Sitting of 5 March 1891

ITINERANT STREET MUSICIANS.
Address for—
"Return showing the regulations and control of Itinerant Street Musicians in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and New York,"—(Mr. Jacoby.)

CROFTERS' HOLDINGS (SCOTLAND) ACT (VALUERS AND ASSESSORS).
Return ordered—
"Showing (1) the names of all the Valuers and Assessors hitherto appointed by the Commissioners
222
under section 17 of 'The Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1880,' and section 1, sub-section 1, of the amending Act of 1888; (2) their previous profession or occupation; and (3) the amount paid to each for his services."—(Mr. Angus Sutherland.)

PAUPERISM (ENGLAND AND WALES).
Return ordered—
"Of monthly comparative Statements of the number of Paupers of all classes (except lunatics in asylums, registered hospitals, and licensed houses, and vagrants) in receipt of relief in England and Wales on the last day of every week in each month of the several years from 1857 to 1891, both inclusive;
"And, of Statements of the number of Paupers (lunatics and vagrants included), distinguishing the number of adult able-bodied Paupers, relieved on the 1st day of January 1891, and the 1st day of July 1891, respectively."—(Mr. Long.)
Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 130.]

QUESTIONS.

  ENGLISH EPISCOPAL CHURCH AT NABLUS.
  SIR JOHN KENNAWAY: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can obtain from Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople any information respecting the delay in granting a firman to the English Episcopal Church at Nablus, which was erected in 1881, and opened for service in 1882; and whether he will instruct Her Majesty's Ambassador to use his friendly offices with the Ottoman Government to procure the issuing of the firman?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON,): Her Majesty's Ambassador is using his friendly offices with the Ottoman Government.

  DEFERRED ANNUITIES.
  MR. RANKIN: I beg to ask the Postmaster General if he will kindly state the number of persons who have purchased, in the Post Office Savings Bank, Deferred Annuities, payable after the age of 60; and what is the average amount of such annuities?
  *THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES,): The total number of Deferred Annuities payable after the age of 60 which have been purchased through the Post Office Savings Bank is 568, and the average amount of these Annuities is £18 1s. 2d.
  MR. RANKIN: Is that from the commencement of the granting of such Annuities?
  *MR. RAIKES: Yes, Sir.

  ELEMENTARY DAY SCHOOLS.
  MR. RANKIN: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Council whether scholars attending evening classes, and who are also in the obligatory standards of an elementary day school, are in a position to receive any assistance from the County Council in respect of any manual or technical instruction given at the evening school?
  THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Sir W. HART DYKE,): No scholar over 14 is, as a rule, recognised on the registers of a day school, and no scholar under 14 can be recognised in an evening school unless he is deemed by the Department to be exempt from the legal obligation to attend school, so that it is practically impossible for any child to occupy the dual position indicated in my hon. Friend's question. It appears, however, that scholars who having passed the Fifth Standard no longer receive instruction in the obligatory subjects are, if qualified to attend an evening school, eligible to receive assistance from the County Council in respect of manual or technical instruction.

  STATE-AIDED SCHOOLS.
  MR. LENG: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education if he can state the total numbers of male and female scholars and of male and female teachers in the State-aided schools under the inspection of Her Majesty's Inspectors in the United Kingdom, at the latest date to which statistics have been supplied?
  *SIR W. HART DYKE: The latest published figures for England and Wales will be found on pages 239 and 242 of the last General Report laid on the Table, but the Returns for 1890 are almost ready, and will shortly be in the hands of Members.

  LABOURERS IN WOOLWICH ARSENAL.
  COLONEL HUGHES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War the decision as to the Petition of certain labourers in Woolwich Arsenal for increase of wages on account of heavy rents in London?
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. E. STANHOPE,): The position of the labourers employed under the War Office was fully considered by the Government at the same time as that of those employed in the Dockyards. We came to the conclusion that no general case was made out for increasing the pay of labourers in the Ordnance Factories. But as regards the unskilled labourers in the employment of the Army Ordnance Store Department, we propose to follow generally at Woolwich, Portsmouth, Devonport, and Chatham the lines recently announced in the Circular from the Admiralty.

  SHIPMENT OF INCOMPETENT SEAMEN AT CARDIFF.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if his attention has been called to the illegal shipment of incompetent seamen as A.B.'s at the port of Cardiff, as appears from the statement of R. Phillips and others, reported in the South Wales Daily News of 25th February, and also by the statement taken from the said R. Phillips and others by the Superintendent of Mercantile Marine at Cardiff; if he is aware of the fact that the men referred to, although incompetent and inexperienced, were signed on as A.B.'s in the presence of an official of the Board of Trade; whether, to prevent incompetent men from being signed on in future, the Board of Trade will cause instructions to be given that no man shall be signed on a ship's articles as an able-bodied seaman unless he is able to comply with "The Merchant Seamen (Payment of Wages and Rating) Act, 1880," sec. 7; if he is aware that the men so signed on as A.B.'s were brought to the ship by a person who is not licensed to ship seamen in accordance with sec. 147, sub-sec. (1), of "The Merchant Shipping Act, 1854;" and, if these statements are true, what steps he proposes to take with

  225
  regard to the official who has, in two separate instances, allowed the Acts which he is appointed to administer to be infringed?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,): Yes, Sir; my attention has been directed to the cases to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, but I am not in a position to give a categorical reply until I have received the Report of the Cardiff Local Marine Board, who have made an inquiry with regard to all the circumstances. I may, however, add that it has always been held at the Board of Trade that there is nothing in Section 7 of the Merchant Shipping (Payment of Wages and Rating) Act, 1880, which confers power upon a Superintendent to refuse to allow a man to sign on as an A.B. without production of a certificate or certificates mentioned in that section. This view of the section is borne out by the following paragraph in the Final Report of the Loss of Life at Sea Commission, 1884:—
  "With respect to the rating of 'Able Seamen,' it is now the law that no man is entitled to he go rated unless he can prove four years' service at sea before the mast. There is, however, great laxity in this respect. Men are constantly rated as 'A.B.' without any inquiry as to their past services and with insufficient qualification: practically it rests with the masters of vessels whether to rate them as such or not. Nor does it appear to us that there is any certain method by which this can be prevented."
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: When will the right hon. Gentleman be ready to give an answer to the other part of the question, which refers to the action of the Department?
  *SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I cannot say at present. If the right hon. Gentleman will defer the question for a week I think I shall be able to answer it.

  POST OFFICE TELEGRAMS.
  MR. JACOB BRIGHT: I beg to ask the Postmaster General if the Post Office has the right, after determining the number of words in a telegram and securing prepayment, to demand a further payment if, through the inefficiency of their servants, they discover an increased charge should have been made by reason of more words being in the message than were counted at the time; and, if they have the right,
  226
  will he give directions that the sender shall have the original message shown him, and in the case of long messages of several hundred words be allowed every facility to examine such messages?
  *MR. RAIKES: The payment for a Press telegram is determined by Act of Parliament, and no servant of the Post Office, whether efficient or inefficient, has power to vary the charge. It has been decided in the High Court of Justice that where an insufficient payment has been made at the counter in the first instance, the sender of a message is afterwards liable for the balance of the charge. The fullest facilities are afforded to senders to re-count their messages if they have any doubt as to the correctness of a claim for further payment. If the hon. Member has in his mind any case where these have not been allowed, and will communicate the circumstances to me, I will direct inquiry to be made.

  BETTING AT RACE MEETINGS.
  MR. SAMUEL SMITH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the recent decision of the Chamber of Deputies in Franco, which has decided to suppress every kind of public betting at race meetings, and even the Paris mutual bookmakers are to be interdicted; and whether the Government will take in to consideration the expediency of proposing similar legislation for this country?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,): I collect from the newspapers that the French Chambers have rejected a Bill by which the Government proposed to legalise what is called the pari mutuel, and to levy a considerable tax on that form of betting. I also collect that M. Constans announced that if this Bill were rejected he would go to the opposite extreme, and would prosecute those who practised that form of gambling; but this decision does not appear to be final. The Government do not intend to propose any legislation on this subject.
  SIR W. LAWSON: I understand from the right hon. Gentleman that the Government proposed to legalise the pari mutuel. Is it at present optional?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I do not gather that the Government proposed to legalise it, but to impose a tax upon it.

  SUAKIN AND TOKAR.
  MR. J. MORLEY: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any proclamation has been issued by the Military Commanders at Suakin as to the intentions of the Egyptian Government towards the tribes; whether any terms have been made with the tribes in the neighbourhood of Suakin and Tokar, for the purposes of common action against the approach of hostile forces from Kassala; and whether, at the fall of Afafite and Tokar, any prisoners were captured; and, if so, in what way they have been disposed of?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: Since the right hon. Gentleman gave notice of this question inquiry has been made by telegraph, but as yet the Egyptian Government have no information on the subjects mentioned.
  MR. J. MORLEY: Can the right hon. Gentleman answer the third question?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: That, also, the Government are at present unable to answer.

  SOUTH AMERICAN AND WEST INDIAN MATLS.
  MR. WEBSTER: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that on a recent occasion the Royal Mail Company's vessel Don, conveying mails from South America and the West Indies to the United Kingdom (under contract as far as the West Indies are concerned with the Post Office), was detained 36 hours at Jamaica, in order that certain of the passengers might take part in a State ceremony; and that for a matter of fact the mails by this steamer reached Plymouth two days behind the contract time; who was responsible for this detention; and whether, as these mail steamers touch at several West Indian Islands, he would arrange that they should proceed on their voyages without any further delay than is entailed by the receiving or discharging of cargo or of coaling? I wish to substitute for the Don the Orinoko.
  *MR. RAIKES: I can only answer accurately the question as it appears on
  228
  the Paper. The mail steamer in question was detained at Jamaica, not for 36 hours, but for 20½ hours, on the 27th of January, by order of the Governor, on the occasion of the opening of the Jamaica Exhibition; and although such action is certainly to be deprecated generally, I think this occasion was sufficiently exceptional to warrant it. I believe the course taken has met with general approval in the West Indies and at home. The steamer arrived at Plymouth 36 hours late, but the additional delay was caused by bad weather encountered on the voyage home.
  MR. WEBSTER: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that the rate of postage from Barbados to Jamaica is 4d. per. ounce, whilst from either of these West Indian Islands to the United Kingdom, the United States, or South America the rate is only 2½d. per ounce; and if it is in any way practicable to reduce the postal rates charged by the various West Indian Islands, especially as between them selves?
  *MR. RAIKES: The reduction of post-ago recently made on letters between the United Kingdom and the British Colonies did not extend to letters sent intercolonially, as between Barbados and Jamaica, and, consequently, wherever the intercolonial postage was 4d., it remains so for the present. To extend the 2½d. postage further of course would involve further loss of Postage Revenue; but I hope to be able before long to submit proposals to the Treasury for applying the reduced letter postage to all parts of the British Possessions.
  MR. WEBSTER: I beg further to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the mail steamer from Barbados to the United Kingdom is timed to start two days before the outward mail steamer arrives; and whether, if that is so, it would be possible to arrange that the mail from the United Kindgom should arrive two days prior to the departure of the mail from Barbados to Europe?
  *MR. RAIKES: The time table for the West India Mail Service is arranged so as to afford the greatest amount of postal accommodation between this country and the colonies. The mails homeward are timed to reach this country on one Wednesday and to leave this country outward on the following Wednesday

  229
  thus leaving a week's interval here for replies. This happens to involve, as my hon. Friend points out, an arrival of an English mail at Barbados two days after the homeward mail from Barbados to England has started; but I have not received any complaint from that Island on this point. In any case, I do not see that a re-arrangement of the service for the advantage of Barbados could be made without detriment to the more important communication between the West Indies generally and this country.

  POSTAGE OF PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS.
  MR. KIMBER: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether there is any reason why the Blue Books and other Parliamentary Papers should not be posted to the residences of Members who reside out of London, as well as the Votes and Orders of the Day, without charge to the Members?
  *MR. RAIKES: No charge for postage is made to Members upon Parliamentary Papers which are officially despatched from the Vote Office or Sale Office, and hon. Members can arrange with either of those Offices for the transmission of such Papers as they may wish to have forwarded to them when out of London.
  MR. KIMBER: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if Papers other than the Votes are sent on additional postage is charged?
  *MR. RAIKES: The Post Office does not authorise a charge for any Papers sent officially through the Post Office.

  INFLAMMABLE LIQUIDS BILL.
  MR. KIMBER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any objection to lay upon the Table and to circulate for general information a memorandum of the data and reasons upon which the Inflammable Liquids Bill is founded?
  MR. MATTHEWS: If the hon. Member desires a memorandum I shall be happy to supply it.

  IMPORTATION OF LIVE CATTLE.
  MR. LENG: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether it is intended to lay the Report of the Intra-departmental Committee on the
  230
  Importation of Live Cattle into the United Kingdom from Canada and the United States upon the Table of the House; and, if so, when it is likely to be presented?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. CHAPLIN,): Yes; the Report of the Committee in question will be laid upon the Table, and I hope it will be ready shortly after Easter.

  CRETE.
  MR. LEVESON-GOWER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give the House any recent information as to the condition of Crete, and as to the correctness of the report that disturbances have again broken out in that Island, and that, among other cases of outrage, two lads have been lately murdered and mutilated by Zaptiehs?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: Papers will shortly be presented which will include the Reports of the British Consul on the state of the Island. It cannot be said that disturbances have again broken out, but frequent murders take place both of Christians and of Mussulmans. Some of these crimes are attributed to gendarmes. One of these cases was that of a Christian lad of 18, who was recently found murdered with circumstances of great atrocity.

  MOUSSA BEY.
  MR. LEVESON-GOWER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government have any ground for believing that Moussa Bey is to be tried on any of the charges still pending against him; whether there is any prospect of his being exiled to Medina or elsewhere; and whether he is at present at Constantinople in actual or nominal confinement, or has been permitted to return to Armenia?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: According to the Turkish Papers, Moussa Bey was sent under police escort to Medina on the 19th of October last.

  DISTURBANCES AT ERZEROUM.
  MR. LEVESON-GOWER: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it be the fact that, although, according to Consul

  231
  Lloyd's Minute of 2nd October, 1890, many Christians were "detained in prison for long periods without any charge being made against them" in connection with the disturbances at Erzeroum upon 20th June, no prosecution has been instituted by the Turkish Government, in spite of the repeated representations of the British and French Representatives at Constantinople and promises of the Grand Vizier, against any Mahommedans for the murder and pillage of Christians upon that day; and whether, if this be so, Her Majesty's Ambassador will be instructed to press upon the Porte the fulfilment of these promises, in order to afford greater confidence and security to the Christians of Erzeroum and the surrounding country?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: No prosecution has, so far as we know, been instituted. Inquiry will be made as to what stops the Porte proposes to take in the matter.

  AFFAIRS AT ZEITOUN.
  SIR JOHN SWINBURNE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it is a fact that Sir William White has received a Petition from the Christian inhabitants of Zeitoun, in Armenia, which contains the allegation that 400 children have died from the effects of poison intentionally introduced into the system when they were vaccinated by a doctor acting under the orders and direction of the Turkish Governor, Salih Pasha?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: No such Petition has, so far as we know, been received by Sir William White, but a letter was addressed to Her Majesty's Consul at Aleppo on October 21 last containing the incredible statement that 400 children had been vaccinated with intentionally poisoned lymph by a doctor sent by the Governor for the purpose, and had died in consequence. As I have already stated, Sir William White has taken steps to inquire into the truth of the varying statements that have been made respecting occurrences at Zeitoun.

  THE CARD SCANDAL.
  MR. COBB: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to a statement publicly made in
  232
  several newspapers, that in September last, at Tranby Croft, Field Marshal H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Lieutenant General Owen Williams, and Lieutenant Levett, were informed that Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Gordon-Cumming had cheated at a game of cards, and thereupon the three officers and others signed a paper agreeing to preserve silence as to the accusation, provided that Sir William Gordon-Cumming pledged his word never again to play at cards; whether the three other officers in question were guilty of an offence against the Army Regulations in signing a paper agreeing to preserve silence with respect to such an accusation; and whether it is intended to hold any Court of Inquiry into the conduct of the officers concerned?
  *MR E. STANHOPE: I have seen the statement referred to, and I am given to understand that it will shortly be the subject of a civil action; and I must therefore, in common fairness to all parties concerned, respectfully decline to make any observations whatever upon the case.
  MR. COBB: Am I, then, to understand that whenever circumstances which may have involved a breach of the Army Regulations are to be brought before the ordinary Courts of Law, the consideration of the question as to the breach of the regulations is to be postponed?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: The hon. Member is only to understand what I said.

  THE SOUDAN.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the fact that the Khedive of Egypt has abandoned the Soudan, but has not abandoned his "rights of sovereignty" over it, the inhabitants of that country are deemed rebels to their Sovereign by Her Majesty's Government; whether the de facto Government of that country is recognised by Her Majesty's Government; whether the sovereignty of the Soudan, claimed by the Khedive, is recognised by his Suzerain, the Sultan, since the Khedive officially announced that "he abandoned the country;" whether the rights of sovereignty claimed by the Khedive extends to Kassala and to Khartoum, and what are the geo-

  233
  graphical limits of the territory called the Soudan over which they are claimed; whether they are the same as those possessed by the Khedive Ismael; whether, when the Khedive "abandoned the Soudan," any places, except Massowah and Suakin, were excepted from that abandonment; whether he is aware of any official document, either published by Her Majesty's Government or by the Government of the Khedive, by which, either directly or indirectly, that part of the Soudan called Tokar was excepted from the general declaration of abandonment; whether any portions of the Soudanese littoral, except Massowah and Suakin, were excepted from the abandonment; whether, directly or indirectly, Her Majesty's Government has given any assurance that it would defend or maintain Egyptian authority in any territory beyond Egypt and Suakin; whether Her Majesty's Government has called the attention of the Egyptian Government to the fact that the military occupation of Tokar by a portion of the Egyptian Army throws increased responsibility and risk upon the British garrison in Egypt in maintaining order, and whether it is intended to call upon the Egyptian Government to make any increased payment to Her Majesty's Government in consideration of this increased responsibility and risk; whether Her Majesty's Government are precluded from entering into any arrangements with the de facto Government of the Soudan, or from obtaining from that Government exequaturs for Consuls from the de facto Government; and what is the area of the territory called Tokar, over which the Egyptian Government intends to exercise civil and military power, as a portion of the territories under the sovereignty of the Khedive?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: (1.) The rights of sovereignty are the Sultan's, not the Khedive's. Subjects of the Sultan resisting authority exercised in his name are rebels. Since 1885 the collisions which have occurred with any inhabitants of the Soudan have been provoked by themselves. (2 and 11.) We know nothing of the de facto Government of the Soudan. (3.) The Sultan of Turkey has not abandoned his rights over the Soudan. On the 30th of June, 1885, the Turkish Ambassador made a formal
  234
  statement to that effect to the present Foreign Secretary. The Sultan has done nothing inconsistent with the title of the Khedive to the position of his Representative in his dominions in the Soudan or any part of them. (4, 5, 6, and 7) As I stated in answer to the hon. Member's question of March 2, we cannon undertake to define the limits of the Sultan's sovereignty in the Soudan. (8 and 9.) The only assurance given by Her Majesty's Government to the Khedive with respect to the defence of his territory is contained in Lord Granville's Despatches of December 13, 1883, and January 4, 1884—
  "They will be prepared to assist in maintaining order in Egypt Proper, and in defending it as well as the ports in the Red Sea."
  And again—
  "Her Majesty's Government will on their part be prepared to assist in maintaining order in Egypt Proper, and in defending it as well as in continuing to protect the ports in the Red Sea."
  (10.) Her Majesty's Government do not concur in the opinion expressed in this question. (12.) Tokar is a town, and the name is commonly given to the fertile oasis adjacent to it. We do not know its extent.

  THE 2ND BATTALION SCOTS GUARDS.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it has been decided to bring back to England the 2nd Battalion of Scots Guards from Bermuda before the usual time that a battalion on Foreign service returns Home; and, if so, how he intends to treat the extra cost of transport involved in this arrangement so that it shall not fall upon the taxpapers?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: No decision has yet been come to as to the return from Bermuda of the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards. Whenever they are moved the cost will fall upon the Transport Vote.
  MR. COBB: Did I not understand the right hon. Gentleman to say last year that there had been no extra expense incurred?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: No doubt, Sir, that was absolutely true at that time.

  SALE OF POSTAGE STAMPS BY LICENSED VICTUALLERS.
  MR. COBB: I beg to postpone the question of which I have given notice,

  235
  to ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that in neighbourhoods where the Post Offices are closed at or about 8 o'clock in the evening many licensed victuallers are in the habit of obliging their customers by selling them postage stamps; and whether the licensed victuallers are liable to a penalty for selling postage stamps to their customers after the Post Offices are closed, or, in cases where there is no post offices in the immediate neighbourhood, at any time during the day?

  GEANTS TO EFFICIENT VOLUNTEERS.
  MR. AINSLIE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he could explain on what grounds the grant of 12s. par efficient Volunteer is held to be enough for the provision of the equipments required under the regulations in the cases of country battalions; if he is aware that the lowest charge at which these equipments are procurable is 18s.; if he can make a distinction in favour of battalions whoso detachments are widely scattered; and if he is aware that the regulation which limits this grant of 12s. to efficients on the previous October will adversely affect those corps which were below their strength at that time?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: At the time the grant was fixed at 12s., it was supposed that that sum would fairly provide the articles of equipment in which Volunteers were usually deficient. It is found, however, that the demand for such large supplies in a short period has had the effect of inflating prices. I am further considering as to the date when the equipment must be complete. I shall be glad if my hon. Friend will repeat his question a short time hence.

  THE LATE DUKE OF BEDFORD.
  MR. COBB: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will ascertain from the Coroner for Westminster, and state if, in the oath which under the Act of Parliament he administered to the jurors at the inquest, the late Duke of Bedford was described, consistently with the warrant and jury snmmons, as "F. Russell," or as "Francis Charles Hastings Russell," or if he was described, inconsistently
  236
  with such documents, by some different name; and, if so, by what name?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I am informed by the Coroner that the jury were sworn to the full name and title of the deceased person.
  *MR. COBB: May I ask what names were given? There have been several names mentioned in this case.
  MR. MATTHEWS: I have given the Coroner's exact words. I take it that the full name was the name in full.

  REPORT OF THE SCOTCH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.
  MR. CALDWELL: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate what public purpose is served by Table B, No. 1, appended to the Report of the Scotch Education Department of 22nd July, 1890; whether the Department has any information to lead them to believe that anything like 120,283 children, being one-seventh of the children of school age, may be receiving "education in higher schools" in Scotland as set forth in said Table; whether he is aware that, according to the same Table, it would appear that there are 419,169 children between the ages of 7 and 12 on the school register of State-aided schools in Scotland, whilst there are only 395,851 possible children in existence in Scotland between these ages available to attend State-aided schools on the basis or assumption of the Table; and whether the Department will, in future, eliminate Table B, No. 1, from their Reports?
  *THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. P. B. ROBERTSON,): The Table to which the hon. Member refers has appeared in the Report for many years. The assumption of one-seventh as the number of children who might be in attendance at higher schools, was based upon very careful inquiries made by the Schools Inquiry Commission in 1867, and has since been adopted as a general scale. But the Table referred to by the hon. Member at least serves a useful purpose in proving that the applicability of the scale to Scotland is more than doubtful. The Tables appended to the Report are annually revised and re-cast as occasion requires; but it is doubtful whether an alteration

  237
  in the scale adopted, which might give rise to erroneous inferences, would be expedient on the eve of a new Census.

  CHINESE PIRATES.
  MR. MARJORIBANKS: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information with regard to an attack made by pirates (who were on board the ship as passengers) on or about 1st December, 1890, on a steamer voyaging from Hong Kong to Swatow, in which a passenger named Petersen and the Captain (Captain Pocock) were killed, and property to the value of £5,000 was taken by the pirates, who escaped from the ship by boats; and what steps have been taken to bring the perpetrators of this outrage to punishment?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: Since answering the question put by the hon. Member for East Grinstead on the 2nd of February, the Admiral on the Station has reported that he had sent two ships of war to visit certain places to the north and south of Hong Kong, where it was thought some information might be obtained, but they totally failed to learn anything of value, and up to the 8th of January the pirates were still at large, instructions are being sent to the Governor of Hong Kong to report what measures he proposes to take with a view to preventing the surreptitious embarkation of arms by Chinese passengers in future.

  THE EVICTIONS AT SILKSWORTH.
  MR. STOREY: I bog to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that nearly 50 persons were wounded, some of them dangerously, and all of them but three with blows behind, in the recent baton-charge by the police at Silksworth; that respectable unoffending persons, both male and female, quietly walking home by the very side of the police, were struck and kicked by them; what time, if any, was allowed to those persons to get out of the way between the time when the police faced about and the charge was delivered; and whether, in view of the serious allegations publicly made against the police, and in view of the probable renewal of
  238
  the evictions, with the consequent excitement, he is prepared to order a public inquiry into the matter? Is it the fact that none of these persons made or attempted any resistance whatsoever?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I have received a Report from the Chief Constable and have also seen reports of newspapers of different shades of opinion concerning the conflict that unhappily occurred on February 25. Those reports do not bear out the allegations of the hon. Member. The Chief Constable informs me that some 30 persons were more or less injured, but none dangerously, and that only only one female, a little girl, was slightly hurt, having been (it is supposed) crushed by the crowd. It appears that the bailiffs were returning home, escorted by the police, when they and the police were assailed by a riotous crowd, chiefly, as I gather, from Sunderland, and not connected with the Silksworth mines. This crowd continued to shout and pelt the officers with stones and small rivets of iron from the shipyards, hitting many of them, until the superintendent in charge, an old and experienced officer, halted his party and loudly cautioned the mob to desist or he would be compelled to drive them away by force. No attention was paid to this warning; the police charged with drawn batons, and the crowd was dispersed. I am not prepared to say whether or not the police, after making this charge, kept within those bounds of moderation and self-defence which they ought to observe. I have, however, no information before me to show that serious allegations have been made publicly against them. I am informed that the hon. Member for Mid Durham and the miners' officials have openly praised the police for their forbearance in the performance of difficult duties in connection with this strike. The Chief Constable does not apprehend a renewal of excitement or disturbance. I would point out to the hon. Member that the police are reponsible to the Standing Joint Committee, and not to me; and that, if there has been misconduct or excessive violence on the part of the police, complaint should be made to the Local Authority, who will, I have no doubt, make whatever inquiry is necessary. I should be guilty of disrespect to them if I ordered a public inquiry

  239
  without any evidence that they are not prepared to do their duty.
  MR. STOREY: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to allege that respectable and unoffending persons, male and. female, quietly walking home, by the very side of the police, were not struck and kicked. What time was allowed to these respectable people to get out of the way?
  MR. J. WILSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to ask whether the term "praise" he has applied to the conduct of the police refers to their conduct during the evictions?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I stated, with as much accuracy as I could, that the praise was given to them for the manner in which they performed a difficult duty, and not in reference to any specific charge. With reference to the question of the hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Storey) I can give him no answer beyond that which I have already given, that I cannot find either in the Report of the Chief Constable, or in the reports of the newspapers submitted to me, any confirmation of the allegations he has made. I do not undertake to deny them; all I say is that I do not find any confirmation of them.
  SIR W. LAWSON: May I ask if the right hon. Gentleman will make any further inquiry into the matter?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I think I have given an ample answer, and I would suggest that any further question should be addressed to those responsible for the conduct of the police.
  MR. STOREY: I beg to give notice that I shall take the earliest opportunity of bringing this serious matter before the House, and of placing the real facts of the case before the right hon. Gentleman.

  USE OF SCHOOLROOMS FOR PUBLIC MEETINGS IN RURAL DISTRICTS.
  MR. HERBERT GARDNER: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether he is aware of the difficulty which exists in villages and rural districts of obtaining suitable buildings for the purpose of holding public meetings, and whether he will consider the desirability of proposing or accepting legislation which shall secure
  240
  to the ratepayers of a district, under certain safeguards as to interference with educational purposes and injury to the buildings, the use of rooms in schools in receipt of Parliamentary grants for local public purposes?
  SIR W. HART DYKE: I believe the difficulty, which at one time existed, has been largely diminished, partly owing to increase in the number of village halls available for the purpose which the hon. Member has in view, and partly owing to the general desire on the part of managers of schools to meet all reasonable requirements in this connection, and I do not, therefore, as at present advised, see any necessity for further legislation of the character suggested.
  MR. H. GARDNER: I beg to give notice that on the Education Vote I will call attention to this subject.

  INFLAMMABLE LIQUIDS.
  MR. JOHN KELLY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that the present price of mineral spirit being some 50 per cent. above that of mineral oil, any practice of mixing the former with the latter is now impossible; and whether he is aware that the regulation as to tank depôts in Clause 6 of the Inflammable Liquids Bill would, in the cases of small shops, be found quite impracticable, as also that in Clause 10 (d) with respect to the isolation of such depôts?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I am advised that the price of mineral spirit is in excess of that of mineral oil, though I cannot say whether it is so to the extent mentioned in the question. There is no provision in the Bill specially directed against the practice of mixing the spirit with the oil. My hon. Friend appears not to have read Clause 3 of the Bill, which contains no provision as to "tank depôts," as stated in the question. Clauses 2 and 3 are specially intended to protect small shops by enabling them to keep the stock usually stored in such shops without registration or license, and subject only to the restriction that the oil shall be kept in substantial closed metal vessels, a method of storage now largely employed and therefore not impracticable. Clause 10 (d) deals with licensed premises only, and lays down

  241
  no fixed limits as to isolation of depôts. It merely expresses a power already-possessed under the existing law by Local Authorities of prescribing in their licences conditions as to the situation of the premises.
  MR. JOHN KELLY: I beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman, if he is aware that it is stated, at page 248 of the Year Book of Commerce for 1890–91, that, out of the total average annual numbers of fires in London during the four years ending 1889, namely, 2,209, only about two per cent., namely, 43, occurred in the shops of oil or colourmen; whether he is aware that the few fires which have occurred on the premises of wholesale dealers in petroleum oil have not been occasioned by petroleum oil, and that, in more than half the cases of such fires, although the premises and a large proportion of the stocks have been destroyed, the petroleum oil has not taken fire; and whether he has any, and, if so, what reason for doubting the accuracy of the figures given in the Year Book of Commerce?
  MR. MATTHEWS: Yes, Sir; I believe the figures quoted are substantially accurate. They appear to be based upon the Annual Reports of the Chief Officer of the Metropolitan Eire Brigade. I cannot admit the correctness of the statement in the second paragraph of the question. On the contrary, I am advised that some of the fires have been largely due to petroleum oil in their consequences and effects, and in some instances in their inception. I am further advised that it is not the fact that in such cases the oil has not taken fire, although in some instances there has been salvage of portions of the stock. It is the fact that petroleum oil has hitherto been generally supplied in substantially constructed barrels, but the practice of supplying it in tank wagons, from which the oil is conveyed into metal storage tanks, has rapidly increased, and already largely prevails in some districts. The storage in barrels is not a perfectly safe method, because the storage vessel has to be tapped for delivery. It is itself inflammable, it is liable to leak, and is much less safe than the metal tanks. I cannot express an opinion as to the relative danger arising from mineral oil as compared with turpentine, spirits of wine, and whisky, which must depend to a great extent on
  242
  the conditions of storage, but the two latter articles can be mixed with and extinguished by water. The peculiar danger of mineral oil is that water does not extinguish it, and only helps to spread its devastating effects. Turpentine is not stored to anything like the same extent as mineral oil, and its much greater cost tends to secure more careful storage.

  ARTIFICIAL MANURES AND FEEDING STUFFS.
  MR. CHAINING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture when the Bill which he has in preparation for the prevention of adulteration of artificial manures and feeding stuffs will be introduced and put down for Second Reading; and whether, having regard to the fact that the principle of the Artificial Manures, &c. (Adulteration) Bill, now before the House, has been accepted in the resolutions passed by all the Chambers of Agriculture which have up to this date considered that Bill, by the Chemical Manure Manufacturers' Association, by the Incorporated Oil Seed Association, and by other corporate bodies interested in this question, and has received the unanimous approval of the agricultural Press, he proposes to embody in his own Bill the principle thus approved?
  MR. CHAPLIN: I do not think that I shall be able to introduce this Bill until after Easter. With regard to the Second Reading, the hon. Member must be aware that it is impossible for me to make any statements on that point at present. In reply to the second part of the question, I may say that I am in daily receipt of numerous communications on this subject, and they hardly lead me to the conclusion that the hon. Gentleman's Bill meets with the universal approval which he appears to suppose. I am, however, entirely in accord with the hon. Gentleman in the objects which he has in view, and I hope it may be possible to devise a measure which will be considered as acceptable by each of the two Parties who are so greatly interested in the question. With regard to the last question which the hon. Member has put to me, he will have ample opportunity of informing himself as to the principle of the Bill in question

  243
  after it has been introduced and printed.
  *MR. CHANNING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of any agricultural body which has expressed anything but a general approval of this Bill?
  *MR. CHAPLIN: In the communications which I have received some of the Agricultural Associations and Chambers have not expressed an entire approval of the Bill.
  *MR. CHANNING: I beg to give notice that if the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman does not embody the principle of some sufficient guaranteed analysis with penalties for misrepresentation, I shall move, on the Second Beading of the Bill, that the Bill, together with my own, be referred to a Select Committee, and, if the necessity arises, I shall oppose the Second Beading of the Government measure.

  EXPENDITURE UNDER THE NAVAL DEFENCE ACT 1889.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty what was the amount of the unexpended balance of the Dockyard and Store Votes of the year 1889–90 applicable to the Naval Defence Fund under "The Naval Defence Act, 1889 "; and whether any portion of this has been expended in the year 1890–91?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Lord G. HAMILTON,): The unexpended balance at the close of 1889–90 under the head of "New Construction under the Naval Defence Act of 1889," for which provision was made in the Navy Votes, was—for materials and contract work (Vote 8, Sections 1, 2, and 3), £174,243. No portion of this sum has been expended during the present financial year.

  FACTORY AND WORKSHOPS BILL.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he proposes to proceed with his Factory and Workshops Bill in Standing Committee before the House is in possession of, or has read a second time, the Public Health (London) Law Amendment Bill and the Public Health (London) Law Consolidation Bill, to be introduced by the President of the Local Government Board; and whether he
  244
  proposes to proceed with the Factory Bill before the Easter Recess?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I hope to proceed with the Factory Bill before the Easter Recess, and I have every reason to expect that the Public Health (London) Law Amendment Bill will be in the possession of the House before much progress can be made with the Factory Bill.

  ARMY CONTRACTS.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the three years' contract for repairing barracks, fortifications, sea fronts, building stores, guardrooms, barrack officers' quarters, &c, comes to an end on the 31st March next; and what steps the Department intends to take, in reference to the new contract, to carry out the Resolution adopted by the House on 13th February in regard to the sub-letting of Government contracts and payment of fair wages?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: The answer to the first question is "Yes." I have already approved a Circular, which will be issued to contractors, which lays down rules as to sub-letting and as to wages, in full accordance with the terms of the Resolution adopted by the House of Commons.

  THE BUDGET.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he intends to introduce the Budget before the Easter Recess?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN,): I think not, Sir. I think it is very improbable.

  VESSELS BUILT FOR FOREIGNERS.
  MR. JOHN WILSON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in the case of vessels built in the United Kingdom to the order and delivery of foreigners, their values are not included in the Board of Trade Export Returns; and whether, seeing such vessels are built and equipped by material and labour, the product of this country, and thus form an essential part of export trade, he will consider the propriety of including such vessels in the Returns, or at least of appending their value to the Returns?
  *SIR M. HICKS BEACH: No, Sir. The values referred by the hon. Member are not at present included in the Trade Returns; but the question of appending a statement of the values of such vessels has been for some time under the consideration of Her Majesty's Government. In the event of its being decided to obtain this information, legislation would probably be necessary.

  FACTORY AND WORKSHOP INSPECTORS.
  MR. BROADHURST: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Hame Department whether he has taken, or will take, any steps in conjunction with the Treasury to increase the present staff of Factory and Workshop Inspectors?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I shall await the result of the legislative proposals now before Parliament before I decide whether any, and if, so what, increase of the existing staff may become necessary.

  PUBLIC CEMETERY AT HYDE.
  MR. SUMMERS: I beg-to ask the President of the Local Government Board with reference to the proposed arrangement for the provision of a public cemetery at Hyde, whether, in the event of a portion of the cemetery being consecrated, the Bishop of the Diocese would have the right to insist upon a separate chapel being built, at the expense of the rates, for the Episcopalians, in the consecrated portion of the cemetery; whether he would have control over all monuments and inscriptions in that portion of the cemetery; and whether he would have the right of appointing a chaplain to be paid for by the Corporation at a salary to be approved by him?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,): I do not understand that in the case of the Hyde cemetery, to which the hon. Member refers, any difference arises with regard to the provision of a separate chapel for the Episcopalians. The proposal that was submitted at the inquiry was that three chapels should be erected—one for the Church of England, one for Nonconformists, and one for Roman
  246
  Catholics. As regards the question of control over monuments and inscriptions in the cemetery, the arrangement which I am informed was proposed on behalf of the Established Church was that the monuments should be under the control of the Town Council, the Council being responsible for all inscriptions being of a proper character. The right of appointing the chaplain would not, as suggested, devolve on the Bishop, but would be vested on the Town Council. The appointment and salary, however, would require the approval of the Bishop, but in order to meet objections to this requirement, the offer which, as I understand, was made to the Town Council, was that the stipend so fixed and approved should be a nominal one only, say £1 per annum, and that this salary should be deducted by the Town Council from the fees payable to the chaplain.

  BUXTON LIME COMPANY.
  MR. PICKARD: I beg to ask the Attorney General, whether his attention has been called to the case of "Frances Bennett v. The Buxton Lime Company," in the County Court, New Mills, Derbyshire, reported in the Sheffield Independent of 14th February, in which the County Court Judge is reported to have held that the company was justified in dismissing the plaintiff without notice by reason of his having taken part in an agitation for higher wages, although the rules of the company provided for a month's notice in writing; and whether it is the law that a workman forfeits his contract rights by taking part in strike or other agitations?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir R. WEBSTER,): I am informed by the learned County Court Judge that the report in the Sheffield Independent to which the hon. Member refers is altogether inaccurate. He informs me that it was clearly proved at the trial that it has been the invariable practice, for at least 30 years, for both masters and men alike to determine their contract by giving a month's verbal notice. The plaintiff had received such a notice, but neither at the time of his dismissal nor after he had left did he raise any objection that the notice was not in writing.

  COUNTS OUT.
  MR. SAMUEL SMITH: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the many recent cases of the House having been counted out on private Members' nights, the Government will take into consideration the expediency of proposing a change in the Standing Orders whereby the House, on such occasions, would be enabled to pass to the next business on the Paper instead of standing adjourned?
  *THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH,): The counts out to which the hon. Member alludes were, I am afraid, attributable to a disinclination on the part of the House to take any further business, and I do not think the proposal of the hon. Member would be of any use in meeting such a state of things, nor, should an alteration of the Standing Orders of the House be lightly undertaken, even if it were possible to find the time for the necessary discussion.

  MARRIAGES IN INDIA.
  MR. KEAY: I beg-to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the great excitement and apprehension which has been caused in India by the introduction into the Governor General's Council, by Sir Andrew Scoble, of a Bill fixing the ago of consent, in the case of married girls, at 12 years; whether he is aware that puberty very frequently takes place in Indian females before the age of 12 years, while there is no system of registration of births, and consequently no certitude as to the real age of the great majority of the population; whether he is aware that strong resolutions have been passed at mass meetings throughout the Indian Empire protesting against the Bill on the grounds that the European officials responsible for it are ignorant of the injurious effects which it will produce in the social and domestic life of the people, that it will lead to the ruin of innocent families by the fabrication of false charges and put a premium on oppression and extortion by subordinate officials, and declaring that it is a direct interference with native religion and usage, and a clear infringement of the Queen's Proclamation of 1858; whether it is the case, as
  248
  stated in the Indian Press, that this Bill has been brought in at the request of Her Majesty's Government, in consequence of a single case of brutality by a bridegroom having occurred during the last 30 years; and whether the Government of India will now be advised to withdraw a measure which is viewed with the gravest apprehensions by large masses of the Indian people?
  MR. PICTON: Before the question is answered I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he is aware or if he has seen a memorandum addressed to the Governor General by 55 lady physicians in reference to a largo number of cases which have come within their own experience, in which they declare in the strongest terms against these marriages?
  MR. S. SMITH: I wish to supplement the questions which have just been asked by another, namely, whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the most intelligent class of Hindoos, and nearly all the Mahommedans, are in favour of raising the age to 12 years?
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: I have been requested by my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for India to reply to this question. The Bill in question was introduced by the Government of India, with a full knowledge of the facts of the case and after very careful consideration. There is no intention of withdrawing it. In regard to the questions of the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton) and the hon. Member for Flintshire (Mr. S. Smith), I am not in a position to answer them, and if further information is required notice had better be given.
  MR. KEAY: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly answer the 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the question.
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: I think the answer I have given covers the whole of the question. It is impossible to enter into details.

  MAGAZINE RIFLES FOR INDIA.
  MR. MARJORIBANKS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the cost of magazine rifles made by contract is correctly stated in the letter from the War Office to the Under Secretary for India, dated 27th June, 1890, namely—

  249
  "The full price of the rifle is £5 12s. 6d., made up as follows: contract price, £5 9s.; butt and fore end (supplied to the contractors free by the War Office), 10½d. and 1s. 7½d. respectively; cost of extra view of certain components by War Office during manufacture of rifle, 1s.; total, £5 12s. 6d. (Note.—The original contract price was £5 10s., it was reduced to £5 9s. on account of extra view.) Accordingly, the total price payable by you for each rifle is £5 12s. 6d., as follows: to the Company, £2 14s. 6d.; to the War Office, £2 18s.; total, £5 12s. 6d; "
  whether the contract price for bayonets and scabbards is 13s. and 2s. 2½d. respectively; and what is the estimated cost of bayonets and scabbards made in the Government factories?
  *MR. E. STANHOPE: The prices at that time are accurately stated in the Question; but since the letter in which they occur was written, some small savings have been effected as regards parts of the magazine rifle. The last balance sheet of the Ordnance Factories shows the cost of sword bayonets as 12s., and of scabbards as 3s. 8d., but it is believed that the two together are now made for about 14s. 3d.

  COST OF CIVIL JUSTICE IN INDIA.
  MR. CONTBEARE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether the Secretary of State has yet ascertained whether any Papers relating to the cost of civil justice in India can usefully be published; and if the Inquiry promised in June 1890 has resulted in the finding of such Papers, whether they will be placed in the hands of hon. Members?
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON (for Sir J. GORST): I presume that the hon. Member refers to an answer given to the late Mr. Bradlaugh in July last. I can only repeat, in answer to the present question, the information given to Mr. Bradlaugh in a letter from the India Office in December last, namely, that the whole subject of the Bengal Judicial Establishments is under consideration; that the proposals of the Government of India have not yet been submitted to the Secretary of Stats in Council; and that, therefore, the correspondence is not in a state to be presented as a Parliamentary Return.
  MR. CONYBEARE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether definite information may be shortly expected?
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: No, Sir, I am unable to say.

  BOMBAY SALT ACT.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether the Secretary of State will direct the Government of Bombay to so amend the new Bombay Salt Act that it shall not be possible for such acts as the boiling of water containing salt, duly purchased, accidentally spilled therein, or the boiling down of dirty salt, bought openly in the bazaar, to purify it, to be described as the "manufacture" of salt, rendering parties doing these things liable to punishment; (2) whether a recent judgment of the High Court of Bombay, while holding the punishment inflicted for the offences described above was excessive, and that the sentences should be nominal only, yet held that they were offences under the Act, punishable with fine and imprisonment; (3) whether, in legislation relating to the Government, salt monopoly in India prior to the Bombay Act of 1890, similar provisions were contained; and (4) whether in other parts of the Empire Salt Acts contain like clauses; and, if not, why such provisions should be required for Bombay?
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON (for Sir J. GORST): The attention of the Government of Bombay has been called to the subject by the questions which have been asked in this House. The Secretary of State does not consider it necessary to issue the directions suggested. The answer to the second paragraph of the question is—yes. The answer to the third paragraph is that the provisions of the present Bombay Act for the protection of the Salt Revenue are more precise than those contained in the former Act; and the answer to the fourth paragraph is—yes.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I am not quite satisfied by the answer of the right hon. Gentleman whether any steps are being taken by the Indian Government to prevent the evils complained of.
  *SIR J. FERGUSSON: I believe the Secretary of State considers that the law as it is administered is satisfactory.

  TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION IN IRELAND.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to postpone until Monday the question of which I have given notice to

  251
  ask the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether any grants were made towards technical instruction in Ireland daring the year 1890 under the Technical Instruction Act of 1889; if so, for what particular branches of such instruction these grants were made, and what was the total amount in each branch; whether any steps have been taken to bring the facilities thus offered under the notice of those in Ireland for whom they were intended; if so, of what nature; if no such steps have been taken whether he will see what can be done in this direction; what was the total amount of grants for handicrafts or manual instruction in national schools in Ireland during the year 1890; and how many schools shared in these grants?

  THE BALLYSHANNON UNION.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Guardians of the Ballyshannon Union have this year accepted a tender for printing and advertising largely in excess of the amount which a competent local contractor offered to do the work for; and if the Local Government Board has had its attention drawn to this waste of the rates in a Union for which relief works are being claimed?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I believe that the fact stated in the question is correct. The matter came at the time before the Local Government Board, who sent a warning to the Guardians.

  WEST DONEGAL MAILS.
  MR. MACNEILL: I beg-to ask the Postmaster General if he is aware that the mails for the entire West Donegal district are delayed at Strabane for four hours, although a train starts from Strabane to Donegal after the arrival of the mail train at Strabane; what is the reason of this delay; and whether he will take steps for the speedy transmission of the mails from Strabane to Donegal?
  *MR. RAIKES: The mails leaving Dublin in the morning for West Donegal are at present subject to the delay complained of, because the Department has not yet been able to arrange for the use of the train to which the hon. Member
  252
  refers. I hope, however, that the matter may soon be satisfactorily adjusted.

  IRISH RELIEF WORKS.
  MR. DEASY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that a large number of men in the Westport Union have been refused employment on the relief works; and, if so, whether he will give directions that all deserving applicants shall be engaged?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Every effort is made to secure that persons in absosolute need of relief, and that they alone, are employed upon relief works. The employment lists are revised from time to time, and the cases of all applicants receive careful consideration.
  MR. THEODORE FRY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he has come to any conclusion in reference to the extension of the railway from Loughrea to Woodford, which has been brought before his notice by memorial and deputation from the district, and which would not only provide work but be a great permanent boon to that isolated district? I also beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he is aware that only a small proportion of the men on Achill Island have been given relief work, and if it is his intention to increase the number so employed, or to distribute assistance in other ways, they and their families being on the verge of starvation; and, if it be true that only about one-fourth of the needful quantity of seed potatoes have been applied for, that a good many of these have been found to be rotten, and that, in many cases, the good ones are being consumed for food; and, if so, whether he can take any steps to remedy this state of things?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There are four relief works in Achill Island, giving employment on February 28th to 317 persons. Should it be deemed necessary to open further relief works on the Island, or to afford employment to a larger number of persons, the matter will, of course, be carefully considered. The Poor Law Guardians of Westport Union estimated that the quantity of seed potatoes required for Achill Electoral Division would be 58 tons 18 cwt., and that the number of occupiers requiring seed would be 172, giving an average of

  253
  about 6 2–3 cwt. of seed potatoes to each occupier. The Inspectors are satisfied, after making careful inquiries, that the seed is good, with the exception of some damaged bags which have not been distributed.
  MR. THEODORE FRY: Does the right hon. Gentleman intend to take any steps to ascertain the need for relief?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That is not so easy a matter as the hon. Gentleman seems to imagine. I am carefully watching in order to see whether it is necessary to set additional relief works going.
  MR. J. E. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the distress prevailing among the numerous small farmers in the Kiltullagh and Ballinlough Electoral Divisions of the Castlerea Union, county Roscommon; and, whether the poor people of that district may hope for some mitigation of their suffering by the opening of relief works on an early day?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The position of this Union is engaging the attention of the Government.
  MR. SEXTON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the attention of the Government has been drawn to the acutedistress in Ranafushe, Loughanoran, and Ranamona, in Anagany district, county Donegal; whether he is aware that in these localities fever prevails, deaths are extraordinarily numerous, 875 people are left without potatoes or other food, credit is exhausted, debts amount to an average of about. £10 per family, and the inquiry by the police many weeks ago has only resulted in assistance being given to 2 per cent. of the famishing population; and whether the Government will adopt prompt measures for the saving of life by affording immediate employment in the neighbourhood?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The West Coast of Donegal has caused considerable anxiety to the Government, and its condition is being carefully watched. It has not, so far, been found necessary to start relief works in the district of Anagry.
  MR. DALTON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the description of the
  254
  state of Lower Templecrone, County Donegal, contained in a letter to the Berry Journal of the 27th February and signed "J. O'Donnell, Ranafast," is substantially accurate; whether the Reports of the police show that there is great want and destitution in the Electoral Division of Anagry, particularly Ranafast; whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the Report of his Inspector concerning these districts; and whether he can give any assurance that steps will be taken to meet the great distress in this locality?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It is the case that there is poverty among the helpless families in Lower Templecrone. Their eases are under consideration.

  POST OFFICE CLEARING HOUSE, DUBLIN.
  MR. J. E. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether the seven hours rule in the Savings Bank Department in London will apply to women employed in the Clearing House branch, Dublin; and whether, in view of the fact that women employed in the former Department in London receive a minimum salary of £100, whilst those employed in the latter in Dublin receive only£70, any arrangements are in contemplation to bring the rules of payment more nearly to an equality?
  *MR. RAIKES: In reply to the hon. Member, I have to say that I have not yet come to any decision on the subject alluded to in the question.

  IRISH CONSTABULARY FORCE FUND.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he can explain why, although the subscribers to the Constabulary Force Fund have repeatedly pressed for an account of the income and expenditure of that fund, no such account has ever been rendered; what was the amount of the Force Fund in 1863, and what it amounts to now; and whether the authorities have any objection to a public audit of this public fund as requested by the Petition of the pensioners presented to this House in 1888?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Member appears to be under a misapprehension in supposing that any general desire has been expressed by the

  255
  subscribers to the Constabulary Force Fund for the rendering to them an account of the fund. Some memorials from pensioners were received by the Constabulary Authorities on the subject, but on investigation it was found that fully one-half of the memorialists were not subscribers to the fund, and had no pecuniary interest in it. There were no accumulations in this fund in 1863. The present accumulated fund dates from the Constabulary Act of 1866, and now amounts to £146,000; but, as explained in reply to former questions, this falls far short of the sum required to meet the benefits promised by the Government to contributors, and to secure those benefits the Government are about to ask Parliament to give a sum of £150,000 to be added to the present capital of the fund. The fund is regularly audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

  BELFAST TRAMWAY LINES.
  MR. DE COBAIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if his attention has been drawn to a serious collision in Donegall Street, Belfast, between a tramcar and another vehicle at the narrow part of the street where the provisions of the Act of Parliament had been infringed in the laying of the tram lines, and, as loss of life had quite recently taken place at the same point, would he impress upon the Local Authority the necessity for securing greater safety for the ordinary traffic of the city at this and other equally dangerous points?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The only collision between a tramcar in Belfast and another vehicle, which has come under the notice of the police, occurred in Royal Avenue. The matter subsequently came before the Recorder on appeal, who acquitted the tramway officials of all blame. The other case to which my hon. Friend refers is probably that of a schoolboy, who was run over by a passing tramcar when jumping off the foot of another tramcar, on which he had been riding surreptitiously. The coroner's jury found the death to be accidental. I have no doubt the Local Authority give due attention to all such cases that come before them.

  THE PAWNBROKING TRADE IN BELFAST.
  MR. DE COBAIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if his attention has been drawn to the fact that some persons engaged in the pawn broking trade in Belfast had adopted the practice of discounting Army Pension Papers, though such Papers distinctly indicated the illegality of such a course; and whether he would give instructions to the Royal Irish Constabulary to test the validity of these charges, and to take such steps against those who might be found guilty of the offence as would check the recurrence of such a practice?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am informed that some pawnbrokers in Belfast have adopted the practice referred to in the question. The police have made efforts to obtain sufficient grounds for a prosecution, but hitherto without success. I shall, however, consider what further steps should be taken.

  LOANS TO IRISH TOWN COMMISSIONERS.
  MR. KNOX: I beg to ask the Secretary of the Treasury whether the Treasury refuse to allow loans to Town Commissioners in Ireland for public improvements to be made on the same terms, namely, the repayment of principal and interest by an annuity, as loans to landlords and farmers for private improvements; and, if so, for what reason?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. JACKSON,): Loans to landlords and farmers are made under a special Act of Parliament which prescribe the terms of repayment. Loans to Town Commissioners are made under an entirely different principle, and I see no reason why the two should be assimilated.

  JUSTICES OF THE PEACE (COUNTY CAVAN).
  MR. KNOX: I beg to ask the Attorney General for Ireland whether the Government will consent to the Motion for a Return, Justices of the Peace (County Cavan), which is on the Paper for this day?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,): It would be contrary to precedent to

  257
  give all the details asked for in this Return, but there is no objection to give a Return of the names and occupations of the Magistrates; and a Return of the Magistrates who attend Petty Sessions may be added if required.
  MR. KNOX: Why does the right hon. Gentleman refuse to give the rateable value?
  MR. MADDEN: It would be contrary to precedent.

  BELFAST PRISON.
  MR. SEXTON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what has been the result of the Conference between the Irish Government and the Irish Prisons Board, concerning the unanimous protest of the Corporation of Belfast against the projected alterations of Her Majesty's Prison at Belfast, upon the several grounds that they would create an eyesore, destroy the frontage line, and deteriorate the value of property in the district?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have suggested that there shall be a Joint Committee or some analogous body, and in the deliberation of which representatives, both of the Corporation and the Prison Board, shall take part to consider this difficult question. I am in hopes that this plan may lead to a satisfactory settlement of the matter.

  THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN.
  MR. DE COBAIN: I beg to ask the Attorney General for Ireland whether he is aware that complaints have been made by suitors and the public generally in regard to the delay on the part of the officials of the different Courts connected with the Pour Courts, Dublin, in making up the orders and decrees given by the different Judges, almost a month, and sometimes even two months, elapsing in getting out the order; whether the different Law Societies have repeatedly complained of such delays; and, whether, in view of the fact that the hours of attendance at the Four Courts are from 11.30 to 3.30, whereas in London the Judges sit from 10.30 to 4.30, some steps will be taken at an early date to ensure the greater despatch of business at these Courts, in the interest of the professional gentlemen practising there and of the public at large?
  MR. MADDEN: I am not able to accept the statements of fact contained in
  258
  the question of my hon. Friend, either as to the hours of attendance at the Four Courts, or as to the existence of repeated complaints of delay on the part of the officials of this Court. As regards the Common Law Divisions I find that no complaints have been made on the score of delay, and that orders are issued within a day or two after they have been made by the Judges. As regards the Chancery Division the matter appears to have been brought before the Lord Chancellor by the Council of the Incorporated Law Society in November, 1890, and is referred to in their last Report, from which it would appear that their complaints are directed rather against the course of procedure in this division than against the action of the officials of the Courts. I am informed that no complaints have been made since that date. From the nature of orders in the Chancery Division, it would be impossible to have them drawn up and issued as rapidly as the ordinary run of Common Law Orders, and I have no reason to believe that suitors have any just ground of complaint on the score of delay.

  CASTLE ISLAND, CORK.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland can he state the cost of keeping three policemen on Castle Island, adjacent to Schull, County Cork; and if the rent is annually £96?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Constabulary authorities report that no additional cost is incurred in the matter referred to. The landlord provides house accommodation and other requisites free of charge.

  MISS QUANE.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with reference to the case of Miss Quane, who has been sent to gaol in Tipperary on the charge of "hooting the police," would he explain in what the alleged crime consisted, and under what law it is punishable; upon what evidence was Miss Quane convicted; and by whom was the sentence imposed upon her?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The woman referred to was summoned at the time for being one of a disorderly crowd which stoned the police in December, 1889.

  259
  She did not obey the summons. A warrant was thereupon issued, but she evaded arrest until the 23rd ult. She was brought up before a Court of ordinary Petty Sessions, the Bench consisting of five Magistrates. The evidence of the police was uncontradicted. The Magistrates ordered the woman to find bail to keep the peace, and to be of good behaviour. This she refused to do, electing to go to prison in default. The committing Justices, however, subsequently recommended the case to the clemency of the Lord Lieutenant, on the ground that the offence was committed so long ago. The woman has accordingly been released from custody.

  MORTGAGES ON IRISH AGRICULTURAL LAND.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has any statistics showing the amount of interest requisite to pay the mortgages existing on Irish agricultural land, the average rate of interest charged for these mortgages, and the amount of the annuities charged on agricultural land in Ireland which are paid by the owners of the land; and, if so, whether he can present this information to the House?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have no information which would enable me to answer this question.

  THE LARNE AND STRANRAER ROUTE.
  MR. SEXTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury what is the result of the consideration given by the Treasury to the proposals of the Postmaster General respecting the Larne and Stranraer route?
  MR. JACKSON: No, Sir; no decision has been arrived at, but the matter is under consideration.

  AMERICAN LARDS.
  MR. SEXTON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether after the evidence that has been given at the hearing of the recent prosecutions against Messrs. Topping and Walkington, Belfast, concerning the misleading description that is branded upon American lard, to the effect that such lard is sold in England as Irish, the Attorney General for England will direct the police to enforce in Bristol, and in the other English towns in which
  260
  this lard is sold, the provisions of "The Merchandise Marks Act, 1887?"
  SIR R. WEBSTER: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to answer this question. I have not seen the evidence, but I will communicate with the Attorney General for Ireland, and if I find that the evidence is sufficient to warrant a prosecution I will take that step.

  DEPREDATIONS BY FRENCH FISHERMEN.
  MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that numerous complaints have been made by the fishermen engaged in the fisheries off Castletown, Berehaven, of constant attacks and depredations committed on them and their property by French fishermen cruising in large luggers; and whether the Admiralty, in view of the fact that the mackerel fishing season is now at hand, will despatch two or three well-fitted cruisers to protect the interests of the fishermen so attacked?
  *LORD G. HAMILTON: I have not heard of any complaints made by the fishermen in the neighbourhood of Castletown, Berehaven, of depredations by French fishermen. There are at present two sailing cruisers at Bantry, and they will shortly be re-inforced by a steam cruiser. The services of all these vessels will be available, if required, to maintain order.

  THE SCOMBER AND MACKEREL FISHING SYNDICATE.
  MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether information has reached him that the agents and employés of "The Scomber and Mackerel Fishing Syndicate" are in the habit of molesting parties suspected of buying fish from vessels fishing off the South-Western Coast of Ireland; and, if so, under what authority they interfere with persons engaged in their lawful calling?
  *LORD G. HAMILTON: No Report on this subject has been received, either by the Admiralty or by the Irish Government.

  MR. SAMUEL JAGOE, J. P.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware

  261
  that Mr. Samuel Jagoe, J. P., at the Petty Sessions held at Ballydehob, County Cork, 16th January last, ad indicated in a case in which he had himself been examined as a witness, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Mr. Notter, J.P.; whether complaints have reached him that the deafness of Mr. Jagoe, who, though about 75 years old, has been only recently appointed to the Magistracy, is a serious inconvenience to the litigants; and whether it is intended to take any action in the matter?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am informed that, previous to the hearing of the case, the gentleman mentioned had been sitting as a Magistrate on the Bench; and, after giving evidence, he resumed his seat there. He has, however, assured the Lord Chancellor that he had no intention of taking part in the adjudication, and that, in fact, when the case was called on, he stated in open Court that he would not adjudicate upon it. No allegation, either as to deafness or as to inconvenience to litigants, has been made to the Lord Chancellor in reference to this gentleman.

  CHARGE AGAINST AN IRISH POLICE CONSTABLE.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the fact that a police constable named Connell, stationed at Schull, County Cork, deliberately loaded his rifle in the presence of a large assemblage of people returning from a meeting which was addressed by Mr. William O'Brien, M.P.; whether he is also aware that Connell, with another police constable, followed Mr. William O'Brien from Schull to Bantry, carrying a loaded rifle in his hand; and whether police constables, when following Irish Members of Parliament, are ordered to carry loaded firearms?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I must ask the hon. Gentleman to put down the question for a later day.

  PRIVATE BILL FEES.
  SIR J. GOLDSMID: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the fees paid to the Houses of Commons and Lords by promoters of Private Bills bring in a considerable
  262
  Revenue to the Treasury; if so, what the amount was last year; and further, whether he will consider the advisability of proposing to the House a reduction of the present scale?
  *MR. JACKSON: I am informed that the fees received on Private Bills in the House of Commons during the financial year 1889–90 amounted to about£24,800. The fees received in the House of Lords were probably about the same amount. It is not in contemplation to make any reduction in the present scale of fees.
  *SIR J. GOLDSMID: What is the balance of profit to the Treasury on these fees?
  *MR. JACKSON: It would be rather difficult to state accurately.
  *SIR J. GOLDSMID: Does the First Lord of the Treasury think it right that the expenses of the House of Commons should be paid by the promoters of Private Bills?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I am afraid that the answer to that question requires consideration; but I do not think that Private Bill promoters are the most necessitous and deserving class of the community.

  ROMAN CATHOLIC DISABILITIES.
  MR. SUMMERS: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Government will consider the advisability of referring to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council the determination of the question whether Roman Catholics are or are not eligible to hold the offices of Lord Chancellor of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the same manner in which it is proposed to take the opinion of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council with regard to the state of the Marriage Law in Malta?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: The Government are not prepared to adopt the course suggested by the hon. Member.

  TELEGRAPHIC COMMUNICATION WITH SOUTH AMERICA.
  MR. OCTAVIUS V. MORGAN: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the submarine telegraph communications on the West Coast of South America from Valparaiso running North are in the control of a United States Company domiciled in New York, and the land line (the Trans Andean)

  263
  from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres is owned by a Chile Argentine Company, domiciled in Valparaiso; whether the Despatches recently received from the British Admiral commanding the Squadron on the West Coast of South America and from the British Minister in Chile reached London by either of these routes, and whether these Despatches are in cypher or in ordinary language; and if Her Majesty's Government will use their influence with the Government of Chile to permit commercial messages to come freely?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: Part of the Northern line is in the hands of an English Company, part of an American, the line to Buenos Ayres in those of a local company. The Despatches received from Her Majesty's Minister could only come by one of these routes; they were in cypher; some from the Naval Commander-in-Chief were sent from ports in Peru. Chile is not a member of the Telegraph Union, and is therefore unrestricted as regards telegraph communications; but even if she were, the Convention provides for the stoppage of private messages in code or cypher when it is considered to be contrary to the interests of the State that they should be sent. In these circumstances, Her Majesty's Government do not feel that they can at present make any representations on the Subject to the Chilian Government.

  BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA COMPANY.
  SIR HORACE DAVEY: I bog to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government have received from the British South Africa Company a Minute or Memorandum of the terms upon which they are prepared, in the event of their obtaining' possession of the territory claimed by the Mozambique Company, to confirm the grants and concessions made by that company: and, if so, what is the effect of it; whether it is the fact that the British South Africa Company cannot, by their charter, acquire powers of administration over any territory by Treaty without the approval of the Secretary of State; and whether the Secretary of State will make it a condition of his approval of the acquisition by the British South Africa Company of powers of government and administration over Manicaland
  264
  by any Treaty that the British South Africa Company respect, and confirm all grants and concessions made by the Mozambique Company in favour of or now vested in British subjects?
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: No such Minute or Memorandum has been received as is mentioned in the first paragraph. The British South Africa Company can acquire powers of administration by agreement, but they cannot exercise them without the approval of the Secretary of State. Whatever may be the arrangements made or sanctioned by Her Majesty's Government with regard to Manica, the lawfully acquired rights of individuals and companies will receive every consideration.

  LODGING HOUSE KEEPERS.
  MR. JOHNSTON(on behalf of Lord HENRY BRUCE): I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the statement is correct that lodging house keepers have been charged 9d. in the £1 as formerly; and, if so, what steps he proposes to take in order that the amount in excess should be refunded?
  MR. GOSCHEN: In order to obtain the concession granted by the Act of last Session, lodging house keepers were required to have their names registered before July I last, a date subsequently extended to August 31, in order that ample notice might be given of the requirements of the law. It would be impossible to make any concession now in favour of those who, under these circumstances, failed to comply with the conditions demanded by the law. But, of course, they will be able to secure the benefits of the lower charge in future by registering themselves each year within the proper time.

  DISTRESS IN DONEGAI.
  MR. HARRISON(on behalf of Mr. Dalton): I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that there is acute distress in the parish of Gartan, County Donegal; and, whether he intends to take any steps to alleviate it?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The condition of the locality mentioned is receiving the careful attention of the Government.

  METROPOLITAN WATER BILLS.
  MR. HERMON-HODGE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board a question of which I have given him private notice. It is whether, considering the misapprehension that exists, he can inform the House what locus standi the County Councils will have to appear before the Select Committee appointed to consider the Metropolitan Water Bill?
  *MR. RITCHIE: The Water Bills have been referred to a Hybrid Committee with instructions to hear petitioners. There is no question of locus in the matter, and indeed the County Councils will have the right to appear. I understand that Petitions were presented yesterday against each Bill.

  THE EASTER HOLIDAYS.
  MR. GARDNER: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether there is any truth in what has appeared in the newspapers with regard to the duration of the Easter Holidays?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: No, Sir; no decision has been come to on the subject.

  RAILWAY RATES PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS.
  SIR R. PAGET: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether it is the fact that Saturday next is the last day for the presentation of Petitions against the Railway Rates Provisional Order Bills, and whether the right hon. Gentleman will state the intentions of the Government in reference to enlarging the period?
  *SIR M. HICKS BEACH: I do not know whether Saturday is the latest day for the presentation of Petitions, but, if it is, I propose to ask the House to pass some Resolution like that it has passed with reference to the Water Bill, allowing all petitioners to be heard who apply five clear days before the opening of the Committee.

  SENTRIES IN LONDON.
  VISCOUNT WOLMER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War how many soldiers of the Foot Guards are now stationed in London, and how many of these each day are not
  266
  available for drill or other purposes of military training, from the cause of either going on or coming off guard; and whether the present posts of sentries on the public buildings of London have been selected for military or for political reasons?
  MR. E. STANHOPE: There are at present 2,449 non-commissioned officers and men of the Foot Guards stationed in London, of whom 324 are detailed for guard duties. The sentries at public buildings are not posted for purely military purposes.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  MR. F. S. STEVENSON: May I ask whether there is any intention on the part of the Government to attempt to proceed to-night with the Electors' Registration (Acceleration) Bill.
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: Only with the consent of the House.
  MR. H. GARDNER: Is it intended to proceed with the Bill before Easter?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: It cannot take precedence of Supply or other urgent Public Business. It is for hon. Members themselves to say whether it should be taken after 12 o'clock.
  MR. J. MORLEY: What is to be the business next week?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: Supply.
  MR. J. MORLEY: What Supply?
  *MR. W. H. SMITH: I am not able to say positively. We shall go on with the Supplementary Estimates until they are concluded.

  PRIVILEGE—MR. ATKINSON AND THE DAILY NEWS.
  MR. ATKINSON: I wish, Mr. Speaker, to raise a question of Privilege. I desire to call the attention of the House to the fact that I, as a Member of this House, was libelled yesterday by the chief editor or someone in the office of a daily print called the Daily News. I am told that it is a paper printed for the use of Gladstonians, and is read by them; but some of my friends may read the paper too, and, as it imputes to me dishonourable conduct as a Member of the House, I think you will admit that it may impute the same conduct to any other Member of this House to-morrow. The libel is as follows:—

  267
  "At a late hour on Monday night Mr. Atkinson moved the House into Committee on his Marriage of Nonconformists (Attendance of Registrars) Bill. This was contrary to an understanding that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee. The only way out of the difficulty in which the House now finds itself is that the Bill shall pass through Committee pro formâ, to be re-committed to a Select Committee, and that course will probably be taken."
  I do not often read that paper, but yesterday morning some kind friend sent it to me. I immediately wrote to the editor, and sent a special messenger with the letter. I quoted the words that he had printed, and then I said that what he had stated was a falsehood. I said also that I should be very glad if he would inform his informants of this, as, though they seemed to know so much of what was going on in the House, their information was quite worthless, and worse than worthless. Then I wound up most politely by saying that, although I was a political opponent, I always fought fairly, if as strongly as I could, and I hoped that if in future he dealt with me again he would try to deal with me fairly. I also said that the bearer would wait for a reply. The bearer came back and said there was no reply. So I thought that perhaps the editor did not like my note, and I would wait to see it in print. I have turned the paper over this morning in every direction, but there is nothing of my letter in the paper. If a man tells a falsehood, wittingly or unwittingly, when he is told that it is a falsehood it is his duty to confess it, and it was the editor's duty to give me an opportunity of contradicting the falsehood. I now say that when on Monday I came to the House to do my duty I did not know that I was entitled to take the Committee stage of my Bill, but I was informed of the fact by friends. I have consistently declined to go to a Select Committee, because I have been obstructed in that way for six years, and because I do not want to be obstructed again. After having obtained the Committee stage in the most regular manner, after consulting the clerks at the Table, my friends in the House and other hon. Members on the other side, whom I told in, I hope, a straightforward and gentlemanly manner what I was going to do—after doing all this it is hard to be held up as a man who had taken advantage
  268
  of the House by taking a stage when those hon. Members who desired to get home early had gone away. If I would do a thing of that kind I am not fit to sit in this House, either on this side or on that side. I wish, Mr. Speaker, to move that the editor be brought here to the bar of the House and made to apologise. If I had told a falsehood to anyone I would apologise, and I think the editor ought to. My right hon. Friend the leader of the House will now regret that he did not help me to carry my measure to make people sign their names to the leaders they write because now we should know who wrote this libel, and in future we should be able to regard that person as one who has told a falsehood. Under these circumstances, I put myself in the hands of the House, not as Mr. Atkinson, because what I say and do has nothing to do with it, but as a Member of Parliament engaged in the performance of his constitutional duties, and who was actually legislating by your favour at the time, and was doing his duty to his constituents and pushing a Bill which has been obstructed persistently for six years by those who ought to have helped it forward. The Attorney General will confirm what I say, that on that very night I was appealed to by one of my right hon. Friends—before the Attorney General jumped up—to go into a Select Committee, and I said "No, I would not," for I could not agree to it. Therefore, under such circumstances, I ask Mr. Speaker, and I ask the House generally, to be good enough to protect the privileges not only of myself, but of the other 699 Members at all events.
  MR. W. H. SMITH: I trust my hon. Friend will be satisfied with the statement which he has made to the House. Undoubtedly, it is a painful matter for him to be accused of dishonourable conduct in a newspaper of considerable position; but I am sure greater experience and knowledge of the practice of Parliament and of the reports, which are usually so very accurate, of proceedings in this House will induce him to overlook what I believe to be a mistake and not a wilful misrepresentation on the part of the journal in question; and to accept the assurance which I give him that I distinctly understood he refused to allow this Bill to be referred to a Select Committee, and that the course

  269
  he took on the occasion in question was one which he was entitled to take, and certainly was not in derogation of his duties as a Member of Parliament.

MOTION.
  CONDUCT OF THE POLICE AT SILKSWORTH.

    MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
    MR. STOREY, Member for Sunderland, rose in his place, and asked leave to move I he Adjournment of the House, for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely, "the illegal and un justifiable conduct of the police during the recent evictions at Silksworth, near Sunderland, and particularly on Wednesday, the 25th February, 1891"; but the pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. SPEAKER called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than 40 Members having accordingly risen:—
    MR. STOREY: The circumstances I will venture to bring before the I louse took place within two miles of my own home, and the victims of the police were mainly constituents of my own. The right hon. Gentleman just now suggested to me that it was possible for the Joint Standing Committee of the County Council and the Magistrates of Durham to make an inquiry into this matter. I fully grant that that is so, but I would venture to point out to him that that is not sufficient under the circumstances which I shall be able to lay before the House. The precise facts as to the County of Durham may be discussed by the Joint Committee, but the constitutional question involved in the circumstances which occurred at the recent evictions is one which is not fit for a Committee to deal with, but one which should rather be dealt with by this House. I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland left his place just as I rose, because I wanted to assure him that he will find in these matters I am going to bring before the House plentiful proof of how the evil seed which he has sown in Ireland has already taken root, and brought forth fruit in our own country of England. I, of course, shall not
    270
    venture to trouble the House with the whole of the circumstances connected with these evictions. I can assure the House that I will utter no word, which would at all imply any opinion that I may have as to the rights or wrongs of these evictions. My only interest in the matter from the first has been to try to get a trade difficulty brought to an honourable settlement, and I will even venture to appeal to au hon. Friend of mine—whom I am glad to see opposite—I would say to him, "Let us leave on one side the whole of the circumstances connected with the trade disputes;" and I ask, when he has heard the statement of facts I am able to bring before the House, will he not join with me in pleading with the Home Secretary that some more notice should be taken of this serious question than would probably be taken by the Joint Committee in the County of Durham? I say in my Motion that the principal illegalities were committed on the 25th February, during what the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary was pleased to call "the batoning by the police of a riotous mob." I would venture just to inform the House, with a view to the understanding of the whole question, that the illegalities on the part of the police by no means commenced on the 25th February, 1891. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton asked a question here the other night as to whether the under-bailiffs who had been employed by the police to carry out these evictions had not been detained by the police. The right hon. Gentleman, I suppose—in fact, I know—acting upon information which he had received, unless I misunderstand his answer entirely, said that no person employed in these evictions had been illegally detained by the police. The right hon. Gentleman seems to contradict that. He is reported to have said so, and so I understood it. I am glad, however, to hear, even before I begin, that he does not intend to maintain the denial that he made to the hon. Member for Northampton the other day. I assert, and I wish him to understand that I assert, that the police and public officials of the community, paid by the community, deliberately kept men who wanted to escape from the work they were engaged in—this force in the ranks forced them to do work which they

    271
    expressed a desire to escape from. They took them under escort down the yard, and lodged them in a room in a house and kept them there, preventing them from leaving, though again and again they attempted to do so, and they prevented them by force. I make that assertion to the right hon. Gentleman, and I venture to think that when I give him the grounds on which I make the statement he will not for a second time reply in this House that no one was illegally detained by the police. I will interpolate this remark. I do not wish to make use of any strong adjectives, but I beseech the House to believe that whatever adjectives I use I shall be willing both in my place here and elsewhere to produce legal proof to justify. Will the right hon. Gentleman just listen to this statement I am about to make? I will read from a copy of the depositions made by the under-bailiffs or, as we call them in the North of England, "Candymen." These are copies of depositions taken by a Tory solicitor well-known in the North, and a thoroughly upright and hon. Member of the legal profession. I will only trouble the House with a few sentences which relate to the precise point upon which I am speaking. One of the men says—
    "When I entered the first house it was occupied by a man and his wife, and others. I said, 'Here, Boss? we do not want to do this. Open the back door and let us out.' He was going to do so when two policemen prevented him."
    A little further on he says—
    "Some of the men tried to get away on the road. I saw them try to get away, and I saw them dragged back by the police."
    A little further on he says—
    "We were then marched off between the police. They said we should not leave, and I was afraid to break away."
    He also says—
    "We were at the gates stopped by the police, who stretched their arms across and prevented us from leaving."
    I hope the House will understand who these men were. They were not pit men or riotous men from Sunderland, but they were men actually employed by the police to carry out the evictions, and I assert here in my place that they were illegally and with violence detained by the police, and locked
    272
    up and kept from exercising their perfect freedom. Here is another case. A second man says—
    "I saw two of us trying to get away. A police constable dragged them back. I would have left but I was afraid of the constable. I tried to get out of the back door, but the constable stopped me by getting hold of mo."
    Then comes a third, who says—
    "Barrill' (that is one of the superintendents) took me by the arm and shoved me two or three times towards the door to prevent me from getting out of the house I wanted to escape from. Another police constable got hold of me by the arm and said he would put me in an iron cage, that would do me good for a bit. We said we might as well be in gaol as doing the dirty work we were engaged in. I was thrown out into the middle of the road by two policemen."
    Another one swears—
    "I saw several get away, but the police constables got them and brought them back down the back streets, and I saw Bradshaw try to go, but he was pulled back by a police constable."
    A fifth man says—
    "When I got back I tried to get away from the gate, but a policeman stopped me. I said, I want to go home.' The policeman said, 'You had better go back again.' I said, 'I won't.' The policeman then shoved me away up the yard and locked the gate upon me."
    I shall be very glad to make a present of these copies to the Homo Secretary, and I will ask him to get up and say whether the police, whose only function there was to see the evictions carried out and protect the evictors, were acting legally and constitutionally and properly in forcing these men against their will to evict and in preventing them by violence from escaping. I would not have troubled the Home Secretary but that I know he is entirely misinformed by official statements, which give half the truth, but not the whole truth. If he makes an independent inquiry, he will find and, as a constitutional lawyer, he will admit that the liberties of these people were most improperly dealt with by those who ought to have been the guardians of those liberties. The spirit of illegality has been fostered among the police in certain quarters, and this spirit of illegality is not discountenanced by the Authorities, and this spirit led to the unfortunate incident to which I am now calling attention. The circumstances are in a nutshell. The police and "candy men"—a jocular term applied

    273
    to the eviction men—had done their brutal work, and were marching back to what will always be called "Candy Hall," which is on the road to Sunderland. When the police and "candy men" left, a great number of my constituents—not a mob, but a number of respectable men, with their wives and children—went with them. These people, when the evictions were over, walked beside the police towards their homes in Sunderland. They walked, laughing and talking together and with the police; and as they left, a number of stones were thrown. The right hon. Gentleman will not find me getting up and saying that the police had no pro vocation. I know, having been in the village, though I was not on the spot at the time, that the police were subjected to some provocation. Some stones were thrown—a considerable number of stones were thrown—but the police and these people marched on, the stones coming, as is always the case in such circumstances, from the outskirts of the crowd, and from a lot of wild young people in the fields; but around the police were some hundreds of men, women, and children accompanying them, and in conversation, some of them, with the police returning towards Sunderland. Half way up the road a sergeant broke into a field through the dyke, and caught three boys, and gave them a thrashing for throwing stones, and certainly, I think, they richly deserved what they got. I am not talking of the legality of the proceeding, no doubt anyone of us would have done the same under the circumstances. As soon as this was done, a number of girls and young men on the outskirts of the crowd took up clods of earth and stones—the right hon. Gentleman says bolts and rivets—but I do not find that was the fact——
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,): Rivets, not bolts.
    MR. STOREY: Well, there is no substantial difference. But, I say, according to all independent information obtainable on the spot, the statement is not true. But, however, these clods of earth and stones were thrown from the outskirts of the crowd, and then the Superintendent halted his men, faced about, and, without any warning to the people, ordered
    274
    the police to charge. Now, I wish the House to realise the state of things at the moment. It was a narrow road, with rather high hedges on either side, and a crowd of respectable, decent, quiet people were close to the police when the latter were ordered to charge. Now I understand, at least it is the general practice when the military are present to put down anything in the nature of a riotous disturbance, there is considerable hesitation and warning before the military are launched against the people. In many cases the Riot Act is read, and due notice given by Magistrates and officers, so that people may go out of the way; but the police recently, it seems to me, not only in Ireland, but in England, have claimed the right, on being stoned or attacked in any way, to turn on the people, and with batons, which in strong hands are more deadly weapons than swords, beat the people in the most violent fashion. Now, this is a serious matter, and unless the fullest justification can be shown it behoves every lover of liberty in this House to make a diligent inquest as to how it is, and under what conditions, the police exercise such power. If the officer in charge had formed his men across the road in line to prevent the people from coming further, separating the crowd and dividing his force—I believe there were some 150 or 200 police—if he had left the decent, quiet people to go on in front, they would have been able to get out of the scrimmage. Was it not the duty of the police to separate themselves from the people near them in order to get at the stone throwers? But this is what did occur: The police in the front rank rushed down the hill, batoned, struck, and kicked the people immediately near them, while others broke through the hedges on either side and did most unmercifully beat men, women, and children with their staves. Now this is a bold assertion, and I shall be required to bring sufficient evidence to justify such a serious allegation. I happened to arrive on the scene immediately after this business. I wish I had been there at the time. I venture to think I would either have been knocked down by the police or have taken some effective measure to prevent the brutality that occurred. One particular I should mention, the people did

    275
    not resist the charge, there was no attempt at resistance, the people ran hither and thither like sheep before wolves. The police formed up and marched up the road. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Durham, who was there, will be able to state what part he took in the matter, but the people of the village had never left the village. The people from Sunderland were scattered hither and thither, but the people of the village were standing in the village; and I admit that when I arrived there were growlings and cursings amongst them, because the wounded men and women were being brought up from the scene of the attack. No doubt there was a great deal of feeling displayed. My hon. Friend tried to pacify the men, and while he was doing this the police, 250 yards up the road, formed again and charged down upon the villagers who were standing in a crowd. It was then that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Durham, in a most self-sacrificing way, rushed through the crowd towards the police with outstretched arms, begging the police to stop—uttering words which the informant of the right hon. Gentleman has twisted into commendation of the action of the police. Nothing of the sort. He said—
    "Men, you have had provocation, and I admit you have behaved well to us in the village, but for goodness sake do not charge the people again. Keep quiet and leave us to clear the streets."
    It is on this simple statement the imputation is conveyed that he expressed approval of the action of the police. Well, he did pacify the people, and the whole thing ended for the time being. Naturally I shall be asked for my proofs of this serious accusation against the police, and I will give the Home Secretary, not my own statement, but a copy of the depositions made by persons before this respectable Conservative solicitor—persons of good repute and well known in Sunderland. The right hon. Gentleman in his answer seemed to minimise the number of people hurt.
    MR. MATTHEWS: I gave the facts from the information given to me.
    MR. STOREY: Yes, I quite understand the right hon. Gentleman is the victim of misrepresention in the matter, but let me assure him that though it is
    276
    quite true that 30 people had their wounds dressed in the Sunderland Infirmary, at least a dozen others did not get to Sunderland at all, and as a matter of fact, some of these were very seriously wounded. Some 50 persons were hurt, and of these 47 were wounded behind, showing that they were violently struck while trying to get out of the way. Who were these people? I admit if they were part of the "riotous mob from Sunderland," a phrase some hon. Members cheered as if we kept that sort of article in Sunderland—Isay, if these had formed part of a riotous mob then all I could say would be that they had met with the consequences of their action. But these were respectable people, and I will give the right hon. Gentleman briefly their depositions and names so that he may verify them. What does the right hon. Gentleman think of a case like this? Here is a statement of William Burlinson, of 12, Williamson Terrace. Monkwearmouth:—
    "I am a tradesman on my own account—a painter. I went to Silksworth to deliver an estimate for some painting for a builder who had written to me. I saw the police coming. I walked along the road with them. One of the police, James Ware, was a friend of mine. I was talking with him as we went down front the chapel into the 'slack.' About half a dozen stones were thrown, not more. When we were about half way up the bank one of the sergeants dropped behind, went through the hedge into the field, caught three hoys who were throwing stones, and gave them a thrashing with his stick. When he did so I saw a number of persons, mostly girls, right behind, who threw dry earth and stones at the police. The Superintendent called 'halt,' and faced the men round. I was close to the Superintendent, and I never heard him tell the people to go away. My friend said to me, 'Skip out of the road, Bill, there's going to be a row.' I stepped to one side with my hands in my pockets. The police rushed straight at where I was and thrashed me all over the body with a great number of blows so that I am black and blue all over. I was just about losing my senses, and was lying in the ditch, when one of the policeman lifted his baton to strike me. At this moment another policeman running by said, 'Look out Dryden here's another.' Dryden looked round, and then turned and struck me as I lay. He brought his baton down with the full force of his arm on the hack of my head which I had raised, split my head open, and the blood spurted all over me. He said, 'Hush you—take that.' I turned up my eyes to him and saw him distinctly. I was lying in the ditch helpless. I got up and crawled on my hands and knees a few yards further on the road towards Sunderland. The Superintendent was then gathering the men back into the ranks. I had

    277
    dropped on my knees on the roadside, being weak with loss of blood and the blows. Three or four police passed and kicked at me, one of them ran at me and gave me a kick in the hip and said—no, I cannot bring myself to repeat the filthy language used, whatever it was, let it be marked with a dash—'You—take that,' Some women came along and one of them lifted my head up and proceeded to bind it up with her apron; while doing so, another policeman lacked her and kicked me. Some other women lifted me into the 'bus and I was brought away to the Infirmary. My head was split with a wound 2½ inches each way. The doctor dressed my wounds."
    I may tell the Home Secretary that this man, after being out of the Infirmary some days, had to go back again, and is considered to be in a rather critical condition by the doctor who has attended him from the first, I may add, farther, that Mrs. Richardson is prepared to testify that the policeman did strike the man and did insult and strike her while she was engaged in her act of mercy. Now let me give the Home Secretary another instance from the five or six typical cases I select, to show how unjustifiable was the conduct of the police. Here is the case of James Ranigan, of 31, Potts Street, Millfield. Being idle, he says he went to Silksworth on Wednesday and was returning at the same time as the police escort. When the police charged without a moment's notice, he was about ten yards behind the main body. They soon come up to where he was. Though he made every effort to get out of the way, he was knocked down by a blow on the head and tramped upon. He managed to crawl into the dyke with au old man. The first charge was then over. Two superintendents were standing near, and one of them said to him, "Your men from Sunderland are the instigators of this disturbance." He made no reply. A policeman then walked up and struck him twice upon the head, although he was already bleeding. He was also bruised about the arms and body. He then said to the old man: "We had better get back to Sunderland as quickly as we can." To do this they had to go through the policemen. The old man did not attempt this, but Ranigan did and got safely through until reaching the last lot, when an officer said, "Charge him he has not had enough." One constable then struck him on the Lack. A gentleman, wearing a light suit, was
    278
    standing near at the time. Ranigan ran and the officer ran after him and struck him again on the side and back. He is unable to identify any of the officers. Now the Home Secretary said no women were hurt, and only one little girl. Now I saw the little girl, and I do not envy the feelings of that policeman who maltreated her. But there were women struck and kicked. Here is the statement of an elderly woman, the wife of John Southern, of Garden Cottage, Fulwell. She, with her husband and son, had gone out to see the evictions and were in the crowd, peaceably walking along near the police when the charge was made. Her son, a young man of 22, was talking to a constable whom he knew, just before the charge. A constable struck her husband on the back four or five times with a baton. Just as he got out of the road of one, another came and struck him. Five policemen were upon him at one time. The same with her son, who was attacked by six policemen at once, and left on the ground in a pool of blood, as she thought, dead. The sight quite unnerved her, and even to speak of it again brought tears to her eyes. As a boy her son got five stitches in his head, and the beating he got on Wednesday opened them all out again. Dr. Stobo is attending him now. He is able to walk about but is weak from loss of blood. Here again is the experience of an invalid named Thomas Fletcher, of 17, Whitburn Street, Monkwearmouth. Five months ago, whilst working at Messrs. Blumer's shipbuilding yard, an accident befel him which smashed his right elbow so that his arm remained stiff and he could not bend it. He was advised by the surgeon attending him to take plenty of exercise, and in an evil hour for him he, on the Wednesday, walked out towards Silks-worth. He was sitting by the dyke-side, this man with the lame arm who could not have thrown a stone had he wanted to, when the charge was made, and this happened to him: He was struck by half a dozen policemen. His head was broken, the shoulder of the wounded arm was bruised and became swollen; his legs have marks of violence, and there can be no doubt he received very severe treatment. The old wound for which he had been treated for months was brought back to its old state from the damage he

    279
    received. And this innocent man was one of those who formed what is described to the Home Secretary as "a riotous mob from Sunderland." Here is another account from Mr. Ralph Parker, and I am glad to say that I can personally speak as to the respectability of Mr. Ralph Parker, as indeed I can of others who give this evidence. He says he recently belonged to Silksworth, but now lives at Monkwearmouth Colliery. He went up to the former colliery for the purpose of looking after his friends. He was going quietly along the road, and when he saw what was occurring he endeavoured to get out of the way. Whilst doing so he received three blows which knocked him down on the road. A woman ran up to him to lift him up, and was about to take her apron off to dress the wound when another policeman said, "If you don't leave off, you," calling her by the foulest epithet that can be addressed to a woman—" I'll knock you down." The woman fled. Now let me give the evidence of a gentleman who was fortunate enough to escape injury, but he gives an account which I commend to the attention of the Home Secretary. This gentleman, Mr. Edgar Thompson, an Insurance agent, was returning from Silksworth at the time the police were coming from the village, and he saw the charge of the police. Because some persons on the outskirts of the crowd threw stones at the police, they immediately charged the crowd, batoning 300 or 400 persons, and seriously wounding 50 of them, none of whom had taken any part in the stone-throwing. There was no attempt at resistance, no attempt to arrest the stone-throwers, not a single stone-thrower was reached, but because some stones had been thrown the police fell to work with their batons mercilessly beating constituents of mine, in finitely more respectable than the police men who did this dastardly deed. Probably the Home Secretary will say this was done in the heat of passion, they were young fellows, and it is not pleasant to have stones rattling about your ears. But, I say these are men under discipline, and even if they did temporarily get out of control, yet suppose after the men had been brought back into the ranks and half an hour had elapsed, that some of them left the ranks and fell to beating and kicking Her Majesty's subjects,
    280
    would not that be conduct deserving the severest condemnation of every decent man and respector of order? Here is what occurred, and it can be proved by 10 witnesses who, if the police can be identified, are prepared to state these facts. Here is the statement of Robert Brewis, of 51, Hedley-street, Sunderland—
    "I am a miner at Silksworth Colliery, but I live in Sunderland. On Wednesday, February 25th, I wag up at Silksworth, I was in the shed being erected to house the furniture when the charge occurred—"
    I may tell the House that I am absolutely certain the man was there and not in the mêlée, because I was there talking to him, and I know he did not leave the shed until I left, and when I arrived at the scene all the row, or riot, was over and things had quieted down. He started to go home. He fixed the time at ten minutes past two.
    "When I left the village there were five Superintendents of Police."
    I am not sure whether he is quite correct; at any rate, there were five police officers there—
    "One of them said to me, as I was passing, 'If you Sunderland fellows come up to-morrow you will get your heads cracked.' I said, What for? I have as much right on the high road as you.'"
    That is the sort of men we breed in Sunderland; they are not afraid of the police—
    "I went towards Sunderland, and when I got up to Davison's public house—"
    exactly 400 yards from Silksworth—
    "a body of police were standing. I walked past. The police shouted 'You shipyard b——s,' and made signs as if they would thrash them. I ran. Four of them came out of the ranks and ran after me. On" of them struck me on the side of the head as I ran, and knocked me down on my face in the road. When I was down, he kicked me twice; when I got up, he struck me right and left, and knocked me into the hedge. I got up again, and ran for my hat; another policeman struck me; his number, I believe, is 481. I got up and said: 'Mind, I have your number; you will hear from me about this.' I then walked away."
    Unfortunately, the man wanted the number of the second policeman who had hit and kicked him. He went to the Superintendent, who declined to give his name, though he knew it.
    MR. WHARTON: What is the name of the Superintendent?
    MR. STOREY: Superintendent Oliver, who called the men back to the ranks and ordered the sergeant to take their names. The Superintendent, when I applied personally, refused to give the names, and referred me to Colonel White. I did not propose to write to Colonel White, feeling it was the duty of the Superintendent to disclose the names of the officers who were charged with assault. But the point to which I wish to call attention is this—All this occurred 40 minutes after what the right hon. Gentleman calls a riot. No less than six persons saw the whole of the circumstances, and can prove that the man did not interfere with the police, and that the police made a brutal and deliberate assault upon him. After the details I have given, it will be believed that there is a great deal of feeling both in Sunderland and in that part of the City of Durham. I do not think the Home Secretary would read another answer as he did the last, in a tone which implied, amidst approving cheers opposite, that this was a riotous mob from Sunderland. There never was a riotous mob from Sunderland—["Oh!"]—save in the old days, when Sunderland was Tory. There was no riotous mob from Sunderland that day. What rioting and stone-throwing there was occurred among those who struck on the outskirts of the crowd, yet the Superintendent and his men fell upon and batoned and kicked respectable persons who had a perfect right to be on the high road. For that reason I felt it my duty to move the adjournment of the House, feeling certain that, although there are political differences, hon. Members opposite will not yield to us in seeing that the liberties of the English subject are preserved, and that the power of the police shall be kept in absolute legal control, and under the authority of those who represent the public. I beseech the right hon. Gentleman, when he gets up, not to say that this is a case for inquiry by the Joint Committee. I think I have made out a sufficient case to justify the Home Secretary in granting a public inquiry. I know he will suggest that we might have gone before a Magistrate. That will be done in one or two cases; but the House will readily understand, in the dust of a mêlée that was all over in
    282
    two minutes, how difficult it was to fix upon particulars officers. I venture to submit that we should have such an inquiry as will first of all establish the facts, and, secondly, as will lead to the framing of some rule under which the police shall be restrained from these baton charges, which are common in another country, but which have not heretofore been common in ours. Many a time, when I have heard Members for Ireland describing these baton charges by the police, I have thought that there was some degree of exaggeration, due to their fervid imaginations; but, from what I know has taken place here, I am not prepared to disbelieve anything almost that Irish Members may say as to the conduct of the police in Ireland. I submit that, I have made out a case for independent inquiry, so that the truth may be known and a better system established.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."
    MR. MATTHEWS: I do not in the least complain of the action of the hon. Member, or of the manner in which he has presented his case to the House; but I take it that it is perfectly clear that many of those who are his constituents have suffered injuries which are usual when such mêlées occur. Of course, the hon. Member is perfectly justified in making these occurrences known at the earliest possible time to the public through this House. At the same time I cannot help pointing out that the course is open to grave objection. The hon. Member, as understand, was not himself a witness of the great bulk of the facts he has described. He has spoken of depositions, but I do not know that it adds to their weight that they were taken by a Tory solicitor.
    MR. STOREY: What I meant roughly was that these statements were not made in the hurry of the moment, but were serious legal documents.
    MR. MATTHEWS: I do not understand that they were made before any Court of Justice, but in a solicitor's office. While I do not disparage the statements of the various persons, it is quite impossible that I can deal with them, or say anything of their truth one way or the other. The Hon. Member

    283
    might, I think, have taken the course I which, I think, would have been the right one, of going to the Head Constable first—who is responsible for the conduct of the officers, and whose duty it is to maintain discipline among them—because he has means, which I have not, of getting at the constables implicated. I understand that the hon. Member, on some ground or other, declined to see Colonel White. On the other hand, I can tell him my solo informant is Colonel White. ["Oh!"] I would like to know what other informant I could possibly have. I will read what the Chief Constable wrote.
    MR. STOREY: Was Colonel White there?
    MR. MATTHEWS: I gather from what the hon. Member said that he was not there either.
    MR. STORET: Colonel White was not there.
    MR. MATTHEWS: I know nothing about whether Colonel White was or was not there. I am now going to give the evidence of another witness. Colonel White in his letter said that all went quietly at the evictions until Wednesday the 25th February, when "there was a large and riotous crowd, chiefly from Sunderland." The hon. Member will understand that I am not asserting this to be true; it is the statement of a responsible officer. The letter goes on—
    "The crowd continued to shout and pelt the police with stones and small rivets of iron from the ship yards, hooting many of them, until the Superintendent in charge of the party"—
    I believe, from the newspapers, it was Superintendent Oliver—"
    an old and experienced officer, halted them, and loudly cautioned the mob to desist or he would drive them away by force, but as none of them paid attention to his warning, he felt compelled to charge the mob with drawn batons. It had the desired effect of dispersing the riotous mob, and during the conflict some thirty persons were more or less injured, but none dangerously; and only one female, a little girl, supposed to have been crushed by the mob."
    Colonel White goes on to say that the riotous mob which followed and assaulted the bailiffs came chiefly from Sunderland, and did not consist of Silksworth men. He adds that he does not apprehend any renewal of the disturbance, and that if he sees any reason for such apprehension he will communicate with
    284
    the Magistrates of the district. I think the hon. Member will at least acknowledge that in the answer I gave to his question a short time ago I was giving him, as, of course, I was bound to do, the exact substance of the information I had received. I quite admit that the depositions which have been read by the hon. Member, and as to which, of course, I knew nothing, give a different account of the transaction from that furnished by Colonel White, although in some respects I think the absolute contradiction rests more on the statement of the hon. Member than on the documents he read. The hon. Member has stated that that there were no rivets thrown.
    MR. STOREY: I did not want to trouble the House with an unnecessary repetition of statements, but I asserted, and I can, I think, prove, that there were no rivets thrown. If my statement is contradicted, I want to have the contradiction from some one who was there, and who can say he saw what went on. I know that what the right hon. Gentleman asserts has been said in some of the newspapers, but against that I put the testimony of those who were present.
    MR. MATTHEWS: I can only say what I am told by those who give me information on this subject; but I would point out to the hon. Member that if he wants all these things cleared up he has it in his power to institute a much more satisfactory inquiry than I could direct. He has mentioned the name of one policeman and the number of another, and I do not hesitate to say that if the statements he has read describing the conduct of those policemen can be proved, those men grossly exceeded their duty, and would be liable to proceedings for assault in the same way as any other subject of Her Majesty.
    MR. STOREY: Before whom?
    MR. MATTHEWS: Before whom? Why, before any Magistrate of the land. I commend the suggestion to the hon. Member and to this House, that it would be much more satisfactory that these facts should be sifted and ascertained in a Court of Justice, where there could be full cross-examination of the witnesses, than by means of any inquiry I could offer, unless under statutory enactment, which I hardly think would be asked for in such a case as this. The hon. Member has told us that Superintendent Oliver—

    285
    an officer who has discharged his duty with credit, and who is a man of character and respectability in the Sunderland Police Force—declined to give the names of the four policemen who, upon the statement of Mr. Brewis, behaved with scandalous disregard of what was proper and right for policemen to do, who committed an unprovoked, an unnecessary, and a brutal assault upon Mr. Brewis. I do not think I am using language too strong in so describing the conduct charged. But I submit that before the hon. Member comes and asks for an inquiry it is his duty to go to the Magistrate and charge the policemen; if he fails in getting redress, then, perhaps, he might come possibly to the person who is in some sense responsible for every thing that goes wrong-in this way throughout the country. I beg again to point out that these police are not in my hands. I have no authority to order them to do this, that, or the other, nor have I a right to call upon them, except as a matter of courtesy, for any account of their transactions. I believe the Chairman of the Joint Committee for the County of Durham is in the House, and I trust we shall hear from him whether there is any probability that that Committee will refuse to do justice and make a proper inquiry in a case in which brutal misconduct is charged against the police under their command. I would make this general observation. I have no hesitation in saying that the police are no more justified than any other subjects of Her Majesty in using weapons of offence, and they are no less. The batons of the police are weapons of defence and not of offence, and the police ought to have perfect self-command and self-control. If the statement of the Chief Constable be correct, there can be no doubt that a large crowd of roughs, no matter whence they came, surrounded the police in charge of the party of bailiffs, and for a considerable time pelted them with stones and pieces of iron, hitting and wounding many of them. This being so, I can have no doubt that the officer in command of that detachment was perfectly justified in ordering the police to charge for the purpose of dispersing the crowd. When their charge was made and the purpose of defence had been answered they should have
    286
    held their hand. At the same time, at the risk of stating a truism, I would add that the police, in my experience, are. like other human beings, apt to give way to feelings of excitement and anger under circumstances of provocation and difficulty, and he would be hypercritical who would blame them too severely for giving way to over-excitement and going a little beyond the line of their legal rights. I hope the hon. Member will not understand me as defending or excusing any acts on the part of the police which go beyond their strict line of duty; but, at the same time, although I cannot excuse such acts, I think every just man will remember how difficult, if not impossible, it is in cases where strife begins to keep even disciplined men under absolute control. Until it is proved that the Local Authorities have not done their duty in inquiring into these allegations, I do not feel justified in granting the inquiry asked for by my hon. Friend.
    MR. JOHN WILSON: As I was a spectator of these occurrences I can perhaps give the Homo Secretary the information he desires. I am very sorry that disputes between employers and employed have taken place, but I should like to correct an impression which exists, that in the present instance the blame is to be attached to the workmen. The inception of this affair did not be with the workmen, and if their advice had been taken this sad occurrence would never have been brought under the notice of the House. I should like to give a review of what actually took place, as it has been my lot, as agent for the men, to take part in the evictions, and to try to adjust matters. As to the general conduct of the police I have nothing to say, except as to their interference with myself when I was taking-the candy men away from the works. I was told by Superintendent Oliver that the men were under contract, and that they had no right to go away; but I replied that a man is entitled to leave his employment whenever he likes if he is prepared to take the consequences of breaking his contract. As to what has been called the riot of the 25th February, it would be untrue if I were to say that no stones were thrown, because I bear the mark of one on my own forehead. I and others endeavoured to persuade the

    287
    villagers to remain quiet, because we felt sure from the temper, manifestations, and expressions of the police that a collision between them and the people would be a serious tiling. The people of Silksworth observed our recommendation, except three or four of them; and when the policemen got about 200 yards from where we left them we saw them scattering the people right and left. The policemen formed themselves into a square, and charged at the double-quick. I agree that some of the policemen were hurt by the stones; but, at the same time, I believe they would have effected their purpose quite as efficiently if they had charged without drawing or using their batons. I certainly never praised the police for making that charge, as has been suggested. The hon. Member for Sunderland in his statement said that most of the people injured were those who had not thrown any stones. With that I agree. Those who throw stones are most cowardly people, and are always ready to run away. They hang on the outskirts of the crowd, and those who do not throw stones are therefore taken quite unawares by the attack, and are in many cases very seriously injured. I should like to impress upon the Home Secretary the desirability of holding an inquiry for the sake of the police constables as well as for the sake of the people. Here was a serious dispute in a large industrial centre, and if the impression remains that the police charged a crowd without any cause whatever, or any sufficient cause, a great deal of bad feeling will exist between them and the people of Durham. If, however, witnesses are called on both sides to give evidence before some proper tribunal as to the stone throwing and attack by the police, I believe this irritation will be at an end. I think it is right we should know on whose side the fault really lies. I have no fault to find with the police as regards the manner in which the evictions have been carried out. I am aware it is an obnoxious duty, and I believe the police felt, with others, that it was hard to see people turned out of their homes when there was no one else to put in them. That is a doglike way of conducting things to win in a trade dispute, and is not one which will settle on whose side lies the right. I feel
    288
    bound to say that had the police charged without drawing their batons the crowd would have been dispersed quite as effectually, and no violence would have been necessary.
    MR. WHARTON: The House must, I think, feel it has just had au honest, straightforward account of what occurred from the hon. Member who last spoke, and will thank him for giving it. I should not myself have risen to say a word on this subject if I had not been alluded to as Chairman of the Joint Committee for the County of Durham, and if I had not been many years before Chairman of the Police Committee of the Magistrates. I want to see justice done to two men who have been referred to, the Chief Constable for Durham and Superintendent Oliver. With respect to Superintendent Oliver, if there is one in the whole Force whom I would have picked out as a man of forbearance and one to be thoroughly trusted it is that gentleman; and unless I hear on sworn authority before a competent tribunal that he was guilty of the acts attributed to him, I shall refuse to believe the allegations. As for the Chief Constable, he is a man whose moderation and courtesy are known in the whole county, and it is a matter of regret to me to hear the hon. Member for Sunderland sneer at the Chief Constable.
    MR. STOREY: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I did not sneer at him. I only said that as far as I knew he had not been applied to.
    MR. WHARTON: If the hon. Member had applied to the Chief Constable, he would have found him to be a man of great ability and of the greatest possible courtesy. The Government are asked to have an inquiry, but of what kind? If there is to be an inquiry, let it be an inquiry before a competent authority and upon sworn evidence; do not let us have the tittle-tattle of newspapers. If the allegations are that the police have exceeded their duty, it is well that they should be tested before a proper tribunal, and the proper tribunal is the tribunal of the Magistrates. Now, I have heard the hon. Member for Sunderland in this House speak very generously of the Magistrates of the County of Durham, and therefore to-day I was sorry to hear him throw doubt upon their impartial

    289
    action. Who are the Magistrates the hon. Member doubted? Is it the Magistrates of the County Bench at Sunderland? There is, believe, no more efficient Bench in England. The Magistrates constitute the proper tribunal to investigate these charges; they can have sworn testimony before them. I can only say, on behalf of the Chief Constable and of the Joint Committee, that as far as any informal inquiry can be held this matter will be investigated.
    MR. ATHERLEY-JONES: I quite agree with what fell from the hon. Gentleman who last spoke as to the extremely high character of Superintendent Oliver, and as to the great capacity and extreme urbanity of the Chief Constable. I have long known both gentlemen, and am, satisfied that they endeavour to perform their duties satisfactorily. My real motive in intervening in this Debate is to urge upon the Home Secretary the strong advisability of instituting an inquiry. If I may say so, I do not quite agree with the accuracy of his statement that in the past there have only been two Departmental Inquiries. As far as my investigations have gone, there have been more than two inquiries info occurrences such as these. And, again, with regard to Mr. Bridge's inquiry at Cardiff, I may point out to the right hon. Gentleman he was not quite right in saying it was conducted at the instance of the Local Authority, for I believe the Home Office authorities were the first to suggest that a special investigation should be made. The hon. Member for the Ripon Division said that to order an inquiry before Justices of the Peace was a proper and legitimate course to pursue. I do not deny that, generally speaking, it would be the proper course; but the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for pointing out that at an investigation at Petty Sessions the inquiry is limited to the circumstances of the particular case before the Committee, and the investigation is controlled by the ordinary rules of evidence. Now, such an inquiry as that which was held at Cardiff must result in eliciting information which could not be adduced before a Court of Petty Sessions; and I am sure that the sending down to Durham of a Metropolitan Magistrate to investigate this
    290
    matter would give satisfaction not only to the hon. Member for Sunderland, but to the whole county. There is another matter to which I should life to refer ft is perfectly well known to all who are familiar with these unfortunate evictions that the great source of exasperation was the employment of a number of disreputable and dissolute characters know as candymen. They were employed not by the police, but by the owners. They were the scum and scouring of the streets of large towns, such as Leeds and Bradford, and they were regaled liberally with intoxicating liquors. I would point out to the Homo Secretary and to my hon. Friends that there is no power on the part of the police to allow the owners and agents to employ candymen for the purpose of carrying out the evictions. The proper course to pursue if the police are not in sufficient force to carry out the evictions is that they should engage assistance, for they are really exercising-the functions of the Sheriff. Had they done that, and had they continued to show the spirit of forbearance and consideration which had characterised their conduct up to the time of these unfortunate disturbances, I am confident these riotous proceedings would have been avoided. I have but little to add. I have made inquiries of all classes, and of people living in Sunderland and adjoining districts, and the testimony has been almost unanimous that the police in the charge used a considerable amount of unnecessary brutality. I have no doubt they were excited and irritated, and that up to the moment of the charge they showed great forbearance; but I expect that careful inquiry will show that individual policemen did commit grave outrages. I therefore hope that the Home Secretary will do as former Home Secretaries have done, and order an inquiry. As to an investigation before Justices of the Peace—to whose fairness and general integrity I desire to beat-testimony—I hold that such an inquiry, limited, as it would be, to particular cases, would be inadequate for properly ascertaining whether or not the police exceeded their duty.
    SIR H. DAVEY: I am rather disappointed we have not received some assurance from the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for

    291
    the Ripon Division that there will be some inquiry by the Standing Joint Committee into the charges made by the hon. Members for Sunderland and Mid Durham. I do not wish to throw any doubt on the competence of Colonel White. No doubt that gentleman deserves everything the hon. and learned Member for the Ripon Division said about him. I believe the County and Borough Benches of Sunderland deserve all he said about them, but what we want is to be satisfied that some inquiry will be held into the charges made. I admit that there is great force in what the Home Secretary has said—that the use of County Councilsand Local Authorities is to investigate a question of this kind without the necessity of calling the attention of the House of Commons to it; but we do not wish to be sent from one authority to another, from one official to another, while making an endeavour to probe the incident to the bottom. The statements which have been made by the hon. Member for Sunderland are not, strictly speaking, evidence: they stand no higher than what some of us are familiar with, the proofs of witnesses which we are furnished with before witnesses are sworn. But we have the distinct admission of the Home Secretary and the hon. Member for the Ripon Division that if these statements are proved by proper legal evidence the police exceeded their duty, and were guilty of excessive violence. I quite admit it would be more satisfactory to have an inquiry on sworn evidence, but we cannot get it, and for the reason that the complainants cannot obtain the names of the police who maltreated them. No. 481 kicked the man Brewis when he was down, but what we want to get at is the name of the man who first knocked Brewis down. I appeal to the hon. Member for the Ripon Division to use his influence with the Committee over which he presides to direct an inquiry into the allegations made with respect to this matter; or to use his authority to induce those in command of the police to furnish the hon. Member for Sunderland with the names of the policemen who have been concerned in this affair.
    MR. WHARTON: I have not been quite understood. I stated that I considered the proper course to be taken was, having got at any rate two policemen
    292
    connected with this affair, first of all to cause an inquiry to be made before a Magistrate—that the men should be charged with assault, and the witnesses brought forward and subjected to cross-examination. Speaking for myself, and as far as I can do so for the Standing Joint Committee, I think there is no doubt that an inquiry will be made by them into the affair. We have no power, however, to take evidence on oath; and evidence on oath is far more satisfactory than statements not on oath. The Standing Joint Committee is composed of 24 members, and. 24 Judges or Commissioners form a somewhat cumbrous body, but as far as we can I think we shall inquire into this matter.
    MR. PICTON: I think the question raised by the Motion of my hon. Friend is a much more important one than can be satisfactorily dealt with by any inquiry before a Magistrate. It is a question not merely of one or two assaults by police constables; it is a question of the growing tendency on the part of the police here and there to regard their batons as instruments of punishment rather than as instruments wherewith to defend the law. ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Gentlemen seem to question that, but over and over again the hon. Member for Sunderland told us of cases in which flying men were pursued and beaten on the back. What right has a policeman to use his baton under such circumstances? It cannot be denied that the same thing has been done in other parts of the country. There is another reason for asking for a more important and solemn and responsible inquiry than can be obtained in the locality. We have observed during the course of this Debate that whenever the energy and vigour of the police has been referred to it has been enthusiastically cheered on the other side. The statement of my hon. Friend, that the police might have done everything that was necessary by threatening to charge, was scouted and sneered at by hon. Gentlemen opposite. When we were told how the police rushed down and violently batoned these unarmed and helpless people there were loud cheers. In those cheers there is very considerable reason for not being satisfied with any local inquiry. The hon. and learned Member for the Ripon

    293
    Division seemed to think we slight and slander the Standing Joint Committee if we say we are not quite satisfied with them as a Court of Inquiry. I take it that body is mainly composed of gentlemen such as those who sit opposite, and who admire, above all things, vigour, energy, and physical force on the part of the police. Hon. Gentlemen opposite always cheer violence; they cheered flogging in the Army; they heard with satisfaction of a sentence of 150 lashes passed on a burglar; they cheer all kinds of revival of torture. It is not to a body composed of gentlemen of that temper we would commit such an inquiry as we ask for. There is a dangerous tendency on the part of some portion of the police. I myself, when going home late at night from this House, have had occasion to observe the temper in which some of the police occasionally discharge their duties. They are not satisfied with keeping order; they try to punish disorder without even bringing people before a Magistrate. Such a tendency ought to be discouraged, and it would not exist amongst the police unless those in authority were ready to condone, or even to encourage this action on their part. I do not think we ought to be satisfied with a. mere local inquiry in this instance, but we ought to insist upon the Government undertaking to look into the circumstances.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down says that the question of real importance raised by the Resolution is the great tendency on the part of the police, who are the guardians of order, to use more force than is absolutely necessary for their purpose. I thought the hon. Gentleman and his friends had already decided that the remedy for any improper conduct on the part of the police was to entrust them to a Local Authority. At all events, that has been their argument with regard to the Irish police. Now, however, it appears that these hon. Gentlemen have no confidence either in the police or in the Local Authority, and that on the first occasion on which a complaint is made against the police force which is under the control of a Local Authority, these gentlemen come down and declare that the one person in whom they have confidence
    294
    is the Home Secretary and the Department he administers. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Leicester has had any practical experience of local government. I do not think he has; but I confess I was surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland should have taken up the line he has done, because I know that he has been a great advocate of the dignity and authority and power of local government, and has himself taken a very active part in local work; and having been Mayor of Sunderland, he probably knows as well as anyone in the House how far a Watch Committee or a Committee entrusted with the control of the police may be trusted to make all necessary inquiries when the Police Force misbehaves itself. I regret that my hon. Friend, whom I have always counted as an advocate with myself of the privileges of local government, should now, as it appears to me, throw doubt on our Local Institutions. What is the state of the case? Here is a primâ facie case made out by the statements of my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Mid Durham—in his most temperate speech—a primâ facie case against the police. But who has made out a case either against the Local Magistrates or against the Local Authority, the Standing Joint Committee? They have not been tried. Surely it is a perfectly monstrous thing before these gentlemen have acted, and when there is no proof whatever that they will not act satisfactorily and do full justice in the case, to put them aside and to ask this House to interfere. I protest in the name of local government, and I say that if the Home Secretary—I am not speaking of the present occupant of the office more than any other—were to make it the rule when ever there is a row in any locality, without waiting for the action of the Watch Committee or other Local Authority, to interpose an inquiry from the Central Department, he would certainly be the most unpopular Home Secretary who ever filled the office. I have one further objection to the unfortunate precedent which has been cited by my hon. Friend behind me. One of the objects, have been told, of the extension of local government—one reason why we should give the police of Ireland

    295
    to Local Authorities in Ireland—is that we should relieve this House of a great deal of unnecessary business. Here, on the very first occasion on which a dispute arises in that particular district which is represented by my hon. Friend, he comes down and takes up the time of the House for two hours or more, when it has other and more important business to attend to, and seeks to put the Local Authority aside. Under these circumstances, how can he himself with any reason ask us to hand over the police of Ireland to Local Authorities on the ground that we should save Parliamentary time? We should have all the difficulty we have now just as much as ever. We should have the nominal control in the Local Authority and the real control in the Central Authority; and if the Local Authority is to be supervised, put into leading-strings and swaddling-clothes in the way my hon. Friend suggests, I submit he will be making a very strong argument for giving all control of the police of England to that Central Authority which apparently he considers to be the only adequate one.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: The right hon. Gentleman says he protests in the name of local government. I think he rather protests in the name of coercion in Ireland. He is so accustomed to praising in this House batoning in Ireland, that he cannot refrain from praising the Home Secretary for refusing to interfere in this case. So far as I am concerned, I have listened with a perfectly judicial mind to what has been said, and I have come to the conclusion that there is a primâ facie case against the police of the County of Durham. We have had all these depositions read. The Home Secretary thinks everybody must be bound to tell a he if he does not swear to his statements over and over again. For my part, I believe in the depositions, as I believed in those of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham on a former occasion, and voted for them.
    MR. CHAMBERLAIN: They were not mine.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: No, your Friends opposite complained that they were not yours, and they complained that they were not true. In this case
    296
    we have, putting aside the depositions, two hard facts, which make a primâ facie case that the police acted improperly. We have the fact that 50 persons—the police say 30—were seriously injured by the attacks of the police, and a very great number were taken to the infirmary. Can the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary tell us of one single policeman who was really so much injured by stone-throwing that he was taken into the infirmary? The other strong point is, that when Superintendent Oliver was asked to give the names of two policemen who were alleged to have attacked individuals, he refused to do so. I hold that a policeman has a number in order that persons may see it, and that any superintendent or other police officer ought, when asked, to give the numbers or names of men against whom charges or misconduct are made. We are asked to refer this matter to the Standing Joint Committee of Durham. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chamberlain) says that hero we have a case for local government, and we want to drag in the Home Secretary and to show our confidence in him. For my part, I say, with all respect for the right hon. Gentleman, I have no confidence in him. What we want is a public inquiry. The right hon. Gentleman forgets that we have not got any local self-government in Durham. What is the Standing Joint Committee? Why, it is packed with County Magistrates.
    MR. WHARTON: I believe, Sir, that two members of the Standing Joint Committee are on strike at the present time.
    MR. STOREY: Only one.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: But how is the Committee composed? How many Magistrates are there on it?
    MR. WHARTON: Half and half.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: Well, that is quite enough to leaven the mass, and leaven it most injuriously. This is what the right. hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham calls an independent local self-government—a Committee of which half the members are elected and half are nominated by the Lord Lieutenant. It is because we have no local government, in the real sense of the word, in the county, and because the Conservative Government refused to

    297
    give the control of the police to elected representatives of the ratepayers, that we object to going before this Joint Committee and ask for a public inquiry. There was an inquiry in Cardiff, and there might be a similar one here. The right hon. Gentleman says the Town Council of Cardiff asked for an inquiry. Well, my hon. Friend, who is Member for Sunderland and a Member of the Town Council, asks for one. The right hon. Gentleman seems to think he has answered the question when he says the men came from Sunderland, and, therefore, were roughs, and, therefore, ought to have had their heads broken. He cannot expect my hon. Friend to accept that. We say we ought to have an inquiry. If the right hon. Gentleman will grant such an inquiry as took place at Cardiff, it will not be necessary to divide; if not, I hope my hon. Friend will go to a Division.
    (7.0.) The House divided:—Ayes 121; Noes 205.—(Div. List, No. 73.)

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY—ARMY ESTIMATES, 1891–2.
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £5,632,700, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge of the Pay, Allowances, and other Charges of Her Majesty's Army at Home and Abroad (exclusive of India) (General Staff, Regiments, Reserve, and Departments), which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1892."
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I was somewhat surprised at the very sanguine observation of the First Lord when this Vote was before us on the last occasion that though Debate had lasted only some 10 or 12 minutes he hoped that this enormous Vote would be granted at once. If the right hon. Gentleman will carry his memory back to 1884, he will remember that the entire month of February in that year was occupied in discussion of this very Vote, and Motions for its reduction, all because there had been an expedition to Tokar, and, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman must not expect us to refrain now from discussing the recent Tokar expedition, and, indeed, the Army in
  298
  Egypt, altogether. It is obvious that if we did not keep this portion of our Army in Egypt the expense of maintaining our Army would, by the cost of so many, be reduced. Here let me make a correction in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. He stated that the number of English troops in Egypt had been considerably reduced, and that during the time the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian was in office the number of troops in Egypt was 12,000. I think he will find he is mistaken. The numbers went up and down. If is perfectly true that when there were military operations going on either in Alexandria, Suakin, or in the Soudan, when operations were in progress for the defence of the Southern Frontier, there were as many as 12,000 men in Egypt; but I think if he takes the figures he will find that on an average there were not more men in Egypt, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian was Prime Minister, than there are at the present moment.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. E. STANHOPE,): Oh!
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I understand that the right hon. Gentleman disagrees with me, and believes there were many more men in Egypt then than now. But if he will take the average from two years, say, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir up to the time when the late Government left office, and not taking into account periods when active military operations were going on, he will find that the number was considerably less than 12,000, and not probably more than the present number.
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I will give the hon. Gentleman the exact figures, as I know he loves accuracy above all things. On August 1, 1886, the number of troops in Egypt was 9,113, that being a considerable reduction from the beginning of the year.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Yes; but I think then there were certain military operations in progress.
  MR. E. STANHOPE: No.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Well, they were still hanging on at Suakin. But I will not quarrel about the figures. The reason why troops were kept in Egypt after Tel-el-Kebir was because we were

  299
  told it was very possible a revolution might break out either in Cairo or Alexandria, and that the revolutionists might destroy the Canal. Therefore we were asked, in the interests of civilisation and the Empire, to retain the troops there until an efficient Egyptian Army was established able to defend the Suez Canal. That was the main argument used, but there were a dozen others equally bad relied on as justification for imposing this increased charge upon our taxpayers. During the tenure of office by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian, although the troops were not withdrawn from Egypt, it is an undoubted fact that there was the intention to withdraw them. I will go further, and say that it was agreed absolutely that at some time they should be withdrawn. There was always some unfortunate circumstance occurring—once sickness broke out amongst them, and then again disturbances broke out in the Soudan—which prevented their withdrawal, but it was the normal intention, if I may call it so, of the Government of the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw the troops from Egypt. At any rate, the right hon. Gentleman and his Colleagues again and again stated that they would withdraw them as soon as a proper Government was established in Egypt, as soon as there was sufficient Egyptian military force to keep down any revolution that might lead to the destruction of the Suez Canal. But the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs has expanded this matter very largely; he has told us we are not to withdraw so long as we may imagine it possible that any Foreign Government may take our place and occupy Egypt. The only possible Government he could have in his mind is the Government of France; and, therefore, I ask whether any negotiations have been instituted with France to neutralise Egypt or not to occupy Egypt, or whether the great European Powers have been asked to place Egypt under International Law, so that it shall remain a neutral country? If anything of that sort has been done, that will, to a certain extent, change my attitude; for I should believe there is some intention, some desire, on the part of Her Majesty's Government to withdraw from Egypt. But, so far as I know, nothing of the sort has been
  300
  done, and I can only say that the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that we must remain in Egypt until we, in our own minds, are convinced that there is no danger of any Foreign Power going there is tantamount to saying that we shall remain there until doomsday, or until we are turned out. I notice that the organs of the Government complain of the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, and say that he ought boldly to have asserted that we are there, and, no matter what objections may be raised, we are going to remain there. At any rate, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman is most unsatisfactory as to any expectation that within a reasonable number of years our occupation will cease. Since these Estimates came before us there has been a great extension of our occupation in Egypt; the Soudan is being re-annexed under the auspices of Her Majesty's Government. So far as I can make out the answer given to me this afternoon, the Egyptian Government have no right to the Government of the Soudan; the sovereignty rests with the Sultan, and the Khedive has nothing to do with it; yet suddenly Egyptian troops go and annex a large portion of the Soudan for the benefit of the Sultan. That, of course, is not actually the case; part of the Soudan is annexed for the benefit of the Egyptian Government. Memories are short, so let me refer to what has taken place. No doubt Members do not remember the discussions of 1884. After the fall of Ismail the Soudan was a Province under the Khedive of Egypt. On Arabi's revolution there were disturbances in the Soudan, and the Egyptian troops had been withdrawn. There was a general state of revolution. Hicks Pasha went there with troops, and was defeated. Her Majesty's Government then disconnected themselves as much as possible from those proceedings. Lord Granville wrote to Mr. Cartwright at Cairo—
  "I notice in your Despatch that you enolosea a telegram from General Hicks to Sir E. Malet on the subject of the military operations of the Soudan. It is unnecessary for me to repeat that Her Majesty's Government are in no way responsible for the operations in the Soudan, which had been undertaken under the authority of the Egyptian Government, or for the appointment or action of General Hicks."
  There we have the fact that this Army was sent there without the approval or

  301
  assent of Her Majesty's Government. Subsequently, in debate, Lord Granville said it was impossible for Her Majesty's Government to urge the Egyptian Government to give up the Soudan until some attempt had been made to settle the position there. The position in the Soudan in 1884 was this: Hicks Pasha was vanquished, the Mahdi was in possession of the Soudan, Gordon Pasha had been sent to Khartoum to withdraw the garrison, and an attempt was being made to relieve the garrisons of Tokar and Sinkat. It was then fully believed that the Egyptian Government were simply going to withdraw the garrisons from Tokar and Sinkat on the one side and Khartoum on the ether, and that the exercise of Egyptian authority in the Soudan was to be limited to Suakin and Massowah. We may dismiss Massowah, for it is now practically in the hands of Italy. Her Majesty's Government made representations to the Khedival Government to induce them to abandon the Soudan. On January 9 Sir E. Baring sent the following telegram to Lord Granville:—
  "His Highness the Khedive said that he accepted cordially the policy of the abandonment of the whole of the Soudan."
  That includes Tokar. We are told that the Soudan is a geographical expression, but the expression in the telegram includes the whole of the Soudan under Egyptian authority—so Tokar was included. The whole of the Soudan must be understood with the exception of Suakin on the Red Sea littoral, and the Eastern Soudan was included, where there has been the recent fighting. We have always claimed that the Egyptian flag shall fly over Suakin and Massowah, though I do not quite understand why. The argument for Suakin is that it is on the line of our communication with India, and that we ought to retain influence there, because we have expended a great deal of money to suppress the over-sea Slave Trade which has been carried on from Suakin. In any case, it was agreed that the Egyptian flag should fly over Suakin, but certain conditions were imposed. On February 19th the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale said—
  "We imposed a veto upon any attempt to re-conquer the Soudan, and when the Ministry of Cherif Pasha, after a period of hesitation,
  302
  appeared to be disposed to adopt half measures—that is to say, that the re-conquest of the whole of the Soudan was impossible—it wished to retain a portion of it, which we advised them was far beyond their power, we imposed a veto on that policy, and we informed the Government that a Government of Egypt which relied on our support must in questions which are considered vital accept our advice or forfeit our support."
  About this time Gordon Pasha was in Khartoum, and there was a small English garrison at Suakin, and a considerable force of Egyptian troops under Baker Pasha. Tokar and Sinkat were supposed to be held by Egyptian garrisons, and it was deemed reasonable that these garrisons should be relieved. It was determined to advance to relieve Tokar. Baker Pasha advanced to El Teb; he was defeated, and fell back on Suakin, which was attacked by Osman Digna. General Graham and 5,000 soldiers who had been intercepted on their way home from India were ordered to defend Suakin, which they did. They advanced to El Teb, and vanquished, the forces of Osman Digna. Then they fell back upon Suakin. General Gordon objected in a telegram to that, and fully recognised not only that Eastern Soudan was a part of the Province of the Soudan, but that Tokar was a portion of the Province which the Egyptian Government had abandoned. He telegraphed—
  "About Tokar and Sinkat you can do nothing, except by proclaiming that the chiefs of tribes should come to Khartoum to Assembly of Notables, when the independence of the Soudan will he proclaimed."
  He absolutely asked the British authorities at Suakin to ask the Notables at Tokar to join in the Assembly of Notables at Khartoum for the purpose of declaring that the whole of the Soudan was independent of Egypt. On March 6th the noble Lord the Member for Rossendale said—
  "General Graham has been directed not to undertake any operations at a considerable distance from Suakin. It is believed that the force under the command of Osman Digna is at a spot about 10 miles from Suakin. The force which General Graham found in position at El Teb was encamped at no distance from, but directly threatening, Suakin. Therefore, if that post was to be satisfactorily defended, it was absolutely necessary that General Graham should not retire in face of a victorious force in such a position, but that he should take efficient measures to defeat or disperse it at the spot where it was encamped."
  My object is to show that the expedition

  303
  was made with the simple object of freeing the approaches to the garrison of the presence of Osman Digna and his hordes. The noble Lord afterwards added—
  "There is every reason to hope that within a short period General Graham's force will have accomplished the purpose for which it was sent—that is to say, the relief of what remained of the garrison of Tokar and the effective protection of Suakin. When this is done I should be disposed to think that the retention of a force of any magnitude such as that at General Graham's command will be certainly unnecessary, and probably it will be easily in the power of the Navy to provide for the security of Suakin during the short interval which may elapse before the final decision is come to as to the permanent garrison—a garrison probably of moderate dimensions—by which Suakin will be held. We have no intention of undertaking any operations for the purpose of punishing or taking any revenge on Osman Digna. We have no intention of undertaking any operations for the purpose of exterminating or making war upon his adherents, so soon as they shall cease to menace the positions which we have announced our intention to maintain and to protect."
  A few days ago I found to my horror from the accounts in the newspapers that there had been an advance of the Egyptians upon Tokar, accompanied, of course, by one of those abominable and horrible massacres of Dervishes which characterise these advances. Seven hundred out of 2,000 Dervishes were found dead on the field of battle, and no doubt very many were carried off by their friends, and have since died of their wounds. We may take it that one out of every two was killed, and on territory which no more belongs to the Khedive of Egypt than it does to me. I have knocked the bottom entirely out of the theory that these people are rebels against the Khedive, and the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs has said we are to regard them as rebels against the Sultan. It practically amounts to this: that the Sultan has nothing whatever to do with it, and that the Egyptian Government, who have to do with it, are our dummies, and that we are violating our pledges to abandon the Soudan. The intentions of the Egyptian Government are apparently to lay hold of the oasis of Tokar, to establish a civil Government there, to establish a military force there, and to prevent Osman Digna and his people going back. There was a distinct understanding that the Egyptians should
  304
  not stay there, and it is in violation of that understanding that they are endeavouring to annex the country now. The last news is that they are building a fort 12 miles south of Tokar, and situated in the midst of an extensive area of cultivated country, and that a telegraph line 55 miles long is recommended by the Sirdar. It is clear that a very considerable portion of the Eastern Soudan is occupied by the Egyptian Forces at the present moment, and that the intention is to remain there. Does the Government approve of this? It is quite contrary to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone), and to the opinions expressed by Members of the present Government when they were in opposition. There was unquestionably the strongest feeling against any attempt to reacquire for the sake of Egypt, or for Egypt to attempt to acquire any portion of the Soudan. It may be asked, "How do you bring this into this Vote?" I answer, "In a simple way." We are responsible for these things; the Egyptian Government is nothing but our dummy. We forced our policy on the Egyptian Government. Perhaps the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the present Government is not so strong as the Foreign Secretary in the former Government; but as we could force our will upon Egypt so far as an invasion of the Soudan was concerned formerly, so we are able to do it now. If we do not do so it is because we do not desire to do so. The Egyptian Army is officered by British officers. You may say they are not on the Estimates. Perhaps they are not, but how is it that that Army can go to the Soudan? The fact is that the unfortunate British taxpayer has to pay for this Eastern Soudan expedition. We keep a garrison in Egypt of 3,300 men to maintain order, and this garrison enables the Egyptian troops, instead of remaining at Cairo and doing their primary duty, to go forth filibustering in the Soudan. Therefore, we are precisely as responsible for what occurs as if we had sent British soldiers there. If the Egyptian Army is really strong enough to maintain order it is not necessary for us to remain in Egypt. Therefore, I say that we are not only responsible for what occurs, but we are

  305
  actually paying for it. If Osman Digna bangs about in the neighbourhood of Suakin, and you drive him off and occupy Tokar, 55 miles away, will be not bang about in the neighbourhood of Tokar, and will you not have to make a further advance? The right hon. Gentleman opposite scoffed at me the other night when I said that, and he declared that there was no place to which we could go. There is Kassala, and a straight road leading up to it. There is no desert there—at any rate, during a portion of the year; and I have no doubt that if the Government remains in the weak bands in which it is at present, just as they have allowed the Egyptians to lay bold of Tokar so they will allow them to lay hold of Kassala. And supposing the Egyptian troops should be defeated and driven back, first to Tokar, and thence to Suakin. Will the Secretary of State for War deny that his Government would not feel it incumbent on them to send a British Army to Suakin? There are in Egypt a great many influences at work—there is the Military Party, who think that they are bound in honour to re-acquire the Soudan, and there are the Egyptian Pashas, who not unnaturally have made a good thing out of the Soudan, amongst other things by the Slave Trade, and who are anxious to have the chance of it again. Then there is the Financial Party, who are interested in retaining us there, and who, therefore, wall not be sorry if there are disturbances in the country which will render it difficult for us to leave. The Egyptians are in this position. They know very well that if a Liberal Government comes into power, Egypt will be evacuated in six months or a little more. ["No, no!"] Yes, I say this; there are so many on this side of the House in favour of Egypt being evacuated that (unless the Liberal Government were not a real Liberal Government, but was supported by hon. Members on the other side of the House against a majority on this side) if they did not leave Egypt in six months they would leave their offices. ["No, no!"] Hon. Members say "no." Why, I have voted a hundred times against the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian on these questions, but never succeeded in getting many to vote with me beyond a number of gentlemen from
  306
  the opposite Benches who were influenced by factious motives. Now, however, go to any constituency you like and tell them you want to remain in. Egypt, and if you are a Liberal they will have nothing to do with you. The pressure will be brought to bear by the constituencies upon Members on this side of the House. The Egyptians knowing this are doing everything they can to compromise the situation so that instead of withdrawing from Egypt we shall be obliged, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian has observed year after year, to remain there. I know that the right hon. Gentleman's most anxious wish and desire is—and I have beard him say so a dozen times to withdraw from Egypt. Under the circumstances, I think the matter ought to be thoroughly debated. I think it ought to be frequently debated, and for my own part whenever I see Votes proposed which, directly or indirectly, are intended to maintain our position in Egypt, I shall move Amendments and make speeches, and ask Members who agree with me to vote with me. To bring home the facts to the minds of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen it is necessary to recur to them again and again. In the year 1884 the country was in a great state of excitement and indignation at the massacres which took place of thousands of dervishes. Now we have another massacre of 700 dervishes—a circumstance which the country has not yet thoroughly realised. If this annexation takes place it will not merely be hundreds who will lose their lives, but thousands—and thousands of men who, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian has said, are rightly struggling to be free. I shall support every Amendment to these Votes, from whichever quarter of the House they come.
  THE CHAIRMAN: There is now no Amendment before the Committee.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £100,000.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That '£5,532,700' be granted for the said Service."—(Mr. Labouchere.)
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: The other night we dealt with the Vote for the number of men employed in Egypt, and I will not go over that ground again now. I think we

  307
  might now with great advantage withdraw from Egypt, and from the contingencies which may arise so long as our occupation continues. The point I wish to address myself to is this: that if we are to keep troops in Egypt, Egypt ought to pay for them, as India pays for the troops there. Egypt pays only a small subsidy towards the expense of the British troops. Is India treated in that way? Far from it. India pays not only local but also extraordinary expenses, and the utmost farthing of incidental expenses. The cost of our troops in this country and the colonies, including officers, Secretary of State for War, and all, is about £118 per head, and including barracks it will come to quite £125. In India, with the higher pay given to officers, it will undoubtedly come to £150 per man. Egypt pays £232,000 for 3,200 men, which is only about £70 per head, whereas the real expense to the British taxpayer must be more than £125 per man, as we have to add the cost of armaments, accoutrements, barracks, hospitals, stores, recruiting expenses, headquarters, administrative expenses, transports, and so on. I shall be glad if the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War will tell us whether those figures are right or not. I think it is a very heavy expenditure, and I do not think any reason is shown for it. Why do you not apply to the ease of India the arguments with which you seek to justify the small charge you make to Egypt? The sending out of troops to Egypt disturbs our military arrangements at home. You cannot keep half the battalions at homo and send half abroad. You have to send out more than half the battalions, rather the battalions at home are emasculated. The best troops are sent abroad and the invalids and recruits are kept at home. We were told that Egypt is heavily burdened with debt and cannot afford to pay what she ought, and that, therefore, the British taxpayer must meet the charges. But what is the real state of the case? The financial advisers of the Egyptian Government tell us that they are not only paying their way in that country but establishing a considerable surplus. If that is so, why should not the Egyptian Government defray all these military expenses without involving the British taxpayer in the heavy burdens I
  308
  have described? My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton has supplied the reason, which is that the moment you have restored order to Egypt, instead of trying to do justice to the British taxpayer by withdrawing your troops, you allow the Egyptian Government to indulge in the commencement of a fresh conquest of the Soudan, and that is the reason why your troops are now chained, as it were, to Cairo, and why we are in our present position. It may be true that we have arrived at a better state of things in Egypt than hitherto. We have restored peace and we have disciplined the Egyptian Army; but at the same time, owing to the aggressive operations in the Tokar district and on the Suakin frontier, we have felt it necessary to occupy the whole of that part of the Soudan territory. The consequence must be that you will have to maintain a strong brigade at Tokar of probably three or four battalions, because you cannot defend the district between that place and Suakin with a smaller force, and it is extremely probable that you will ultimately be obliged to send up a large number of British troops in support of that Tokar garrison. In that case you will have to send more troops from Malta and Gibraltar, which are practically the reserves of the British Army in Egypt, and in this way there will be no end to the expense to which this country will be put. The Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs has told us that the Egyptian sovereignty over the Soudan is not abandoned. I am very sorry to hear this, because it means that we have undertaken vast liabilities which may give rise to all the mischief and extravagance pointed out by the hon. Member for Northampton. I may say that I am very much surprised at this announcement, because, as I have repeatedly said in this House, I have great confidence in the wisdom and judgment of the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary. I was therefore exceedingly puzzled when I heard that after the Soudan was supposed to have settled down in native hands for a number of years, we should at the last moment be told that the Egyptian Sovereignty over a vast region of the Soudan is not to be abandoned. I confess that I cannot understand it. I do not think that Lord Salisbury is a man who is likely to give in

  309
  to a few officers at Suakin who wish to revenge themselves upon the police who follow oar defeated friendlies right up to the walls of that place. I am afraid there is some deeper motive, which is either that it is necessary to conciliate the Egyptian Government in order to induce Riaz Pasha to give Egypt over to us, or that there maybe such an idea as that suggested by the French of reviving the Empire of Sesostris by obtaining control over the whole of the territory which is to be acquired by the East Africa Company from Lake Victoria and the sources of the Nile, and bringing it down to a point at which it will adjoin the region occupied by British forces at Kassala and Suakin. I repeat, because I regard Lord Salisbury as a prudent man who has hitherto shown no disposition for rash enterprises, that I cannot help thinking the motive for re-occupying this portion of the Soudan is something more than that of reclaiming Egyptian Sovereignty over the Tokar region. Believing, therefore, that there is something behind which may involve this country in great liabilities which ought not to be undertaken by us, I beg to support the Motion of my hon. Friend for the reduction of this vote.
  DR. CLARK: I wish to say a few words in supporting the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton. In so doing I would remind the House that there is a certain sum of £250,000 charged on the British taxpayer for the Army of Occupation in Egypt; but I was told by the Secretary for War that in reality the British taxpayer paid nothing at all for that Army of Occupation. He said we required a certain number of troops, and that whether they were in Cork or Edinburgh, Aldershot or Egypt, made no difference. We required the men, and must support them wherever they were, so that if we kept them in Egypt we had only to pay for them there as we should have to do if they were maintained anywhere else. This would have been a good reply had it been accurate; but I doubt its accuracy. For instance, I find that in three of our Crown Colonies, the Mauritius, Ceylon and the Straits Settlement, we have about the same number of men that we have in Egypt, so that if this theory were sound
  310
  the cost would be pretty much the same; but the fact is that we charge the Governments of the Crown Colonies of Ceylon and the Mauritius, omitting the Straits Settlement, over £200,000 for the troops we maintain there, whereas in Egypt we are only charging the Egyptian Government £80,000. I understood the Financial Secretary (Mr. Jackson) to say that the reason why £80,000 was charged in Egypt was because the battalions there had to be increased from 720 to 801, and that Egypt had to pay the difference; but I want to know why Egypt should pay the difference, because if you want so many men it can be a matter of no importance where they are. I have as yet had no satisfactory reply from the Government, and unless I do get one that is satisfactory I shall go to a Division. It is quite certain to my mind that one of two things must be the case; either Egypt is not paying sufficient, or we are overcharging the Crown Colonies I have named. With regard to the general question before the Committee, I should like to ask a question or two. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War whether he intends to have a railway constructed from Suakin to Sinkat; because you will want Sinkat ultimately, and must have a garrison there, inasmuch at it lies amongst the hills and is necessary to the health of our troops during the hot season. Moreover, it will be necessary if you maintain a garrison at Tokar, to have a railway there, otherwise the convoys might be cut off between Tokar and Suakin; and supposing you have the railway at Tokar, why should you not go. on to Kassala and Berber? I must say that so far as the Egyptians are concerned, there is a good deal to be advanced in defence of a forward policy. They depend upon the Nile; and if the people living in the upper regions adjacent to that river are to divert it for irrigation or for other purposes, Egypt will necessarily suffer. Thus you see that the further you go into the Soudan, the more arguments you find for extending your progress still further; and that process will go on until at last you will have acquired the whole of the Soudan. But it seems useless to question the Government on

  311
  this subject. They do not know anything. They do not know whether there has been any declaration of war. All they seem to know is that the dominions of the Soudan are still a portion of the Sultan's sovereignty. If it is intended to occupy the whole of the Soudan territory, why should you not carry the doctrine still further, and apply it to the French, turning' them out of Algiers and Tunis? I regret that we have not been able to extract any information on these points from Her Majesty's Government. We now see that our troops have been attacking those of the de facto Government of the Soudan territory adjacent to Suakin. In doing this, I say we have been guilty of carrying out a high handed and a filibustering policy, and I hope that this House will no longer sanction such a course. Egypt is said to be in a prosperous position; and, therefore, I do not see why we should be called upon to pay this money.
  MR. E. STANHOPE: The hon. Member has put to me several questions and it is only right I should rise to answer them. His first question was, "Why should we pay the whole cost of the Army when we make some of the Crown Colonies pay the whole cost of the troops maintained in those Colonies"? The answer is perfectly clear. If we left Egypt the 3,000 troops we maintain there would not be disbanded; we should use them for our general purposes. At present, in Egypt, we are only carrying on from hand to mouth, believing that the time will come when we will be able to withdraw the troops for the general purposes of the country. When you come to the Crown Colonies the case is altogether different. We actually raise troops for the purpose of defending those colonies; they appear on the Army Estimates, and we get the money from the Colonial Government. Where we garrison distant coaling stations, it is difficult to call upon those colonies to pay the whole cost, but as much as they can afford. The cases are wholly different, and there is no analogy between them. The hon. Member asks what we propose to do with regard to Tokar. There is not the smallest suggestion of making a railway there. We have yielded to the strong representation of
  312
  the Egyptian Government that their frontier should be extended in that direction. The hon. Member for Northampton admits that he has made 201 speeches on this subject. I myself can assure him that I have heard him make the same speech 30 times, and that he has used almost the identical words. The Committee will not be surprised, therefore, that I have nothing to add to the answers I have already given, and that I decline to re-open the political question of the occupation of Egypt or the expedition to the Soudan. The argument of the hon. Member is that we ought to leave Egypt at the earliest possible moment, and leave her to carry on her own affairs. And we are actually to begin with the process of telling Egypt that she may not undertake operations for her own defence, though the Government thinks them essential. When the time comes to leave Egypt, you are to turn to her and say, "It is not necessary to make on your frontier proper provision for your defence." We have been attacking a hostile tribe of dervishes who have been attacking the Egyptians at Suakin. We have no desire to interfere with the native tribes in the neighbourhood; on the contrary, we desire to encourage them to assist the Egyptian Government in carrying on the government of the country around Suakin. We certainly have no intention whatever of re-conquering the Soudan, nor have we any intention of interfering with the Egyptian Government in taking steps that are necessary to her security. With these assurances I hope the Committee, if we go to a Division, will support the Government in doing what is for the interest of Egypt.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: I entirely differ from the view of the right hon. Gentleman. Egypt, with a quiet population and a large revenue, might succeed in self-government, but the Egyptians are not capable of governing the Soudan, inhabited by warlike tribes, and with little revenue and small means. It was the prudent policy of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian to abandon the Soudan, as the Egyptians were not fitted to govern that country. The Secretary for War said

  313
  that if we trusted Egypt we should leave the Egyptians free to occupy the Soudan.
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I never said that. I said we should leave them free to give attention to their own frontiers.
  *SIR G. CAMPBELL: I contend that, if the Egyptians continue in the Soudan, and the tribes are moved to reprisals, they will have to remain there, and they will have to occupy the whole district. I think you had much better draw the line at Egypt proper, leaving them as the utmost hope, to govern themselves, but never deeming them able to govern other people.
  MR. S. STOREY: When the hon. Member says that it is the policy of Egyptians not to go outside Egypt, I am afraid he has not met those officials in the full pride of official costume, but in circumstances and places of a more pleasant character. If he had seen them officially he would probably have ascertained what is the prevailing opinion of Egyptian officers, who, almost to a man, are in favour of extending the bounds of Egypt. Their conviction was that they should sustain Anouan by going to Dongola, Suakin by going to Tokar, and Tokar by going to Berber, and Kassala. I opposed this occupation of Egypt from the first. I have not made 201 speeches about it, but I have spoken eight or nine times in six or seven years against the occupation of Egypt, and against the projection of British arms into the Soudan. Formally, I must make my protest against this projection of Egyptian arms some distance into the Soudan, because I know it carries out the hidden intentions of the Pashas, who, when we leave Egypt, will be the masters. Their conviction is that they ought to have the whole territory which belonged to Egypt 15,20, or 30 years ago. It is because the little movement at Tokar is as the beginning of the letting out of water that I am disposed to take objection to a matter which may appear extremely trivial. Somebody on the Treasury Bench talked as if Tokar were a fertile oasis. What nonsense. Why, there are a hundred more fertile oases around Egypt. It was not Suakin or the defeat of Osman Digna, but the carrying out of a secret policy of the Turkish Pashas that was fought in going to Tokar under the cover
  314
  of English guns and the leadership of English officers. I am one of those who wish England to leave Egypt. When it was said that we would leave her to manage her own affairs I never believed it from the first. I remember warning the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) that if we went to Egypt we would have to stay there. With every step we take forward we add to our responsibilities. I am not one of those who condemn the Tory Government for not doing that which the Liberal Government did not do. I have been in Egypt on more than one occasion, and if the opportunity were a proper one I would say to the House that, although I opposed the original occupation, and although I still feel that there are important interests which make it desirable that we should get out of it as soon as possible, yet it is impossible to deny that the occupation of Egypt by England has been productive in more than half a dozen directions of great, and I hope permanent, advantage to the Egyptians. For my part, although, as hon. Members know, I am not fond of officials or of officialdom, yet when I was in Egypt it was my good fortune to meet a great many gentlemen who are concerned in carrying on practical works in that country, and a more self-sacrificing and a more successful body of public servants was, I believe, never possessed by any Government on this globe. What they have done in increasing the cultivable territory would alone suffice to justify a great deal of affection on the part of intelligent Egyptians for the English. I freely admit that all our officials there have done their duty, and more than their duty. But while I say that our occupation has been useful and advantageous to the Egyptians, I must at the same time draw this distinction that every step we take forward towards mastering the control of Egyptian affairs render the Egyptian people, and Egyptian officials, less capable of undertaking the management of their own affairs. That is a deadly evil we have before us, I fear, from the fact we have gone there that we shall never get out of it, and it is because I feel that, and because I object to it, that I want to diminish as far as possible the chances of our continuing in that country. This I

  315
  know, that the further Egypt advances into the Soudan, the more the Egyptian Government enlarges its responsibility there, the more will it depend upon the British Government which is behind it; and the less the Egyptian Government is permitted to mix itself up in the affairs of the Soudan, the better will be our chance of escaping from our untenable position. Therefore I have joined with my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, and shall continue to join with him in pressing upon the Government the extreme impolicy of giving to these Pashas any free hand whatsoever. It is of no use saying that the Military Authorities recommended this advance. I do not think that military men in Egypt, except for the flurry of engagement, would care in the slightest degree about advancing into the Soudan. It is the Pashas and perhaps behind them the Khedive who advocates this; it is men who want to live in the history of the country as having been responsible for advancing its frontiers, and it is because I believe that if they are permitted to do it they will draw the British Government insensibly on from one project to another until they commit themselves to the re-conquest of Berber that I am now making the strongest protest I can against the re-occupation of Tokar. In this House, unfortunately, very little notice is taken when hundreds of men are slain; they are said to be only Dervishes; they are what the Government are pleased to call rebels, though I always feel when I hear an English gentleman thus stigmatise them that he is guilty of insolence, for they are in no sense rebels, simply because the Sultan of Turkey, sitting at Constantinople—or rather lying there—chooses to pretend that he has territorial rights over the Soudan; that simply because the people of the Soudan choose to manage their own affairs, men in England talk glibly about the Dervishes being rebels. I deny the applicability of the term. In no English sense can they be called rebels, and then to declaim about the necessity of this advance in the interest of the protection of the Egyptian ports is all nonsense. I always notice that when we deal with matters such as these some official or other discovers the place to be of immense importance. I say that if
  316
  you left Suakin, Egypt would not be merely as strong, but stronger, for the permanent object which we have in view. If you allow Egypt to retreat upon herself, she would be an area easily governable, absolutely controllable, and easily defended; while every day the possibility of our leaving the country would increase. But if you allow these Pashas to control you, and compel you to undertake one expedition after another, you will end at last with exhausting the resources of Egypt, and you will be compelled to remain then in your own interest, and have permanently to hold possession of the country for the sake of your honour and credit. I, therefore, feel I must join in the protest against the recent advance on Tokar, and against our continued occupation of Egypt. If the right hon. Gentleman had assured us the Government would do as Sir Evelyn Baring committed us to do four or five years ago, I would have said: "Very well, I think the present condition of Egypt is such, and the signs of improvement are such, that you have made out a good case for a further continuance of your stay." But if the Government will not do that, if it will lay itself open, as in this case, to be induced by the Pashas to pass on to other exploits, which involve slaughter of the Dervishes and then permanent occupation of the country, accompanied by ill blood between ourselves and other Powers, I feel bound to protest. I know that the services we have rendered Egypt have been of great advantage to the Egyptian people, but I am sure that the international evils which would follow upon our continued occupation would more than counterbalance those advantages, and I venture to point out that one effect would be to bring us close to territory likely to come under Russian dominion. I believe we can only come out of Egypt, if at all, by minimising the responsibilities of the Egyptian Government, by curtailing its territory, and resisting her leaders from undertaking expeditions to the South. I say that if we allow these, whatever may be the intentions of the Government, there will be no escaping the duty of permanently occupying Egypt. I therefore think we ought not to have permitted the advance on Tokar. It

  317
  would be Letter to curtail the ambitions of these Pashas, and make them devote themselves to improving the condition of the population, reforming their judicial system, and educating their people. If that policy were pursued, then the necessity for our remaining there would gradually disappear, and Egypt could be left to work out her own destiny. Whatever may be the result of the present Vote, the permanent policy of this country—whether the Liberal or Conservative Party be in power—should be to limit the ambition of the Egyptian Pashas and to take the earliest opportunity of honourably escaping from our unfortunate and untenable position in Egypt. (8.25.)
  (9.24.) Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has given us a fair explanation of the reasons why we are going to take the Eastern Soudan. No doubt, the right hon. Baronet the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs will address the Committee, and I ask him to make a full statement of the arrangements with the Egyptian Government. We wish to know, for instance, whether the recent military operations have been undertaken with the consent and at the desire of the Sultan, and whether it is attended to absolutely reverse the policy laid down by the noble Lord the remember for Rossendale (the Marquess Hartington) as to the abandonment the Soudan. Are we to understand that the province of Tokar is to be seized; is there to be an Egyptian civil and military Government there? Have the Government taken into consideration the great contingency there is of these Dervishes drawing the Egyptians into a real war with the Soudanese, in which the shall have to go to their aid? It must be remembered that the Soudanese strongly object to our holding Suakin. Undoubtedly, they have not engaged in military operations of late against Suakin, but I have no doubt they are very disagreeable neighbours. There is the widest difference between holding Suakin alone, and holding this large territory. What is being done must
  318
  inevitably get us into great difficulty, unless we have a clear understanding. It may be said I am pressing this unduly, but in 1884 there were debates which were continued day after day. The country was horrified at the massacres which took place there. We have had a similar massacre now, but there is this difference between the two years—that whereas then the troops returned and it was said there was no intention of laying hold of any portion of the Eastern Soudan, now we have the massacre followed by the Egyptian troops seizing or annexing a very considerable tract of the Soudan, which is claimed, lightly or wrongly, by the Dervishes to belong to them. I do trust we shall have some sort of statement as to what is really intended.
  COLONEL BLITNDELL: Every military man who heard the statement made by the Government at the time of General Grenfell's action, that we were to hold Suakin by itself, knew that it was a dangerous statement to make, because there is no such thing as a passive defence. Any General defending Suakin ought to have full liberty to hold a certain zone of the territory around it, so that an enemy should not be allowed to come up to it at all. Pull liberty should be allowed to the commanding officer defending Suakin to occupy and hold the country near, in order to secure that town from attack by an enemy.
  DR. TANNER: This is a short but expressive statement from a supporter of the Government. But we may ask where, in the name of common sense, is this region of attack to end. We were told not so long ago by Her Majesty's Government that the occupation of Egypt is to continue to a remote period. Then again we are told that the possession of Suakin is indispensable as part of our policy. It is of no practical use to England as a military station, but our holding it or Egypt holding it constitutes a sort of sore on the surface of that part of the world, it provokes irritation among the natives; and how long is this to continue? We are to have an extension of telegraphic communication, and other expenses are to be incurred in connection with a district which is of no good to the

  319
  country, and has no advantage really from a military point of view. I really cannot help supposing that this is only one of the many methods made use of by Her Majesty's present advisers to provide posts for the assistance of impecunious relatives. If we accept the doctrine of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who has just spoken, it must lead to the permanent occupation of the whole African coast until we find ourselves on the boundaries of another European Power. Really I think we ought to have some substantial declaration from the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War. When will the limit be reached of this systematic land-grabbing of the territories of free people? As far as in me lies I must protest against this wasteful, foolish system. I do not quite agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland that the permanent occupation of Egypt will bring about a conflict of British and Russian interests; the place where we are likely to feel any difficulty on that account is the Indian North-western frontier. But I merely want to press for an answer from the right hon. Gentleman, and it cannot be matter of surprise that we are not satisfied with a bald statement from the responsible Minister when we are asked to vote this very large amount of money.
  MR. H. J. WILSON: I feel bound to join in offering this protest against the whole of this Egyptian business. I have not been in the House through the whole of the discussions, and therefore I do not know whether this point has been alluded to. It is acknowledged that we have a certain amount of responsibility for the action of the Egyptian Government, and when we see that English officers lead the Egyptian troops in these expeditions it is assumed by the people that these expeditions are undertaken upon instructions from the English Government. As a matter of fact it is the English Government promoting these attacks, because by the presence of our troops in Egypt we liberate a certain number of Egyptian troops for the purpose. The speech of the hon. and gallant Member has let the cat out of the bag, and shows the real position—that, once established anywhere, we must then go a step
  320
  further; and that is what is indicated by what we are told about telegraphs and other arrangements. I suppose the Egyptian Government now hope that all is to be recovered in the Soudan. Again and again have we asked what is going to be done in the country, and the answers we have received are examples of what out of doors we should call downright shuffling. I am not fully posted up in all the details of this question, and have no desire to take up time, but I must join in the protest of my hon. Friend.
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I hope we may now be allowed to come to a decision, for it is clear we are discussing over again exactly the question that was discussed at the last sitting on the Army Estimates. I have this evening again answered the observations of the hon. Member for Northampton, who, however, did not do me the favour of remaining in the House to hear my reply.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I was absent swallowing a hasty cup of tea, but I know what the right hon. Gentleman said; a friend of mine has told me.
  MR. E. STANHOPE: Then we have had a speech from the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir G. Campbell), who never fails to give us the benefit of his views on this subject. No one can deny that the speeches of to-night have been the a réchauffé of the last Debate on the subject; no additional fact or argument has been adduced. I did not wish to curtail legitimate discussion in the least degree, but I must earnestly appeal to the Committee to pass from this to the next Vote in the Estimates, which raises more important matters than this.
  MR. STOREY: The right hon. Gentleman thinks there are more important matters to discuss on the next Votes, but I venture to differ from him because in this question the honour of this country and the honour of the Government are involved: the honour of the country because we have pledged ourselves to Europe that we will at a convenient time come out of Egypt, and we on this side hold that the futher you advance into the Soudan the more you retard the time of our departure from Egypt—the honour of the Government of this country because the foreign

  321
  policy of our Government is supposed to be continuous, and the late Government was pledged up to the eyes to retire from Egypt at the first convenient opportunity. What we urge here, and what we mean to urge throughout the country is that by permitting themselves to be seduced into military proceedings in the Soudan the Government are practically eating their pledges and putting off to the Greek Kalends the time when we can honourably retire from Egypt. The right hon. Gentleman thinks the time has arrived for us to come to a decision and that we have put no new facts before the Committee. The Committee? What is the use of putting facts before empty benches with neither heads or hearts or intelligence? Wood and leather have we been addressing our arguments to, interspersed here and there with a representative of the Government or the Treasury Bench. An audience of five or six gentlemen have we had opposite. We might as well talk to leather and wood as talk to the intelligence and endeavour to pierce the pachydermatous skins of Her Majesty's Government. Now they invite us to come to a Division, and that means that, having exhausted argument, and made convincing speeches to which they have made no reply, we are to be met by numbers and voted down. Beaten on a Division we know we shall be—beaten in argument the Government are. The Financial Secretary smiles at the idea, but I invite him to rise and give us some tangible defence in regard to the matter we are contesting. We say the Government by meekly permitting the Egyptians to go to Tokar, innocently I will admit, without any desire of their own, but unfortunately for us and for Egpyt, are provoking another war in the Soudan and delaying our departure from Egypt. One point there is which has not been dwelt upon in these discussions. We allege that these advances in the Soudan are prompted by the ambition of the Egyptian Pashas and by the influence of the Military Authorities anxious to gain a little military glory at the expense of the half-armed Soudanese. But how far do these schemes of conquest and annexation, apart from military spirit and the greed of the Pashas, originate in those financial circles whence came the
  322
  hateful influence which induced the late Government to embark on their disastrous career in the Soudan? All of us who were Members of this House in 1882 know that we went to Egypt in the interest of the bondholders, not because the honour of England was involved or the safety of Egpyt at stake, but to save the pockets of the financiers whose influence is now felt by those who hold high places on the Treasury Bench. This financial influence projected the Egyptian policy of the late Government, and have we not now the same cabals, the same schemes, the same inspired newspaper paragraphs, the same direct and indirect efforts on the minds and inclinations of the governing authorities in Egypt and at home for the purpose of permanently securing those financial interests, which would have been destroyed if we had not gone to Egypt, and which everybody knows will be jeopardised if we leave Egypt. How to keep up the English occupation is the constant endeavour of the bondholders, and so it is that these ideas of exploiting the Soudanese are fostered, that the difficulties arising may prolong our occupation of Egpyt. We do not mean to divide until we have had some more definite engagement than we have yet secured. We are not going to permit the blood of Egyptians or Englishmen or Soudanese to be spilt time after time—and these occurrences the Recording Angel must have written with a double-dyed pen—without impressing upon the Government that it was by weakness the Liberal Government entered on these projects in the past; and that it is by weakness the present Government are being led on to a war which is likely to be conducted in a manner to cause permanent mischief to Egypt. The hon. Member for Carlisle thinks these enterprises have been entered upon not through weakness, but through wickedness. I do not think the Government of 1882 had wickedness in its composition or purposes. If it had, those who composed that Government have shed it or got rid of it since. For my part I believe it was weakly led on step by step until events culminated in the wicked bombardment of Alexandria, and a war which, though not productive of much loss of life, yet was productive of

  323
  much suffering to Egypt. It is by weakness that the present Government has been led on. You had Alexandria, Tel-el-Kebir, and Khartoum to record against the last Government; what have you against the present Government? I cannot remember the petty names, for the Government has done nothing great, but the records show that they have been going on foolishly from one petty conflict to another and sacrificing with no permanent effect the lives of men belonging to three nations. And that is going to continue to be done; I can see it from their present policy. They will go to Tokar and, if permitted to remain there, a few months hence they will discover another oasis beyond Tokar. Some military gentlemen or some enterprising Pasha who wants to distinguish himself will discover, 30 or 40 miles from Tokar, another oasis. Having found that Suakin could be best defended from Tokar, it will then be said that Tokar can be best defended from this other oasis, and advances will be made in one direction upon Kassala and in another direction upon Berber, and this country will be committed in "honour" to projects which will involve the re-conquest of the Soudan, or, at all events, the Nile portion of it. It is because our past experience has made us jealous and has prevented us from putting confidence in the promises of Governments—knowing how their promises are falsified—that we make protests against these military projects. For the reasons I have given I have felt it my duty to renew the protests made by the hon. Member for Northampton and the hon. Member for Caithness, and I would ask from the Treasury Bench some declaration to the effect that for the future this country shall not be committed to pledges of conquest in the Soudan for the purpose of giving security to the dividends of the bondholders, and with the result of continuing to an unknown date the occupation of Egypt.
  MR. MORTON: I can understand the anxiety of the Minister for War to get this Vote. I suppose this is what he would call the dangerous part of the Army Estimates, and that he thinks that if he can get this item he will be able to go on for
  324
  another twelve months exploiting in the Soudan, and bringing about further annexation. As I understand it, we want an answer on two points from the Secretary for War and from the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. We want to know when the Government are going to leave Egypt for good, and whether they intend to re-conquer the Soudan. I could quite understand the Government saying candidly that they mean, as far as they are concerned, retaining possession of the Soudan, and to go on conquering and re-conquering as much territory as possible. I was not a Member of the House in 1882, when these proceedings commenced, but outside the House, in connection with political associations, I have always opposed this occupation of Egypt and this interference with the Egyptian people. I have no hesitation in saying—for this is not a political matter—that I objected even more strongly to the action of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian than I do to the action of the present Government in continuing the occupation of Egypt. It was a mistake to go there in the first instance. I believe the late Government meant to retire as soon as they could, but what do the present Government mean? Why do they not say they mean to leave by a certain date, and why do they go to Tokar at all? I cannot see that it is of any use at all, unless it is intended to go further and conquer more territory. To my mind, we have no right to interfere with the Soudanese, who we were told were a people "rightly struggling to be free." Another strong objection I have to these proceedings is that they annoy and irritate the French people. It may be that the Government desire to annoy the French people and their Government. I know they do not like a Republic, but I cannot help that. My point is that we have no right to irritate neighbours with whom we should live on terms of amity and good feeling. Besides, we are likely to suffer by giving this annoyance in Newfoundland and elsewhere. Having promised the French Government that we would retire from Egypt, why should we not do so honestly and as quickly as possible. So long as I am a Member of this House I shall vote against spending money on these

  325
  Egyptian affairs, and I now give my hearty support to the Amendment.
  MR. KEAY: The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War complained a short time ago that all that was said from this side of the House was in the nature of reiteration of matter already uttered in previous Debates. I think, whatever may be my feebleness and defects I shall be able to contribute, if allowed by the Chair, to the information which ought to be placed before the House concerning matters which hitherto have not been mentioned. The hon. Member for Sunderland maintained—and I think rightly maintained—that the cause of all the difficulty in which this country has been involved was our original advent into Egypt through means which we all know, namely, the bombardment of Alexandria. I have no doubt that many Members of the House would be glad to consider that that was entirely ancient history. For my own part I cannot consider that it is ancient history until the last corporal's guard of the British Army has evacuated Egypt. The occupation of Egypt was not the doing of the present Government. The events I am about to mention, they were not, at all events directly, responsible for, and they may even have forgotten some of them, miserable as they were. The first of these events was this: We went to Egypt without any declaration of war violating in that respect, the law of nations. We also invaded Egypt absolutely without permission of the English Cabinet.
  THE CHAIRMAN: I do not see the relevancy of this at all.
  *MR. KEAY: I submit to your ruling, Sir, but I am only taking the historical latitude which was accorded to other speakers.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! The hon. Member did not understand the argument of the hon. Member for Sunderland. The hon. Member for Sunderland suggested motives for the present position in Egypt.
  *MR. KEAY: I am alluding to the hon. Member for Northampton when he went over the history of the case. I wish to show that we went to Egypt merely through the action of officials.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order!
  *MR. KEAY: Then I cannot pursue that part of the subject. The next point which I have in my mind is the devastating effect which our action has had on Egypt, inasmuch as through our very first act the whole civil population of Alexandria disappeared at the time of the bombardment, and has never been heard of more.
  THE CHAIRMAN: This is far too remote from the subject now before the Committee.
  *MR. KEAY: I can only obey the ruling of the Chair. I do not know whether it will be in order to mention that I have heard questions put in this House as to the fact of the disappearance of these people.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order!
  *MR. KEAY: I suppose I must understand that the history of the causes which led to our occupation of Egypt is not to be discussed on this occasion. I will, therefore, confine myself to a few remarks as to the financial question. I contend that the financial position in Egypt is such that either this reduction should be passed, and the Egyptian Government should pay the extra expense of our troops out of their own surplus, or else that Her Majesty's Government should prove to the Committee that there is some British reason why the British taxpayer should be mulcted in the amount now asked for. From the examination I have made of Egyptian affairs, I cannot congratulate either the late Government or the present Government upon any real improvement in Egyptian finance. I do not deny that they have, by hook or by crook, extorted from the Egyptian peasantry a large amount of revenue by their scientific system—because I must confess that the British revenue system is, so far as exaction is concerned, a very scientific system of extortion. They have succeeded in extorting from the Egyptian fellaheen all that was obtainable before the war, and a large sum in addition for the maintenance of British soldiers and British Departments. The surplus which is spoken of in connection with Egyptian finance clearly owes its existence to severer revenue laws, and severer extortion from the unfortunate cultivators of the country. I cannot understand—taking even the

  327
  official view of the matter—how anyone can maintain that the surplus has not been obtained by extortion. If the surplus had been due to the increased prosperity of the country, we should have had some proposal to relieve the British taxpayer of, at any rate, a part of the burden of this Vote. These are my reasons for—as far as your ruling, Sir, will allow me—saying that I shall certainly record my protest against the passing of this Vote.
  Mr. JOHNSTONrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put; "but the CHAIRMAN withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.
  Debate resumed.
  SIR W. LAWSON: It has been complained that we sometimes speak twice on this aide. Well, Sir, I have not yet spoken on the subject which I take to be the question of our occupation of Egypt and whether certain contingencies of an evil nature in the Soudan do not arise from that occupation. I am surprised to hear a right hon. Gentleman opposite say that there are more important questions to be discussed than this. I do not think there could be a more important question discussed than this. Nobody can have forgotten how we went on and on, and employed our Fleets, Armies, in stifling Home Rule in Egypt, merely for the sake of securing the extortionate profits of a few bondholders. Can there be anything on which it is more important for everybody in this House to do all that within them lies to prevent the renewal of such crimes as have occurred. You may have a renewal of one of the greatest international outrages of the century—a foul blot on the record of the Liberal Party. The occupation of Egypt to my mind was commenced in outrage and carried on with fraud. It was to the everlasting shame of the Liberal Party that they carried out these proceedings, and I am glad to see that some of the Pashas of that Party have now arrived. I hope that they will tell the Committee that they are as much opposed to this forward policy in Egypt as any of those who sit below the Gangway. Why have our soldiers been kept in Egypt? Have we not been told over
  328
  and over again that they were only to be kept there until order was established; and are we not told that order has been established, and that everything is now going on happily? Why are you keeping your soldiers there? I can do nothing but repeat the question as the right hon. Gentleman opposite has said, and I do so because it is never answered. The only possible excuse for keeping up this expenditure is that you want to do something or other in the Soudan. That is no excuse. I sit down by asking the right hon. Gentleman to answer one question, and if he will answer it in a straightforward manner it will be simplifying matters a good deal. I want to know whether the Government adhere to the policy laid down in the Despatch of January 8th, 1884, by Sir Evelyn Baring, who said that the Khedive accepted a gradual policy of abandonment of the whole of the Soudan, which he believed on mature reflection to be for the best interests of the country. I want a straightforward answer to the question: Have the Government abandoned the policy of ruling the Soudan or have they not? If we got a straightforward answer to the question we could not have a surer ground. I feel sure the right hon. Gentleman will be glad to give us that answer.
  MR. WILLIAM HENRY SMITHrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
  Question put, "That the Question be now put."
  (10.30.) The Committee divided:—Ayes 135; Noes 68.—(Div. List, No. 74.)
  Question put accordingly, "That '£5,532,700' be granted for the said Services."
  (10.45.) The Committee divided:—Ayes 65; Noes 140.—(Div. List, No. 75.)
  MR. CONYBEARE: Mr. Courtney, I have to state that by accident I have been excluded from voting. I was in the Lobby at the time of the Division writing a letter, and my vote was not recorded.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Did the hon. Member hear the question put?
  MR. CONYBEARE: Yes, Sir.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Then the hon. Member ought to have voted.
  Original Question again proposed.
  SIR W. LAWSON: I move, Sir, that you do now report Progress, and ask leave to sit again, and I will give my reasons for so doing. I think that this is a most extraordinary way of voting national supplies. We have been discussing as important a question as it is possible to discuss, namely, the policy of this country in Egypt. Hardly anybody on the other side of the House came to hear or take part in the discussion, but all of a sudden in comes the First Lord of the Treasury, and without having listened to the Debate for five minutes—I do not think the right hon. Gentleman even heard my speech—he gets up and moves that the question be now put. The Government even refused to answer a question I put. I put it seriously, respectfully, and earnestly, a question which arose out of the discussion then going on, namely, the policy of the Government in the Soudan, which is the cause of the necessity for voting this number of men and the amount of money asked for. I put the question seriously to the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for War, and directly I sat down, having asked the question, up jumped the First Lord of the Treasury and moved that the question be now put. Was anybody ever answered in that way in the House before? More than that; I happen to know that others wish to take part in the Debate and express their opinions on the Egyptian policy of the Government. In these circumstances I have no hesitation whatever in moving to report Progress.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Sir Wilfrid Lawson.)
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I had no intention to show any want of courtesy towards the hon. Baronet in not answering his question. I have not answered it for the simple reason that if the hon. Baronet had only listened to the Debate which took place on the last occasion when the House discussed this subject, he would have known that his question had already been answered. The question of Egypt was discussed on the last occasion
  330
  when the Army Estimates were taken, although it was admitted that the question was but remotely connected with the subject before the Committee but it was discussed at very great length and an interesting Debate took place. That Debate was resumed again to-day, when not a single new argument was adduced, nor, I believe, a single new fact brought forward. Three hon. Members addressed the Committee twice at inordinate length. One hon. Member spoke for 41 minutes and then again spoke for 30 minutes. I venture to think that that was a very considerable waste of the time of the House, and the Government would have been wanting in their duty to the country—their duty being to get through the business of the country in an efficient manner—if they had not endeavoured to bring the Debate to a conclusion. Therefore, the Government cannot for one moment think of consenting to the proposal to report Progress.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I began the Debate by moving the adjournment. I then asked a question of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The right hon. Gentleman has said that nothing new has been adduced yet. Since I had the honour of making speech we have had an entirely now phase of the question put before us. We have had this attack upon Tokar. On the last occasion it was only known indistinctly from the first telegram, and I confess I was so aghast that I could hardly believe it was a fact. But, unquestionably, we never have got clearly from the Government any statement as to whether it is intended to annex that country or not. The Government have simply played with the question. They said it could not be called annexation because the Egyptian Government had not abandoned the country, and because the Sultan had not given up his Sovereign rights. I have read to the House a statement made by the Minister in 1884 in which there was a distinct pledge that the Khedive was to abandon the Soudan, and that that was the policy of Her Majesty's Government. But now the old policy is entirely altered. Things have got to such a pitch, we are so down-trodden on this side of the House that we are not allowed when this

  331
  enormous alteration is made in the policy of Her Majesty's Government, which we find has already cost the lives of some hundreds of persons, and which we believe will lead to an enormous expenditure of blood and treasure, and which will require us to retain an Army in Egypt for years to come—we are not allowed to discuss the matter. There has been no discussion, because it requires two to make a discussion, and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have not attempted to answer us. We have asked the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs to make a distinct statement of the policy of the Government, and it is because we do not get that statement that we are continuing the Debate. The First Lord of the Treasury by moving that the question be now put has endorsed the action of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. We are therefore justified in moving to report Progress in order that the Government may have an opportunity of reconsidering their position, and of inventing some reason for the policy which they are adopting.
  MR. STOREY: The exact position of affairs is this. A question was asked of the Government from this side. The Gentleman whom we particularly wanted to answer it was not in his place—I refer to the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. We have now been told that the reason for not answering the question was that it had already been answered; and the head of the Government, when he told us that, complained that one 'Member of this House had spoken first for 40 minutes and afterwards for 30 minutes without adducing a single new fact. Thereupon all the hon. Members opposite, who had not listened to the Debate, with that astounding faith and gullibility of disposition which distinguishes the Tory Party, accepted the statement of their chief. Now, I contravene the statement that the question we have asked has been answered. The question was this: Sir Evelyn Baring, in 1884, said the Khedive accepted gratefully the policy of the abandonment of the whole of the Soudan, which he believed, on mature reflection, to be best in the interests of Egypt. If that be correct, then how do the Government reconcile it with the forward movement
  332
  on Tokar? We want that answered by the Government, and if we do not get the reply to-night we shall proceed on future convenient occasions to (Parliamentarily) compel them to answer us.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I may give another reason which justifies the action of my hon. Friend. The responsible chiefs of the Party which sit on this side of the House have in no way assisted us in our attempts to get satisfactory assurances from the Government. I have noticed a lamentable absence and ominous silence on this question on the part of those who usually occupy the Front Opposition Bench. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham is smiling in unusual fashion. He has been enjoying——
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order order! That line of argument is not relevant to the Motion.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I was only employing it for purposes of illustration. The right hon. Gentleman is always willing to criticise the action of his former colleagues; but I had hoped he would have helped us in getting an answer from the Government. It will, no doubt, be in his recollection——
  MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, order! I have already told the hon. Member he is speaking irrelevantly. I must now warn him of the consequences which will ensue if he persists in that conduct.
  MR. CONYBEARE: Certainly, Sir; I bow to your ruling. But it cannot be denied that we had no satisfactory assurance from the Government. Cannot the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs do away with the necessity for further discussion by giving us the answer we require? Our demand has been met as usual with a Closure Motion. We want the Government, however, to closure the forward movement in the Soudan. Complaint is made that we have been wasting time. I do not think that charge can fairly be made against me. I have been in Egypt and done something to make myself acquainted with the issues involved in this question, and I might justly have asked the indulgence of the House in order to raise certain points. Having regard to the immense importance of this matter from

  333
  an international standpoint, I do think we have a right to an answer to the questions asked. If the Government intend to adopt this attitude they will find it difficult to make progress with their business. I hope the right hon. Gentlemen will be wise in time and tell us whether they intend to continue the policy of annexation in the Soudan.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir J. FERGUSSON,): The only reason why I did not answer was that I dealt fully with every point raised when this matter was discussed a few nights ago, and I felt that to repeat what I said on that occasion would be to waste the time of the Committee. I listened to the speech of the Member for Northampton and to some others which followed and I certainly did not hear one question which has not already been amply answered. Having made the most specific declarations as to the policy of the Government, having stated that there has been no departure from the policy of 1886, that the movement on Tokar was made in connection with the defence of the Red Sea ports, and that there is no intention of advancing into the interior of the country, I felt it to be unnecessary to take up the time of the House by repeating these assurances.
  SIR J. SWINBURNE: Are the Government going to maintain the policy of occupying Tokar and Handoub? That is what we want to know.
  DR. TANNER: I hope the Government will take to heart the interesting lesson they have received tonight. We have had dilettanti utterances from two or three right hon. Gentlemen who receive large salaries, the larger portion of the supporters of the Government have been indulging in the luxuries of Morpheus, and we have tried in vain to get a satisfactory answer to our question; I want to try and prevent the recurrence in future of the action of the First Lord of the Treasury in performing the part of the bogie man.
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order!
  (11.16.) The Committee divided:—Ayes 68; Noes 160.—(Div. List, No. 76.)
  (11.25.) Original Question again proposed.
  *SIR G. CAMPBELL: I now want to move a reduction of the Vote in respect of the troops employed in South Africa. I have constantly protested against the system of making the British taxpayer pay the whole of our military expenditure. These colonies are called upon to contribute only a nominal sum. Now the Government propose to give responsible Government to Natal, and I want to know if any arrangements have been made as to the cost of the military defence of Natal? The right hon. Gentleman the Undersecretary for the Colonies, with that audacity which characterises some of his statements, told us that no very serious civil or military questions were involved in this matter, but I do not agree with him. This is a matter worthy the attention of Parliament that involves the expenditure of a large sum, and I, therefore, think we are entitled to know what arrangements have been made, and if the taxpayers of this country will be relieved of the cost of the military defence of Natal. I beg to move the reduction of the vote by £80,000.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That '£5,552,700' be granted for the said Services."—(Sir George Campbell.)
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I think the hon. Gentleman might have had his desire gratified by simply asking a question. For the last two years we have had a Departmental Committee sitting. That Committee has been composed of representatives of the War Office, the Colonial Office, and the Treasury, and has already called upon certain colonies to pay increased sums towards the cost of troops who are maintained in those colonies. The question of the Cape has not been approached yet, but as to Natal our hope is that there shall be no military force permanently maintained there. We have had troublous times in Zululand, and we have not deemed it right to remove the troops.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: I gladly acknowledge that Her Majesty's Government are doing a good deal in regard to the question. I have often brought to the notice of the House, the necessity of the colonies making an annual contribution towards the troops employed within their borders. I am surprised to hear Her Majesty's Government

  335
  hope that troops will not be permanently employed in Natal. We have been told by the Under Secretary for the Colonies that the Government are prepared to give responsible Government to Natal, and what I want is a distinct assurance as to whether, when responsible Government is given, we shall be relieved from charge. I was a little alarmed at what the Secretary said in regard to Zululand. Natal and Zululand are mixed up with one another, and it will be a real evasion if you are going to keep troops in Zulu-land at the expense of the people of this country. Again, I want to know whether any precaution will be taken that Natal will, out of their own resources, keep up a sufficient force, and whether we shall, before matters are finally settled, have an opportunity of discussing them?
  MR. E. STANHOPE: An opportunity for discussion will be given in the Colonial Vote: certainly the question does not arise in the Army Estimates.
  DR. CLARK: Am I to understand that the sole garrison will be the garrison we maintain for Imperial purposes at Simon's Bay, and that the entire cost of all the men required in Natal will be defrayed by Natal?
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I have not said anything of the kind. The Departmental Committee will presently consider the case of the Cape.
  *SIR G. CAMPBELL: Will Her Majesty's Government make it a stipulation that Natal will keep up a force sufficient for the protection of Natal so that the taxpayers of this country will not be burdened with any charge?
  MR. CONYBEARE: I think the apprehensions of my hon. Friend are somewhat exaggerated. I do not imagine that when the troops are removed from Pietermaritzburg there will be any greater danger to the white population of Natal than there is at the present time. I have every reason to believe that responsible Government in Natal will be quite competent to look after itself and not involve itself in complications either with the population of Natal or the population of Zululand. And if they do, I am not aware it will be incumbent upon us to send out troops there any more than we are in the habit of sending out troops in the case of disturbance
  336
  in New Zealand. I am extremely glad to hear the troops are to be withdrawn from Natal. My own belief is it will be an advantage to our people there as well as to the natives, and it certainly will remove the inducement to employ our troops whenever there is any difficulty over the border. The troublous times in Zululand, to which the right hon. gentleman referred, resulted from our own wretched mismanagement of the Zulus. If it had not been for the disgraceful way in which we treated some of the chiefs I believe we should not have had any trouble whatever. I hope that, in connection with the withdrawal of troops from Natal, England will pluck up courage, and pursue a policy more in consonance with common sense than that pursued by the Colonial Office in times past.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Original Question again proposed.
  SIR G. CAMPBELL: I have given notice of my intention to move another reduction, but the point I wished to raise has been to some extent answered by what the Secretary of State for War has just said. I wished to move a reduction in respect of the troops employed in colonies which at present pay no contributions whatever. There are several colonies which do not pay one farthing towards the cost of troops. I hope we are to understand that the Committee which is sitting will consider the whole subject. If I am right in that understanding, it is not necessary I should raise that particular point. I am glad to see the Secretary for War assents to that. While I am on my legs, I want to refer to the general subject of this Vote—the cost of the men and officers of the Army. The more I see and read, the more and more convinced I am that we are going too much on the old-fashioned line of sacrificing to a morbid desire to maintain a totally inefficient Army the defensive forces of the country. The real defensive forces are emasculated in order to maintain an offensive regular force which is really quite contemptible from a European point of view. The Militia is far below

  337
  its strength, and there is the greatest possible difficulty in getting officers. A good deal has been done for the Volunteers, but we are told that the different corps are short of officers. I do not think you are spending enough money on the Volunteers, and I am sure you are not doing enough for the Militia. I wish to enter a protest against the way in which we expend our men and resources in India, Egypt and other parts of the world, while we neglect an auxiliary and popular force in this country.
  SIR J. SWINBURNE: Are the Government in a position to say when they intend to withdraw the troops from Natal?
  MR. E. STANHOPE: I am afraid I cannot answer the question of the hon. Baronet. Personally I am very anxious to withdraw the troops from Natal at as early a date as possible, consistent with the material interests of Natal. It is better the troops should be concentrated as far as possible in the Cape Colony, but looking to the present condition of Natal and the districts bordering on Natal I cannot fix a date for the withdrawal of the troops.
  MAJOR RASCH: I desire to call the attention of the Secretary for War to a matter which may have his cognisance, but which I am sure has not his approval. Large Government works are under construction at Shoeburyness. They are under the control of the Engineer Department, and that Department have made a practice for several years of turning off old soldiers when work is scarce elsewhere, and they can get the young fellows from the brickfields in the neighbourhood. I do not say that old soldiers because they are old soldiers should have a preference, but I think that old soldiers when once they are employed on work in garrison towns should not be sent about their business at a moment's notice without any reason whatever. The Secretary of State for War has frequently expressed his interest in the employment of Reserve and discharged soldiers; he has now a practical opportunity of showing such interest and of preventing the continuance of a practice which creates much dissatisfaction amongst very respectable old soldiers who now live in and about garrison towns.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. BRODRICK,): Our experience is whenever an officer has the opportunity of employing old soldiers he does so, and the men receive proper consideration. I am surprised, therefore, to hear the statement made by the hon. and gallant Member, and some inquiry shall be made into the matter.
  DR. CLARK: I notice there has been a reduction in the agency charges——
  MR. E. STANHOPE: The hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hanbury) is going to raise the question in the form of a question. We shall then have an opportunity of explaining what we propose to do with regard to agents.
  DR. CLARK: But we cannot discuss the matter upon a question.
  MR. BRODRICK: I can explain the position in a few words. The present Army Agents have undertaken to continue to issue the pay of officers without any charge, and this will cause a large diminution in the amount voted from January next. The right of the officers to a continuance of agency has been recognised for a long period, and is based on a surrender of pay by the officers in consideration of agency being established.
  MR. BRUNNER: I should like to know from the Government whether there is any official organisation to which employers in the country can apply when they want to obtain the services of old soldiers. The only organisation of which I have 'any knowledge is, I understand, an entirely voluntary one. It has an office in London, but it is not sufficiently known. There are, I believe, a very large number of employers who would be very glad to have old soldiers of good character in their service. I have some in my service, and I find them exceedingly steady and intelligent.
  *MR. BRODRICK: This subject has been several times previously brought before the House, and the Secretary of State for War will undertake that the reference to the Committee that is about to sit on the Recruiting Question will be drawn in such a way as to enable them to take the matter into consideration. That will certainly be the most efficient way of dealing with it.
  MR. BRUNNER: My desire was that the Government should adopt some means of making the organisation in Pall Mall better known, and I trust that the point will receive attention.
  DR. TANNER: I think that insufficient attention has been paid to the point raised by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy. The hon. Member drew attention to the fact that while certain colonies pay towards the cost of troops employed within their borders, there are several colonies who contribute nothing to such cost. If we are to be fair all round, the Government ought certainly to take into consideration the fact that there are colonies who do not pay any thing towards the troops. We ought to have some distinct assurance from the Government that no invidious distinction will be made between——
  It being midnight, the Chairman proceeded to interrupt the business.
  Whereupon Mr. WILLIAM HENRY SMITH rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
  Question put, "That the Question be now put."
  (12.0.) The Committee divided—Ayes 157; Noes 49.—(Div. List. No. 77.)
  Original Question again proposed.
  DR. TANNER: May I call the attention to the fact that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy made a Motion proposing to reduce the Vote by £50,000, and it was to that Motion I was speaking at 12 o'clock?
  THE CHAIRMAN: That Amendment was withdrawn.
  DR. TANNER: But may I ask whether the Question was withdrawn by the Chair?
  THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, it was.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Resolution to be reported to-morrow.
  Committee to sit again to-morrow.

  SEED POTATOES SUPPLY (IRELAND) ACT (1890) AMENDMENT BILL.—(No. 148.)
  Bill read a second time, and committed for this day.
ELECTORS REGISTRATION (ACCELERATION) (RE-COMMITTED) BILL.—(No. 147.)

  COMMITTEE.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 1.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Dr. Tanner.)
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. RITCHIE,): This Bill has now been amended fro formâ in Committee by the insertion of the Government Amendments.
  DR. TANNER: I object.
  *MR. RITCHIE: But the hon. Member cannot object to my making a statement? I desire to say that the Government do not think they would be justified in keeping this Bill on the Paper and allowing the matter to remain in a state of uncertainty. It is undesirable that those who are engaged in the duties of registration should have any doubt as to those duties and the time in which they must perform them. We had hoped that this Bill would have been accepted generally' by the House when we introduced it at the desire of County Councils, but I have been in communication with hon. Gentlemen opposite who have Amendments on the Paper, and from who I am told I fear there is very little probability of their withdrawing their opposition and Amendments. I propose to put the Bill down for Monday, in the hope that hon. Gentlemen who have notices of Amendments to entirely alter the character of the Bill, will meanwhile reconsider the position. But I think it my duty to put an end to uncertainty, and if on Monday hon. Members cannot see their way to withdraw the Amendments to which I refer, and if they are not prepared to accept the Bill practically in the form in which it is now reprinted, it will be my duty to move the discharge of the order.
  MR. CAUSTON: Does the right hon. Gentleman, in putting the Bill down for Monday, intend that it shall be taken at an hour when it can be discussed?
  *MR. RITCHIE: We propose to take it after the principal business of the Government for the day is concluded.
  MR. CONYBEARE: I think the right hon. Gentleman has said quite enough to justify opposition to the Bill by hon. Members on this side. The right hon. Gentleman brings down a Bill to effect important changes in the constitution of the country, and simply throws it at our heads saying "If you do not choose to accept the whole Bill as we present it we shall withdraw it, and you shall not have whatever benefit it may contain." The Bill has passed through Committee simply pro formâ without a word of discussion, and if the right hon. Gentleman thinks we are going to let an important Bill like this pass without consideration and, if need be, amendment—if that is his attitude, I can assure him that although I have had representations made to me in favour of the Bill by the Clerk to the County Council of my county yet I shall offer the most strenuous opposition to the Bill, because I protest against the infringement of the right this House has to discuss and amend any Bill that comes before it. If the right hon. Gentleman does not choose to listen to criticisms upon the measure he had better withdraw it at once.
  *MR. RITCHIE: I wish it to be understood that what I said has reference to Amendments on the Paper which are of a fundamental character; embracing, as they do, alterations in the franchise, they are not simply Amendments dealing with the machinery of registration with which we ask the House to deal. To Amendments of that character of course my remarks do not apply. The Amendments I refer to are those which strike at the very root of the Bill which we have introduced at the earnest request of County Councils. It is a pure machinery Bill and we are not prepared to ask the House to embark on the discussion of franchise questions.
  MR. STOREY: In my judgment some of the Amendments which appear upon the Paper are by no moans germane to the Bill as promoted, but I want to represent to the right hon. Gentleman that at any rate in my part of the country there are very serious
  342
  objections to the changes he proposes being made at the present time, practical objections. Such changes, if made at all, and I admit they ought to be made, are surely changes which ought to be made in quiet times, and not under the shadow of a General Election. With his practical knowledge the right hon. Gentleman knows that the gentlemen charged with the duty of registration in country places are not so clever as they might be, and if a General Election should take place immediately after the passing of this Bill into law, these changes in forms will perplex and bother them. At the present time there is great difficulty in getting Overseers and Assistant Overseers to provide full and accurate lists each year, and if you make the changes under pressure of time it will be impossible in many places at once to get out sufficient and accurate lists. While I entirely agree with the changes proposed, I think the right hon. Gentleman would exercise a wise discretion in not pushing them forward now.
  MR. RITCHIE: I want the Committee to understand that the Government must not be supposed to be acting with the slightest disrespect towards Members of the House if they do not proceed with the Bill. I on a previous occasion explained our deeply-rooted objections to changing the whole character of the Bill in the manner I have indicated. The position we take is this: If this change is to be made it must be made in sufficient time in order to allow anyone who has anything to do with the working of the Registration Law to make himself acquainted with the change. The Government do not think they would be justified in pushing forward the Bill if it could only come into operation at a time when possibly those charged with the administration would not be fully acquainted with the change. If the Bill does not pass we shall do all we can without it to assist those who are charged with the duty of making up the register, in the performance of their duties within the time and in the best manner possible.
  MR. CAUSTON: I am in favour of a Registration Acceleration Bill, but with freedom to propose Amendments. But if we only enter upon the Bill after 12 o'clock there is no opportunity of dealing with Amendments, and

  343
  therefore, I would suggest that the Bill should be taken at a time to allow fair discussion of reasonable Amendments.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

SUPPLY—REPORT.
Resolutions [2nd March] reported.

NAVY ESTIMATES.
1. "That 71,000 men and boys be employed for the Sea and Coast Guard Services for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1892, including 14,005 Royal Marines."
2. "That a sum, not exceeding £3,404,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of Wages, &c. to Officers, Seamen and Boys, Coast Guard, and Royal Marines, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1892."
Resolutions agreed to.
Ordered, That the Resolution which, upon the 24th day of February, was reported from the Committee of Supply, and which was then agreed to by the House, be now read;
"That a number of Land Forces, not exceeding 153,696, all ranks, be maintained for the Service of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at Home and Abroad, excluding Her Majesty's Indian Possessions, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1892."

ARMY (ANNUAL) BILL.
Ordered, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide, during Twelve Months, for the Discipline and Regulation of the Army; and that Mr. Secretary Stanhope, Lord George Hamilton, the Judge Advocate General, and Mr. Brodrick do prepare and bring it in.
Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 240.]

MUSEUMS AND GYMNASIUMS BILL. (No. 159.)
Order for consideration, and Bill, as amended, read.
MR. STOREY: I object.
MR. CHAINING: I hope the hon. Member will not persist in his objection. The Bill is a very useful one.
MR. STOREY: I object to its being taken at such an hour as this—half-past 12.
*MR. F. S. POWELL: There is no opposition to the Bill from any quarter of the House, and I hope the hon. Member will allow this stage to be taken.
*MR. RITCHIE: I would point out to the hon. Member that the Bill is not compulsory.
MR. STOREY: I see it is a useful measure; therefore, I will waive my objection.
Bill, as amended, considered.
Amendments made.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a third time."—(Mr. F. S. Powell.)
MR. CONYBEARE: The question has been raised in regard to Government and other Bills, whether the Third Reading can be taken after a Bill has been amended. I remember last Session we had an all-night Sitting——
Bill to be read the third time tomorrow.

CONVEYANCING AND LAW OF PROPERTY ACT (1881) AMENDMENT BILL (No. 5.)
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
Clause 1.
Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Thursday next.

BRITISH SHIPS IN FOREIGN TRADES.
Return ordered—
"Showing the number and tonnage of British Vessels employed in the Foreign-going trade during each of the years 1884–5 to 1888–9, inclusive, together with the number of men employed, and the number of men lost by wreck and other accidents in such vessels, distinct from the number and tonnage of vessels, and the number of men employed in the Home Trade, and the number of lives lost in the Home Trade and in fishing vessels."—(Mr. Whitley.)

TEACHERS (REGISTRATION AND ORGANISATION) BILL.—(No 156.)
Ordered, That the Select Committee on Teachers (Registration and Organisation) Bill do consist of Sixteen Members.
The Committee was accordingly nominated of.—Mr Arthur Acland, Mr. Charles Acland, Mr. Bruce, Mr. Sydney Buxton. Mr. Conway, Sir William Hart Dyke, Mr. Hobhouse, Mr. John Kelly, Mr. Lawrence, Viscount Lymington, Mr. Powell, Mr. Roby, Sir Henry Roscoe, Mr. Rowntree, Mr. Sidebotham, and Sir Richard Temple.
Ordered, That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records.
Ordered, That Five be the quorum.—(Sir Richard Temple.)
House adjourned at twenty minutes before One o'clock.

NEW PEERS.
William Connor Lord Archbishop of York—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
Anthony Wilson Lord Bishop of Winchester—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
James Lord Bishop of Manchester—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

REGISTRATION OF ELECTORS ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to he printed. No. 53.

PRIVATE AND PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILLS.
Ordered—
"That no Private Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Friday, the 12th day of June next:
That no Bill originating in this House authorising any inclosure of lands under special report of the Land Commissioners for England, or confirming any scheme of the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales, shall be read a first time after Thursday, the 14th day of May next:
That no Bill originating in this House confirming any provisional order or provisional certificates shall be read a first time after Thursday, the 14th day of May next:
That no Bill brought from the House of Commons authorising any inclosure of lands under special report of the Land Commissioners for England, or confirming any scheme of the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales shall he read a second time after Friday, the 26th day of June next:
That no Bill brought from the House of Commons confirming any provisional order or provisional certificate shall be read a second time after Friday, the 26th day of June next:
That when a Bill shall have passed this House with amendments these orders shall not apply to any new Bill sent up from the House of Commons which the Chairman of Committees shall report to the House is substantially the same as the Bill so amended:
That this House will not receive any petition for a Private Bill after Friday, the 1st day of May next, unless such Private Bill shall have been approved by the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice; nor any petition for a Private Bill approved by the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice after Friday, the 8th day of May next:
202
That this House will not receive any report from the Judges upon petitions presented to this House for Private Bills after Friday, the 8th day of May next:
Ordered, That the said orders be printed and published, and affixed on the doors of this House and Westminster Hall." (No. 54.)

CLERGY DISCIPLINE (IMMORALITY) BILL.—(No. 45)

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  *THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, in presenting this Bill to your Lordships and requesting you to give it a Second Reading, I have to state that it is in substance the same Bill as your Lordships passed in 1888, and again the same Bill that was read a first time last year and afterwards dropped on account of the pressure of business. It is in substance the same Bill; but since it passed in 1888 it has been very carefully considered by some of the most eminent members of your Lordships' House, and by others learned in the law, and I am happy to be able to say—it is a source of great satisfaction—that although the late lamented Archbishop of York opposed the Second Reading of the Bill in this House in 1888, yet in the shape in which it was presented to your Lordships last time it had his entire concurrence except upon one small point—your Lordships will consider it a small point when it is explained, as it will be, in Committee. In every other respect it received his complete assent, and would have had his hearty support. Since then the drafting has been again criticised by a very capable member of your Lordships' House, and I venture to present it now with much confidence. I think I ought to repeat to some extent what I had the honour of laying before your Lordships when the Bill was first introduced and first passed. I present this Bill to your Lordships as really a matter of necessity and as a matter of right—a thing which we have a right to ask. We of the clergy are appointed with much care and circumstance to serve this nation in things religious and things moral. It is our special duty to advance all the interests and enforce all the teachings of religion, above all things to raise the moral tone

  203
  of those among whom we are, with so much of anxiety, appointed to work. Among 23,000 clergymen there must be a certain number who by common consent are designated "black sheep." There must, unhappily, be unworthy members in every profession and under all circumstances. But what we do feel, what we are sure of, is that they are but few in comparison with those great numbers. We have, however, to lament the fact that in very many instances the majority of those few are practically secure in their position. The difficulties of removing them, the difficulties even of suspending them for any proper period are so great that we, the clergy, may be regarded as maintaining in the midst of us a certain small, limited number of bad men, who are acting against and undermining the very function which the nation commits to us. We say, then, this is a matter in which we have a right to appear before you to ask you to grant us that we should be relieved from the discredit of such persons working and living in the midst of us. It is not a fair pressure that is put upon our work; it is not a fair discredit. Our enemies them selves being the judges, the thing is not fair. It is not right that it should not be possible to remove immoral men from the ranks of moral teachers; and when we consider the amount of misery that is produced among both their brethren and the laity, the comfort withheld from the sick and the dying, the mischief done to the young, the impossibility of these people accepting the teaching of such persons, and the doubts thrown up in many minds as to whether these men can really believe what they teach, your Lordships will see that the present state of things is very much like the action of the old tyrant King who bound the living to the dead. The close unity in which those, so to speak, "dead men" are placed among us and among the people whom they have to feed with the Bread of Life makes it imperative that we should ask in some way or other to be relieved. It is only right, my Lords, that I should mention what some of the principal hindrances are which make it necessary that the present state of things should be altered by legislation. The very first step in any process for the removal of such men, or
  204
  for their correction in any adequate way is now beset with difficulties. Their case has first to be examined into by a Commission of persons without legal knowledge and without legal assistance. If those men return that there is a primâ facie case against the man accused, the Bishop) must proceed. When the facts come to the appointed Court, although they may be flagrant and notorious, have been proved and established beyond a doubt in the Civil Courts, those facts have to be proved over again; and after that the man may remove his case from Court to Court by way of appeal, and the facts may still have to be proved over and over again. Then the cause is often heard at a considerable distance from the place of occurrence; and if it is a case of appeal, it must in nine cases out of ten be heard at a considerable distance, so that witnesses are exceedingly inconvenienced, and the expense in reference to them is very great. There is further great delay in carrying through the appeals. I remember well on the former occasion how your Lordships felt it to be, as it is generally felt to be, exceedingly unfair that in a large proportion of cases, even if the Bishop is successful in proving his case, the whole of the costs are thrown upon him, because it is not possible to meet them in any other way; and if he is unsuccessful, the costs may be enormous. Your Lordships probably remember there was one famous case, at no very great distance from the present time, in which a Bishop incurred an expense of £14,000, and his successor in the same case a further expense of £1,400. But it is not only the unsuitableness of such costs being thrown upon the Bishop, but the result—the moral effect—is so extremely bad if he fails to prove his case, as he may, through the operation of a number of technicalities. When so many obstacles have to be avoided, and the Bishop fails, in cases where immorality has unquestionably been committed, the effect upon the community is exceedingly bad. In such cases a Bishop is generally advised that there are so many technicalities, so many hindrances, in the way even of legal evidence, when the cases have been started by men who are not generally supposed to be versed in reviewing evidence, that his success

  205
  would be more than problematical. Flagrant cases are at times kept back on that account. Then the process is not only slow and cumbersome, but one of the incidents of the procedure is that the sentences are given by precedents, without any regard to the interests of the place, the parish, or the whole Church. Naturally, in the long course of time, the precedents have become milder and milder; and as each case is tried and the sentence passed, the latest and mildest case is the one proceeded upon; so that all the legal authorities are perfectly agreed that the sentences which at present are capable of being inflicted under the system of precedents are quite inadequate. I may be allowed to give your Lordships a recent instance to show what I mean by the absolute futility of the sentences which are passed under this system. A clergy-man was convicted of being drunk in the highway; he was convicted of riotous and disorderly conduct, and was fined by the Magistrates. The case was immediately sent by the Bishop to the Provincial Court; that was in the month of November. In the month of April he was suspended. The whole time from November to April was consumed in procedure, and the sentence passed upon him then was that he be suspended for three months. It had been impossible in the meantime to issue any inhibition, and this man had continued to officiate during the whole time. When the sentence of three months' suspension was pronounced upon him he went abroad; he came back radiant and assured his parishioners of the pleasant holiday he had been enjoying, and he is still in his place. These cases are very few comparatively, but they are very hateful to all. The system of journalism belonging to our times acts like a series of multiplying mirrors. Every case is heard of everywhere, and each several case is doing harm to religion and to morals in every parish, and raising tip a host of enemies to the system under which such a state of things can exist and such scandals be perpetrated with impunity or with no sufficient punishment. If this state of things is carefully reviewed, it will show that we are not living under a proper system of punishment for offences against morality committed by clergy.
  206
  By your Lordships' permission I will now give a very brief sketch of how this Bill attempts to meet the difficulties. In the first place, the Bill recognises absolutely and acts upon a conviction pronounced in a Civil Court. If a man has been convicted of offences against morality by a Civil Court and punished, the Ecclesiastical Court will, by this Bill, be enabled to proceed, taking the offence to be conclusively proved; and if he has been sentenced to penal servitude, if he has been sentenced to hard labour, if he has been convicted of adultery, if a bastardy order has been granted against him, it is so hopeless that the man should do any more good in that place that, according to this Bill, he will be deprived of his benefice. Supposing the offence or punishment to be less than these, any person may make a complaint to the Bishop, and the Bishop then, unless he is ready to declare in writing that the complaint is too vague or too frivolous to be proceeded upon, will send the complaint to the Court; but the Bill provides, and I think your Lordships will think properly provides, that with the consent of both the complainant and the defendant, or if the case is undefended, the Bishop may pronounce sentence at once without the process of the Court. The Court is not altered by the Bill. We do not propose to make any alteration. We believe that when the Consistory Court as it exists is put in its proper position, it is quite sufficient for what is required. Your Lordships know that the Chancellor acts as the Consistory Court; but the examination into facts by a Commission having been done away with, it is now proposed that where there are facts to be proved the Chancellor shall have the aid of six assessors if demanded. If there are facts to be proved, and the defendant demands that it shall not rest with the Chancellor alone, the Chancellor is by ballot to appoint six assessors out of a list. When the case comes into Court all questions of law are to remain as now with the Chancellor. The six assessors are to be four clerics and two laymen, making, with the Chancellor, three laymen and four clerics, to hear and inquire into the facts. Those six assessors are to be taken from a list formed for the diocese, consisting of seven clergymen elected in the way

  207
  described in the Bill, and five laymen being Justices of the Peace, and appointed by the Justices for this diocesan list. The Chancellor will, by ballot, appoint six from the list for each trial upon which facts are to be inquired into. There comes in here a shortening of the process if both parties agree. In that event a case may be decided upon affidavits. Or again, if either party is not satisfied with the Consistory Court as it exists in his own diocese, he is free to appeal at once, and to transfer the cause to the Provincial Court; or he may appeal to the Queen in Council. We have thought it a matter of great importance that the number of appeals which are now possible should cease, and therefore the appellant will be at liberty to decide whether he will appeal to the Provincial Court or to the Queen in Council, but he is not to appeal to both. This point of appeal is a new feature in this particular Bill, and has been introduced since it was last before the House. The last Bill—and this was a point upon which the late Archbishop of York spoke strongly—did not provide that there should be any appeal upon matters of fact; but now, in deference to what he then said, and to what is ascertained to be a general feeling among clergy, an appeal is 'to be made possible by this Bill upon facts as well as upon law; but with this proviso and under this arrangement: not that a man, about the facts of whose case there can be really no possible doubt, shall have the opportunity at his own will of dragging the case before the Appeal Court; but it has been suggested by a noble and learned Lord in this House that the example set in the case of certain proceedings before the Privy Council should be followed, and that whether the man appeals to the Provincial Court or to the Queen in Council, he should obtain from the Appeal Court in the first instance leave to appeal. There would be no hindrance to justice in that, because he will ex parte state the facts upon which he bases his appeal, and if there is a primâ facie case shown the appeal will be allowed; but the Appeal Court is itself to determine whether there is such a primâ facie case as that the man ought to be heard over again upon appeal. Your Lordships will now observe that there is provided for already a very considerable
  208
  shortening of processes and diminution of expenses in this procedure. I am told that in legal proceedings before the Privy Council there has really been, since the method was adopted of requiring the proposing appellant to obtain leave to appeal from the Appeal Court, an immense saving of expense. Then with regard to sentences: in this Bill there is inserted a provision that in the giving of sentences regard is to be had to the interests of the parish and of the place, and not to precedent alone in the interest of the clerk. The noble Lord is not present in his place who made an admirable observation upon this point. He said—
  "These trials of the clergy in such cases are under their old name trials pro salute animœ."
  and he said—
  "I think we have had enough of proceedings pro salute animœ; it is time we had some consideration pro salute animarum."
  Then it is provided that if the man is deprived of his benefice, and the case is very gross, he may also have his Orders taken away. It is again provided that if his sentence is of such a kind as that there is abundant time to expiate it; if there is a sentence of suspension for two or three years, for instance, before he can come back and be re-admitted, he must produce evidence of what his conduct has been in the meantime before re-admission; and there is a provision—it is one of the most important in the whole Bill—that he shall not reside during the period of suspension. There is no describing the fearful scandals occasioned by the residence of such men; and although they promise sometimes that they will not reside, they do not keep their promises, and there is no power to keep them away; the Bishop, it may be, sometimes does not feel sufficient confidence in them to require a promise from them. I can point to a case where a man has been suspended for extreme and shameless debt, but he persists in residing: he is living close to the church in the parsonage house; he insists upon presiding at every vestry; if funerals have to be celebrated, and families have applied duly to the officiating clergyman, the suspended clergyman, unless he has been consulted according to his own satisfaction and wish, will send the people out of the churchyard who have to dig the

  209
  graves; he will open the church and show it to people (it is an interesting place); and tell them he is not above receiving gratuities from visitors. He has appointed his own half imbecile son parish clerk, who will go and touch on the arm and demand fees from the mourners at funerals; he interferes with the excellent school, and through some slight legal flaw in the election or appointment of the managers he insists upon ruling that school alone; he is gradually getting rid of all the scholars little by little, and is getting rid of an excellent master and promising pupil-teachers. No tyranny can be conceived more miserable and injurious than the tyranny which that man has been able to inflict upon an important parish owing to the fact that there is no power to prevent his residing during his period of suspension; and the only remedy that the law gives us is that perhaps with regard to the school we can get assistance from the Charity Commissioners. I think it will be admitted there is a very large gap in our procedure in the way of dealing with some of the most important interests which this country knows. Finally, then, the Bill makes arrangements by which some disgraceful scenes of defiance of sentences shall not be reenacted, when a man under sentence forces himself into the church, takes possession of the churchyard, and insists upon performing services there. If this Bill passes such scenes will be scenes of the past. It will prevent such scandals by providing that the Sheriff shall be in possession of the church, chapel, or mission room, and shall place the right persons in possession for using them. Supplementary to this, there is another provision which one would have supposed not to be necessary, but it is—namely, that, if there is a grievous scandal about a case, the Bishop shall be able to prevent the man's officiating during the proceedings. Nevertheless, your Lordships will not find, I think, that this Bill is a hard Bill. Everything that is reasonable towards offenders has been considered in preparing it. The rule about convictions being conclusive is not to apply if they have been summary convictions without opportunity of appeal. Again, we have considered that the clergyman accused ought to be
  210
  heard if he is able to advance mitigating circumstances. Provision is also made for his replacement in his benefice if he receives the Queen's pardon; or for re-trial; or, supposing judgment has gone by default from his nonappearance, and he is subsequently able to explain that non-appearance, in such case he may be restored. Also a proper limit of time is fixed, beyond which it will not be possible for people to be proceeded against. All those points are to be submitted to your Lordships; but I think it is desirable I should point out that, in the first instance, the Bill is not meant for inflicting wounds in all directions. We desire that wherever it is thought any reasonable deductions ought to be made they should be made. And now, with your Lordships' permission, I will just sum up the gains which are secured by this Bill. We shall have the assistance of the Chancellor in considering the facts of the case, and I think that a very important point; the convenience of witnesses will be consulted by the trials being held in places where they are able to attend without excessive cost; the door is closed against the many evasions which are now possible in consequence of the fact that the man now belongs to some different diocese or that the parties to the case reside hero or there, or that the offence, or part of it, was committed in another diocese. Then, it is a matter of great importance I believe, and quite applicable in many of these cases, that the trials should be heard upon affidavits. A primâ facie case is required to be shown before an appeal is heard at all. This is one of the principal items, and a very great item, indeed as regards the expensiveness of these proceedings. It is required also that security for costs should be given wherever the Court thinks it necessary. Non-residence in suspension, as I have explained at length, and the non-officiating of the accused while his trial is still pending, are provided for; and it is also sufficiently provided that there shall be no defiance of the law when the sentence has been passed. I will not detain your Lordships longer. I do plead most earnestly that we ought not to be mere suitors for remedies like these for criminalities not only great, but so extremely offensive in

  211
  their nature, and so destructive of the very reason for which our office exists. We cannot plead in formâ pauperis for this remedial measure. We believe that you will generously own that it is as a matter of right that the Church or any other Religious Body should come before you and claim from you the assistance which you only can give, to deliver a religious and moral institution of the highest importance to the welfare of the people from plague spots which at present it is unable effectually to remove.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Archbishop of Canterbury.)
  *THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, the words in which the most rev. Prelate who has brought this Bill before you on Second Reading has referred to my eminent predecessor compel me to say, with your Lordships' permission, a few words to explain to you why I earnestly welcome and desire to support the Bill. I have always had a deep interest in this question. It was a matter of very great regret to me to find, something like a year and a half ago, that an ecclesiastical lawyer so justly eminent and distinguished as my predecessor took very serious objections to some parts of this Bill; and it is a matter of proportionate satisfaction to me to find that at the last those objections had been almost entirely removed by modifications of this Bill, and that he gave it in all its main features, and I think, indeed, if I rightly understand the most rev. Prelate, he gave it with the exception of one only, which is not a main feature, his support then and would have given it his support now if he had been spared to address your Lordships upon the subject. Measuring the importance of his opposition as I did measure it at the time, I think it may be to your Lordships a very great proof of the value of this Bill and of its freedom from objectionable matter in its altered form that at the last so able, so earnest, so conscientious, and so learned an opponent should have supported, instead of opposing, the Bill. I would venture to say a word or two, not as regards those details which have been so lucidly put before your Lordships by the most rev. Prelate, but as to the principles of the Bill which are my
  212
  reasons for supporting it. This Bill appears to me to be based upon two principles, both of which will, I think, commend themselves to your Lordships' approval, and, I trust, to the approval of the country. The first is a very simple one. It is, that the incumbent exists for the sake of the parish and not the parish for the sake of the incumbent. To read the old processes of the Canon Law and the early processes of the Church Discipline Act one would imagine that there were no such persons in existence as 'parishioners: the whole proceedings were framed in salutem animœ, for the good of the soul of the delinquent clergyman alone, and they in no way concerned the manner in which he had discharged his duty to his parishioners. I cannot imagine a position of greater nicety and difficulty in which to place the President of a Criminal Court than to tell him he is to judge an offender and to inflict the penalty, not according to the heinousness or mischievousness of the offences charged against him, but according to the spiritual condition in which that offender may happen to be at the moment he is convicted. Obviously sentences may, on such a principle as this, vary ad infinitum from the greatest severity to the greatest lenity—even to the extreme of extending to the convicted offender free forgiveness, with a gentle remonstrance on the gravity of his offence. To permit such a state of things is to totally ignore the rights of parishioners. If a Judge in a Criminal Court were to act upon such a principle as that, it would lead to the strongest laxity in the administration of the Criminal Law. The most rev. Prelate has laid before you what the rights of parishioners are; but I venture to add this: that parishioners in the Church of England have a special right to have their complaints and grievances redressed for this reason, that they have not selected nor appointed the incumbent who has shocked their moral sense by his conduct. He is imposed upon them, and is practically irremovable by them. Surely they have a right to come to us, who have given him the cure and guardianship of their souls, and say to us, "This man has proved himself utterly unfit for his trust; he is doing mischief instead of good where you have sent him to do good, and we call upon you to remove

  213
  him from our midst." What is the answer we give to the parishioners in such a case under the existing law? The answer is, "We will try this man' for the good of his soul,' and we will send him away from his benefice for two or three months or for two or throe years according as his soul may seem to require it, and then at the expiration of that period he will come back into the midst of you to the place where he has disgraced himself and you, to that place where he is practically useless we send him back." What, let me ask, would be the state of discipline in the Navy if a captain who was found drunk on his quarter-deck were to be simply told that he must leave his ship for a short time that the First Lieutenant would discharge his duty for him (at a very moderate salary) in the interim, and that at the expiration of that short period he should be permitted to come back with a certificate of good character, and take command of his ship again? I can see no difference between the two cases, except that the one is a far more sacred and important trust and office than the other. Such a state of things has much more serious consequences than if it existed in the Army or the Navy. No doubt it seems cruelly hard sometimes that when a man has been overtaken in a fault he should lose such a position as that of incumbent of a parish; and the case becomes painfully sad when we think not of the offender himself, but the innocent wife and children who are to suffer for his fault, but still the "good of the service," if I may be pardoned for adapting a term from military affairs, the very safety of the Church require that sympathy of that kind for the innocent shall not be allowed to prevail where the spiritual welfare of the parish is concerned, and that the punishment shall not be relaxed against the offender. This, then, is the first principle of the Bill; that the rights of parishioners are to be considered. The second principle is this: that in dealing with a criminous cleric you should as closely as possible assimilate the proceedings to those followed in the case of criminous laymen. I see no reason why they should widely differ as they have hitherto done in. cases of criminous clergymen. If a layman is tried it is in a Criminal Court which is reasonably accessible, the
  214
  processes of which are simplified largely and cheapened largely—as much cheapened as is consistent with a fair trial, and, of course, with a modest maintenance, which I hope will always be provided for members of the Bar—but those things being cared for a layman obtains a speedy decision of his case. Again; a clergyman who is tried before a Temporal Court for an offence against the law ecclesiastical, but which is also temporal, has his case cheaply, reasonably, and speedily dealt with. But bring the same man into an Ecclesiastical Court for the same offence, and the processes of trial and subsequent appeals are what your Lordships have heard described by the most rev. Prelate. Everything that can facilitate the trial of the cleric, as in the case of the trial of a layman, it is fair should be allowed not only to the accuser, the person who prosecutes, but to the offender, the accused himself. I confess I look with the greatest satisfaction upon the provision that when certain offences are committed entailing imprisonment they should be followed by deprivation. I am sure the most rev. Prelate is as reluctant as myself to stand up in this House and, as it is called, "tell tales out of school"; but we must, in support of a Bill of this kind, furnish one or two cases to your Lordships, thankfully acknowledging at the same time that they are very few, in illustration of what we say. Let me give your Lordships one case which occurred in my own diocese as regards this matter—of a clergyman being actually imprisoned for an offence and afterwards returning to his benefice. It will, I think, throw considerable light upon the necessity for this Bill. This was the case of a clergyman who was found guilty of an attempt to commit a very heinous offence which, had it been completed, would have been a felony. Not having, however, been found guilty of the felony, but only of misdemeanour, he was sentenced to imprisonment for 18 months. But that did not in the least vacate his benefice. All I could have done in the matter would have been to try him over again for that offence, and thus poison the Church and Society with a recapitulation of all the horrible details which would have been involved in his trial, not being sure, even then, by any means

  215
  of depriving him in the end; possibly, "for the good of his soul," he might have had three years' suspension, but on the expiration of that term he would have come back again. Seeing, therefore, that after his imprisonment this clergyman would be at liberty to return to his parish, and thus become a centre of contamination, I was obliged to resort to the device which I will state to your Lordships. I sent word to him that though I could not compel him to resign his benefice he was bound by law to reside within it and not to absent himself for 12 months continuously, and that if he did then remain absent his benefice would become ipso facto vacated. As I am happy to say his imprisonment imposed a material barrier to his so residing, I was able by threat of deprivation to obtain his resignation. But I was only able to do it in that way. This is, of course, ludicrous; but it is very horrible to think that if the man had only been imprisoned for nine months he might have insisted upon going back to his parish and have there remained for years a shame, a misery, and a disgrace to the parishioners. That alone, my Lords, is, I think, an amply sufficient illustration of the need there is for this Bill. There is, however, if I may venture to say so, with all respect to the most rev. Prelate, one defect in this Bill, but it is a defect which I fear is incurable, and that is that it makes no provision for the costs of the prosecutor—really none. One thing is quite certain under this Bill: the only person who will ever prosecute a clergyman under it will be the Bishop. Your Lordships may be perfectly certain that no parishioner will do it. Men may be found who will form themselves into associations (and upon such associations I desire to be understood as pronouncing no opinion; I only take them as having actually been formed) for the purpose of prosecuting or defending clergymen who may conduct services in ways which they either approve or dislike; but, as far as I know, the Association of Laymen has yet to be formed for prosecuting clergymen who may be found intoxicated when performing any service. There is, I am afraid, all the difference in the world in these matters between party spirit and public spirit; and it requires a great deal of public spirit for a
  216
  parishioner to come forward and prosecute his clergyman. Your Lordships may be perfectly assured that the only prosecutor will be the Bishop. I go further and say that he is the only proper prosecutor. I have no belief in Bishops not doing that which they vow to do at their consecration; that is, to punish all "disquiet and criminous" persons. It is a mere quibble that Bishops are the fathers of the clergy, and, therefore, may not prosecute them; on the contrary, I hold that the correction of sons is one of the duties of fathers. At any rate, it is clearly on the Bishops that these prosecutions will devolve. If that is the case, it does not seem right to me that a Bishop should be the only public prosecutor who should not have his costs provided for and who is to be, in fact, heavily fined for performing the duties of his office. But that is the case, for he is heavily fined in the shape of costs. Unfortunately, when very large Episcopal revenues were given up to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners no lien was placed on those revenues as it might very well have been, either for the police duties of the Church or for the augmentation of the Episcopate. Had that been done both would have been in a very different position now as regards the true interests of the Church. That fact it is impossible now to pass by, but I only refer to it for this reason: that if there are any clergymen who are, as I think, quite unnecessarily dreading that Bishops will be impatient to use this Bill as an instrument of oppression, or coercion, or spite, they may take comfort from the fact that the Bishop is bound over in heavy recognisances not to proceed unduly or hastily against clergymen under this Act, because in almost every case he will have to pay heavy costs. Either he loses or wins the suit, and the more heinous the offence charged the heavier the costs for the prosecutor. The mere fact of conviction for the offence of course entails deprivation of the benefice, and he cannot, therefore, come upon the benefice, because it has ceased to belong to the convicted clergyman; he cannot, therefore, get anything from him; and even if he could, I doubt whether there is a single Bishop on the Bench who would add to the pain and misery of that man and his family by seeking to enforce the payment of costs

  217
  even if he had power to do so. Upon the Bishop, then, must fall the costs. I think, then, on behalf of the Church, and even on behalf of the overburdened and overtaxed Bishop, the process by which an offender is brought to justice should be as easy, as cheap, and as efficient as is consistent with perfect and scrupulous fairness to the accused. Believing that the Bill does make those provisions, and that it carries out those two principles which I have endeavoured to submit to your Lordships for your approval, I do most heartily and cordially support the most rev. Prelate's Bill, and I earnestly trust that it may speedily become law.
  *LORD GRIMTHORPE: Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to add one or two remarks to the explanations of the two most rev. Prelates, for I think it is desirable that the public should be made fully acquainted with cases which show the necessity for the Bill, and its reasonableness in its present form. The principle of the legislation which is being attempted now is not new; it is only extending a little what was done some 30 years ago in an Act which is cited at the end of this Bill, where it is provided that
  "So much of an Act to abolish forfeitures for treason and felony and to otherwise amend the law relating thereto (that is, chap. 23 of 33 & 34 Vict.) as relates to a forfeiture by a clergyman of any benefice is hereby repealed."
  That Act is only repealed because it is extended so as to embrace not merely treasons and felonies, but certain offences which, for all moral purposes, are just as bad and as noxious to a parish. I may be allowed to say with regard to the 1st clause of this Bill, which was at first drawn by me, that I took an existing clause in that Act and extended it by amendment. That is not very material, but it is material that the public should know that we are introducing no new principle by enforcing ipso facto deprivation. Of course, there is also the question of costs, upon which the most rev. Prelates have touched, but that is a difficulty which it is very hard to get over. There is just one point I must criticise, and which I do not understand, as there has been an alteration made in the Bill since the meeting at Lambeth, which substantially settled the Bill. A clergyman is to be allowed, after being
  218
  convicted in a Civil Court of something which does not amount to ipso facto deprivation, to "show mitigating circumstances." I confess I do not quite understand what that means. The former Bill of 1888 had a clause providing that he might urge whatever he could "in mitigation of punishment." I understand it is supposed that there is some difference between the two phrases. But what is there to be mitigated except the punishment? The late Archbishop of York and I objected to the former phrase, and it was altogether omitted. I do not think the present one is satisfactory. The result of it is this: if a clergyman is guilty of an offence charged against him, and knows he is guilty, he may prove mitigating circumstances. But, on the other hand, if he is found guilty, but knows he is not guilty and is quite confident he could prove it if allowed, he cannot prove anything that will do him any good, because mitigation implies guilt. It is quite clear some alteration is required there, though this is not the time to point out what it ought to be, if it is desirable to keep that phrase in at all. Your Lordships may think, as I stated my own opinion to be at the meeting at Lambeth, that there are cases in which it would be fair to allow the clergyman accused to make out that he was not guilty at all; and I mentioned the memorable case of Mr. Hatch, who was convicted on the evidence of two girls, who afterwards admitted that they had committed perjury. What could Mr. Hatch have done under this Bill? Would he have been able to come to the Court and say, "I am not allowed to prove that I did not commit the offence which I am charged with, but I can prove mitigating circumstances?" Mitigating what? If he was innocent, of course there would be nothing to mitigate; and if, on the other hand, he was guilty, nothing could have been worse than such an offence, and how therefore, could it be mitigated? I hope, before we go into Committee on the Bill, some attention will be paid to this matter by some other noble and learned Lord who wants to make the measure as perfect as it can be. With regard to the matter of costs, that seems to me to be an incurable difficulty, except by the means which were pointed out by the most rev. Prelate who spoke last

  219
  with whom I entirely agree. Moreover, the worse the defendant's case is the worse it will be for the Bishop; for if he is only suspended there will he some thing to pay costs with, but if he is deprived, nothing. That seems to be a monstrous injustice which does not, I believe, prevail in any other class of cases in England. At the same time, I believe it would be very difficult in these days to get anything out of the funds of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for such a purpose, though I think it will be admitted that this is a far more important matter than even the extension of the Cathedral of Truro, for which they and the Government quietly allow the Common Fund to be invaded. I am very glad to find that there is not, as far as I can judge, any appearance of dissatisfaction with the Bill, and I am happy to think, after attending the two large meetings at Lambeth, and seeing the universal agreement at such meetings, which included two strong opponents of the Bill of 1888, I think there is a presumption that the present Bill is, on the whole, a good and fair one.
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Viscount CRANBROOK): My Lords, if this Bill is passed in your Lordships' House you will hardly be surprised to find that the Government, so far from offering any opposition to it, will heartily support it, agreeing in its principle, but without, of course, committing themselves to details. I think your Lordships will agree that the Bill has been well threshed out in preparation, when the noble Lord behind me (Lord Grimthorpe) has only been able to find in it a very few words to mitigate the effect of his eulogy of the measure as a whole. That being the case, I think we may accept him as—I will not say advocatus diaboli——
  *LORD GRIMTHORPE: Only of the clergy.
  VISCOUNT CRANBROOK: Well, at all events, the noble Lord, having accepted the Bill as a whole, will not be surprised that the Government should do the same.
  LORD HERSCHELL: My Lords, I only desire to say a word or two upon this Bill. I have on previous occasions expressed my approval of similar Bills, and having expressed my approval
  220
  of them, have said that I desired to see them passed into law. This is not a matter which concerns merely the discipline of the Church, but it is one of large public interest. Clergymen who conduct themselves as those clergymen do who are intended to be dealt with under this Bill bring discredit not merely on the Church, whose ministers they are, but they bring scandal and discredit upon religion itself. Therefore, it seems to me that a measure which seems to provide the means of speedily and successfully dealing with their offences is one which all who are concerned in the interests of religion must regard with sympathy and approval, and which all must desire to see carried into effect. I do not propose to trouble your Lordships now with any observations, except to say a word in reference to the point to which attention has been called by the noble and learned Lord opposite upon the details of the Bill; but I do desire to put before your Lordships the grounds upon which it seems to me the Bill may claim the support and approval even of those who do not regard themselves as members of the Church, and who would not support it merely as a measure for improving the discipline of the Church. With reference to the point which has been alluded to by my noble and learned Friend, it is, no doubt, a matter of difficulty. The scheme of that part of the Bill is, as far as possible, to make the findings of the Temporal Courts conclusive, and to avoid the necessity of trying the same facts over again. Of course, if you allow a person who is convicted in a Temporal Court to go into the question of his guilt or innocence again when the matter is hoard before the Ecclesiastical Court, you add enormously to the expense of the proceedings. The extent to which that finding should be conclusive may, no doubt, be a matter giving rise to difference of opinion; but, upon the whole, I think one may very well be content that, where the Temporal Court has decided against a man who has committed that which is an ecclesiastical offence, the Ecclesiastical Court should be permitted, without the necessity of re-trying the case, to act upon the judgment of the Temporal Court. No doubt you may have hard cases in which a mistake has been made

  221
  by the Temporal Court where you would not desire to see the person dealt with as guilty; but it is impossible to deal with matters of this description except as a whole; and, looking at the matter very broadly, when you so deal with it, it is necessary for furthering the ends of justice that you should shut your eyes to the possibility of the hard cases that may arise. But I quite agree with my noble and learned Friend that any provision of that description requires careful scrutiny and attention, and I think the most rev. Prelate would desire any necessary assistance in order to take care that the provision shall be made as satisfactory as possible.
  On Question, agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

  FISHERY BOARD (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]—(No. 17.)
  House in Committee (according to order); an Amendment made; and Bill re-committed to the Standing Committee.

  EAST INDIA OFFICERS BILL [H.L.] (No, 49.)
  Amendments reported (according to order); and Bill to be read 3a tomorrow.
  House adjourned at half past Five o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten.