARL STANHOPEMy Lords, there is one very small point to which I would like to draw attention, and that is the very inadequate accommodation that there is provided for the meetings of these Committees. Some amount of inconvenience has already been felt, although all the noble Lords appointed on the Committees have not been in attendance. We shall presently have important measures sent to us from the House of Commons which will no doubt excite great interest, and the attendance at the Committees will be much larger. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that this question of accommodation should be dealt with. I am not certain that it would be altogether practicable, but it has occurred to me that provision might be made for these Committees in the new rooms at the side of the Central Hall.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYI quite agree with what has fallen from noble Lords as to the importance of some, record being preserved of the proceedings of the House of Commons, but I also agree with the noble Marquess that it is equally important that the proceedings should not be too formal. I think the short Minutes to which the noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon) has referred are quite sufficient. I cannot conceive it possible that the House, which has, be it remembered, to deal with Bills after they have left the Commons, should be left in ignorance of what has taken place, and the Divisions that have been had, and the Amendments that have been unsuccessfully proposed.
  VISCOUNT HARDINGEI wish to draw the attention of the House to another point in connection with these Standing Committees. It appears that the average attendance at the meetings is very small indeed. Without making any invidious criticism upon the constitution of the Committees, I must say that there are some Members who are by
  918
  no means regular in their attendance, Why they should have been put on I do not know; but, as some noble Lords feel agrieved at their not having been appointed to serve on these Standing Committees, I think greater caution might be exercised in selecting those Peers who are fit and proper and willing to serve.
  THE EARL OF MILLTOWNIt is quite true that the proceedings of the Standing Committee for General Bills do appear on the Minutes, but those of the Standing Committee for Bills relating to Law, &c., do not, and I think it is extremely unfortunate that they do not. My noble Friend (Lord Herschell) is to-night going to move the rejection of a Bill which has been before that Committee; many important divisions were taken, and it would be of the greatest advantage for your Lordships to see how those divisions went; but, unfortunately, there is no record of them whatever.
  LORD BRABOURNEI sincerely hope that the noble Lord at the head of the Government will reconsider his decision with regard to records of the proceedings of these Standing Committees. The present system is all very well for those Peers who serve on the Committee, but it is exceedingly hard that those who are not Members should have no opportunity of ascertaining what has been going on, especially having regard to the fact that the Bills when they leave the Committees, come up to the House for final adoption or rejection. With regard to what has occurred to-day, I cannot sit down without making one respectful remark to my noble Friend at the head of the Government. I think the objection I ventured to take to the appointment of these Standing Committees in the first instance is now becoming better understood by noble Lords who have reconsidered the subject. A great many Peers have begun to find that they are practically disfranchised, and have not the opportunities of discussing various measures that they had before the Committees were appointed. It is a very singular thing that we should have tried to find a remedy for our having nothing to do in following precisely that course which was adopted by the House of Commons for precisely the reverse complaint. We have surely

  919
  plenty of time to discuss all the measures that are brought before us. Indeed, about the only thing which can be said in favour of these Standing Committees is that they lead to a greater occupation of your Lordships time, because there is no doubt that in the case of all important Bills we shall in the House itself have to go all over the work that has been dealt with by the Committees. Meanwhile, the work is not always better done than would have been the case if it had been performed in the House itself. I may instance the proceedings in the General Committee upon the Smoke Bill (Metropolis) wherein, doubtless from the absence of special information upon the subject, I understand that a decision has been arrived at which will prevent any railway engine from approaching within several miles of the Metropolis. This work will have to be undone by the House if we are to preserve the inhabitants of the Metropolis from an inconvenience which would amount to a calamity. Of course, the House has decided to try the experiment of Standing Committees, and it should have a fair trial; but I do hope that the noble Marquess will give the matter his careful reconsideration, and that if he finds that we are practically re-discussing in the body of the House that which has previously occupied the attention of the Standing Committees, and if he finds, moreover, that there is, as I think there is, just cause of complaint by Peers who are deprived of opportunities of discussing Bills in which they are interested he will not scruple to abolish this new reform, which, although no doubt a measure of progress, does not appear to be one of progressive improvement.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYI have no doubt that if the predictions of the noble Lord are fulfilled, the House will not hesitate to alter the Standing Orders and abolish these Standing Committees. I rose, my Lords, simply to say that I have not objected to the circulation of Minutes such as those to which the noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon) alluded. What I referred to was the suggestion that the proceedings of the Committees should be entered in the Journal, which means a very large amount of formality and detail, the introduction of which I strongly deprecate.

LARCENY ACT, 1861, AMENDMENT (USE OF FIREARMS) BILL (No. 82.)

  THIRD READING
  THE EARL OF MILLTOWNIn asking your Lordships to give a Third Reading to this Bill. I shall not trouble your Lordships with any further observations upon its principle. We have already had two Second Reading debates on the measure. During both debates, almost everything that could be said for or against the Bill was put forward, and your Lordships, by overwhelming majorities, approved of the principle of the Bill. Under these circumstances I confess that the course which my noble and learned Friend opposite (Lord Herschell) proposes to take in moving the rejection of the Bill on the last stage, appears to me to be somewhat unusual. I desire to call attention to a Report on this subject which was issued in 1875. Lord Cross, when Home Secretary in that year, issued a circular to Her Majesty's Judges, to Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, Recorders of Boroughs having Quarter Sessions, Stipendiary Magistrates, the Magistrates of the Metropolitan Police Courts, and to Sheriffs and Sheriff Substitutes in Scotland, asking five questions with regard to the use of firearms. The fourth and fifth questions referred to the subject which was dealt with by the Bill now before their Lordships. The questions were: (4) Should flogging be authorized for other kinds of violence than those which came within the provisions of 26 and 27 Vict., c. 44, especially for assaults on women and children; and (5) has flogging been efficacious for putting down offences for which it was applied by 26 and 27 Vict., c. 44. Answers were obtained from all the Judges, and those who gave evidence that flogging was a sufficient deterrent were, the late Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Mr. Justice Blackburn, Mr. Justice Mellor, Mr. Justice Lush, Mr. Justice Quain (who said that flogging was the only punishment except death that was really deterrent), Mr. Justice Archibald, Mr. Justice Coleridge, and Mr. Justice Brett. Now, as my noble Friend the Master of the Rolls, has not proved himself to be an enthusiastic admirer of this Bill, I wish not in the least to overstate what he said in reply to these questions. I do not say that he advo

  921
  cated flogging, but he did say that it had proved an efficient deterrent. I will read his Lordship's own words. In reply to the fifth question, he said:—
  "According to my experience it has, as applied in these cases, certainly had a material deterrent influence."
  So that the noble and learned Lord was then, as I have no doubt he is now, of opinion that flogging had proved an efficacious deterrent, and that is all I claim for this Bill. Mr. Justice Grove was of the same opinion. I would like to quote the remarks of Mr. Justice Lush, who, as everybody knows, was a kindhearted and gentle-minded man. In reply to the fifth question he said—
  "I believe it has. When I first went to Manchester in the spring of 1866 there was a general feeling of alarm at the prevalence of what was called garrotting. It had increased notwithstanding that heavy sentences of penal servitude had been awarded in the previous Session. I had as many, I think, as 20 or 21 flogged. I went again in the summer of the same year and had to administer the same punishment to about half that number. I have been there five times since and have only had one such case, and that was three or four years ago. The same result has followed at Leeds and Chester, and the crime has all but disappeared. From what I have seen and heard from prisoners, some of whom have implored me to give them any term of penal servitude rather than the cat, and from what I have been told by governors of gaols, I have no doubt that flogging is more dreaded than any amount of imprisonment or penal servitude; and that the suppression of garrotting is attributable solely to the infliction of this kind of punishment."
  After this expression of opinion, what weight can we attach to the exception which was taken to the noble Marquess's assertion that the punishment of flogging had "acted like a charm" in suppressing garrotting? So much for the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of Queen's Bench which existed in those days. Then came the Barons of the Exchequer. They were unanimous. Chief Baron Kelly said that flogging had "utterly put an end to garotting." Mr. Baron Bramwell was of opinion also that it was "a thoroughly efficacious deterrent." Mr. Baron Piggott agreed. Mr. Baron Pollock made a remarkable statement, which I would like to read to your Lordships. He said:—
  "I think flogging should be authorized in all cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.… I do not think it would be desirable to authorize flogging for indecent assaults."
  Then comes a remark which is more to
  922
  the purpose. In reply to Question 5 he says:—
  "Flogging has, in my judgment, been efficacious in putting down these offences. Before I had experience as a Judge I was not in favour of flogging, nor did I believe in its efficacy. I have now been five Circuits in the Northern and Midland counties, and from what I have seen and heard in court, from what I have gathered from conversations with Magistrates, governors of prisons, and others, I am thoroughly satisfied that the practice of flogging has worked well, and gone far to put an end to systematic robberies with violence."
  I think, my Lords, that that is extremely important testimony, coming as it does from a learned Judge of vast experience, who was at first predisposed against this form of punishment. Then Baron Cleasby was also in favour of it, and so was Mr. Baron Amphlett. Of all the Judges whose opinions were asked upon this question, two only expressed an opinion adverse to flogging as a deterrent punishment. Those were the late Mr. Justice Keating and Mr. Justice Denman. Then, going on with this Report, the Chairmen of Quarter Sessions were unanimous in favour of flogging; so were all the Recorders of Boroughs having Quarter Sessions, all the Stipendiary Magistrates, and the Magistrates of the Metropolitan Police Courts—in fact, all persons who had had the best of opportunities for forming an accurate opinion, and who had had most experience in the administration of the law, bore testimony to the efficacy of this punishment, and the wonderful effect it produced on criminals insensible to other kinds of punishment. I think that that testimony is of far more value than the theories of noble Lords opposite who, however trustworthy may be their opinions on other matters, have not had anything like the means of forming a correct judgment on this question that were possessed by these witnesses I have called in support of the Bill. My Lords, it is said that the policy of this Bill is one of lex talionis. It is nothing of the kind. That is not my object in bringing forward the measure. I want to put a stop to this new practice of the criminal classes of going about armed, prepared to carry out their criminal intentions per fas aut nefas, heedless whether they murder or maim those who oppose them. I believe that the result of the passing of this Bill will be that that practice will be dis

  923
  continued. These individuals will not face the possibility and probability and peril of a punishment such as flogging. Utterly callous in regard to the pain they inflict upon others, they are altogether sensitive about the penalties that may be inflicted upon their own persons. I am bound to admit—and I will make the noble Lord opposite a present of the admission—that if in the repression of this crime by this means, some of these miscreants should suffer in their own persons, I should read the record of that suffering with a considerable amount of equanimity. That is not the object of the Bill, but I should think that if, after this Bill has become law, a man goes about armed to commit his depredations, he will have himself to blame if in consequence of doing so he receives a sound flogging.
  Moved "That the Bill be now read."—(Earl of Milltown.)
  LORD HERSCHELLI regret that my noble Friend opposite should have thought it right to express disapproval of my objecting to this Bill upon the Third Reading. My noble Friend may be consoled, I think, by the fact that he knows beforehand that he will defeat me by an overwhelming majority, and that all I shall have will be the satisfaction of my protest. Therefore, I do not think he need feel aggrieved by the course which I feel it my duty to take. My Lords, I am quite prepared for being set down as a sentimentalist, and a humanitarian, because I object to the measure which is now before your Lordships. I do not myself believe that I can lay any special claim to being a humanitarian. I am disposed generally to look at matters from a practical point of view, and my objections—be they right or wrong—to this measure are practical. I do not think anybody can dispute that there are practical objections to a measure which inflicts the punishment imposed in certain cases by this Bill. Some of them have been quite frankly admitted by those who are in favour of the Bill passing into law. My noble and learned Friend Lord Bramwell admitted that one evil connected with the infliction of punishment of this description was that it was apt to have a brutalizing and injurious effect on those who had to be the instruments of inflicting that punish
  924
  ment. I do not suppose that anybody will dispute that that is a real and substantial objection to it. And, my Lords, though I do not propose to dwell upon the effect that it may have upon those who suffer under it for the offences that they have committed—because I am quite aware that the argument is that it is intended only to be inflicted upon those who are already such brutes that they cannot be further brutalized—yet I would remind the House that human tribunals are not infallible, and that men are convicted of the offences to which this Bill has reference who are innocent of the crimes with which they are charged. ("Oh!") I have in my mind at this moment cases within my own experience where men have been so convicted, and who would in all human probability have received a severe flogging if this Bill had been law when they were so convicted. Now, I quite admit that you cannot undo any punishment that you inflict; at any rate, I agree with that to some extent, although it is not a very conclusive argument. It is perfectly true that you cannot undo the imprisonment which you have inflicted on a man who turns out to have been innocent of the offence of which he has been wrongfully convicted; but your reason for inflicting this punishment is that you intend it to be inflicted on brutes, and that it is a punishment of a specially degrading character. ["No, no."] I certainly have heard that argument used by some who have advocated this punishment. If it is not to be regarded as of a degrading character, certainly we differ very much in our estimate of what its real character is. It may be quite proper to inflict it, that is another question; but I say that for a man to be stripped bare before his fellow men, and flogged with a cat-o'-nine tails by a prison warder, is a punishment which an innocent man would feel beyond almost any other punishment.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYI think the noble and learned Lord has misunderstood what has been advanced in support of the Bill. I am not aware that any of its advocates have said that this punishment is intended to be brutalizing.
  LORD HERSCHELLI certainly understood that it had been advanced as a special merit of this punishment,

  925
  when applied to those for whom it was intended, that it was of a degrading character. But I put that aside. If it be true that this is a punishment which above all other things a man would dread to have inflicted, then obviously you are going to add to the risks which any innocent man wrongfully convicted will suffer the infliction of a punishment which on your hypothesis, is one which any man would care for more than penal servitude. I cannot conceive anything which would be more likely to be a sting in a man's mind for the rest of his life than that he should have been convicted of an offence of this description when innocent, and flogged with the cat-o'-nine-tails in the prison yard. I will venture to say that an innocent man suffering in this manner would be likely to feel that more, and think of it more, than the mere imprisonment, the mere deprivation of his liberty. That is one of the objections that I feel to this measure. And, my Lords, it is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that if this principle be a right one, there are many who desire its application (and, in my opinion, it ought to be applied) to many cases that are outside this Bill. We cannot forget what has passed in another place. I observe that one Member of the other House voted for a measure similar to this on the ground that he hoped to have the punishment applied to persons convicted of indecent assaults; and, although there is no class of crime which excites greater abhorrence, it is impossible to doubt that there are few offences of which an innocent man is more likely to be found guilty. I think it is a perilous course to adopt a principle of punishment the essence of which is the mere infliction of pain. No one has less sympathy with or is less likely to stand friend to Bill Sykes than I, but when we adopt a principle of this sort I think we run considerable danger. If, in spite of the passing of this Bill, burglars still carry firearms, it will then be said that we must carry the principle further and inflict some punishment of a still more severe character. I altogether doubt the wisdom in the present day of resorting to or increasing the infliction of punishments the mere principle of which is to give physical pain.
  926
  These, my Lords, are objections to the general character of the measure. I now come to deal with the Bill itself. If it had dealt with the use of firearms or murderous weapons in connection with burglary, I could have understood that it was founded on some principle; but the Bill applies to the case of a man with an unloaded pistol, and that whether he has or has not the means of loading it in his possession. I confess that is an anomaly which I do not like, and I endeavoured in Committee to instil some principle into the Bill, but without success. I sought to limit it to cases of loaded firearms, or cases where the man had ammunition and also an unloaded firearm in his possession, or cases in which the unloaded firearm had been used for purposes of intimidation. I also endeavoured to apply the Bill to the possession of deadly weapons other than firearms, but the Committee rejected those proposals. A man, therefore, who has an unloaded pistol in his possession may be flogged, while one who has a dagger and actually uses it will be considered less criminal and incapable of being flogged under the Bill. But, more than that. One knows [hat burglars use other implements o sides guns and pistols. I dare say some of your Lordships have seen—I have more than once—what are called knuckledusters, which will destroy a man's appearance so that he may be disfigured for the rest of his life. A man may use weapons of that kind and yet not be punished under this Bill in the same way as a man who carries an unloaded pistol. For my part, I protest against legislation of that sort. I object to it altogether. If this is a right principle it seems to me that it ought to be applied in some cases in which it is not made applicable, and not applied in others in which it is. Besides, there are offences included in the Bill which are comparatively speaking trivial. For instance, a man breaking out of a church if in possession of an unloaded pistol might be flogged. If t could be conclusively proved that, in spite of those objections, more good would be done by the Bill than harm, one might accept it notwithstanding those objections; but I believe that the imagination of the noble Earl that when he Bill has passed burglars will cease to go about with firearms is not well,

  927
  grounded. No doubt if the man committing the specified offence were certain that punishment would follow, that punishment would act as a deterrent whether it were flogging or mere penal servitude. But if a man is willing to risk the chances of penal servitude for life, the question is whether the mere addition of the chance of flogging will alter his view of the risks. And, my Lords, there is one danger (not, it seems to me, imaginary) which may result from this measure. Suppose you are right in saying that flogging is the punishment dreaded above all others by burglars, is there not a danger that the fear of it will induce burglars to use their firearms to effect escape, where, under other circumstances, they would not have used them? They will not receive any more severe punishment for using firearms than for merely carrying them. Now, with regard to the evidence of the effect of this punishment in the past, I should like to say a word or two. I know that many Judges think the punishment efficacious, and I know that some most eminent Judges have always been opposed to it, and some who I am quite sure could not be charged with sentimental reasoning. But the efficacy of punishments must be to a certain extent a matter of opinion. The noble Earl has quoted the opinion of a learned Judge who says that he went to Manchester, and that he inflicted flogging in a certain number of cases, and that the crimes ceased. [The Earl of MILLTOWN: Chester, and Liverpool, as well as Manchester.] Well, I have the records of the number of convictions and the number of sentences of flogging at Liverpool and Manchester. At Manchester (which was the town to which the noble Lord referred), I find that at the Summer Assizes of 1884, there were ten cases of garrotting, and two were flogged; at the Winter Assizes there were six cases, and none were flogged; at the Winter Assizes of 1885 there were 19 cases, and none were flogged; at the Spring Assizes of 1886, there were 13 cases, and 12 were flogged—the last is, I think, the occasion to which the noble Lord specially referred. At the Summer Assizes of the same year there were 13 cases, and six were flogged; at the Winter Assizes the same year, there were 15 cases. The truth is, it is a very difficult thing for
  928
  any individual Judge to follow the results of the particular punishments which he inflicts, and determine what has caused a diminution of crime. I am satisfied that the infliction of long terms of penal servitude by my noble and learned Friend, Lord Bramwell, was that which really put a stop to garrotting. I do not deny that flogging may have terror for the criminal classes, but the real question is, will the addition of that punishment to penal servitude make the difference between committing the offence and not? My Lords, I have stated my objections to this Bill, and it seems to me that the problematical good to be obtained by passing it does not really outweigh the evils which everybody must admit, though opinions may differ as to their importance, to be real ones, which must result from this change in the law. I therefore beg to move that the Bill be read this day four months.
  Amendment moved, to leave out "now" and add at the end of the Motion "this day four months."—(The Lord Herschell.)
  LORD NORTONThe noble Lord's argument, based on the possibility that a man might be wrongly convicted, would apply to all kinds of punishment, solely excepting fines, but especially to capital punishment. The test of proper efficacy of punishment lies in its preventing the repetition of a crime; and to prevent repetition the punishment must meet the motives of the offender. Therefore, refined punishments must always fail to affect the motives of men so brutal as to be capable of the most atrocious crimes. If mere physical pain is the only punishment which will effectually operate in certain cases, the fact that it is mere physical pain is not enough to justify its disuse. There are some loathsome diseases for which there are none but loathsome remedies; but no one on that account would suggest that the sufferer should neglect the only road to health. Corporal punishment as administered in the old days in the Army and Navy was undoubtedly brutalizing. Then as many as 300 or 400 lashes might be given; but under the present Bill 25 lashes is the maximum number that could be inflicted. Moreover, the infliction of the punishment would always be within.

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  the discretion of the Judge, and no doubt a distinction would be made between burglars having loaded or unloaded pistols. Again, it is no argument against dealing with the use of firearms by burglars to urge that the use of several other kinds of destructive weapons is not dealt with in the Bill. As to certainty in the meaning of punishment flogging is superior to any other kind of punishment, and particularly to penal servitude, which is about the most uncertain of all punishments. A man who is sentenced to a term of penal servitude never really knows to what he is sentenced, the sentence never being fully carried out. It is said that the punishment of flogging is unequal because its severity depends on a man's constitution. But every kind of punishment is unequal in the sense that it must vary with the constitution or the circumstances of the man who bears it. I do not, however, know that there can be such an inequality in the infliction of 25 lashes that we should be so particular as to the exact amount of pain suitable for a man who has not hesitated to break into a house with the intention, if the householder resist the taking of his property, to blow his brains out. I ask the noble and learned Lord to consider whether he ought not to rest satisfied with what he has effected in the Standing Committee. He has so far emasculated the Bill as that if a burglar is not actually charged in the indictment with carrying firearms, although it may come out distinctly in evidence at the trial that firearms were in his possession at the time, he cannot be flogged. The Bill is thus altered so as to make it necessary that every burglar should be charged in the indictment with carrying firearms that, if it come out in evidence, he might be liable to flogging.
  LORD HERSCHELLI beg my noble Friend's pardon. That was not my Amendment. No doubt I approved of it, but I did not propose it.
  LORD NORTONAt any rate, the Amendment was very much supported by the noble and learned Lord. For myself I hope that your Lordships will regard this as the true test of punishment—namely, whether it meets the motives of the criminals who are to be prevented repeating their crimes; and applying that test in this case, I do not think the Bill is at all open to the
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  objections taken to it by the noble and I learned Lord.
  LORD ESHERMy Lords, I intend to vote with the noble and learned Lord opposite for the rejection of the Bill, and I do so on the ground that I think it is a cruelly unjust Bill, and that it contains within itself powers which are even contrary to natural justice. I also shall vote against the Bill because those who were in the majority in the Committee refused every Amendment which, in my opinion, would have made the Bill decent and just. It is said that flogging would be more efficacious than a sentence of penal servitude without it. That may be so; but, as to that argument, if, besides giving the Judge power to flog the prisoner, power were also given to cut off one of his ears, no doubt that would be still more efficacious. How a burglar with an unloaded pistol and with no ammunition for loading it could blow out a man's brains, as the noble Lord who has just spoken has so often seemed to fear, I cannot understand. I shall adopt all the reasons of the noble and learned Lord opposite for voting against the Bill except one, and that is his argument as to the danger that innocent persons might be flogged. In all my experience at the Bar and as a Judge I have never known an innocent man to be convicted. I have known persons to be convicted and their sentences to be afterwards altered, not because it was proved that they were innocent, but because the matter was brought into sufficient doubt; and I have often advised that the punishment should be remitted on that ground, but I have never once been able to satisfy myself that a man who had been convicted was really innocent. However, all the other reasons advanced by the noble and learned Lord I adopt. I say it is unjust to subject a man to the same punishment whether he intended to use those weapons or whether he did not. But there is another matter in the Bill to which I would refer, and which as it stands proposes, I think, a monstrous injustice, and that is Clause 2. It relates to the case of two burglars going out together, only one of whom has a pistol in his possession. It may be proved to the satisfaction of the Judge and the jury that the other man did not know that his companion had a pistol, that he did not suppose that he had one, that he had even asked and made in

  931
  quiries to ascertain whether he had one, and had been assured that he had not, and really believed that he had not. The man with the pistols escapes; the other is caught and convicted of the burglary. As the Bill stands that man, who had taken every means to convince himself, and who believed that his companion had not a pistol, can be flogged; the other escapes free. Now, I tried to get an Amendment to that clause, for the purpose of obviating that which I call a wicked injustice, and it was refused. I know it is said, "Oh, but the Judge would not flog a man under those circumstances; we give power to the Judge to flog him, but know he will never exercise it." Well, I have great admiration for Her Majesty's Judges, but I have not that absolute confidence in them, and I think, moreover, that it is wholly wrong to give power in an Act of Parliament which may produce a manifest injustice, and then to say, "Oh yes, but the Judges will not do that which the Act empowers them to do." I call that bad legislation. I have often had to construe the meaning of Acts of Parliament, and there is this very well settled rule which I have always acted upon. If an Act of Parliament uses general words, which are capable of two constructions, one of which would give a reasonable construction, the other of which would conduce to either uncertainty or wicked injustice, I have said that the proper construction of that Act of Parliament is to say that the former is the true construction. After this Act I can hardly say so. If it be really the intention that a man, under the circumstances I have referred to, shall not be flogged, plain and unmistakable words to that effect ought to be in the Act. I have asked the supporters of this measure to put the matter plainly in the Bill itself, and they have refused to do so. I say I will vote against any Bill which has such a monstrous clause in it.
  VISCOUNT CRANBROOKI venture to think that my noble and learned Friend (Lord Esher) is entirely mistaken in the argument he has used. Where two prisoners are tried together it happens over and over again that though they are both liable to the same punishment the Judge differentiates the punishment according to the evidence
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  given against each of them. Two men might be charged with manslaughter and one escape with a week's imprisonment, while the other was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. It is a necessity that Judges should be invested with such discrimination. The 2nd Clause of the Bill merely provides against an invasion of this principle. It is idle to talk of the situation created by one burglar saying to another, "I hope you have no firearms nor anything that will get us into a scrape." We have to deal with the common practices of criminals, and it would be impossible to deal with culprits of the worst kind if the accomplice of a man who used a weapon was not liable to the same punishment as his comrade with whom he would have shared the plunder had their venture been successful. It must be left to the discretion of the Judge to say whether there was any difference between the two. I have never been a great advocate for flogging, and I know it is a question which raises considerable doubts in men's minds; but it is absurd to compare flogging with mutilation. It was enacted that flogging might be resorted to in certain cases of robbery. A friend of mine was. garrotted, and in less than a minute was so injured by the pressure upon the throat that he had to keep his bed for three months. You must use strong measures to deter men from committing such crimes; and it is believed that flogging will operate as a corrective and preventive. If you cannot change a man's heart you may change his mind and show him the folly and wickedness of such crimes. The use of firearms has come to the front lately; and it is hoped to put down that practice not by cruelty, but by well-deserved punishment.
  LORD BRAMWELLI trust your Lordships will read this Bill a third time. I very much agree with my noble and learned Friend opposite that it would be better if this 2nd Clause had been left out. Everyone knows that there does exist a great objection to corporal punishment, and it would have been safer to have left out that clause. But my noble and learned Friend did not quite do justice to those who persisted in retaining it. The argument used for it was this—It is true that one of the party of burglars

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  may be possessed of a firearm or weapon, and it is true that his companions may not know of it; but what are probabilities? The immense probability is that each man knows what weapons of offence the others have. Then, it was said, let this clause remain in the Bill, and trust to the Judge not improperly to punish, unless there is satisfactory proof of knowledge on the part of the man who had not got the firearm that it was carried by one of the party. There is little doubt that there has been an increase in the number of burglaries committed with firearms—for one reason, because the miserable weapons which these people get are so cheap. That flogging is deterrent I have not the slightest doubt, though I have not had the opportunities of other Judges of knowing its effects. Some Judges in not ordering offenders to be flogged have neglected their duty, and I have told them so—in the most friendly way. The objection to flogging—that it is a punishment that cannot be effaced—applies to other punishments, too; and we must run some risk in inflicting all punishments, including capital punishment, which it is not proposed to abolish on that account. My noble and learned Friend said that he never knew of a case of a wrong conviction. Well, I congratulate him. Personally, I have certainly known of wrongful convictions, but the cases have been very few indeed—so few that I think we need scarcely have regard to the mere possibility of a man being improperly convicted and sentenced to be flogged. Punishment to be deterrent must be painful. I do not wish to refer to those who opposed this view of punishment as humanitarian, for that term was often applied offensively to very well-meaning people. But the Italian, Beccaria, who was a most humane man and who did so much for the regulation of the Criminal Law, and to make it reasonable and humane laid down these principles:
  "Thefts which have not violence united with them should be punished with pecuniary penalities,"
  in which he included loss of liberty as entailing loss of opportunity of earning money.
  "In the case of thefts with violence the, punishment should be corporal."
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  I do not say that your Lordships will be satisfied with the argument, but, at any rate, that is the opinion of a good and humane man in favour of the proposition which is now before your Lordships.
  On question, "That 'now' stand part of the Motion," the House divided:—Contents 75; Not-Contents 19.
  Resolved in the affirmative.
  Bill read 3a accordingly
  Moved, "That the Bill be now passed."
  On the Motion of LORD FITZ GERALD, the following Amendments were agreed to—
  Clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out first "and," and after "fifty-seven" insert "and sixty-one," Line 14, leave out from "felonies" to "all" in line 15. Page 3, lines 13 to 25, leave out Section 58, and insert the following Section:—
  61. Whosoever shall steal any chattel, money or valuable security in any dwelling house, and shall by any menace or threat put any one being therein in bodily fear, shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof, shall be liable, at the discretion of the Court, to be kept in penal servitude for any term not exceeding 14 years, and not less than three years, or to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour, and with or without solitary confinement.
  Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

TOWN POLICE CLAUSES ACT (1847) AMENDMENT BILL. (No. 83.)
Read. 3a (according to order), with the Amendments, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
House adjourned at Seven o'clock, to Monday next, a quarter before Eleven o'clock.