Sitting of 11 May 1891

QUESTIONS.

  QUEENSFERRY FORESHORE.
  MR. CAMPBELL - BANNERMAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the present condition of a large part of the foreshore close to the Burgh of Queensferry, which was acquired under an Act of 1863 by the North British Railway for the purpose of the construction of a harbour; but which, the harbour not having been completed, remains in a condition which is dangerous to the public; whether he is aware that the company has been in vain requested either to complete the harbour, or to restore the foreshore to its original state, or to grant a lease of the ground for some useful purpose, and whether he can now intervene in the public interest, to cause an end to be put to the present state of things?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Baron H. de WORMS,): I have been requested to answer the question for my right hon. Friend, who is unavoidably prevented from being in his place. I have asked the Railway Company for their observations on the state of things disclosed in the question of the right hon. Gentleman. The foreshore in question was acquired by the Railway Company from the proprietor of the adjoining estate, to whom it was decided by the Courts to belong; and the Crown has, therefore, no control over it.

  ORDNANCE SURVEY MAPS.
  MR. HOBHOUSE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the great inconvenience to the Public Service caused by there being no place in London where the officials of Public Departments and others can consult the maps published by the Ordnance Survey; and whether the Government will provide such a place at the office of the Board of Agriculture, or elsewhere?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. CHAPLIN,): I am quite aware that the present arrangements, both with regard to the inspection and also the sale of the maps published by the Ordnance Survey, are not satisfactory, and they are now under the consideration of the Department. No alteration can be made in the arrangements for the sale of maps before December, 1892, but I hope very shortly to provide in London facilities for the inspection of maps, which will meet the views of the hon. Member.

  DISHORNING OF CATTLE.
  SIR E. BIRKBECK: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the fact that on the 4th instant five Irish Judges decided that the dishorning of cattle was legal, and that three Scotch Judges have also given a similar decision; whether he is aware that the result of the case of "Forde v. Wiley" in the Court of Queen's Bench in England seriously affected the agricultural interest in Norfolk; and whether, taking into consideration the importance of this matter to the agricultural industry, he will take the necessary steps to make the law uniform throughout the United Kingdom?
  DR. TANNER: I beg also to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is aware that the Scottish and Irish Law Courts have now decided contrary to the decision in the Court of Queen's Bench in England, on the question of the dishorning of cattle; and if, under the circumstances, the Agricultural Department can take steps to ensure a judicial review of the case of "Forde v. Wiley"?
  MR. CHAPLIN: My attention has been called to the fact that five Irish and three Scotch Judges have given a decision to the effect that the dishorning of cattle was legal, and that the opposite decision given by the Court of Queen's Bench in England in the case of" Forde v. Wiley" has given rise to some complaint among agriculturists in Norfolk. The case of "Forde v. Wiley" was decided two years ago by the Queen's Bench Division on a case stated by the Norfolk Justices. I am advised that in such cases there is no appeal to a higher Court, and in any case it would not be competent for the Board of Agriculture to obtain a judicial review of a case to which he was not a party. The hon. Baronet asks me if I will take the necessary steps to make the law uniform throughout the United Kingdom; but uniform in which direction? Do I understand him to mean that uniformity should be attained by making dishorning legal or illegal throughout the Kingdom? [Sir E. BIRKBECK: Legal.] I have read the decision of the Judges in "Forde v. Wiley," and a good deal of the evidence, and I should not be prepared to introduce measures to legalise the operation of dishorning, which appears to be one of excruciating pain to the animals which are dishorned. I am of opinion, however, that a solution of the question might possibly be found by making the dishorning of calves permissible up to a certain age—say six months, when the horns, I believe, can be removed without much difficulty or pain, and illegal after that age; and if I found any general support for that suggestion, I should be prepared to further consider it. I must guard myself, however, against giving anything in the nature of a pledge, for I am still awaiting further information on the subject.
  COLONEL WARING: Will the right hon. Gentleman endeavour to obtain further information from the best sources?
  MR. CHAPLIN: Yes, Sir; I am endeavouring to obtain further information.

  ROYAL COMMISSION.
  Message to attend the Lords Commissioners;—
  The House went;—and being returned;—
  Mr. SPEAKERreported the Royal Assent to certain Bills (see page 429).

  MONTROSE LICENSING COURT.
  MR. LENG: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether he is aware that the Licensing Court for the Burgh of Montrose having been fixed, and publicly notified, for 11 o'clock on the 14th of April last, the Licensing Magistrates, without any public notice, and with private notice only to the applicants for licences, changed the hour to 10 o'clock, and afterwards held the Court at that hour; whether he has been informed that an owner and occupant of property near to two houses for which licences were sought, who had lodged signed objections with the Clerk of the Court, and served copies of the same on the applicants, by registered letters, five days before the advertised time of hold-the Court, received no intimation of the change of hour, and the Court was held in his absence and that of his law agent; whether, in the circumstances, the licences granted, renewed, or transferred at the Court in question are valid; and whether the objectors have any appeal or other redress?
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND (Sir C. PEARSON,): The Lord Advocate is informed that the facts stated in the first two paragraphs of this question are substantially correct. According to the information received, three Petitions were lodged with the Clerk objecting to certain licences, and I assume that the petitioners had the necessary locus standi. In one of these cases the licence was refused. In the other two cases the Petitions were marked as copies, and most of the signatures appeared to be in the same handwriting. The Clerk of Court seems to have been misled by the appearance of the Papers thus given in, and to have inadvertently treated them as informal, and the petitioners were thus deprived of their opportunity of being heard. The appeal provisions of the Statute do not appear to meet such a case, and I am not aware of any mode of testing the validity of the licences except, possibly, by action
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  in the Supreme Court. On the abstract question of their validity, I am not disposed to express any opinion.

  ILLUMINATION OF LIGHTHOUSES.
  DR. CAMERON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, since the question on the subject addressed to him on the 30th ult., he has received information on the subject of Mr. Wigham's recent invention, by which it is alleged that the illuminating power of the most powerful lighthouse light can be increased five or six times; whether he is aware that these improvements were devised subsequent to the Trinity House Report of their experiments at South Foreland, and the Report respecting it of the Committee of the Royal Society, and therefore were not referred to in their Report; and whether he will, in the interests of trade and navigation, direct the attention of the Lighthouse Authorities to the subject with the view of their investigating it?
  BARON H. DE WORMS (for Sir M. HICKS BEACH): Yes, Sir; I have now received from Mr. Wigham a copy of a report of the lecture which he recently delivered, describing his new system of lighthouse illumination. I am not aware whether the improvements referred to were devised subsequent to the Report of the Committee of the Royal Society upon the experiments at the South Foreland; but I willingly accept Mr. Wigham's assurance upon that point. I am not prepared to suggest to the General Lighthouse Authorities to incur further expense in investigating the inventions of Mr. Wigham or of other inventors. It is the duty of the Board of Trade to control expenditure rather than to initiate it.

  SUBSIDISED MERCHANT CRUISERS.
  MR. GOURLEY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty if he can state the nature of the structural alterations and arrangements which have been made on board each of the subsidised merchant cruisers to enable them to carry their intended armament; the estimated value of the same; and the time and probable cost of effecting similar arrangements in non-subsidised steamers, say, of about the same speed and type; whether all or any

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  of the proposed guns and fittings for the subsidised ships are ready for shipment; if so, where, and why they remain unmounted, seeing that the owners are receiving a heavy subsidy for this purpose; and will he state how, in the event of hostilities, subsidised ships which happen to be in foreign or colonial ports are to be furnished with guns and men?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. FORWOOD,): My noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty has requested me to answer the question. The plans of several of the vessels were submitted for approval before building, as regards their subdivision and general arrangements being suitable for the purposes of acting as armed cruisers. All the subsidised vessels have had necessary strengthening made to their decks and platforms for guns at a cost of about £400 per gun. Fitting in a similar manner any other suitable ship would require three or four weeks at a cost of £600 to £800 per gun. The guns and fittings are ready for immediate placing on board, being stored at depots most convenient to the routes on which the vessels are engaged, thus insuring cruisers available at early notice in different parts of the world. It is considered more desirable thus to keep the guns, &c, in store and good order until wanted rather than to expose them to the wear and tear incident to mercantile voyaging; also, if kept so fitted, they would form an obstruction to the working of the vessels in their ordinary trading.

  ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether he can inform the House what is the number of elementary schools, in connection with the National Society, which have been built since 1839; what was the total cost of the site and building of such schools; and what amount was granted out of public money towards such cost?
  THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Sir W. HART DIKE,): In 1882, when grants in aid of the erection of voluntary schools had come to an end, 5,676 schools in connec-
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  tion with the National Society or Church of England, providing accommodation for 1,062,418 scholars, had been aided with grants to the extent of £1,515,385. The amount subscribed by promoters was £4,296,519, making the total cost of sites and buildings £5,811,904, or nearly £5 10s. per scholar. Some of these schools have ceased to exist, but at this rate the total cost of the accommodation for 2,651,078 scholars supplied by the 11,854 National or Church of England schools inspected during the year ended August 31, 1890, would amount to £14,580,929. This information applies not to all voluntary schools, but to Church of England schools only.
  In answer to further questions,
  SIR W. HART DYKEsaid: When I said that "some of these schools have ceased to exist," I meant ceased to exist as voluntary schools. Some have been transferred to School Boards, and others have been discontinued altogether.

  THE PADDY TAX IN CEYLON.
  MR. PAULTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether Her Majesty's Government will consider the advisability of substituting for the present Paddy Tax in Ceylon a light Land Tax or other impost which, whilst yielding an equal revenue, would press less severely on the poorest class of cultivators?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: The subject is being most fully considered by the Secretary of State, but no conclusion has yet been arrived at.

  BANKRUPTCY OFFICES.
  MR. MORTON: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether it is true that the Government acquired under the compulsory clauses of "The Bankruptcy Offices Site Act, 1887," the Carey Street building site, at the price of £6,000, owing to an incorrect statement having previously been made by their surveyor to the effect that the Government intended to repudiate an agreement they had made to widen and improve a certain footway; whether the surveyor had any authority to make such a statement; and whether, as the Solicitor General, acting as counsel for the Government at the

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  inquiry, admitted that the statement made by the surveyor was unfounded, the Government will compensate the then owners of the Carey Street building site for the loss incurred thereby?
  THE CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. PLUNKET,): The hon. Member's question, I imagine, refers to the land acquired from the Streatham Estates Company, which was taken by the Government under the Act referred to, for £6,000. The whole of the Carey Street site cost not £6,000 but £80,000. The price was fixed at £6,000 by a jury on the 8th June, 1888, after a three days' hearing, at which the vendors were represented by Sir Charles Russell, Mr. Littler and other counsel, and all material facts were fully discussed. I am unable to follow the allegation in regard to an incorrect statement by the Board's Surveyor; but the hon. Member's question seems to imply that the point, whatever it is, was raised at the hearing, so that the jury must have had it before them. I see no reason for re-opening the case, even if I had the power to do so.

  AGES OF NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.
  MR. HANBURY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in future annual Returns of the British Army, in the table giving the ages of non-commissioned officers and men, he will state the ages of the non-commissioned officers separately, instead of, as hitherto, making no distinction between their ages and those of private soldiers?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. E. STANHOPE,): The suggested information could be given; and before the next annual Return is compiled I will consider whether it will be expedient to supply it, and, if so, in what form.

  YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS.
  MR. MATHER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that in some parts of America, and also in the Colony of Victoria, New South Wales, there has been established a system whereby a distinction between criminal and non-criminal offenders is
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  drawn, and found to be practically possible and beneficial in its operation; and whether he will introduce a clause into the Summary Jurisdiction (Youthful Offenders) Bill to give Local Authorities power to deal with youthful offenders who have been arrested for mere offences against Local Bye-laws and Corporation Police Regulations, such as obstructing the footpaths, throwing orange peel on the pavements, and the like, and which shall provide that such youthful offenders, although arrested by police constables, shall not, as at present, be treated while in custody like ordinary criminals and offenders against the Common Law, and tried and sentenced or discharged in open Court, but shall be dealt with on the lines of the law enforced in Victoria, which provides that children arrested for offences against Local Bye-laws and Corporation Police Regulations shall not be taken to police cells but to offices provided for the purpose, and superintended by special officials, including a matron for the girls' department; that the charges against such children shall be heard and dealt with in a room attached to the said offices by a Magistrate who is empowered to deal summarily with the cases; and that the prosecution of such cases be conducted by an officer of the Department, and not by the police?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,): The Home Office has no official or detailed information as to the system described in the question. With regard to the practicability of drawing a distinction between criminal and non-criminal offenders, I must refer the hon. Member to the answer given in this House on December 5 last, to which I have nothing to add. It would be impossible to make the change proposed in one clause of the Bill now before Parliament. It could only be dealt with in a Bill of many clauses, involving, as it does, a fundamental alteration of our existing judicial system, with the result, probably, of throwing a considerable charge on local funds in order to provide the necessary officials, buildings, and machinery.
  MR. MATHER: Arising out of the answer of the right hon. Gentleman, may I ask, in reference to an answer given a

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  few months ago to a similar question in regard to a matter of Common Law, whether the right hon. Gentleman will not take into consideration the fact that as the law relating to offences which are merely transgressions against bye-laws and police regulations now stands, these young persons may be compelled to associate with some of the worst class of the community; and whether he will not consider the desirability of dealing with children accused of trivial offences in a manner more in accordance with the dictates of humanity and justice?
  MR. MATTHEWS: I have some difficulty in following the question of the hon. Member, which is somewhat involved; but I may say that, I have already suggested a variety of rules as to the sending of children to prison. I may further point out to the hon. Gentleman that it is a mistake to suppose that children, when sent to prison, are liable to be contaminated by older offenders. If the hon. Member will propose an Amendment in the sense he has indicated I shall be glad to consider it.

  MAIL SERVICE TO SHETLAND.
  MR. LYELL: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the negotiations for an improved Mail Service of steamers to Shetland is concluded; and, if not, can he say what is the cause of the delay?
  SIR C. PEARSON (for the LORD ADVOCATE): I am informed by the Secretary for Scotland that the negotiations for an improved Mail Service to the Shetland Isles are still in progress, and it is hoped they may soon be brought to a conclusion; but the nature of the negotiations has not admitted of a more speedy decision being arrived at.

  NEWFOUNDLAND.
  MR. MORTON: I Leg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the exclusion of the Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon from the Newfoundland Arbitration was made at the suggestion of Great Britain or of France?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: The Islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon are French territory. There is no question relating to them which could come within the
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  approaching arbitration concerning the catching and preparation of lobsters, or which either Government has at present proposed to refer to, or exclude from, arbitration.
  MR. G. OSBORNE MORGAN: When will the Papers on the Newfoundland Fisheries question be issued? Will it be before or after the Recess?
  BARON H. DE WORMS: A further batch of Papers on the subject are being prepared. They will include the Letter sent to the Secretary of State and the answer of the Secretary of State to that Letter.

  HALF-TIME CHILDREN IN BIRMINGHAM.
  MR. S. SMITH: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether his attention has been called to a statement made in the Report of Major Roe, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Factories and Workshops for Birmingham, that children leaving school before they can enter a workshop as full-timers become errand boys and girls until the age of 13 years, and that, as the technical school at Birmingham will not take half-timers, and the public elementary schools are generally deficient of accommodation, there is always difficulty in getting a half-timer into a school; and whether he will consider the means by which technical schools can be enabled to receive half-timers?
  SIR W. HART DYKE: I have seen the Report in question, but in a previous paragraph to that quoted Major Roe states that the Birmingham School Board have themselves met the difficulty by raising the exemption standard to the sixth. There is nothing, so far as I am aware, to prevent a lad from attending a technical school half-time if the managers are willing to receive him; no case of such difficulty has, at any rate, been brought under the notice of the Department.

  SLAVE TRADE IN MOROCCO.
  MR. S. SMITH: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been drawn to a statement made by the Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-

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  Slavery Society in the Times of Friday last, alleging that in February of this year a caravan of 2,000 slaves, 1,200 of which were girls, arrived at Tendouf, and were sold at the fair to Morocco dealers; and whether the Government will draw the attention of Her Majesty's Minister in Morocco to this statement, with a view to the more effectual suppression of this slave traffic?
  BARON H. DE WORMS (for Sir J. FERGUSSON): Attention has been drawn to the statement in the Times. It is unfortunately the fact that, notwithstanding the promises made to Sir John Hay in 1884, sales of slaves by public auction continue in Morocco. Sir Charles Euan Smith will be instructed to endeavour to secure the observance of those promises, but it would be unfair to the late Sir W. Kirby Green not to mention his exertions in a matter in which he took great interest.

  ERZEROUM.
  MR. BRYCE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any person, and, if so, who, has yet been appointed Her Majesty's Consul at Erzeroum to replace the late Mr. Clifford Lloyd; and whether there is any truth in the report that the Foreign Office contemplate changes in the present arrangement of Consulates and Vice Consulates in Asiatic Turkey; and, if so, whether he can state the nature of such changes?
  BARON H. DE WORMS (for Sir J. FERGUSSON): No appointment has yet been made to the vacant Consulate at Erzeroum. Certain changes have been suggested by the Ambassador at Constantinople, but no decision has been arrived at. It would not at present be expedient to make a statement on the subject.

  "EVELYN V. HURLBERT."
  MR. SUMMERS: I had intended to ask the Attorney General, since it is provided by 42 and 43 Vic., c. 22, that the Public Prosecutor shall institute criminal proceedings under the superintendence of the Attorney General, and that the Attorney General may in a special case direct the Public Prosecutor to institute criminal proceedings, whether, in the inquiries
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  which he is making into the case of "Evelyn v. Hurlbert," the Public Prosecutor is acting, according to the statute, "under the superintendence of the Attorney General;" and whether he has given, or intends to give, the Public Prosecutor directions as to the action which he is to take, or to abstain from taking, upon the evidence in this case? At the request of the hon. and learned Gentleman I beg to postpone the question until Thursday.

  CATECHISMS IN NATIONAL SCHOOLS.
  MR. SUMMERS: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Council, in the absence of the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he is aware that in certain National Schools a catechism is taught containing the following questions and answers:—
  "Q. Is it very dangerous to leave the Church? A. Yes; and it is also a very grievous sin. Q. Is it wrong to join in the worship of Dissenters? A. Yes; we should only attend places of worship in connection with the Church of England;"
  and whether the Government will consider the advisability of excluding from the benefits of the Free Education Bill schools where such catechisms are taught?
  MR. A. O'CONNOR: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that in certain Board schools doctrines which are not generally acceptable to those who venerate the Hebrew Scriptures, such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the observation of the Sunday, are inculcated, and whether the Government will consider the advisability of excluding from the benefits of the Free Education Bill all schools where religion is taught beyond the writing of the name of God with a capital "G"?
  SIR W. HART DYKE: I must ask for notice of the question of the hon. Member for East Donegal (Mr. A. O'Connor). In reply to the question on the Paper, in the absence of my right hon. Friend, I may be permitted to say that I am not aware of the use in public elementary schools of such a catechism as that described; but unless the violation of the Conscience Clause was thereby involved, it is not clear upon what principle the Government would be justified in excluding a school

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  from the benefits of free education any more than from that of the ordinary Parliamentary grant.
  MR. SUMMERS: I beg to inform the right hon. Gentleman that the catechism to which I refer is issued by the Church Extension Association, and I wish to know whether the teaching of such a catechism would be regarded as involving a violation of the Conscience Clause?
  SIR W. HART DYKE: As the question involves a legal matter, I must ask the hon. Member to put it on the Paper.

  THE "TRUST" SYSTEM.
  MR. CUNINGHAME GRAHAM: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the absence of the First Lord of the Treasury, if his attention has been directed to a paper in the Nineteenth Century magazine, of this month, in reference to the alarming growth of the "Trust" system; and if he thinks the matter of sufficient importance to order a Government inquiry into it?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN,): My right hon. Friend the First Lord requests me to say that the competition in this country is so great that he does not believe it possible for any length of time to control the markets, and he is of opinion that the attempt to do so would meet with the failure which it would certainly deserve.

  THE FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS BILL.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: When do the Government propose to take the Factories and Workshops Bill?
  MR. GOSCHEN: The First Lord of the Treasury prefers not to come under any obligation with regard to the consideration of the Factories and Workshops Bill on Report, but some days' notice will be given.
  SIR H. JAMES: Will full notice be given of the day on which the Bill will be brought on?
  MR. GOSCHEN: Yes, Sir.

  EXTRA POLICE IN WESTMEATH.
  MR. TUITE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord
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  Lieutenant of Ireland whether, having regard to the almost total absence of crime in Westmeath, he can now see his way to order the withdrawal of the extra police stationed in that county, and the discontinuance of the operation of the clauses of the Protection of Person and Property (Ireland) Act at present in force in the county?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The authorities responsible for the preservation of the peace in the County Westmeath cannot as yet recommend a further reduction in the number of the extra police in that county. The Protection of Person and Property Act is not in force in any part of Ireland, having expired in September, 1882; but, assuming that the hon. Member is referring to the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, I may say that a very small part of that Act is in force in the County Westmeath, namely, those portions of one sub-section which deal with cases of forcible possession of houses or land, and assaults on sheriffs or other ministers of the law.

  THE BELFAST MAILS.
  MR. JORDAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland) attaches the through Londonderry carriage to the Belfast Limited Mail at Portadown, behind the guard's van and at the end of the train; if the company has been remonstrated with and refused to make any change; and if such action is in contravention of the regulations of the Board of Trade; and, if so, will he take steps to have the matter remedied?
  BARON H. DE WORMS (for Sir M. HICKS BEACH): I have communicated with the company upon the subject of the hon. Member's question. They state that a through carriage from Londonderry to Dublin is run by the train from that city which connects at Portadown junction with the Limited Mail from Belfast to Dublin. For convenience in working, and to prevent delay, this carriage is attached behind the train at Portadown, and the entire train (including the Londonderry carriage) is fitted with the automatic vacuum brake. With this arrangement, the Board of Trade have no power to interfere.

  FORTS IN THE LOWER SHANNON.
  MR. JORDAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if all the forts in the Lower Shannon, namely, that on Scattery Island, Carrig Island, Tarbert, and Kilkerran, are to be dismantled; if so, why; if that on Scattery Island, the principal protecting fort at the mouth of the Shannon, or any of them will be re-constructed; and whether the war material will be removed from the several localities?
  MR. E. STANHOPE: The forts alluded to in the question are all obsolete, and it is not proposed to reconstruct them.

  DONAGHADEE.
  MR. TUITE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the population found to reside in Donaghadee, County Down, according to the Census taken during the present year?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Census Commissioners report that no information regarding the population of Donaghadee has yet reached their office. The Commissioners will issue a Preliminary Report at the earliest possible date giving particulars with regard to population, and they point out that dealing with individual cases in the meantime would lead to much inconvenience.

  THE PURCHASE OF LAND ACTS.
  MR. J. E. ELLIS: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what sum of principal and interest under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Acts, 1885 and 1888, fell due on 1st May last, and how much of this has been paid; and what arrears now exist of any instalments of principal and interest falling due for payment before 1st May, 1891?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have been asked by my right hon. Friend to reply to this question. The total amount of principal and interest which fell due under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Acts, 1885 and 1888, for the half-year ended May 1, 1891, was £120,595; of this, £10,645 had been paid up to May 6. The total amount of principal and in-
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  terest which fell due under these Acts from 1885 to November 1, 1890, was £518,792, of which £2,207 only is now unpaid.

  EDUCATION IN IRELAND.
  MR. M. HEALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state, as bearing on the effect of the new rule (No. 8) of the Board of Intermediate Education in Ireland, the number of junior grade students who passed in June, 1890, being in their 13th year on the 1st June, 1890; the number in their 14th year on the date mentioned; the number of junior grade students who have sent in their names for the forthcoming examination in June, 1891, and who will be in their 13th year on the 1st June, 1891; those who will be in their 14th year on said date; the number of middle grade students who passed in June, 1890, and who had either attained or were under 15 years of age on the 1st June, 1890; and the number of middle grade students who have sent in their names for the forthcoming examination in June, 1891, and who will either attain or be under the age of 16 years on the 1st June, 1891? I beg also to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it has hitherto been customary for students in the junior grade at the Irish Intermediate Examinations to make it a four years' course by increasing the number of subjects each year; whether, by No. 8 of the new rules of the Board of Intermediate Education in Ireland, teachers, and second year students in the junior grade, have been compelled, at six weeks' notice, to choose between entering for this year's examination, and thereby surrendering the chance of passing with honours in a future year, or to forfeit the whole results of last year's study by postponing their examination till next year; whether the rule operates with similar hardship in the middle and senior grades; and whether the operation of the rule will be postponed for two years, until it can only affect students who have had the benefit of a two years' course in the new preparatory grade? Whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that No. 8 of the new rules issued by the Board of Intermediate Education

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  in Ireland has caused great dissatisfaction amongst the teachers and pupils concerned, and is likely to work great mischief and injustice; whether the rule in question is the result of, and the necessary consequence of, the new "preparatory grade," now for the first time introduced, and which is intended to take the place of the junior grade for the youngest class of students; whether as it now stands the rule will next year and afterwards affect students who this year pass a second time in the junior grade, who though they never got the benefit of the "preparatory grade," will thus be treated as if they had; and whether the Board will, by postponing the enforcement of the rule, for at least two years, prevent it from affecting retrospectively students so situate? I also beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, under No. 8 of the new rules of the Board of Intermediate Education in Ireland, a student who passes this year a second time in the junior grade will be precluded from afterwards passing in that grade, though hitherto he might have passed in that grade four times; whether, accordingly, a student in his 14th year who this year passes in the junior grade for the second time will next year, though then only in his 15th year, be compelled to enter for the middle grade, which is intended for students in their 17th year; whether the rule operates in an analogous way on students for the middle and senior grades; and whether, owing to this, teachers and students are placed in a position of great embarrassment, their plan of study for the past year having been based on the assumption that the existing rules would not be altered, and this rule being now pub-ished for the first time six weeks before the coming examination?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Assistant Commissioners of Intermediate Education report that the number of junior grade students who have sent in their names for the June, 1891, examination, and who will be in their 13th year, are as follows:—Boys, 312; girls, 66. Those in their 14th year are as follows:—Boys, 687; girls, 181. By Rule 8 (1892), students who may pass the examination in the present year in the junior grade,
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  and who have previously passed, are precluded from presenting for examination again in that grade. By the same rule a student who has passed in the middle or senior grade prior to 1892 cannot present for examination again in the grade in which he has passed. Petitions for the postponement of the operation of the rule will be before the Board at their next meeting. The Assistant Commissioners of Intermediate Education report that from letters which have been received by the Board it would appear that some teachers and students are dissatisfied with the date at which Rule 8 will come into operation. The rule in question is not the result of, and the necessary consequence of, the new preparatory grade. It was adopted by the Board independently of consideration of a preparatory grade. Students who may pass the examination this year a second time in the junior grade cannot, under the rule referred to, afterwards present for examination in that grade. Petitions for the postponement of the operation of the rule will be submitted to the Board at their next meeting. A student who has completed his course in the junior grade in his 14th year, and has not obtained an exhibition, is not compelled to proceed at once to the middle grade. Neither, under similar circumstances, is a student who has passed the examination in the middle grade compelled to proceed in the following year to the senior grade.

  CORK MAILS.
  DR. KENNY: I beg to ask the Postmaster General if, in view of an accelerated mail service between the City of Cork and the west of the County of Cork, embracing the districts around Bantry and Skibbereen, an arrangement would be made by which the town of Clonakilty and its surrounding district, extending westward to and including the town of Rosscarberry, would be served in like manner as Bantry and Skibbereen?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. RAIKES,): The question whether any improvement can be made in the Day Mail Service in West Cork is now under examination, and no time shall be lost in coming to a

  497
  conclusion. I will bear in mind the hon. Member's wishes as regards Clonakilty and Rosscarberry.

  MR. JOHN CULLINANE.
  MR. M. HEALY (for Mr. T. M. HEALY,): I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what is the present condition of Mr. John Cullinane in Tullamore Gaol; and how was it the prison doctor mistook his disease for influenza, when he was suffering from acute typhoid?
  DR. TANNERalso asked whether it is a fact that Mr. John Cullinane, P.L.G., at present in Tullamore Gaol, is suffering from typhoid fever; if so, why, and on what specific medical authority, was it stated that he was suffering from influenza; whether typhoid fever is, or has recently been, existent in Tullamore Gaol; and what means are, or have been, adopted to stop it?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: With the permission of the House I will reply to both of these questions at the same time. The General Prisons Board report that Mr. Cullinane is at present suffering from typhoid fever. It was stated at first to be severe influenza on the authority of the medical member of the Board, as the suddenness of the attack and the other symptoms at the outset resembled much more influenza than typhoid fever. Typhoid fever exists in Tullamore Prison; most of the cases began on the same day. Amongst other means adopted to prevent the extension of the disease have been the use of disinfectants and the boiling of the water and milk used. The Report received today from the prison is that all the patients are doing well.
  MR. SEXTON: When typhoid fever broke out in the prison how many persons were there, and how many were attacked? Will the prisoners who have not been attacked be allowed to remain in the prison?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I must ask the hon. Member to give notice of his questions.
  MR. SEXTON: But this is really a very serious question. Will they be removed from the scene of the infection?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Of course, I am aware that it is a serious matter, but the patients, as I have stated, are all doing well, and there is no apprehension of any fatal result.
  MR. MACNEILL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that typhoid fever broke out in Londonderry Gaol, and that three prisoners died before they could be removed?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: My recollection of the fact is somewhat different. I should like to have notice of the question.
  MR. M. HEALY: Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that the statement that Mr. Cullinane had influenza was made not on the authority of the medical officer of the prison, but on that of a member of the Prisons Board? What was the opinion of the medical officer of the prison?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have no information that will enable me to answer these questions, and am, therefore, obliged to ask for notice.
  MR. MAC NEILL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, according to the Attorney General for Ireland, it was a mistake of the medical officer to call the complaint influenza?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I believe the medical member of the Board came to the conclusion that it was influenza, but subsequently it showed itself to be typhoid fever.

  NEW MEMBER SWORN.
  William Ernest Brymer, esquire, for the County of Dorset (Southern Division).
ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  PURCHASE OF LAND AND CONGESTED DISTRICTS (IRELAND) BILL.—(No. 111.)

    COMMITTEE.
    Considered in Committee
    (In the Committee.)
    Clause 6.
    MR. KEAYmoved to omit Sub-section 3, which provides as follows:—
    "The Treasury, in communication with the Lord Lieutenant, may authorise by order addi-

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    tional advances in the county not exceeding the capital value for the time being of that part of the Sinking Fund which has been accumulated out of the Sinking Fund payments paid out of purchase annuities in the county, and such capital value shall include the capital of any guaranteed land stock redeemed by the said payments."
    The hon. Member said: The object of my Amendment is to secure that the Guarantee Fund shall be kept in a solvent state, so as to be able to pay off all the purchase annuities in the event of default. The object of the Amendment is strictly analogous to that which was put forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the object of the Government in a statement in reply to me, which he did me the honour to make on the 26th of January. The solvency of the Guarantee Fund has been all along the boast of Her Majesty's Government—so much so that they have described its solvency over and over again as the distinctive feature of their Bill. The existence of this supposed competent Guarantee Fund formed, in fact, their sole excuse for bringing forward this Bill after having vehemently opposed the Land Purchase Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. Gladstone) in 1886. The reason they have assigned is that the Bill of the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian had no Guarantee Fund, and they therefore objected to the British taxpayer incurring a risk. They professed to have changed all that by interposing a complete financial and arithmetical buffer between the British taxpayer and the Irish tenants in the shape of a Guarantee Fund. My contention is that the re-lendings under this sub-section will bankrupt the Guarantee Fund, relying upon the perfect stability of which the House has been induced to pass the Second Reading of the Bill. Assuming the money to be advanced and re-lent as provided by the Bill, there is the certainty of deficits increasing from year to year.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GOSCHEN,): The fallacy of the hon. Member's argument lies in the assumption that if the tenants do not pay, the Government will still go on re-lending. When deficits arise from the tenants not
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    paying, the re-lending would stop that moment.
    MR. KEAY: According to the Bill, the re-lending would go on, or might go on.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Subject to the sanction of the Treasury. Surely the Treasury would not go on re-lending when they were not paid.
    MR. KEAY: It is not for me to argue whether the Treasury are likely to betray their trust. The Bill would sanction re-lending, although every penny of the deficit was being paid out of the Con solidated Fund.
    MR. GOSCHEN: That is a most impracticable hypothesis. No sane Government would go on re-lending when there was a universal strike, which is the only thing that would lead to a deficit. This is not practical politics.
    MR. KEAY: I am not discussing whether it is practical politics; I am talking about what is possible under the Bill. If the power is so enormous that no Treasury would use it, why put it in the Bill? The operation under this Bill would be this: The original loan we are in the habit of roughly estimating at £30,000,000. Then I say that the operation of this clause would be to increase the lending of this £30,000,000 during the first 49 years to no less than £72,000,000 sterling of gross advances. If the powers are continued as this Bill provides for a further period of 49 years, and the re-lending is to go on, the gross advances will amount to £200,00,000 more. I limit my arithmetical argument, however, to matters affecting the more immediate operations of the Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated the other day that the right hon. Member for Derby (Sir W. Harcourt) was not a good accountant, and always appeared to be in a hopeless fog when he had to deal with an array of figures. It is no part of my duty to defend the right hon. Member for Derby, but I believe I can show that the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, as well as the Chief Secretary, has become considerably fogged in regard to the arithmetical arrangements of the Bill, so far as the re-lending clause is concerned. "What is the fact with regard to the re-lending clause and its operation? Instead

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    of its being, as we have been assured, a solvent fund, the Guarantee Fund becomes utterly bankrupt on the occasion of the first re-lending of the very first sum of £300,000 at the end of the first 12 months' operation of the Bill. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is going to deny it, for he will neither nod nor shake his head, but I will now ask from him what I have never been able to get before, i.e., a clear reply as to hard arithmetical facts. The right hon. Gentleman gave us a Return dated the 30th January last, and I will, from calculations I have made based upon that Return, prove the assertion I have made. I assume, first, that the £30,000,000 have been lent, and that the re-lending has commenced on a full scale. The first deficit would arise in 12 months, and it would amount to £12,000, and it will increase largely year by year.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Will the hon. Member explain what he means by a deficit?
    MR. KEAY: The sum by which the Guarantee Fund will fall short of the possible liability. What does security mean unless it is that you are contemplating some risk? I say if you put a power into this Bill, which the right hon. Gentleman confesses is so enormous that no decent Treasury would ever act upon it, then you are bound to put in an Amendment limiting it so that a properly constituted Treasury might comply with it. I am not responsible, I am glad to say, for the muddled wording of this Bill. My second reply to the right hon. Gentleman's question is this: I am contemplating a default being committed at a given date, and I say that if a total default takes place at the end of the first 12 months, there will be a deficit in the Guarantee Fund of £12,000. If it takes place at the end of the first 10 years, then, as more re-lending will have taken place, and as more unguaranteed obligations will have been incurred, the deficit in that year alone will amount to £131,000. Suppose the tenants go on paying for 20 years, and there is then a default, the deficiency will amount to £334,000. If there is a default in the 30th year, it will be £628,000. That is my calculation, although the Chancellor
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    of the Exchequer in his Return puts it at £645,000.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Not a deficit.
    MR. KEAY: The right hon. Gentleman calculates that the annuities will amount to £1,845,000, while the fixed income of the Guarantee Fund will only be £1,200,000. I will carry the calculations further. If there is default in the 40th year the deficiency will be £1,055,000, and in the 49th year the difference between the Guarantee Fund and what is due from the tenants will amount to £1,700,000. In every year, from the first to the 49th, there may be annually increasing deficits amounting in the aggregate to £28,000,000, and that on the re-lendings of an original loan of £30,000,000. I ask—is it not the case that the Government have concealed this fact from the House of Commons? I, and other hon. Members of greater weight than myself, have often questioned the Government on the point, but all they have done has been to deny the existence of a deficit. What did the Chief Secretary say in his speech of last year? He was speaking of the impossibility of loss to the taxpayer, and he said the funds in hand would cover any possible default; and when three days after I attempted by figures to disprove the assertion the Chancellor of the Exchequer stopped me by raising a point of order. The right hon. Gentleman could not summon the courage to analyse the figures. I saw that they were painful to him. I showed that he had given himself credit for possessing a comfortable yearly sum of £1,600,000 to meet a possible default of £1,200,000, whereas, in point of fact, the only real item on which he could count was a sum of £229,000. The right hon. Gentleman and the Committee will remember that he used a remarkable expression in defending the Bill. He said it was a mathematical impossibility that loss should fall on the British taxpayer, the reason being that he had sufficient funds in his own hands, which no one could take from him. His remark on that occasion had great weight with the House. He said—
    "The third degree of impossibility which I may describe as a demonstrable or a mathematical impossibility is that the Treasury, which not only is precluded from advancing money

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    beyond the capitalised value of the Guarantee Fund, but which has also, in addition, the collateral guarantees, of which I have already spoken, should in any conceivable circumstances be one penny the worse."
    After that he went on to say—
    "Some of these points may be open to argument, though I think not; but that it is mathematically impossible for the Treasury to suffer—this is not open to argument."
    No doubt the right hon. Gentleman in using such language was strictly adhering to what he believed to be the truth —to what he thought to be his book. He meant to say he had enough money in the Guarantee Fund to cancel all the tenants' obligations if default were committed.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The hon. Gentleman must not suppose that I accept his interpretation of the words.
    MR. KEAY: I do not suppose the right hon. Gentleman will accept any interpretation of his speech from me. But I am giving the words from Hansard —words which have been carefully revised and edited by the right hon. Gentleman himself. Now let me come to the effect that these words had on the House. What was the interpretation placed upon them by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. That right hon. Gentleman, it will be remembered, in 1886 opposed the Land Purchase Bill upon the specific ground of risk to the British taxpayer. But on the occasion to which I am now referring—the occasion of the Second Reading of last year's Bill—he said he was pleased to find himself, in consequence of the assertion of the Chief Secretary, able to support the Government on this occasion, because this absolutely valid and mathematically solvent Fund — the Guarantee Fund —had been interposed. The right hon. Gentleman went the length of staking his political consistency on the result. He said—
    "The question between us now as to inconsistency is to be decided by the answer to this question—Whether there is a burden on the British taxpayer under this Bill, and not only whether there is a burden but whether there is risk of burden."
    And he added—
    "If there is the slightest fraction of risk then I am inconsistent in supporting this Bill."
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    Again, the right hon. Gentleman continued—
    "I say, for the sake of this argument, you have to assume that it would not be fair to rest upon the probabilities of the case. I have, in order to make my case good, to prove that the loss is impossible. It is not enough to say it is so improbable as to be almost impossible."
    That was very frank. Again—
    "Supposing you have a general repudiation, you have in your hands sufficient resources to bring you home without the loss of a penny. What have you to do? By the hypothecation of the local resources we practically capitalise a payment which we have contracted to make to the Irish Local Authorities. We are under a contract, under an obligation to pay to the Irish Local Authorities so much per annum. We capitalise this sum, and hand it over for Irish purposes, and then we have a right to come upon the annual sum if there is any deficiency. I say, then, in these circumstances, that you have got an absolute security—an inalienable security."
    Now, it is not for me to attempt to prove inconsistency on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, but I do find it necessary to carry the matter one step further, and to show that the Chief Secretary adopted the same frank view that the annual income of the Guarantee Fund would be sufficient to meet the whole annual default. [Cries of "Divide!"] It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to try and prevent me speaking by crying "Divide!" I must finish my remarks, and their cries only delay me. Their object, I know, is to prevent my arguments being properly heard and appreciated by the Committee, and it is curious that whenever I come to a crucial point their noise is the loudest. I can assure them that their policy will not succeed. The Chief Secretary's speech on the Second Reading entirely bears out the view that the Government pledged themselves to the country and to their supporters that their Guarantee Fund would furnish ample income to cover the annual liabilities in case of default. To prove that, all I need mention is this: The right hon. Gentleman himself provided me with the necessary illustration. He asked what would take place with regard to an Irish landlord who was in the habit of spending the equivalent of his rents on his estate and whose rent for a particular year was withheld by the tenants. He challenged the House to say that any injury could take place, and he said—

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    "I accept then, and I ask this House to accept, the possible effects of a universal repudiation as a contingency which is to be contemplated, and contemplated equally, whether we have or have not the support of the Irish Members."
    Then he says—
    "Do you think the Plan of Campaign would ever have been started, or, if started, would ever have succeeded, on an estate on which all the rent which a landlord derived from the land was given back in the form of local contributions to the neighbourhood?"
    He went on to say—
    "All a landlord would have to do would be to diminish his contributions, shilling by shilling, as the payment of rent was reduced."
    The right hon. Gentleman said—
    "That is precisely the position of the British Exchequer with regard to contributions towards Irish local purposes."
    Now, I think I have, from the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman, proved most thoroughly that his position from first to last, and upon which the House has been encouraged to accept this Bill, has been the absolute validity of the Guarantee Fund to meet default in any possible case. It is unpleasant to the Government to have to recur again to the facts of the case, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put before us, in the form of a Return, figures which give the astounding result that the whole of the re-lendings, amounting to £42,000,000 at the end of 49 years, are absolutely unsecured by the Guarantee Fund in any form whatever. [Interruptions.] There was one remark from the Chief Secretary which I must deprecate. It will be in the recollection of the Committee that a few days ago, when the hon. Member for Northampton endeavoured to raise another point touching the question of the solvency of the Guarantee Fund, the right hon. Gentleman got up and said that the point had been completely threshed out on the First and Second Reading Debates on this and the last Bill—that everything had been said that could be said, and that he declined to say anything further. Now, I give this statement an absolute and categorical denial. This point was not alluded to, and in fact it was not known on the First and Second Reading, and I was the only Member who, even in a perfunctory manner, then alluded to it—not to the insolvency of the Guarantee Fund
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    in consequence of re-lending, which is the present point, but to the insolvency of the Guarantee Fund in consequence of the admission of the Ashbourne Act moneys into the last Bill. That was the point raised. [Interruptions.] The right hon. Gentleman was able to reply that the Ashbourne Act money was excluded from the Bill, and I accepted his statement and sat down. But a reference to the Record of the Debates will show that there was not a semblance of a statement made by the Government in explanation of the fact which now has been placed before the Committee for the first time—the insolvency of the Guarantee Fund from inability to meet the instalments arising from re-lending. The right hon. Gentleman had the audacity to declare I had discovered a mare's nest; but he did not destroy this mare's nest. I am sorry to have detained the Committee so long; I intended to be more brief. I ask the Government, I challenge the Government to show that they have been honest and fair with the House of Commons in this matter—to show that they did not obtain the Second Reading under a false pretence and by hiding away these gigantic deficits. I charge them with having stultified their majority, by calling upon them to pass the first clause of the Bill, which has enacted an arithmetical impossibility. The first clause enacts that the Guarantee Fund shall pay back the temporary advances from the Consolidated Fund, yet the Committee now know that under the re-lending business the deficit in the Land Purchase Account will be so much beyond its income that it will be impossible for it to carry out the functions which the Government ordain it shall perform.
    Amendment proposed, in page 7, line 24, to leave out Sub-section 3.—(Mr. Keay.)
    Question proposed,
    "That the words 'The Treasury, in communication with the Lord Lieutenant, may authorise by order additional advances in the county,' in line 25, stand part of the Clause."
    MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Member who has just sat down said he hoped he should have a succinct reply from this Bench.
    MR. KEAY: Clear and succinct.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Clear and succinct. I cannot say that his speech has either of those qualities. Had the hon. Member brought out his point clearly in earlier Debates we should have been able to put our finger on the particular fallacy. If we have failed to find out his point I am sure there are many Members on his side of the House in exactly the same position, who have been unable to discover what particular mare's nest it was that was agitating the hon. Member. Where is this fated point where bankruptcy is impending over us? The hon. Member has wasted a great deal of unnecessary time in pointing out that in all the loans under this Bill we must not run the risk of any loss.
    MR. KEAY: I said the security of the Guarantee Fund.
    MR. GOSCHEN: With the security of the Guarantee Fund.
    MR. KEAY: That was the Government statement.
    MR. GOSCHEN: No; the statement of the Government was there was no loss to the taxpayer. By this we stand, and I can prove to the Committee there is no risk to the British taxpayer. I think I can put the matter clearly in a few sentences. The hon. Member is anxious to prove there will be an accumulating deficit. He has placed an estimate before the House or before the public in another way, that there will be an accumulating deficit long after there is a general strike, and says the Bill authorises this.
    MR. KEAY: No such argument was ever put before the House or the public by me. I said the Bill provides for it.
    MR. GOSCHEN: I think the hon. Member has put a statement forward that from £8,000,000 a deficit will accumulate year by year.
    MR. KEAY: If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me I will correct him. The deficiency I alluded to in a former Debate. I said, if a default occurs on a particular year naturally it will go on to the next years. It would be a default not in one year only but a total default. Thus if it began at £1,000,000 there might be £10,000,000 advanced from the Consolidated Fund before the annuity was completed.
    MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Member assumes there is default at a certain date. He assumes that annuities may have arisen to £1,800,000 while at the same time the Guarantee Fund only amounts to £1,200,000 and he calls the difference a deficit. But he leaves out of view that at the moment we should hold £16,000,000 sterling either in securities or in Land Stock itself, and if in Land Stock then £16,000,000 would be cancelled, and there would never be more Stock out than £30,000,000. And for this sum the Guarantee Fund of £1,200,000 is complete security. Either you hold securities in hand or the Stock itself. If you have the Stock you cancel it up to £30,000,000. At no time are you in a position when you have not securities in hand, at no time will you have more Stock to pay upon than £30,000,000. The point omitted by the hon. Member, and on which his fallacy rests, is neglecting this security altogether. In Consols or Land Stock the Government will always have this security.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: In how many years would the fund be able to pay beyond 49 years? In the 30th year it will be broken down.
    MR. GOSCHEN: As we have endeavoured to explain, there cannot be loss to the taxpayer—for the amount of Stock out will never be more than £1,200,000 would cover—no loss will arise from re-lending, only a retardation.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: The point is a very simple one. Take the 30th year. As the Committee know perfectly well, the whole basis of this Bill is that £1,200,000 of Irish taxes comes into our hands and is to be held as cover in case annuities are not paid. But by using the Sinking Fund in your business, that is to say by re-loans, in the 30th year your interest amounts to £1,800,000, against a cover of £1,200,000.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Besides, you have £16,000,000 invested.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: Yes, invested in land. ["No!"] Do I understand that the Sinking Fund is not to be invested in land? Let the right hon. Gentleman show us that in the clause. We seem to differ on the construction of the clause. £30,000,000, as we will call

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    the sum, for the sake of argument, is to be invested in land, and of course the 1 per cent.
    MR. GOSCHEN: There is where the fallacy arises. The Sinking Fund is not invested in land. It consists of cash in the first instance. One per cent. on £30,000,000—that is £300,000—is paid over to the National Debt Commissioners, and they invest in Land Stock or Consols, or any interest bearing security, but not in land. They hold the £300,000, and, as fresh advances are made, they hold an equivalent amount.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: It may be my stupidity, but it is not at all clear to me. Let the money pass through any Department in London, these £300,000 are invested in land.
    MR. GOSCHEN: The National Debt Commissioners, to whom the money will be paid over, will invest it in Consols or other securities. Therefore, there will be the interest of the money, and the tenant is also paying an annuity on the amount, so that there will be a double resource.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: The right hon. Gentleman is using his money twice over. Take the 30th year, when the annuities will amount to £1,800,000 against a cover of £1,200,000. Then suppose that the tenants repudiate, that from political or other reasons there is a general strike. What my hon. Friend is contending for is this—that if at any time the tenants do not pay, all the Sinking Fund will be lost, and we shall have to begin again ab ovo, and pile it up for 40 years additional, in order to get back our £30,000,000.
    MR. GOSCHEN: There will be a retardation, but not a loss.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: I do not think this was understood when the Bill was read. Our whole opposition is founded on the great risk, and I think my hon. Friend has put the difference between himself and the Chancellor of the Exchequer with great clearness.
    MR. GOSCHEN: The Ministry of the day represent the majority of the day, and the Treasury would deal with what can only theoretically be considered a universal strike against the payment of annuities.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: But as I understand, the Government refuse to give this power to the Treasury.
    MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Member will observe that under the 3rd section of Clause 6—
    "The Treasury, in communication with the Lord Lieutenant, may authorise by order additional advances in the county, not exceeding the capital value for the time being of that part of the Sinking Fund which has been accumulated out of the Sinking Fund payments paid out of purchase annuities in the county, and such capital value shall include the capital of any guaranteed land stock redeemed by the said payments."
    MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: It must be assumed that the Treasury will act wisely, and if there are defalcations will not go on re-lending; but I do think there should be some clause to prevent re-lending if there are defalcations in a particular district. I agree also with the right hon. Gentleman that, assuming general defalcations and a total failure of the Guarantee Fund, there will not be a loss of more than the original advances of £30,000,000; but will the right hon. Gentleman explain where, under the Bill, the Government take power to retard the operation of the Sinking Fund in the manner he has described by creating a new Sinking Fund?
    MR. GOSCHEN: The right hon. Gentleman will find this provided for at the end of Clause 1. There is nothing in the Act to limit the Guarantee Fund to the first 49 years. So long as there is anything owing to the Consolidated Fund, whether it is 49, 59, or 69 years, the security of the Guarantee Fund will continue to exist.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: This is a more or less academic discussion, and would be more suited to the Statistical Society than the House of Commons. It is very difficult to understand the remarks of the hon. Member for Elgin (Mr. Keay), and a great deal more difficult to understand those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think, however, it is perfectly clear that if at the end of 30 years there is a strike, your Sinking Fund operations will be dislocated, and you will retard the re-payment of the money for 30 years, that is to say, till the end not of 49, but of 79 years.
    MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: I wish to point out that the effect of the retardation would be to throw the obligation of re-payment on future ratepayers, as the period of payment would be extended over 30 years further. I would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it is worth while to go on with the scheme of re-lending? The money that would be re-lent from year to year would be so small for a great number of years that it would really be insignificant. For many years the sums re-lent could be no more than £300,000 a year; they would increase by slow degrees, and it would not be for 30 or 40 years that they would reach £1,000,000 a year. I would venture to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it is worth while to enter into a scheme of so difficult and complex a character for the purpose of lending not more than £300,000 for years to come? It appears to me that the scheme is a great financial puzzle, the offspring of a brain that has been devoting itself to the subject of post-obits, and I think it is scarcely worthy of financial consideration by this House.
    MR. GOSCHEN: In answer to the right hon. Gentleman's question, I may say that we shall proceed county by county, and it is therefore unnecessary to think of a general strike; but theoretically if there was that general strike, the generation striking would have to reckon with the ratepayers of the future. We are not prepared to abandon the re-lending scheme, but it is possible that the Sinking Fund may increase beyond £300,000.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: The right hon. Gentleman has said he accepts the possible effect of universal repudiation as a contingency that has to be contemplated. The main object of the Guarantee Fund has been to meet that contingency. I really think it would be desirable, and would tend to smooth over matters, if the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to listen to the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), and decline to re-invest the Sinking Fund in land in Ireland. What we ask the right hon. Gentleman to do is to a certain extent
    512
    complimentary to him. We say we prefer "Goschens" to land security in Ireland. If the annuities are re-invested in Consols each year, we shall know what we are about, and can rely upon it that at the end of a given number of years, provided that 1 per cent. be paid, we shall be absolutely certain of our money. I think we have a right to ask, after the pledges given at the last election against throwing any liability on the British taxpayer, that we should have every legitimate security, and that the taxpayer should be absolutely covered.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Member does not seem to have grasped the point. I fear that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Keay) behind him suffers from invincible ignorance, and that nothing I say will convince him. The hon. Member for Northampton seems to think that we increase the theoretical risks by re-lending. I do not think so. The re-lending under the Ashbourne Act did increase the theoretical risk, and it is in order to keep the Bill not only practically but mathematically sound that we keep out of it any power of re-lending under the Ashbourne Act. We retain the power to re-lend under this Bill, and we do not admit in the least degree that that destroys the theoretical security. The hon. Member appears to think that money is to be re-lent on the security of Irish land. That would be the case if it were re-lent under the Ashbourne Acts, but it is not the case under this Bill. For what is re-lent above the £30,000,000 there will be not only the security of the holding on which it is lent, but there will be a nominally equal sum invested either in Consols or in Land Stock or some other security. The hon. Member for Northampton has been misled by the hon. Member behind him, who has really got into such a muddle on this question that it has almost got on his brain. Let it be thoroughly understood that the money is not re-lent solely on the security of the land; but there is, in addition, an investment either in Land Stock or Consols, whichever the National Debt Commissioners may choose.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: It seems to me that every speech makes the matter more obscure, and that the diffi-

    513
    culty might be met by withdrawing the sub-section. Its withdrawal would make very little difference, seeing that what is done in the future will depend upon the will of the Parliament or the Government of the day. If the provision be retained, it will have a great effect on the progress of the Bill.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: The hon. Gentleman forgets that when you have got a Sinking Fund you cannot stop, but must go on and work it out. I fully admit that the Chief Secretary for Ireland is a most able gentleman; but I do not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able to make clear to him what will occur under this Bill. If the right hon. Gentleman does understand it himself, he has endeavoured to fog us. Nothing in the world is more simple than the provision. There is all the difference between reinvesting the 1 per cent. in Consols, which are safe, and reinvesting it in land, which is involved in the same risk as the original £30,000,000. But you do more than that—you invest the interest after the second year. As my hon. Friend has said, at the end of your 49 years you will have lent £72,000,000. If the whole thing were repudiated, it is perfectly true that we should only have paid the £30,000,000; but our risk is not upon the £30,000,000, but upon the £72,000,000, and, consequently, if one-half were repudiated, you would still lose your £30,000,000. I despair of convincing any hon. Gentleman who does not see the difference between investing your dividends in speculative business and investing them in Consols.
    MR. H. H. FOWLER: I do not agree with my hon. Friend that this is a very simple subject; and I am bound to say that if the question were within the domain of practical politics, I think I should have considerable difficulty in following the arguments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary. I do not, however, think it is within the domain of practical politics. To incur the risks suggested there must, in the first place, be general repudiation, which I do not think likely; and, in the second place, the provision cannot come
    514
    into operation for a considerable number of years. I should like some further information from the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this most perplexing and difficult subject. I am really asking for information, and not in the way of dogmatic criticism. The Chief Secretary has just said that if we re-lend the £1,200,000 we shall realise as much from it as if we invested it again. My point is this, that under this principle of loans you will want the whole £1,200,000 a year every year up to the last, in order to repay your original £30,000,000. Let us take the sum of £10,000, and suppose it to be lent at 4 per cent. £400 a year would in 49 years replace both principal and interest, and that is the way in which we now pay the National Debt by terminable annuities. Thus you will want your whole £1,200,000 every year in order to repay your original £30,000,000; that is to say, when you had paid off £29,000,000 you would still require the whole of the £1,200,000. Now, let me take the operation of the Sinking Fund with the proposed re-lending. At the end of the first year you would have £300,000 to be invested in Consols or other securities. The interest on that would be £7,500, and the annuity obtainable by re-lending would be£12,000 a year. Assuming repudiation, the deficiency would be the difference between the interest on the Consols and the annuities paid by the Irish tenants. But it is assumed that you are going to re-lend the actual money which forms the Sinking Fund, but, as I understand it, the Government do not propose to re-lend that£300,000; they create Land Stock as against that investment, and that is not re-lending it.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: It is the same thing.
    MR. H. H. FOWLER: No; it is not the same thing, because they have £300,000 on which interest is paid at 2¾ per cent., and this is invested somewhere else and is producing interest. This, I think, clears up much of the complexity surrounding this matter. It is not a re-lending.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the original £300,000 is cancelled or not?
    MR. H. H. FOWLER: That is a mere matter of detail and is unimportant, because, if cancelled, they have not to pay the interest. I want to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether there would not be a difference between the sum received from the investments and the sum which ought to be received from the Irish tenant, but which on the hypothesis of a general repudiation would not be payable—say £7,500 as against £12,000?
    MR. GOSCHEN: I have to thank the right hon. Gentleman for his clear speech on this subject. In reply to his question, I would state that no doubt there would be a difference between the interest on the Consols and the annuity. That difference would consist of two things, namely, the 1 per cent. of the Sinking Fund and the ½ per cent. which would go to the County Authority. In the result it comes to this: that there would be no risk to capital and no risk to income. All that would happen would be that the whole operation would have to be repeated, and the Sinking Fund would have to be set up afresh, thereby prolonging the number of years.
    MR.MORTON: I think the hon. Member for Elgin has proved his case up to the hilt. If you go on re-lending you might have to pay £1,800,000 per annum out of £1,200,000. You will be deceiving the British public. If I may accept the authority of the Times and Standard newspapers, the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary is the person who is responsible for the muddle that has been made of this Bill. We are now told that the Sinking Fund will be invested in Consols, and the right hon. Gentleman calculates the interest at 2 ¾ per cent. You may get that for a time, but not for long; and when the paper I hold in my hand was calculated, it is evident he did not mean to invest the money, but to buy up Land Stock, or something of that sort. We are told that there is to be no re-lending, but that the Sinking Fund is to be accumulated, and you are to have fresh loans. But I do not see that either the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Chief Secretary have at all cleared up the question as to the cover for the security to be provided for the British public. I shall vote
    516
    against this sub-section, because I do not think any Government should have the right of lending beyond the original £30,000,000 without coming to this House for fresh authority. Hitherto the House of Commons has never allowed any Department to go on lending and re - lending money without its authority, and therefore we have a right to say that no such power should be exercised in this instance, especially as we are told that it may lead to advances amounting to the enormous total of £200,000,000 sterling.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I move "That the Question be now put."
    THE CHAIRMAN: I am very reluctant to put such a Motion, but I am bound to say that I think the time has arrived when there should be an end to the discussion on this point.
    (6.23.) Question put, "That the Question be now put."
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 172; Noes 114.—(Div. List, No. 204.)
    (6.35.) Question put accordingly,
    "That the words 'The Treasury, in communication with the Lord Lieutenant, may authorise by order additional advances in the county,' in linoe25, stand part of the Clause."
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 191; Noes 97.—(Div. List, No. 205.)
    MR. SEXTON: By this sub-section it is provided that—
    "The Treasury, in communication with the Lord Lieutenant, may authorise, by order, additional advances in the county, not exceeding the capital value for the time being of that part of the Sinking Fund which has been accumulated out of the Sinking Fund payments paid out of purchase annuities in the county; and such capital value shall include the capital of any guaranteed land stock redeemed by the said payments."
    I propose to leave out from "not," in line 25, to "payments," in line 30, and insert the words which stand in my name. It will be seen on examination that, in the first place, the clause, as it stands, provides that the share of the county in the Guarantee Fund is inalienably devoted to that county. It appears to me that the Government have scarcely considered what will occur if at any time it becomes quite clear a county is not disposed to exhaust its share of the Guarantee Fund. It may be said this is an eventuality somewhat

    517
    remote, but it may occur, and I think it is desirable we should provide against it. Suppose that after the lapse of years, and when most of the counties have exhausted their shares, it becomes apparent that some particular county or counties are not disposed to carry into effect the policy of land purchase so far as to exhaust the financial share of the Guarantee Fund appropriated to it or them, would the money or the Stock to that extent be allowed to go to waste? One of the objects of my Amendment is to secure that in case any county or counties should not exhaust their share of the Guarantee Fund, the residue may be available, at the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant, for use throughout the country where it may appear to be required. Then the Chief Secretary provides that an amount of Stock equal to the capital value of the Sinking Fund accumulated in any county may be appropriated to that county. Suppose that the share of the Guarantee Fund proved to be enough, and the county does not require its share of the Sinking Fund, what is the propriety, what is the common sense, of locking up the share of the Sinking Fund by attaching it to a particular county, if it should appear that that county had no desire to use its share of the Sinking Fund, and another county was prepared to use the money? I propose that the residue so left may, at the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant, be applied to any county in Ireland. I now come to the third point of my Amendment, and that relates to what is popularly called the repayments under the Ashbourne Acts. In last year's Bill the Government proposed that the moneys coming in under the head of repayments under the Ashbourne Acts might be applied for the purpose of fresh loans for the purchase of land in Ireland; and in moving for leave to bring in that Bill the Chief Secretary explained the utility of that particular provision. He said that whilst the provision for the issue of Stock would provide the initial fund, the repayments under the Ashbourne Acts would provide a permanent fund. That very weighty consideration was not dissented from in any part of the House, and it appeared to me to be one of considerable
    518
    force. However, the provision has disappeared from the Bill of this year. I thought it had disappeared through inadvertence, because it appeared to me so natural. But a question addressed to the right hon. Gentleman elicited the reply that the Government discovered that the repayments under the Ashbourne Acts, if they were re-lent, would not be covered by the Guarantee Fund. Surely that must have been apparent at first. [Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear.] The right hon. Gentleman assents. Therefore, the Government must have been quite aware, when they introduced their Bill of last year, that the repayments under the Ashbourne Acts would not have been so covered, and being aware of that they deliberately introduced the provision. There was a strong reason last year why the provision should be made; there is another and stronger reason this year. The Secretary for Ireland proposes to substitute for a subsection which has been omitted a new clause, which is described in the Amendment Paper as a clause for the "Allocation of the sum available for purchase in proportion of the value of holdings." By that clause the right hon. Gentleman intends that the moneys to be available for land purchase in any county shall be apportioned as between the relative number of large and small farms. I want to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that if he sticks to that scheme his policy of land purchase will stagnate. Under the Ashbourne Acts the larger farmers took two-thirds of the money, and they will press forward for a corresponding amount under this Act. If you do net suspend the rule, it is evident you will soon reach the point beyond which you cannot go. On the other hand, if you suspend the rule, or break it down, you will bring about a repetition of the operation of the Ashbourne Acts—the bulk of the money will go to the larger farmers. I strongly urge upon him to re-insert in this Bill the provision of the Bill of last year to re-lend the moneys under the Ashbourne Acts. I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 25, to leave out from the word "county," in line 25, to end of Sub-

    519
    section 3, and insert the words "Provided that the aggregate of the additional advances so authorised for all the counties in Ireland shall not exceed the aggregate of the following sums:—

    (a) A sum equal to the aggregate of the capital value of the Sinking Fund, including the capital of any guaranteed land stock redeemed by payments to the Sinking Fund;

    (b) A sum equal to twenty-five times the Guarantee Fund;

    (c) The sums for the time being repaid on account of the principal of the money authorised by the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Acts, 1885 and 1888, to be issued."— (Mr. Sexton.)

    Question proposed, "That the words from the word 'county,' in line 25, to the word 'and,' in line 28, stand part of the Sub-section."
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The first proposal of the Amendment breaks down the rigid barrier which the Bill at present raises between each county. The hon. Member desires that the Government should lend in the counties that do not desire land purchase the share which may be allocated to counties desiring it. On the face of it that is an extremely plausible proposition, but I cannot assent to it, because if there is a great desire to purchase, say, in County Down, and very little desire to purchase in County Mayo, the fund allocated to County Mayo may be drawn upon for County Down, and County Mayo will have to pay for any default of County Down purchasers. The third suggestion of the Amendment is that we should re-lend the money of the Ashbourne Acts. The right hon. Gentleman has told us quite correctly that this part of the Amendment was an integral portion of our own Bill of last year, and he has asked us what has occurred to make us drop it. It is perfectly evident that the only chance this Bill has of passing is that we should be able to say of it that it is absolutely impossible it should throw any liability on the British taxpayer. If the hon. Gentleman asked me my own private opinion as to whether there would be any serious risk involved in this, or if he asked me whether I should prefer to re-introduce the provision of last year in this Bill, my answer would be in the negative to the first question and in the affirmative to the second. I do not be-
    520
    lieve that there would be any appreciable risk to the British taxpayer; but I have felt that the time taken up by hon. Gentlemen sitting in the neighbourhood of the hon. Member for West Belfast, and of which there is a distinguished exponent (Mr. Keay) sitting immediately below him, practically renders it impossible for the Government with any justice, either to themselves or the cause of land purchase, to re-introduce the provision. I have not altered my own view as to what would be in the interest of the taxpayer; but I am sure the English taxpayer would not agree to the introduction of the provision, and I do not think the matter is sufficiently large to make it worth the while of the Government, even if we could do so, to attempt to force down the throats of a reluctant majority a proposal of this kind.
    MR. KNOX: This is the first occasion in which the Chief Secretary has displayed any fear of the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn (Mr. Keay). During the course of this discussion, the right hon. Gentleman has met the hon. Gentleman with tolerable courage; but to-day, for the first time, he seems to think the hon. Member represents so considerable a portion of public opinion that it is hopeless to expect the House of Commons to agree to the present Amendment. The Chief Secretary has admitted that, in his own opinion, this Amendment is a good one, and would improve the Bill. I am persuaded that if he only told the Whips of his Party that he wished his opinion carried into legislative effect it would be carried into legislative effect. I appeal to the Committee to take the Chief Secretary's opinion in this matter, and to disregard his fears of the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn. I think the Amendment of my hon. Friend is extremely reasonable. We know that in some counties land purchase proceeds very slowly, and that there will be no great desire for land purchase. In other counties there will be an overwhelming desire for it, and, speaking generally, I think it may be said that in the cases in which there is the greatest desire for land purchase it is most necessary that land purchase should be

    521
    adopted. Under the proposal of the Government a certain sum will be given to each county, and nothing more. Surely the money which is being regularly repaid under the Ashbourne Acts might fairly be re-lent for the purposes of land purchase. When the Ashbourne Acts were passed a considerable section of Members on the Opposition Benches, differing from the Irish Members, said they did not expect to see any of the money back. But it has been repaid, and, therefore, it may be regarded by them as a windfall. The hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn never expected to see the money again; when, therefore, it has come in in an unexpected way, it may be lent out again.
    MR. KEAY: My hon. Friend has humorously described the position the Chief Secretary has taken up towards myself. I desire to take off the varnish, and to say what I think the Chief Secretary really meant by his allusion to me. The right hon. Gentleman simply meant to say that the country would see in all its naked deformity the utter rottenness of his Guarantee Fund if he were to bring in the Ashbourne moneys as he did last year.
    MR. SEXTON: I admit that the criticism of the right hon. Gentleman upon sub-heads (a) and (b) is technically correct, but (a) could not come into operation for some time, and (b) could not come into operation until such time as it was seen a county was not going to use its share of the Guarantee Fund. My opinion is, that before that day arrives the British taxpayer and everybody else will agree that the Guarantee Fund is in no degree essential. As to the Ashbourne moneys, if I were to ask you to devote any new money to the purchase of land in Ireland uncovered by the Guarantee Fund, I think there would be force in the argument against me; but this is money already voted. The advances have been regularly repaid, and there is nothing to show that the re-loan of the money would be unsafe. Under the circumstances, I must go to a Division.
    (7.14.) The Committee divided:— Ayes 177; Noes 29.—(Div. List, No. 206.)
    MR. KEAY: I beg to move to leave out from "county," in line 28, to the end of the sub-section. The sub-section of the Bill provides that the Lord Lieutenant may authorise the Treasury to issue certain extra sums of money by way of loan to the different counties equal to the accumulated value of the county's share in the Sinking Fund, and that—
    "Such capital value shall include the capital of any guaranteed land stock redeemed by the said payments."
    My object in moving to omit these last words is to make the re-lendings of a terminable instead of a perpetual character, as they are under the Bill as it stands. The Land Stock is redeemable after 30 years, but the redemption is really of a nominal character, unles3 these words are excluded. Indeed, it may be said that the cancelment of the Land Stock under the present arrangement of the Bill is colourable, and not real and practical. The Committee will admit that it does not matter a brass farthing to the British taxpayer, or to those who are concerned in the financial responsibilities of the Bill, whether old paper is cancelled or not so long as new paper is allowed to be issued to the same extent and in respect of the same fund. The clause as it stands is really a cunningly devised method of throwing dust into the eyes of the population of this country. These annuities cease 49 years after the advance. I hold that the Stock itself ought to be absolutely terminable at the same date, even in the case of full success as distinguished from default. The last words of the clause militate against what I may call the authentically cancelling of the Stock. I challenge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to state whether or not I am right when I assert as I do that under the Bill as it stands there is no date fixed when the cancelment of the whole Stock is to take place. If my Amendment is accepted the effect would be that the re-lending which the Government are so desirous to see effected might go on up to the date when the whole Stock becomes redeemable, but after it becomes redeemable all the redemptions which take place will be bonâfide redemptions whereby the Public Debt of the country

    523
    will stand diminished to a corresponding degree.
    Amendment proposed, in page 7, line 28, to leave out from the word "county," to the end of Sub-section 3.—(Mr. Keay.)
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
    MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Member is mistaken as to the effect of the clause. The words of the clause are simply declaratory, and make no reference whatever to the redemption of Land Stock.
    (7.38.) The Committee divided: — Ayes 139; Noes 18.—(Div. List, No. 207.)
    MR. KEAY: The Amendment which I have now to propose is to insert, after "payments," in line 30—
    "Provided that no such order shall be made if any part of the capital value of the Sinking Fund has been accumulated by advances from the Consolidated Fund."
    The object of this Amendment is very clear. It is to secure that no new advances shall be made if the pecuniary burden has already fallen on the British taxpayer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has already told us to-day that the idea that such re-lendings could go on under such circumstances is perfectly absurd, that no officers in charge of the Treasury in future would think of making advances under such circumstances. While I have no desire to make any reflection upon the Treasury officers of the future, I think some words ought to be put in the clause which will make it clear that, in case of pecuniary loss, no further advances should be made. The Amendment which I now offer to the Committee is the best method which I have been able to devise to supply the want. I do not think such an astounding proposal as that the Bill should be left open in this way could be justified in any quarter of the House. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer holds to the statement he made earlier in the evening, I do not see how he can avoid accepting my Amendment.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 30, after "payments," to insert "Provided that no such order shall be
    524
    made if any part of the capital value of the Sinking Fund has been accumulated by advances from the Consolidated Fund."—(Mr. Keay.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
    MR. GOSCHEN: The hon. Gentleman admits that his Amendment is to provide for a contingency that no reasonable man can possibly contemplate.
    MR. KEAY: I said the right hon. Gentleman himself said so.
    MR. GOSCHEN: I cannot believe there is anyone in the House who thinks that if the annuities cease to be paid we should go on lending money. The proposition is most absurd.
    MR. KEAY: What objection can there be to inserting these words? they simply provide that in case of default the Treasury shall not even have the discretion to lend money.
    Amendment negatived.
    MR. KEAY: I now move the last of this series of Amendments in my name, that is, in line 30 I propose to insert, after the word "payments," the words—
    "But any such order shall not come into operation unless it has lain for thirty days on the Table of the House of Commons, nor if a Resolution objecting to it has been passed by such House."
    The sub-section has laid down that these re-lendings shall take place at the discretion of the Treasury, and my object now is to provide that the House of Commons shall have time to consider and assure itself of the safety or danger of the operation. My reason will, I think, be self-evident. The taxpayers will be exposed to unbounded risks from the unlimited character of both the primary and secondary loans, the re-lendings rising in almost geometrical ratio with the original advances. Under the Bill as it now stands this will go on, and the House of Commons will be powerless to interfere, and, as we now learn, the Sinking Fund is bound to be paid up from the Consolidated Fund, even though all the tenants are defaulting. Her Majesty's Government now actually desire that nothing shall be included in the Bill that will bring these doubtful operations under the surveillance of the House of Commons. But surely

    525
    it should be sufficient justification for my Amendment that it is taken word for word from the right hon. Gentleman's Bill of last year, which had a similar clause relating to the same subject. It is for the Government to explain why this provision has been deliberately omitted from the present Bill. I am sure it would have met with no objection.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 30, after the word "payments," to insert the words "but any such order shall not come into operation until it has lain for not less than thirty days upon the Table of the House of Commons, nor if a Resolution objecting to the order has been passed by such House."—(Mr. Keay.)
    Question proposed, "That those words foe there inserted."
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: If the hon. Gentleman had studied the Bill of last year with any degree of attention he would have seen that the clause referred to was introduced with reference to the re-lending of the Ashbourne money. No such reason exists for the introduction of a similar clause in the present Bill. If the hon. Member's Amendment were carried, the House would be mainly occupied in performing functions which had much better be left to the Treasury. The hon. Member must know that the Treasury will not lend money contrary to the wishes of the Ministry of the day, and his experience in this House, although not great, has probably been sufficient to teach him that the Ministry of the day are not likely to do anything contrary to the wishes of the majority of the House of Commons.
    MR. KEAY: I did give some study at the time to the Bill of last year, and I have an impression that this provision in the Bill governed re-lendings of all kinds. However, I am subject to correction, and I have not a copy of last year's Bill before me. The re-lendings under the Ashbourne Act would have been a small matter as compared with the re-lendings contemplated under this Bill, and if it was thought necessary that those small re-lendings should be brought under review by the House is not the argument stronger in favour of a similar provision now with regard to the enormous re-lendings of this Bill?
    Mr. CONYBEARE: I shall consistently support any Amendment which tends in any way to bring the operation of this Bill under the control of the House, and this will give the House a slight hold, though only a slight one, over these operations. Without such a check as this what opportunity has public opinion to influence the Treasury? The machinery of the Bill operates in the office of the Land Commission, and will not come under public notice at all. We know how altogether dark and secret are the transactions of the Treasury in regard to loans of other kinds. Very few Members can off-hand explain the manner in which the Government of the day deals with these matters, and the public are ignorant of the position until they find their interests are seriously prejudiced, and a Government more disregardful of the views of the House of Commons than the present it would be difficult to discover. If five or ten years hence the present Chancellor of the Exchequer should happen to hold the office, and in his individual wisdom deem it desirable that these re-lendings should go on, he will not trouble himself about the opinion of the House of Commons upon the matter. The security of the wishes of the majority of the House of Commons seems to me an illusion, for I do not see how the House can give expression to its wish without such a provision as my hon. Friend proposes. I certainly cannot see what valid objection there is to the proposal.
    MR. KEAY: The Chief Secretary has found it convenient to leave his place, but I have now a copy of the Bill of last year, and I find that he has altogether misrepresented the effect of the clause to which I referred. Clause 15, Sub-section 4, of that Bill provided that—
    "The Treasury may by order authorise an additional amount to be advanced in respect of holdings in a county provided that the aggregate of the additional amount so authorised for all the counties in Ireland shall not exceed the aggregate of the following sums: (a) The sums for the time being repaid on account of the principal of the money authorised by the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Acts, 1885 and 1888, to be issued, and (b) The capital value of the Sinking Fund of the guaranteed land stock under this Act. But any such order shall

    527
    not come into operation until it has lain for not less than thirty days upon the Table of the House of Commons, nor if a Resolution objecting to the order has been passed by such House."
    Now, under the circumstances, and holding the matter to be one of great importance, and one to which Her Majesty's Government agreed last year, I think we are entitled to know for what reason the provision is now excluded. In his remarks just now the Chief Secretary misrepresented the actual effect of Clause 15 in his last year's Bill. He is not now in his place, nor is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and under the circumstances, and to give the right hon. Gentleman the opportunity of an explanation, I now beg to move that you do report Progress and ask leave to sit again.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I shall not put that Motion, as to do so would be an abuse of the forms of the House.
    MR. CONYBEARE: I do not, of course, question your ruling, Sir, but I think we have reason to complain of the conduct of the Chief Secretary. This is an important question, and the control of the House of Commons over these financial transactions has been the subject of much discussion. My hon. Friend put the plain question why had this provision, which was included in last year's Bill, been omitted from the present Bill. The answer of the right hon. Gentleman was equally plain that the provision last year had reference only to re-lendings under the Ashbourne Act, to which it was thought necessary to have Parliamentary sanction. But this is not a representation of the 15th clause of last year's Act, and as the right hon. Gentleman has now returned to his place I will quote the clause in full. [The hon. Member read the clause as quoted by Mr. Keay.] Now, if the right hon. Gentleman by slip of memory misled the Committee, perhaps he will now give us some more sufficient explanation why the provision is omitted from the present Bill.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It is undoubtedly the fact that the clause in the Bill last year related to lendings of two kinds, Ashbourne Act money and money under the new Bill. The clause then dealt with the re-lending of unsecured money, and involved a question of policy,
    528
    to which it was desirable there should be the sanction of the House. Now, the re-lending of the Ashbourne Act money is eliminated, and re-loans are to be-made upon security, and so it is left for the Treasury to decide upon these questions, which are similar to those which the Treasury has to decide every day.
    MR. MORTON: I think the Press, may more than ever have reason to remark that the right hon. Gentleman is making a muddle of his Bill. Why a provisional which was thought necessary in relation' to loans of a smaller amount should not be necessary in relation to a very much larger amount I do not understand.
    (8.24.) The Committee divided:— Ayes 31; Noes 102.—(Div. List, No. 208.)
    THE CHAIRMAN: The next two Amendments are not relevant to this clause.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I beg to move-the Amendment that stands in my name.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 31, to leave out sub-section 4, and insert:—"(4) So long as any money authorised to be issued under the Land Purchase Acts, 1885 and 1888, remains available for advances under those Acts, an advance may be made out of the money so available in any case where the landlord and tenant so agree, and the amount so advanced shall be repaid as if this Act had not passed."—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)
    Question proposed, "That Sub-section 4 stand part of the Clause." (8.37.)
    MR. J.E. ELLIS: I wish to point out, Mr. Courtney—
    Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I want to put this point to the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary. Taking the amount which will be advanced under the conditions of this Bill as £30,000,000, and assuming that the Ashbourne Act is to continue in operation, will it not be the fact that you will have two systems of land purchase in operation in Ireland side by side at the same time? If the answer to that question is in the affirmative, I cannot but regard it as a very incon-

    529
    venient state of things; and I would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should give us some assurance that the unexhausted portion of the powers given by the Ashbourne Act should be issued under the provisions of this Bill.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No doubt the hon. Gentleman is correct in assuming that if this Bill be passed there will be for some years to come two systems of land purchase in concurrent operation in Ireland. Tenants and landlords will be able to select under which system the sales and purchases agreed upon shall be carried out. But I do not think any great practical evil is likely to result from such a state of things. It did not occur to me as being worth while to deprive the country of the powers of the money already given by Parliament under the Ashbourne Act for the mere purpose of preventing the apparent, but not, as I believe, substantial, difficulty which might be supposed to arise from having two legislative measures on the same subject in existence at the same time.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what is the precise amount unexpended under the Ashbourne Act?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That is a somewhat difficult question to answer, as there are so many stages in the application and expenditure of the money. I believe, however, that over £9,000,000 have been already applied for, and that somewhere between £6,000,000 and £7,000,000 have been actually expended. Of the £9,000,000 applied for it is quite certain that the whole of the applications will not be granted; but it is impossible at present to say how many will be sanctioned and how many refused. It is impossible for me to say more than this in answer to the hon. Member's question.
    MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: What I object to most is the proposal that there should be two systems of purchasing being carried on simultaneously. The effect of the clause would be that when large holdings are in question the purchases would be effected under the Ashbourne Acts, and when small holdings are in question the purchases would be
    530
    effected under the present Bill. Therefore, the old Acts would merely be kept alive for facilitating the purchase of the large holdings. Whatever money is provided ought all to be expended under one Act or the other, and I prefer that it should be under the present Bill.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The whole system of guarantee and cover and taxation of local funds applicable to the one system is wholly inapplicable to the other, and it would be impossible to wed the two systems more closely than they are already wedded.
    MR. CHANCE: I do not see the objection to two systems being in operation at the same time. I hope the Amendment will be accepted, though I think the wording of it might give rise to complications. I propose to insert in the Amendment, in place of the words—
    "And the amount so advanced shall be repaid as if this Act had not passed,"
    the following words:—
    "And every such advance and repayment thereof shall in all respects be subject to the provisions of the said Act as though this Act had not been passed."
    MR. RATHBONE: If the Committee could be fairly sure that the Government would in the new Bill make due provision for the smaller tenants having their full share of the money, there might be some advantage in leaving the old Acts in operation. Parliament would have then an increased amount of experience with regard to the working of the measure, and could insert stringent provisions into the present Bill, which might be maintained or modified as experience should dictate.
    SIR G. CAMPBELL: If Her Majesty's Government and the Irish Members are combined on this matter we shall not be able to offer much resistance, but I must say that I very much dislike this Amendment. It seems to me that the clause as it stands gives everything that is requisite. With regard to the Ashbourne Act, it strikes me that we ought to take-advantage of our experience with the operation of that Act by making the system more applicable to the case of the smaller tenants. It is evident from, what has just been stated that a great deal more than £1,000,000 of money is

    531
    available under the Ashbourne Act. I am somewhat surprised that the hon. Member for Carnarvon should support the Chief Secretary in this Amendment I think the latter should stick to his original proposal. Experience has shown that there are defects in the Ashbourne Act which should be remedied.
    MR. SEXTON: The Ashbourne Acts have not been defective from the point of view of the British taxpayer. Hon. Members who represent Irish constituencies certainly believe that those Acts have not sufficiently tended to set up peasant proprietors; but experience has shown that the loans have been judiciously made, and that the repayments have been punctual and full. In answer to a question to-day, the Chief Secretary said the total amount of principal and interest which fell due under these Acts from 1885 to November 1, 1890, was £518,792, of which £2,207; only is now unpaid. We are accustomed to regard the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy as being solely solicitous for the security of the British tax payer in this connection. Can he show in the whole round of this British Empire, upon which the sun never sets, such a slight proportion of arrears to the magnitude of the operations? The result affords a signal example of careful and successful administration, so far as concerns the security of the State. This I say while acknowledging that the Acts have not gone so far as we intended in the establishment of a peasant proprietory. I should like to know whether the Land Commission have sanctioned, or have in their hands, applications which will exhaust the balance available under the Ashbourne Acts. It rather appears to me there will be a certain amount of embarrassment and awkwardness in having the two Acts side by side. There will, I think, be a tendency on the part of tenants to get their money under the Ashbourne Act rather than under this Act. I see the Chancellor of the Exchequer appreciates the reason. Under the Ashbourne Act the tenant pays his 4 per cent. of the purchase money and gets his full benefit of purchase at once, not subject to the discretion of the Lord Lieutenant to have his annuity increased. Naturally the tenants will prefer to take their holdings
    532
    under the Ashbourne Act and public opinion, will be in the same. direction, because, the Ashbourne Act does not involve the levy of a local rate. On the other hand, a landlord will prefer this Act; because in case of default his guarantee deposit will only be liable to the extent of one-half, whereas under the Ashbourne Act the whole is liable. In the desire of the tenants to take the one Act, and the preference of the landlords for the other, I foresee there may be some difficulty in administration. In my opinion, therefore, it would be better that we should exhaust the amount available under the Ashbourne Acts before we proceed under the present Bill.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think that it would be better either to adopt the plan in the Bill as it originally stood or else the plan which we have proposed at the instance of the hon. Member and his friends. The hon. Member appears to think that there would be a great tendency on the part of the landlords to go under the present Bill, and on that of the tenants to go under the Ashbourne Acts. For my own part, I do not agree with him in that respect. Though in some respects the Ashbourne Acts may appear more favourable to the tenant, in. my judgment the advantages are in favour of this Bill. It must be recollected that under it there is an elasticity which does not exist? under the old Acts, and I have constantly heard of the Irish tenant preferring to remain tenant rather than become a purchaser, because if he purchased his instalments would be required to the day, and a Public Body would have neither the right nor the power to inquire how far he was able to pay, while, on the other hand, the old landlord is a creditor who might be expected to take into consideration the circumstances of the debtor. That is the only reason why the money under the Ashbourne Acts has not long been exhausted, and why the tenant has not taken advantage of Acts which would make him proprietor of his holding and give him a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent. This rigidity is, to a certain extent, remedied in the Act which we now propose. On the other hand, the landlord under this Act was to be paid in Stock, not in

    533
    cash, though we hope that the Stock will be equivalent to cash, and I am not sure if we polled the landlords of Ireland it would not be found that they prefer to go under the Ashbourne Acts. Therefore, I doubt whether there would be that preponderant selection of the Ashbourne Acts by the tenants and of the new Act by the landlords which the hon. Member has suggested; I believe that the operation of the Acts will be well balanced, and that they will run concurrently. I would remind hon. Members that they are treating the Government and the Committee rather hardly in discussing an Amendment which has been introduced in order to carry out the views expressed by the hon. Gentleman himself.
    MR. KNOX: The right hon. Gentleman has failed to notice one point in the speech of my hon. Friend, that is, that we should know the exact amount available under the Ashbourne Acts. We have a Return, giving the account of proceedings up to the end of March, the amount applied for, the amount sanctioned, and of course there is a much smaller sum actually advanced, but we do not know the amount definitely refused.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have not the information now, but I know no reason why it should not be given, and if the hon. Member will put a question on the Paper I will ascertain.
    MR. KNOX: I will do so. I think it is a matter for consideration whether the amount still available under the Ashbourne Acts ought not to be reserved for the holdings in the West of Ireland, where the tenants' insurance provision will almost prevent sales. With regard to the question of elasticity, what the tenants complain of is want of elasticity with regard to time, but I fail to see anything in the new Act which will meet this feeling. With regard to the Ashbourne Acts, I fancy that the reason why tenants have held back is that they were always expecting something better. They knew that prices had fallen in the last few years, and they thought that they might fall still further.
    Amendment to proposed Amendment agreed to.
    Amendment, as amended, agreed to.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I rise for the purpose of moving the first clause of the Amendment which stands in may name, and is to add the following as a new Sub-section:—
    "An advance shall not be made under the Land Purchase Acts for the purchase of any holding unless the Land. Commissioner is satisfied that the tenant has been free from duress or undue influence when making the contract of purchase."
    I take it that this will in principle be admitted, and it does raise, I know, a very important point. As we understand, the Government have voluntary action as the basis of their Bill. They intend both parties shall be free agents. Indeed, I cannot do better than remind the Committee of the words used by the First Lord of the Treasury in April of last year when he said—
    "All the scheme of the Bill is based on the voluntary action of the tenant and landlord."
    That there has been duress in past transactions no one who has followed the evidence before the Commission in 1886 can doubt. As to the working of the Act of 1885, we have the evidence of Mr. J. G. Macarthy. In giving his evidence before Lord Cowper's Commission, in answer to the question whether there was not any other hindrance he could state to the operation of the Act, he said—
    "The operation of the Act has been hindered by an unwise attempt on the part of some land agents to coerce tenants into buying and as to the terms of buying."
    Asked if the agents attempted to coerce the tenants to buy at an unfair price he answered—
    "To buy at their own price, which may or may not be fair."
    Replying to Lord Milltown, who suggested that the terms of buying were what the tenant might consider an unfair price, he said—
    "And sometimes what we also consider an unfair price."
    Lord Milltown then asked—
    "The agent tries to compel the tenant to purchase at what the tenant considers an unfair price?"
    and Mr. Macarthy replied—
    "I do not think any man ought to be able to compel another to buy at his own price. A contract is worthless unless it is free. Neither party should dictate terms to the other."
    In answer to a question by the President

    535
    as to how the pressure was exercised, he said—
    "By telling the tenant he must either sign a contract for sale or go out. I have seen letters of this class. I have a letter in my possession from an extensive land agent telling the tenant that the. Sheriff could not be put off beyond to-morrow, but that if she handed the Sheriff the contracts for purchase duly executed he would not take possession. Surely, a contract signed under such circumstances cannot be free."
    We have other evidence tending in the same direction. When the Marquess of Londonderry was the Lord Lieutenant this Circular was sent out from his estate office at. Newtownards on the 20th February, 1888—
    "I am desired by the Marquess of Londonderry to inform you that he is willing to offer you your farm at 20 years' purchase of the present rent. Lord Londonderry has decided to take this step (though much against his inclination) mainly owing to the fact that in the event of another bad season he will be quite unable to give the reduction which he lists granted the last two years, and by giving which he has received absolutely nothing from his own property. As you will see by enclosed circular, you will, by purchasing your holding, still gain a reduction of 20 per cent., which will not be dependent upon the will of your landlord, but permanent, and at the end of 49 years your holding will be absolutely your own, free of all rent."
    How, I think that it was a very strong step for Lord Londonderry to take, he being at that time the Chief Executive Officer in Ireland, with all the force of coercion at his disposal, and having also the power by law to declare any combination of tenants unlawful. I think the Committee will be disposed to agree with me in stating that here was a case of duress. Well, now I will refer to some of the Memorials which have been laid before this House in Return 83 of this Session. They come from 13 different counties in every province. They represent a total amount of instalments of £31,800 per annum and a capital of £780,000—a considerable sum of money and relating to a very large area, representing, I may say, £1 of every £10 advanced under the Ashbourne Act up to that time. I think the hon. Member for West Belfast took a somewhat roseate view of the financial position a few minutes ago when he referred to the answer given him as to arrears under the Ashbourne Act by the Chief Secretary this after-
    536
    noon. Remember this is only the beginning; and when we find that purchasers representing £1 of every £10 advanced are asking for postponement of their instalments, I think it does represent a rather serious state of things. The Return which has been furnished does not give a précis of the Memorials; but I have been in communication with some of the memorialists, and I may say that generally their complaint is that they were not free agents, and that, in fact, they acted under duress in entering into the contract of purchase. I take first the case of the sale of the Duke of Leinster's estate, in County Kildare. The extent of the estate is 18,992 acres, the number of holdings 332, and the amount £244,365. I will take the evidence of the Rev. Mr. Staples in reference to this estate. He says—
    "The tenants are a most respectable body of men of their class."
    He adds—
    "I may say also that the Duke of Leinster as a landlord compared favourably with the other landlords of Ireland. At the time it was proposed to them that they could purchase their holdings they, with very few exceptions, owed over two years' rent. Another half year accrued while the negotiations for the purchase were going on. They then became almost hopelessly in arrears; and when they objected to give 18 years' purchase of the rent as then fixed, they were threatened with eviction for the rent and arrears of rent which were then due, and which they were unable to pay; and in order to escape being thrown out on the roadside and robbed of their lives' toil, they consented to purchase their holdings on the landlord's terms as a temporary relief, in hopes that better times might come."
    Mr. Staples asks, "Can any of these men be considered free agents?" and certainly I must agree with him that they cannot. I now take a second instance—in County Kerry, near Dingle. The estate there of Mr. S. M. Hussey, consisting of 1,615 acres, 23 holdings, and amount £15,550, and also the estate of another member of the family—-Captain Edward Hussey— 2,571 acres, 14 holdings, and £6,500. Another sale under the Act is the estate of Mr. R. A. Hickson, 777 acres, 12 holdings, and amount £10,000. In relation to these purchases of holdings in the same district, a meeting was held of the purchasing tenants, in October, 1890, and was presided over by the Rev. Canon O'Sullivan. At that

    537
    meeting a resolution was passed in the following terms:—
    "That, inasmuch as we the majority of the tenants induced to purchase our holdings under Lord Ashbourne's Act, through coercion, are now through no fault of our own unable to pay this year's instalment of the purchase money without disposing of the few cattle left us by exorbitant rents, law costs, and in many cases evictions. We protest strongly against the confiscation of our property, and our expulsion from our homes owing to our inability to pay those instalments which would be considered exorbitant in prosperous years."
    And then, again, I take an instance from County Waterford in the sale of the estate of Mr. George Lane Fox, consisting of 4,542 acres,70holdings,andprice£67,042. I hold in my hand a letter from a Mr. Nicholas Hailey containing undeniable evidence that the purchases were made to save eviction and loss of property by the purchasing tenants. The actual writs of ejectment and other documents are in my hand, and place the matter beyond question. The last case I shall trouble the Committee with arises on the property of the Marquess of Waterford, in the same county. The Marquess parted with his interest in 80 holdings of 8,135 acreage for £109,770, and I cannot do better than quote from the letter of Mr. Jeremiah Nugent, who acted as hon. secretary for the tenants—
    "In every single case in the parish pressure of the severest nature was brought to bear on the tenants; it was, pay up all arrears or purchase, as you can see and prove from the writs which I enclose. As a rule, they are all poor, some exceedingly so, and the little relief they gained by purchase enabled them to struggle on so far. The land is of a very inferior quality, and requires constantly to be renewed by tilling and manuring, or it would in a few years lapse into its original barren and unproductive nature."
    Then he goes on at some length to illustrate the manner in which the tenants were forced either to pay or to go. There was a meeting of these purchasers, and they admitted their disappointment was very great at finding their bargain had turned out so badly, and they say—
    "At the time of purchasing the majority of us had no voice in the contracts, as we were so much in, arrear and threatened with eviction, so we had to agree to buy at the landlord's terms."
    These cases are illustrative of what has taken place, in my opinion, in a large
    538
    number of the 12,000 instances that occur in the first two Returns as to the operation of the Ashbourne Act. It may be said that it is the business of the Land Commission to look into this matter. That is not so. Anyone who has read the judgment of Mr. Commissioner Lynch will know that it has been laid down that duress is no bar to purchase. I venture to think that in the interests of the tenants themselves and of the Imperial taxpayer—not the British taxpayer, because I admit the Irish taxpayer possibly pays his full share— some distinct mandate should be given by this House to the Land Commission to look into this matter before sanctioning purchases.
    Amendment proposed,
    To add, at the end of the Clause, the words—"(5) An advance shall not be made under the Land Purchase Acts for the purchase of any holding unless the Land Commission is satisfied—(a) that the tenant has been free from duress or undue influence when making the contract of purchase."—(Mr. J. E. Ellis.)
    Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not think it is necessary for me to traverse the ground the hon. Gentleman has just gone over, nor to inquire into the various cases of alleged duress. That there is evidence of duress in any of these cases I am not prepared to admit. The hon. Gentleman's argument amounts to this— that, because the tenants bought while process of eviction was hanging over them, therefore the purchases were completed under duress. I cannot see how that doctrine can be accepted unless we also accept the doctrine that no tenant who owes arrears of rent can purchase except under duress. If the hon. Gentleman's proposition is accepted broadly it is clear that the chief sufferers will be those whom he most desires to serve. If the Committee are going to inquire into the motives which bring about the sales, theinquiries ought not to be one-sided; we ought to inquire into the motive which animates the landlord in selling as well as the motive which animates the tenant in buying. If the tenant is fulfilling the contract for sale, he can go to the High Court of Justice, which has ample power to investigate all the circumstances of the case, and to see. whether they are such

    539
    as will justify them in not compelling the additional contract to be carried out. For these reasons and for others I would suggest that we do not complicate the Bill by any such impossible condition as is suggested.
    MR. CHANCE: The right hon. Gentleman has spoken on general and philosophical questions, but has entirely declined to apply his mind to the specific matter mentioned in the Amendment, namely, whether the landlord has, in given instances, exacted from the tenant more than the tenant and more than the Land Commissioners believed to be the fair value of the holding. Of course, Sir, he could not deny it, because Mr. Commissioner M'Carthy had given evidence before the Royal Commission, and distinctly stated that in particular cases it had been found that the landlord's agents had put On pressure to compel the tenants to give more than the value for their holdings. But the matter went further, because in the Case of the Marquess of Ormonde's Estate, Mr. Commissioner Lynch found against the landlord on the ground that his agent had gone to the tenant's door with the Sheriff and said, "Out you go, unless you settle on the terms we propose." I remember a case in which a landlord produced, as evidence of the paternal relations which existed between him and his tenants, a document in which the tenants said that, having been called together by the landlord's agent to consider the question of purchase, they had decided that under the circumstances it was better for them to leave the fixing of the price in his Lordship's hands. The price was fixed by his Lordship, and I am happy to say that, as a result of subsequent events, neither his Lordship nor his Lordship's successors were able to get that price in their pockets, because the Commissioners found that it was exorbitant. Yet it is proposed now to bind the Land Purchase Commission to carry out the bargains made by his Lordship's bailiff under such circumstances.
    MR. SEXTON: The situation in regard to this particular Amendment appears to me to be peculiar enough to merit particular notice. My hon.
    540
    Friend the Member for Rushcliffe has put forward an unassailable principle. I think it is the manifest duty of the right hon. Gentleman to accept an Amendment which, as far as it may operate, can only fortify the security of the State. Why does the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary reject it? I think he has laid himself open to the observation made: by my hon. Friend. He made some abstract observations on the Amendment and scarcely touched on the very startling cases presented by my hon. Friend. I have had some experience of one case which struck me very forcibly. It was at a sitting of the Committee on the, Estates of the Irish Societies, and we had before us a man of great experience and great ability, Mr. M. Bryan, an Inspector of the Land Commission whose duty it is to visit the tenants and ascertain the relations between them and the landlords. The landlord in the case dealt with was a great London Company. Mr. Bryan detailed the circumstances of the case, and stated to the Committee that he never in all his experience as an official of the Land Commission met with a body of tenants in a state of such absolute and abject terror. The thing is notorious, and if there were no cases before us the general situation of Ireland would render inevitable the conclusion that duress will be employed. The right hon. Gentleman has put in force his Coercion Act, and under that Act Associations for the protection of the tenants have been declared to be illegal and dangerous, and have been suppressed in various districts. Meetings have been broken up by force, and every obstacle has been thrown in the way of such combination among the tenants as might enable them to arrange amongst themselves for the best protection of their interests. The tenants have been isolated one from another, and the object of the system has been to prevent them combining against those who have wealth and trained intelligence and the power of the law on their side. It must be obvious that men in the position of the tenants require to be protected as far as the State can protect them. The right hon. Gentleman has, however, punished the combinations of tenants whilst he has encouraged the

    541
    combination of landlords. We know what occurred on the Ponsonby Estate, and how the hon. Member for South Hunts and his confederates entered upon the scene, and by means of their wealth prevented a satisfactory arrangement being come to, between landlord and tenants. We know, too, that the Chief Secretary encouraged combinations of that detestable kind, and, therefore, he is not in a position to speak of this as a one-sided Amend ments.
    MR. SMITH-BARRY: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but I should like to remind him that we offered to sell their farms to the Ponsonby tenants on extremely favour able terms.
    MR. SEXTON: You never offered to give, the evicted tenants the same terms as the others.
    MR. SMITH-BARRY: I beg your pardon, we did.
    THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! It is not relevant for the Committee now to enter upon that controversy.
    MR. SEXTON: I am raising the question of the tenants being placed under duress to purchase.
    THE CHAIRMAN: But it is not necessary to go into the details of the dispute of the Ponsonby Estate.
    MR. SEXTON: I think I am entitled to say that the Chief Secretary, on the facts I have stated, is not entitled to argue that this Amendment is against the interests of the landlord. The landlord has an exceptionally strong position. He fills the Magisterial Bench, he has the National League suppressed, and he has a facile and effective Court of two Magistrates in every part of the country, who are perfectly ready to punish any combination on the part of the tenants for the purpose of improving their position. In fact, the condition of affairs is that all the strength is on one side, and the weakness on the other. If the Amendment is rejected it will be said with justice that even if the Government have not been willing to countenance duress they have at least not shown any anxiety to prevent it.
    MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: I think that after the evidence given before Lord Cowper's Commission fey Mr. M'Carthy, it is impossible to deny that there have been numerous, cases in which tenants have purchased under duress. What is exactly duress may be a matter of doubt; even the Commissioners differ on that point, for while Mr. Wrench contends that a landlord' who asks his tenants to purchase on the terms he holds in one hand while in the other he threatens a writ of eviction does-not place his tenants under duress, while Mr. M'Carthy describes such a proceeding as duress, I understand the Chief Secretary to agree with Mr. Wrench, and to intimate that a landlord who threatens to evict a tenant unless he accepts the alternative of purchase, does not place his tenants under duress. That, however, is not our view; most of us are of opinion that it is duress. While it is equally wrong that a landlord should sell under duress that possibility does not so much concern the State, because the security will, in such a case, be higher. The objection to my hon. Friend's Amendment is that those tenants whom the Land Commission find to be buying under duress will be altogether deprived of the benefits of the Act, and must continue to pay their old rents, or submit to eviction. The only remedy is to give to the Commissioners power to fix in such cases. what the terms of purchase should be. I saw a curious case reported in the Irish papers the other day. A number of tenants in the County of Cork who had a somewhat high rent to pay got those rents reduced in the Judicial Courts some time ago. But they owed five years' arrears, so when the terms of purchase were discussed they agreed to pay 16 years' purchase. They went into Committee, but the Land Commission after inquiring into the matter decided that they were under duress, that the terms were too high, and that the price ought not to exceed nine years' purchase. The result was that the sale was not carried out, and the unfortunate tenants were unable to participate in the benefits of the Ashbourne Acts. Hence it is I should like

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    to see power given the Land Commission, not only to reduce the terms, but to insist on the completion of the transaction. Although the Amendment in this respect does not go so far as I should wish, I shall still support it, because it will afford protection to the tenant against being compelled to buy at excessive rates.
    MR. LABOUCHERE: I must say that my admiration for the unscrupulous cleverness of the Chief Secretary is rapidly becoming fanatical. But I wish to warn the right hon. Gentleman against, the sameness of his cleverness. He treats every Amendment alike. Whenever an Amendment is proposed the right hon. Gentleman removes the discussion to the regions of philosophic doubt, and then says, "For these and other reasons I must oppose the Amendment." And then hon. Gentlemen come in from different parts of the House and vote us down, although we are absolutely in the right, as we have proved over and over again. This is one of the consequences of having a mechanical majority. My hon. Friend stated that duress had been used in many cases in order to compel the tenants to buy at other prices than they otherwise would. Did the Chief Secretary dispute that fact? Did he defend or justify it? He did not, and he refused to put words into the Bill to prevent it. He said, "I cannot do this for reasons which I have in my breast." Will he give us those particular reasons? I am perfectly open to conviction, and to vote for the right hon. Gentleman if he convinces me, but I cannot be convinced simply because he tells us, "I have reasons in my breast."
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: As my hon. Friend has pointed out, the Chief Secretary has not made the least attempt to controvert either my arguments or the facts I have brought forward. I did not mention the case of the Irish estates of the Drapers Company, because in that case purchase was not sanctioned. But if hon. Members will look at the evidence of duress that has come before that Committee, I think they will be astonished at the amount of duress used. Why, I
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    had in my hands during the sittings of the Committee the rent receipts of a particular tenant for two years, and the ejectment proceedings of the Company against the tenant for rent which he had actually paid. The proceedings instituted by One great Company against their tenants in the North of Ireland were of an almost incredible nature, and I believe they could be paralleled on the estates of many landlords. I feel bound to take the sense of this Committee on the Amendment, in order to place on record our desire that there should be absolute freedom of contract.
    MR. CONYBEARE: I think that the Amendment is not stringent enough. It proposes that no advance shall be made, unless the Land Commission is satisfied, on the four points enumerated, and knowing something of the way in which the Land Commission has in the past been manipulated in the interests of the landlords, I do not think it possible it can ever be satisfied. I have no confidence that it will not be susceptible of similar manipulation in the future. As I do not think that the evidence of duress, which is sufficient to satisfy the hon. Members on this side, would satisfy the Commission, I want to see the Amendment made more stringent. With reference to the fourth condition, I would suggest—
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I have not moved that yet.
    MR. CONYBEARE: Then I will only add that there can be no freedom of contract in Ireland when the landlords have behind their backs the machinery of the Coercion Act. I support the Amendment so far as it goes, but I should like to see the repeal of the Coercion Act as a condition precedent to this legislation being put in force. As to the remarks which have fallen from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, I can only express a hope that the Committee has not been reduced to such a state of inanity as not to call upon the Chief Secretary for reasons for his action. I support the Amendment in the interests of English taxpayers and Irish tenants.
    (10.50.) The Committee divided:— Ayes 93; Noes 128.—(Div. List, No. 209.)
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I propose the next Amendment standing in my name, because I really think the tenant ought to have an opportunity to claim a judicial rent. According to a Return made last year, the number of applications for judicial rents which remained undisposed of was 35,695, and of these 33,000 had actually been waiting six months. It is to meet these cases that I propose my Amendment.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 40, after "passed," to add,— "(5.) An advance shall not be made under the Land Purchase Acts for the purchase of any holding unless the Land Commission is satisfied—
    5 (b.) that the tenant has not been deprived of the right of application for a judicial rent in respect of the holding by the service of any notice of ejectment for any arrears of non-judicial rent;
    (c.) that any application made by the tenant for a judicial rent in respect of the holding has been disposed of."— (Mr. J. E. Ellis.)
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As far as the object of the first part of the Amendment is concerned—the operative part it has been secured already. It is perfectly impossible, under the existing law, to deprive a tenant of the right in question.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: Under what Act —the Act of 1887?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No; the Act of 1881.
    Amendment negatived.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: I have not moved the last part of my Amendment, which is to give the tenants the same right of combination as Trades Unionists have in this country.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 40, after "passed," to add "An advance shall not be made under the Land Purchase Acts for the purchase of any holding unless the Land Commission is satisfied that the tenant has been freely able to exercise such rights of combination as are lawful under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875."—(Mr. J. E, Ellis,)
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOE IRELAND (Mr. MADDEN,): The tenants will, of course, be entitled to exercise all legal rights of combination, and a legislative declaration to that effect is quite unnecessary.
    Amendment negatived.
    MR. KNOX: My object in moving the Amendment of which I have given notice is to exclude land-grabbers and planters from the benefits of the Bill. Upon the fate of this Amendment will depend whether the Bill gives satisfaction to the tenantry of Ireland as. a body, or whether it aggravates existing difficulties. I do not believe that the tenantry as a whole will be satisfied until the men who have fallen in the fight against landlordism shall have been restored to their homes. There are places in Ireland where tenants are living within sight of the holdings from which they have been turned out. They are supported by public opinion, and their neighbours are determined not to allow any interlopers to live peacefully on their former holdings. Not long ago the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in an eloquent speech in which he said he would rather beg his bread than give in to the Plan of Campaign, putting himself in the position of an Irish landlord, said—
    "For my own part, even if it were not wholly to my pecuniary interest, I should desire to restore peace to that part of the country where my property was situated, and to see that on fair and equitable terms the tenantry were restored to their homes."
    Now, I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that if the Bill passes in its present shape the evicted tenants can never be restored to their ancient homes, because their places will be taken by new freeholders. Land-grabbers and planters, I submit, are not a class whom any land legislation in the past has been intended to benefit. There is no security on which these advances could be made, and they would be contrary to the whole course of previous legislation, risky and dangerous to the State, and calculated only to produce greater difficulty in Ireland. If the planters be allowed to buy we can never have a peaceful settlement by means of the Land Purchase Act or of any other Act, because you will put in for perpetuity a man who is hateful to the people and who will ever remain so.

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    If the Bill is passed in its present form, it will fail to secure peace to the country, which the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary says he should desire in his locality if he were an Irish landlord. We had hoped to make this Bill, if not a treaty of peace between the warring classes in Ireland, at least a modus vivendi. If the Amendment be adopted, it will be possible to find a modus vivendi, and to arrive at such a settlement as will heal the sores which have arisen out of the Plan of Campaign estates. Hitherto it has been said that every land title in Ireland has had its root in confiscation. We had hoped that that would not be the case under this Bill. Surely the right hon. Gentleman cannot suppose that if advances are made to these planters on the estates of the Plan of Campaign an Irish Parliament if established will for a moment respect the vesting orders. Such a Parliament will be bound to take whatever means are necessary to restore to their holdings the men who have been unjustly turned out of them. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman bases his case on the supposition that there will never be an Irish Parliament. I do not think the recent elections entirely justify that supposition; but even if there should never be an Irish Parliament, yet for many a year to come these men will be hated in their respective districts, and every effort will be made to prevent them from making any profit. Surely it is hardly wise, in a measure alleged to be intended to settle the Irish land war, to insert such a dangerous provision, and to perpetuate this source of evil conflict. If this Bill is carried as it stands the hon. Member for South Hunts and his fellow evictors will at once try to sell to the emergency men, and bogus sales will be the rule if Mr. Wrench has any share in the administration of the Act. If the Government attempt to put these planters and land-grabbers on the land, which almost every Irishman believes to be the lawful property of the evicted tenants, they will, instead of restoring peace to Ireland, only aggravate the social disorder. If the Chief Secretary rejects this Amendment he must not hope that his parchments will be respected, or that peace will be restored, for it will be the
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    bounden duty of every Irish Nationalist to make the lives of those men intolerable until the men who have been unjustly evicted are restored to their holdings.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 7, line 40, at the end of the Clause, to add the words—"(5.) No advance shall be-made under the Land Purchase Acts for the purchase of any holding which has not been in the occupation of the tenant or his predecessors in title, or which has been resumed by the landlord, since the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one, except—

    (a.) to a person who was, or whose predecessors in title were, in occupation of" the holding on the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-one, and who after the determination of. his tenancy has been reinstated;

    (b.) to a sub-tenant of any tenant who has- agreed to purchase his holding; or

    (c.) to a person migrated from a congested" district under this Act."—(Mr. Knox.)

    Question proposed, "That those words-be there added."
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Tie hon. Gentleman who has just sat' down has tried in the course of his speech to touch upon almost every one of the controversial questions connected with the relations between this country and Ireland, finishing up with a declaration of his intention to persist in a course of conduct which is equally revolting to common morals and to Common Law. I do not think it necessary, however, to follow the hon. Member in the lines of the speech which he has delivered. The hon. Member must surely himself be conscious that it is impossible for the present or for any other Government to accept the Amendment. It is absurd on the face of it. He has told us it is intended to prevent sales to those who have taken evicted holdings on the Plan of Campaign estates. But it goes a great deal further than that, and would prevent sale to a tenant of a holding which formerly belonged to a family of whom every trace is lost. One of the hon. Member's arguments was that the security of these tenants will be bad; and the security being bad, it is highly improper to allow public money to be advanced upon the holding. If the security is bad, it will be the bounden

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    duty of the Land Commission, under the rest of the Bill, to see that no purchase takes place; if it is not bad, there is no conceivable reason; either in policy or in equity, from the point of view of Ireland or of the English Exchequer, why the sale should not take place. Land-grabbers I understand to be men who take farms from which tenants have been evicted because they would not pay their rents.
    MR. CHANCE: Unjustly evicted.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Member knows that the feeling is not merely against, such men, but attaches to men also who pay rents against Orders of the local organisation. I will state boldly to the House that no system of agriculture can possibly be in a healthy condition unless the owner has some means of getting rid of a tenant Who neither will nor can pay his rent, supposing the land is capable of paying rent. There must be in any conceivable healthy agrarian society some means of getting rid of inefficient members of that society, just as in any other trade in the world. It is absolutely impossible for the Government to accept this Amendment, and I cannot doubt that the Committee will support them, in that view.
    MR. CHANCE: The right hon. Gentleman entirely mistakes the scope of the Amendment. He has plainly shown that it is his intention that the Land Commission shall have power at the expense of the British Exchequer to make a man who is a stranger the purchaser of a holding in which he has I no vested interest. Now, that is a most alarming extension of the principles of the Bill. Would the British Government thus enable a man to embark on any other enterprise? Certainly not. Then why lend honey to a man to buy a holding in which he has no earthly interest? The man is simply a mercenary soldier without probably any knowledge of agriculture or any desire to retain the holding. He is paid by the landlord to become a tenant; he acts as a sort of agrarian policeman, and he is an instrument for punishing the tenant who
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    has been evicted for declining to pay an excessive rent. An evicted holding is a holding which no person in the locality will take; there is no competition for it; so the landlord sells the holding to the planter, who often enough hails from some factory in Portadown or some other Orange city. He is paid so much a week. Then an arrangement is entered into by which he becomes the purchaser, and as soon as the landlord has pocketed nine-tenths of the purchase money, his confederate disappears, the holding is put up for sale, no One but the landlord bids; he gets it perhaps for a £10 note; he willingly sacrifices the tenth of the purchase sum he originally deposited in the Guarantee Fund; he soon finds another tenant, arranges another sale, and again pockets nine-tenths of the purchase money which the State has advanced. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to say it will not be possible for an estate thus to be sold three or four times, the landlord pocketing nine-tenths of the purchase money, and re-buying in case of default at practically a nominal sum. Under the old system the locality was not sufficiently interested to prevent such an arrangement between the Chief Secretary, the landlord, and the gentleman from the Portadown factory; and if £600 or £700 was thus wasted it did not care. But now the locality is to be fined if this man from Portadown, who comes in under the guise of an agricultural tenant, possibly not knowing one end of a spade from the other, or, like the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, not being acquainted with the difference between a turnip and a potato, should commit default and not pay the annuities. The lunatics of Ireland are to be set at large, the poor are to be deprived of indoor relief, and children will have to go without education. The only persons whose interests are to be safeguarded are the prisoners; they are to be the only class secured from eviction; while the emergency men will serve the interests, first, of One landlord syndicate, and then of another. Is it not absurd that such an arrangement should be allowed to exist?
    MR. M.J. KENNY: The Chief Secretary has totally misrepresented the scope of the Amendment. It is altogether false to say it is

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    designed for the purpose of enabling worthless tenants to purchase their holdings to the exclusion of those who could manage them well. It has two objects—one is to enable bonâ fide tenants, who have made improvements on the land, and who have been evicted, to regain their position, and that which they have lost. The law as it at present stands affords an evicted tenant certain facilities for redeeming his interest in his holding, and all that this Amendment proposes is that the tenant who has forfeited his equity of redemption shall have an extension of the time, so that what purports to be a permanent settlement of the land question may in reality be secured. Does the Chief Secretary really contemplate the possibility of settling the land question, and at the same time leaving these tenants out in the cold? It is all very well for him to say that they have been scattered to the four winds. The Amendment specifically provides for that state of things, so there is no force in his objection on that score. I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what is the meaning of his clause. Its meaning is that persons previously unconnected with the land and having executed no improvements upon it, having also paid nothing for those improvements, but simply having squatted down and chosen to defy local opinion, shall qualify themselves as purchasers of the landlord's interest at the expense of the British taxpayer, and shall pay nothing for the tenant's interest. I say that that is a gross fraud upon the public, and one which it is impossible to defend on the ground of equity. The second portion of the Amendment deals with a most important class of tenants—I mean the sub-tenants. Under the provisions of this Bill there is no possibility of a subtenant acquiring any interest in his holding. He is to be absolutely excluded from the benefits of the Bill, and to be left at the mercy of the middleman. That is a great defect in the Bill. There are 50,000 sub-tenants in Ireland, and something certainly ought to be done to enable them to come within the operation of the Bill and to purchase their holdings. Surely the Chief Secretary could frame some better argument against this Amendment than moving "That the Question be now put." I see he is
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    awaiting an opportunity to jump up and do that.
    It being after Midnight, the Chairman proceeded to interrupt the Business.
    Whereupon Mr. ARTHUR BALFOUR 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 131; Noes 68.—(Div. List, No. 210.)
    Question put accordingly, "That those words be there added."
    (12.10.) The Committee divided:—Ayes 73; Noes 129.—(Div. List, No. 211.)
    MR. SEXTON: Mr. Speaker, I have to state that Irish Members here have been prevented from discharging their duty to their constituents by the application of the Closure in a Debate upon a question of vast importance, and in which only three Irish Members have spoken, and I have to give notice that we shall think it our duty, on the Question "That Clause 6 stand part of the Bill," to debate the question that the right of speech has been invaded.
    MR. BARTLEY: On that subject, am I at liberty to state, Sir, that during the greater part of the Debate there was only one Irishman here?
    MR. M. J. KENNY: It is absolutely false.
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!
    Committee report Progress; to sit again to-morrow.

  LAND PURCHASE (IRELAND) ACTS.
  Copy ordered—
  "Of the Judgments of Mr. Commissioner Lynch in the cases of Walshe v. The Marquess of Waterford, and Flynn and others v. The Marquess of Waterford."—(Mr. T. M. Healy.)
  House adjourned at half after Twelve o'clock.

BERKELEY PEERAGE.
Report from the Committee for Privileges, That it is the opinion of this Committee that the Superintendent Registrar of the District of Staines, Middlesex, should be ordered to attend the next meeting of the Committee, and that he should bring with him the original register of deaths in the district of Staines, Middlesex, showing the death on the 27th August 1882 of Thomas Moreton Fitzhardinge Berkeley; made, and agreed to, and ordered accordingly.
Petition of the Right Hon. Francis William Fitzhardinge, Baron Fitzhardinge, for leave, on the consideration of his Petition to Her Majesty by the Committee for Privileges, to use the evidence adduced in the case of the claim of William Fitzhardinge Berkeley to the Earldom of Berkeley in 1811, and upon the reference in 1799 of the Earl of Berkeley's pedigree to the Committee for Privileges, and that he may be relieved from the expense of reprinting such evidence; read, and referred to the Committee for Privileges.

COMMISSION.
The following Bills received the Royal Assent:—

1.Registration of Certain Writs (Scotland).

2. Middlesex Registry.

3. Electoral Disabilities Removal.

4. Public Bodies (Provisional Orders).

5. Taxes (Regulation of Remuneration).

6. Army Schools.

7. Merchandise Marks.

8. London (City) Trial of Civil Causes.

9. Charities (Recovery).

REGISTRATION OF ELECTORS ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.—(No. 95.)
Returned from the Commons with the Amendments agreed to.
THE MANIPUR DISASTER.

  QUESTION—OBSERVATIONS.
  THE MARQUESS OF RIPON: My Lords, seeing the noble Viscount the Secretary of State for India in his place, I am anxious to put a question to him in regard to the recent occurrences at Manipur. I find a statement in the St. James's Gazette this evening, which is headed "Blood Money offered," and which in some of the placards which have appeared in the streets is referred to as "a disgraceful proclamation," the statement being that
  "The Chief Commissioner"—
  meaning, of course, the Chief Commissioner of Assam—
  "Has issued a proclamation putting heavy sums on the heads of the Regent, the Senaputty, and those of the Councillors and Generals who were concerned in the outbreak."
  It is, I think, very desirable that that sort of statement should not go forth to the public uncontradicted if it is not correct, and I should be glad if the noble Viscount will state whether he has any information upon the subject?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Viscount CROSS): I have no information on the subject, and have not even seen the paragraph mentioned by the noble Marquess. I am not aware whether a proclamation has been issued offering certain sums for taking these people alive, but I am quite sure the Viceroy would never have countenanced for a single moment such a proclamation as has been hinted at in the statement quoted by the noble Marquess. As this question has been asked on the matter I should like to state that full Papers on the subject of the Manipur occurrences will be laid on the Table as soon as they are printed. They would have been produced already, and I hope they will be ready to-morrow, but a long Despatch has just come in by this mail which ought, I think, to be added to them, which has caused a delay of 24 hours. That is the only reason why they have not been already produced to the House.

THE WHITSUNTIDE RECESS.

  QUESTIONS—OBSERVATIONS.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: May I ask the noble Marquess opposite if he

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  can inform us when he proposes the House should adjourn for the Whitsuntide Vacation, and for how long?
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY): That is a matter which generally interests nobody less than Her Majesty's Ministers; but to-morrow would, I imagine, be in accordance with precedent, and unless there is a great anxiety to return to our labours, I think the following Tuesday fortnight would be a sufficiently early day for our reassembling.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: Then we adjourn to-morrow?
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Tomorrow.

THE EGYPTIAN EXILES IN CEYLON.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  EARL DE LA WARR,in rising to call attention to the Correspondence which bad been laid on the Table of the House relating to the Egyptian exiles in Ceylon, said: My Lords, in asking your attention for a few moments to the Correspondence mentioned in the Notice which stands in my name, I must ask your Lordships to refer for a moment to a statement made by the noble Marquess at the head of Her Majesty's Government a short time ago relative to this subject in answer to a question which I had put with regard to the production of Papers. The noble Marquess said, as reported, that—
  "The crime for which Arabi Pacha was tried, and for which he was condemned to death, was not that for fighting for the independence of his country, but for rebelling—he being a soldier—against his Sovereign; he was condemned for military mutiny, and if he had been a less distinguished person he would most undoubtedly have been shot."
  Now, it so happens that I was at Alexandria not very long after the bombardment of the forts there, and I cannot but think that the noble Marquess must be aware of the fact, which was then well known, that Arabi Pacha was in the Government of the Khedive at that time, that he had received orders relating to firing upon the British ships from the Khedive, and also that he was acting under instructions from the Sultan of Turkey. I believe I am right in saying that at the time
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  of the bombardment of the forts of Alexandria Arabi Pacha was Minister of War in Egypt. I do not wish to enter further upon the question of the justice of the sentence which was passed upon Arabi and his companions, but I cannot suppose for a moment that it was intended that he and his companions should be sent to a place which in all probability would involve a lingering death. I believe that they would have much preferred the honourable death of a soldier endeavouring to protect the interests and liberty of his country, inspired with the noble sentiment of the Roman poet—
  "Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori."
  But, my Lords, I think I can show, by the Correspondence which is in your Lordships' hands, that the carrying out of this sentence has resulted, and in all probability will still further result, in causing the lingering death of those who are now suffering from the effects of the climate. When I called your Lordships' attention a short time ago to the case of Arabi Pacha and his companions, and asked for information respecting them, the noble Marquess at the head of Her Majesty's Government said that a Medical Board had been appointed last autumn, and had inquired into the state of health of the exiles, and their Report was that—
  "The climate of Ceylon had exercised no injurious effect upon the health of the banished persons."
  It appears that this Board sat on the 4th of October, 1890, and after an examination of the exiles gave their opinion that the climate of Ceylon has had no injurious effect upon them: but previous to this a Memorial had been forwarded by the exiles themselves to the noble Marquess, which reached the Foreign Office on the 26th of June, 1890, in which they said
  "The Memorialists have now been seven years in exile in Ceylon, and though they have been invariably treated with kindness during that period, yet the health of all of them, as proved by the following certificates from medical men of well-known position in Ceylon, has suffered very severely from the dampness of the climate."
  I wish to point out to your Lordships that the certificates are signed by medical men in Ceylon, though not in any way connected with the Government, yet men who, it appears, are well known and in large practice. The gentlemen who signed

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  the certificates to which I wish to refer your Lordships had been several years, when they gave those certificates—one, I think, for four years, and another for a longer time—in attendance upon the exiles and their families. They had, therefore, full opportunity during a considerable time of knowing what effects the climate of Ceylon had produced upon the health of these exiles. These certificates being in your Lordships' hands, you will be able to refer to the documents themselves better than I can explain them. You will find on page 2, Dr. Dort, I believe an English physician, says—
  "For the last four years, during which I have been engaged as medical attendant on the family of Arabi Pacha, I have observed, and it has always been noticeable in the case of several other patients of mine among the Egyptian exiles, a marked deterioration in health clearly traceable to the effects of the climate of Ceylon, and quite independent of all other conditions or individual predisposition."
  In conclusion, he says—
  "I am firmly convinced that the climate of Ceylon is prejudicial to his health and that of his family, and I cannot but think that a prolonged residence in such an unsuitable climate in his present state of health must undermine his constitution, and affect his chances of life most seriously."
  This is dated "Colombo, March 1st, 1890." Dr. Dort again, on page 3, speaking of the family of another of the exiles, Mahmood Sami Pacha, says—
  "I have no hesitation in declaring that I consider the climate of Ceylon, with its great divisional variations of temperature, its dampness, its very frequent changes of weather, its excessive humidity and trying winds, has had a most exhausting and enervating effect on the family, and has rendered it necessary to change their residence frequently at great inconvenience and expense." (Dated Colombo, March 10, 1890.)
  Dr. Dort again says he has attended the family of Yacoob Sami Pacha—
  "I certify that I have attended him and some of the members of his family since his arrival in Ceylon, and have been frequently consulted by them for general debility and fever, neuralgic pains and rheumatism, due less to constitutional and accidental causes than to the ill effects of the climate of Ceylon on their health, especially on that of the ladies of the family." (Dated March 12, 1890.)
  Then Dr. Geysell, a physician of Edinburgh, certifies that Toulba Ismet Pacha, another of the exiles, has been suffering from frequent attacks of catarrhal asthma and neuralgia during
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  the last few years, and that he has been under his treatment. He says—
  "I am of opinion that the climate of Ceylon is too damp for him to reside in permanently. The last attack of neuralgia lasted nearly a month; he is left sallow and weak, and his predisposition to colds is marked. His family, too, are victims to climatic influences; his wife was brought to death's door, and his only child suffers frequently from malarial fever." (Dated Ceylon, March 3, 1890.)
  I come now to a certificate as regards Abdul-al-Helmi Pacha, about whom I shall have a few words to say. This, again, is from Dr. Geysell, certifying that—
  "Abdul-al-Helmi Pacha has been under my treatment off and on for the last two years for rheumatism and bronchial asthma. I am of opinion that the climate of Ceylon does not agree with him, and that the humidity of the atmosphere, which is a marked feature of the climate of Ceylon, is to blame for these attacks. I have noticed with much concern the effect of the climate upon Abdul Pacha's health, owing to recurring attacks of torpidity of the liver, asthma, and rheumatism. I had advised him to change his residence to the seaside, and I found that even the climate of the seaside has not prevented a recurrence of the asthma. I fear that in a year or so Abdul-al-Helmi Pacha will he a confirmed asthmatic, and his life in danger if he continues to reside in Ceylon." (Dated March 3, 1890.)
  These, my Lords, are some of the certificates of medical men who have attended the Egyptian exiles and their families in Ceylon for some years. I will not trouble you further. I think I have said enough to establish, what I endeavoured to show on a former occasion, and which I feel now quite as strongly as before—that is, that the climate of Ceylon has had the effect of seriously damaging the health of the exiles who were sent to the Island, and who have been kept there against the strong testimony of medical men. I will only refer once more to the certificate with regard to one of them, Abdul-al-Helmi Pacha, in which it is said, in a year or so, unless he changes his residence, death will probably ensue. He fears that in a comparatively short time his patient will be a confirmed asthmatic, and that his life is endangered if he continues to reside in Ceylon. I regret to state that it is now known to the Colonial Department that this effect, so truly forseen, has taken place. The unfortunate exile Abdul Pacha died of fever a short time ago. I cannot give your Lordships

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  the exact date, but the information which has reached me is to the effect that he died a little more than one year from the time that the medical certificate which I have read was given. The information which reached me was to this effect—
  "The Pacha has passed away peacefully, but under specially sad circumstances, for only two months ago his wife and family started on a visit to Egypt."
  This, I think, speaks for itself, and I need not trouble your Lordships further in calling attention to the Correspondence on this subject.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY): My Lords, in reference to this case I have to speak of matters which were decided not by the Government with which I am connected, but my predecessors, and I must necessarily rely on the information which was then given by authorised bodies who are above suspicion. My noble Friend has gone into the character of Arabi Pacha and his history, and he appears to be convinced that Arabi was throughout a loyal and devoted soldier of the Khedive. I hardly think this is an occasion on which it is desirable to discuss that question in detail, and I do not know that I am precisely the person whose business it is to enter upon it; but I can only say to my noble Friend that, as far as the history of that time came to me, I believe that Arabi Pacha, being a soldier, broke his military oath and exposed himself to the punishment of soldier who is in mutiny, that he was condemned by an impartial tribunal, and that he was treated at the instance of the Government of Her Majesty of that day with great leniency by the Khedive. I think, therefore, that in respect to what is past we have, as a nation, nothing to reproach ourselves with, and nothing to retract. With respect to the present, I again must take my stand upon authorised testimony—the only testimony which we can safely follow. The question of the health of Arabi Pacha was submitted to a board of medical officers, consisting of Mr. Kinsey, the Principal Civil Medical Officer and Inspector General of Hospitals in Ceylon; Brigade Surgeon W. C. Robinson, of the Army Medical Staff, and Senior Military
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  Medical Officer; and Dr. Macdonald, Medical Superintendent of the General Hospital of Colombo, and Professor of Medicine in the Ceylon Medical College. That Board having assembled and carefully examined Arabi Pacha, and having perused the documents relating to his case, found that he was 50 years old, of which eight years had been spent in Ceylon; and they were of opinion that the climate of Ceylon had had no injurious effect upon his health. A like certificate was signed on the same day by the members of the Board with regard to the other persons detained. My noble Friend tells us, however, that there are other doctors who are of a different opinion. Well, my Lords, that is not an entirely novel fact in human experience. I remember the late Sir G. Cornewall Lewis saying that if you got an expert in any department of knowledge to depose to any fact, you could always find another expert who would depose exactly the contrary. I do not know whether that is a pessimist view of expert nature or not, but certainly the fact that doctors differ is not a sufficiently strange thing to induce me to withhold my faith from this very authoritative and strongly-supported statement. At the same time, an offer has been made, I believe, to change the place of these gentlemen's detention—they have been offered Zeila, but I am informed that they see no advantage in the change. But however that may be, the question arises—Is there any necessity for their remaining in Ceylon? There, again, it is not a question exactly of what they wish or what they think, it is a question of what ought to be done in the interest of the Egyptian Government, with whose action we interfered when we rescued these men from a military sentence; and I find that the Government of the Khedive have very distinctly stated that they do not approve of the return of these men to Egypt. A Memorandum by Riaz Pacha, written from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Cairo, runs as follows:—
  "His Highness the Khedive, after having read Sir William Gregory's Memorandum relating to the transfer to Egypt of the Ceylon exiles, has declared that it is impossible for him to consent to such transfer in view of the very bad effect which their presence in the country would produce."
  I agree in that opinion myself, but even

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  if I did not agree with it, yet, considering the position of Egypt and our position in respect to it, I should hesitate very much before going against the deliberate opinion formed by the authorities who are responsible for the peace of Egypt. I am afraid, therefore, I can hold out no hope to my noble Friend at present that any change will be made.

COPYRIGHT BILL [H.L.]-(No. 7.)
SECOND READING.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
LORD MONKS WELL: My Lords, the House will readily believe that I feel myself very unequal to the task imposed upon me of moving the Second Reading of this Bill. I am, however, sustained by two convictions—first of all, that there is no body of men in the Kingdom towards whom your Lordships entertain a more friendly feeling than towards those who are eminent in literature and art whom this Bill seeks to benefit; and, secondly, I am sustained by the conviction that whatever errors I may make, whether of omission or of commission, will be set right by subsequent speakers. This Bill is brought up by the Society of Authors. This Society of Authors is a society which any man may well be proud to serve. It has for its President Lord Tennyson, and for its Chairman. Mr. Walter Besant, and among its members are a large number of persons very eminent in literature. I wish to say, on behalf of the Society of Authors, that this is not an authors' Bill (although it is fathered by the society) in the sense that it seeks to set up what may be called the extreme rights. Nor, my Lords, is it an authors' Bill in another sense. It is not an authors' Bill as being confined to literary copyright. The Bill deals with every kind of copyright—literary, artistic, and musical. If I were not informed to the contrary, I should have thought this Bill had been put forward rather by a Society of Artists than by a Society of Authors, for whereas the literary part of the Bill strays very little beyond the recommendations of the Commission, it is perfectly true that, as regards the artistic part, there are conditions in this Bill which are not authorised by the Report of the Royal Commission which
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sat in 1876 and 1877, and of which the Duke of Rutland was Chairman, and upon which Lord Knutsford and Lord Herschell had seats. I hope to be able to persuade you that the artistic part of the Bill is right. I only allude to the matter now for the purpose of showing that the Society of Authors are not subject to the reproach of seeking to legislate only in their own interests. This Bill is supported by the most eminent names in literature and art, including, of course, Sir Frederick Leighton, and by publishers. In point of form, this Bill has been drafted under the immediate supervision of Sir Frederic Pollock, than whom I may say there is no better draftsman in England, and no one more intimately conversant with the puzzling details of the Law of Copyright. I had hoped that my task, though it could not have been easy, would, at all events, have been short. I had hoped that all I should have been called upon to do would have been to explain the main features of this Bill; but the opposition of Her Majesty's Government to this Bill, of which I have been warned, but for which, I confess, I cannot find a reason, necessitates my taking a somewhat different course. That opposition necessitates that I should dwell with some persistency on the shockingly discreditable state of the present Law of Copyright. Since the first Statute on the subject of copyright was passed in the time of Queen Anne, the Law of Copyright seems to have been the sport of some malignant demon as it were, and we find that at present the Law of Copyright is contained in 18 Acts of Parliament, and in some ill-defined Common Law principles. Well, I think it will be admitted that here are all the materials for a glorious muddle, and as Statute after Statute was passed the confusion grew worse confounded. All the usual artifices which are employed by draftsmen to make Acts of Parliament unintelligible have, it appears to me, been made use of in this case, and some artifices which fortunately are not usual. Statutes have been incorporated by reference; some of them have been drawn in the most slovenly possible manner, some of them contain enormously long rigmarole sentences, in the middle of which, as Sir James Stephen has remarked of one of

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them "the draftsman seems to have lost his way." This subject of copyright has been dealt with at different times piecemeal in different stages and in different conditions of public opinion; and the result is that there are arbitrary distinctions in the law which it is impossible to defend. To crown all, some of these Acts have been drafted by persons who have shown an absolutely astounding ignorance of the law which they sought to modify. Now, I have said that the muddle began with the Statute of Anne. One would have thought it was not very easy to begin with a muddle, because that was the first Statute passed, but the muddle began in this way, that the Statute of Anne was apparently passed by a Legislature who had evidently not the slightest idea'that there was any Law of Copyright in existence at all, and it so happens that it was more than 60 years before the lawyers could decide whether the Common Law of Copyright was superseded by the Statute of Anne, or whether the Statute of Anne was in addition to the Common Law rights. At least this question was finally settled by the House of Lords, when it was settled, on the opinion of six Judges against five, in favour of the former view; but Lord Mansfield, who was one of the Judges, being a Member of your Lordships' House, did not give his opinion with the other Judges; if he had, the opinion of the Bench would have been absolutely equally divided, as he agreed with the minority. One would have thought that the Legislature would have taken warning by that, and that after an episode of that sort, draftsmen would have been employed, who at all events, knew something of the law which they sought to modify by Statute. But we find that the draftsmen in the time of Queen Victoria show absolutely and precisely the same ignorance as the draftsmen of the time of Queen Anne, and that they fell into precisely the same error as the draftsmen of the former reign. In 1842 an Act of Parliament was passed which is still the law, and is still the principal Act with regard to copyright. That Act dealt with, among other matters, dramatic copyright. It is not decided to this day whether the Act takes away the Common Law right previously subsisting in a dramatic
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author to prevent in perpetuity the publication of a play acted in public but not printed. It is perfectly clear that the draftsman was absolutely ignorant of the Common Law, because the Act recites the intention of the Legislature to extend dramatic copyright; but if the Common Law is taken into consideration, at all events in one particular direction, the Act of Parliament, instead of extending the then Law of Copyright, actually cut it down. There is another matter about the Act of 1842, which is this: the draftsman actually misunderstood the terms of an Act of Parliament which he purported to amend; of course the draftsmen in the time of Queen Anne could not do that, because there was no Statute in existence then on the subject to amend. Now, my Lords, I come to the Act of 1862. That was the first Act giving statutory copyright to works of Fine Art, and here we find the draftsman again falling into exactly the same error as his predecessors. The Preamble of the Act recites as follows:—" Whereas authors of paintings, &c, have no copyright." Now, that Preamble has given rise to a good deal of trouble, because, as a matter of fact, "authors of paintings," &c., had by the Common Law a perpetual copyright to prevent anybody copying their pictures and drawings before publication, and, at all events, two of the learned Judges, Sir James Stephen and Mr. Justice Day, have expressed doubts as to whether or not the Common Law right is, to some extent, cut down by that Statute. Now I come to the Copyright Commission, which sat to take evidence for just a year, from May 1876 to May 1877. The Report of that Commission commented in 1878 in scathing terms on the chaotic and unsatisfactory state of the Law of Copyright. The Commissioners, after observing that
"The Common Law principles which lie at the root of the law have never been settled,"
proceed in paragraph 9 to fall foul of the Statute Law in the following terms:—
"The 14 Acts of Parliament which deal with the subject were passed at different times between 1735 and 1875. They are drawn in different styles, and some are drawn so as to be hardly intelligible. Obscurity of style, however, is only one of the defects of these Acts. Their arrangement is often worse than their style. Of this the Copyright Act of 1842 is a conspicuous instance."

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This Report is studded with examples of the uncertainty of the law. Take paragraph 31. There the Commissioners complain that it is uncertain what constitutes publication, and they observe, in paragraph 71—
"We have carefully considered the Statute Law now in force with reference to music and the drama; but from the way in which certain Acts of Parliament have been framed and incorporated by reference, considerable doubt arises in our minds on various important points connected with these subjects."
But the uncertainty of the law is not its only defect; it is also full of arbitrary distinctions. Paragraphs 10 and 11 of the Report are as follows:—
"10. The piecemeal way in which the subject has been dealt with affords the only possible explanation of a number of apparently arbitrary distinctions between the provisions made upon matters which would seem to be of the same nature. Thus—(a) The term of copyright in books, and in printed and published dramatic pieces and music, is the life of the author and seven years after his death, or 42 years from the date of publication, whichever is the longer. (b) The term of copyright in music not printed and published but publicly performed is doubtful, and may perhaps be perpetual. (c) The term of copyright in a lecture not printed and published but publicly delivered is wholly uncertain. The term of copyright in a lecture printed and published is the longer of the two periods of 28 years and the life of the author. It may, perhaps, be doubted whether the term of copyright in a book consisting of a collection of lectures would differ from the term of copyright in other books. (d) The term of copyright in engravings, &c., is 28 years from publication; in paintings, &c., the artist's life and seven years; in sculpture, 14 years from the first 'putting forth or publishing' of the work (an indefinite phrase), 14 years more being given to the sculptor if he is living at the end of the first term."
"11. Other singular distinctions exist as to the law relating to registration of copyrights. No system of registration is provided for dramatic copyright, or for copyright in lectures or engravings. Such a system is provided for copyright in books and paintings, but its effect varies. Registration must in either case precede the taking of legal proceedings for an infringement of copyright, but after registration the owner of copyright in a book may, while the owner of copyright in a painting may not, sue the persons who infringed his copyright before registration."
Those are only selections from a mass of defects mentioned by the Commissioners. For instance, in paragraph 102, the Commissioners observe that the effect of a proviso in the Fine Arts Act of 1862 is, that if an artist sells a picture without a written agreement as to the copyright, the copyright is altogether lost—the
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artist loses it and the buyer does not get it. This proviso, the Commissioners observed,
"Was apparently added to the Bill without sufficient consideration during its passage through Parliament."
One of the Commissioners, Sir James Stephen, took upon himself the arduous task of codifying the law of copyright, and his Code is published at the end of the Report. The notes to the Code are, perhaps, more instructive than the Code itself in regard to the disgraceful state of the law. As to two Acts dealing with penalties for pirating prints and engravings, Sir James Stephen complains that they are "inexpressibly puzzling," and he adds—
"I have compared the two Acts line by line, and I am by no means sure that I have got the result correctly. The sense escapes in a cloud of words."
One sentence of 55 lines in one Act qualifies in two minute particulars a sentence of 61 lines in the other Act. In addition to these remarks of the Commissioners, I should like to add to what they have said one word as to the present deadlock in the case of the law dealing with the drama, and I would give, as an illustration, the Little Lord Fauntleroy case. Anybody may dramatise anybody else's novel, and having dramatised that novel the law does not object to his getting that drama acted, but though he may dramatise the novel he may not publish the drama, because if he does, that is an infringement of the novelists' copyright. But here the difficulty comes in: the law says before you can act a drama you must give a copy to the Lord Chamberlain, but you cannot give a copy to the Lord Chamberlain, because that would be to infringe the copyright in the novelist. I venture to think this is a most discreditable state of the law. It reminds me of the story which Lord Eldon used to tell of an Act of Parliament. He said that an Act of Parliament had once been passed to build a new prison out of the remains of an old prison, but it contained a clause "that the old prison was not to be touched until the new prison was built." That is the sort of way in which we legislate. Now, my Lords, copyright may be roughly divided into literary copyright and artistic copyright. First of all, as there are several noble Lords

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here who are not learned in the law, I may perhaps tell them, which will no doubt surprise them very much, that ever since this Report of 1878 was issued, nothing has been done to amend the Law of Copyright except in two particulars. International copyright has been dealt with under the International Convention of Berne; and, thanks to the exertions of a gentleman known as the "Musical Hawk," to twist a monstrous law to his own advantage, the most intolerable features in the law of musical copyright have been set right. But with those exceptions nothing has been done, though abortive Bills have been from time to time introduced, and upon those Bills the Bill which is now before the House is to a great extent based. As regards literary copyright, the principal Amendment in this Bill is to abolish the necessity, in the case of an alien, of residence in this country in order to get copyright. That is a point which has always been doubtful, and the consequence is that when an American wishes to get English copyright he has to undertake a journey to Canada, a journey which I think he might well be spared. It is necessary, whatever happens to this Bill, that the law should be altered in this respect, because if the law is not altered in this respect the American copyright possibly will not apply to England. Therefore, whatever may be done by your Lordships with regard to this Bill, I would urge that if we want to get for certain the benefit of American copyright, that the law should be amended in this particular as to residence before the 1st of July, when the American Copyright Act comes into operation. It is necessary that the Bill should be passed before then with regard to residence on English soil, in order to get copyright, for unless that is done English authors may not be enabled to take advantage of that Act. Whatever happens to this Bill it is eminently desirable that a Bill dealing with this point should he passed with all convenient speed. I may observe with regard to residence that that is one of the recommendations of the Commissioners. With regard to the duration of copyright the recommendations of the Commissioners are adhered to. It now endures for 42 years from publica-
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tion, or for the author's life, and seven years after his death, whichever is the longer period. The Commissioners suggest, and this Bill proposes, to substitute the life of the author, and in every case a term of 30 years after his death. There are two advantages in that, one of which is that it is not very easy sometimes to tell when a work is published, but it is usually easy enough to know when an author is dead. And there is, another thing, the copyrights of an author's works keep dropping in one after another under present conditions; but if the law is altered in accordance with the suggestion of the Commissioners, the whole of a man's works will cease to be copyright at the same time, and a complete edition of his works might then be published. At present it might be 42 years from the death of the author before a complete non-copyright edition of his works can be published. There are only three countries where the term is shorter — Belgium, Holland, and Greece; it is the same as that which obtains in Germany, and there are many other European countries where the term is a great deal longer. Novelists are to have the exclusive right to dramatise their novels, and conversely the authors of dramas will have the exclusive right to convert their dramas into novels. Abridgment is recognised; for the first time as part of copyright, and the period after which the author of an article or essay in a collective work (other than an Encyclopaedia) is to be entitled to the right of separate publication is reduced—it will be after three years instead of 28 years, as at present. So far we march with the Report of the Commission, but in one important respect, no doubt, the Report of the Commission with regard to literary copyright has been departed from. The Report of the Commission recommends that non-registration within a certain time shall entail an absolute forfeiture of the right to sue. We suggest that there shall be no absolute forfeiture, but that on payment of a penalty the right to sue shall revive. In one respect, no doubt, the Bill fails altogether to carry into effect the recommendations of the Commission, and that is as regards setting up a system of licensing in the colonies. No doubt this is an exceedingly difficult question. There is a system of licensing, similar to

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that which the Commission suggests, now in existence in Canada under a Canadian Act passed in 1875, and ratified by the Imperial Legislature. But by that Act the Canadians were only given the power of re - publishing copyright works of English authors with the consent of the authors. That is a vital reservation and apparently it will not satisfy the colonists. There is another mode of obtaining English copyright works besides by re-publication. The other means open to the colonists of obtaining English copyright books at less than copyright prices is for them to obtain an Order in Council empowering them, on certain conditions, to import into the colony American reprints of English books, or the Tauchnitz Editions, or what not. The Commissioners were not altogether satisfied with the conditions laid down in the Foreign Reprints Act, and they suggested that it should be re-enacted with more stringent conditions. They suggest that some system of licensing should be set up in the colonies. We do not propose to interfere in any way with the Canadian Act of 1875, and only to a very slight extent with the Foreign Reprints Act; but the Society of Authors have found themselves unable to follow the recommendations of the Commissioners in favour of licensing. As to Fine Art copyright, the Bill does not compel registration either of paintings or of sculptures at any time. The Commissioners suggested that registration should be compulsory after the painter or sculptor had parted with the copyright in his works, and not before. But we find that the painter and the sculptor very strongly object to any system of registration at all, because they say it is so much the custom to keep touching up their works that none of them can tell when they are finished. Again, the Bill resolves a very moot point in favour of the artists—a point which the Commission acknowledge they had the greatest difficulty in determining, namely, whether the copyright in a painting or sculpture should, on such painting or sculpture being sold, remain with the artist in the absence of any agreement, or pass to the buyer. I hope that the strong and unanimous desire of the artists will be allowed to outweigh the very hesitating expression of opinion
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on the part of the Commission which was, I believe, only the opinion of a bare majority, and that the law may be altered in favour of the artists, particularly as the Bill introduces two important modifications in the copyright it proposes to confer upon the artists. A painter is not allowed, without the consent of the owner of the picture, to reproduce, by any art or in any size, a portrait painted on commission, nor may the painter, without the like consent, make a replica—that is, a copy of the same size and by the same art—of any picture he has sold. As to the rest of the Bill, the provisions as to Fine Art copyright follow the recommendations of the Commission by making it an infringement of copyright to copy any design in one art—say painting — by any design in another art — say sculpture. Artistic copyright is made to endure for the same term as literary copyright, and stringent provisions are inserted for the protection of the copyright owner. As to prints and photographs, copyright is only given for 30 years, and the registration of all prints is required. It is expressly provided that no photograph ordered on commission is to be exhibited without the leave of the person ordering the photograph. A Fine Arts Copyright Bill, almost identical with this Bill, passed a Second Reading in the Commons in 1882, but it failed to pass 'through Committee, principally owing to the opposition of Sir H. D. Wolff, one of the Copyright Commissioners, who took the objection, since removed by the conclusion of the Berne Convention in 1886, that there should be no legislation on copyright in this country until some arrangement had been made with foreign countries on the subject. The Bill of 1882 was both a consolidating and amending measure, so also was a Bill brought in by Lord Herschell in 1878, and another by the present Duke of Rutland in 1879. I may add that this Bill proposes, in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission, to set up new registration offices. This proposal is, however, merely tentative, and it is believed that the present offices in Stationers' Hall will be sufficient for all the requirements of the Bill. I should like to make one observation with regard to the American Copyright Act which has

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just been passed. That Act contains, as your Lordships are aware, a provision that every book, to obtain American copyright, must have two copies printed from type set in the United States. This provision has greatly alarmed our printers here, who seem afraid that English books copyrighted in America will have to be printed there exclusively. I think, although their alarm is not altogether unfounded, it is very much exaggerated. As Sir Frederick Pollock pointed out in an article in the Contemporary Review for April, the loss of time and difficulties in the way of absolutely simultaneous publication will lead to printing in both countries. Sir Frederick writes—
"Time and risk would clearly be saved by printing in England first, and sending; out corrected sheets to be reprinted in America."
If this be so, there can be no reason for resorting to the retaliatory legislation which has been suggested. It is gratifying to find that the most scathing criticism of the printing provisions of the American Act come from the Americans themselves. The New York Nation, a paper that, I believe, enjoys a very enviable reputation, objects to the printing clause as—
"A piece of tariff barbarism no more respectable than an Act obliging foreigners on landing here to provide themselves with a suit of American-made clothes, in order to entitle them to the services of the police, or to access to our Courts of Justice … to put any condition on a man's right to the protection of the law for his person or property beyond honesty and peaceable behaviour, is unworthy of a civilised Government."
It is, however, only fair to the Americans to add, as the Times observed on the 17th of March, that—
"In some respects, at least, the Act is better than had been expected… In future, etchings and engravings may be copyrighted and imported on payment of the existing duty."
This change in the law, the Times thought—
"Ought to make a very great difference, indeed, in the value of artistic copyrights and in that of the engraver's skill."
Upon that, I may observe that it would seem that the clause as to printing does not apply to musical copyright. My Lords, I have now taken the House through the main provisions of this Bill. There are many provisions in it which time does not allow me to touch upon. I now propose to say a few words, in con-
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clusion, by way of answer in anticipation to some of the objections that may possibly be urged against this Bill. Your Lordships may possibly be told by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack that the Law of Copyright bristles with points of difficulty. I am not concerned to deny that this is so. But surely the difficulty of a question is not to be urged as a reason why your Lordships should not attempt to deal with it. Your Lordships have plenty of time and leisure to take up this question, and I do not see why you should not do so. A Judge cannot refuse to decide a cause on the ground that it bristles with points of difficulty, and surely, if I can make out a strong case for legislation, your Lordships are not absolved from the duties of legislation on account of the difficulties involved. I may, perhaps, be told that this Bill attempts too much—that the law ought first to be consolidated, and then amended by a separate measure. In some cases that may be the most convenient plan to adopt, but we must remember that the law down to 1878 has already been codified by Sir James Stephen. But, my Lords, I do not stand upon that Code. I say that the present law is so cram full of utterly indefensible arbitrary distinctions, that to put all of them side by side within the four corners of a consolidating Statute would be to produce an Act that would be the laughing-stock of the youngest law student. The law is in such a state that we cannot for very shame consolidate without amending it, and that has been the opinion of every copyright reformer who has introduced Bills since the Report of the Commission, including the Duke of Rutland and the noble and learned Lord (Lord Herschell). Then, I may be told by the noble Lord opposite (Lord Knutsford) that he is unable to make up his mind what to do as to a licensing system for the colonies. On this point the Society of Authors sympathises deeply with Lord Knutsford. They also have found themselves unable to formulate any system of licensing. But if we are to wait till we can get a complete and perfect measure that satisfies every one, reform of the Copyright Law must, indeed, be relegated to a dim and remote future. With regard to the licensing question, there are, after all, only two

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courses open to the noble Lord (Lord Knutsford); he must either do something or nothing. If he does something he can incorporate his plan in this Bill; if he does nothing this Bill would not interfere with him, for the measure does not propose to do anything. The passing of the Bill would leave the noble Lord with as ample an opportunity of making up his mind, or delaying to make up his mind, as he now possesses. Why, my Lords, should not this Bill be passed through your Lordships' House now? What is there to wait for? International copyright, under the Convention of Berne, has now been in force for five years, and that much-expected Statute, the American Act, has been passed. I think I have given strong reasons why this House should promptly take in hand the great question of copyright reform. This House is, I venture to say, peculiarly fitted to deal with the question. Your Lordships were in thorough sympathy with the just claims of literature and art, and are perfectly capable—much more capable than is the House of Commons—of elaborating a just and useful measure. It is true that the old-fashioned modes of patronage are at an end. Authors are no longer driven to earn a livelihood by dedicating their works to your Lordships; they now appeal for patronage and support, not to the few, but to the many. If your Lordships go to the theatre you are no longer accorded special places on the stage. But your Lordships, as a Legislative Body, can do inestimable service to the cause of literature and art. In your capacity of legislators you can still exert your influence to see that justice is done to persons to whom the community are deeply indebted for instruction and entertainment. There are noble and learned Lords in this House who are peculiarly fitted to criticise and amend such a Bill as this. It is not a question on which there can be any jealousy between the two Houses. I believe the House of Commons would willingly accept any measure that had been well thought out and discussed in your Lordships' House. But whether I am right in that or not, let us, at all events, leave to the other House the grave responsibility of refusing to amend a law which is positively grotesque in its absurdity and injustice. I ask your Lordships to do
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what in you lies to secure to literature and art their just reward, and to make the Law of Copyright an ornament instead of a disgrace to the Statute Book. I beg to move the Second Reading of the Bill.
Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a"—(The Lord Monkswell.)
THE SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Lord BALFOUR of BURLEIGH): My Lords, I am able to go some distance with the noble Lord who has just spoken, and some distance, at any rate, in his criticism, I might almost say denunciation, of the existing state of the law on the subject of copyright. I am quite willing to admit that it needs consolidation, and that it needs amendment. The noble Lord has stated that the Acts which deal with the subject are many in number, that they are not always consistent with honour, that in some respects they are unsatisfactory, and that in other respects they are ineffective; and he has told your Lordships there are Common Law principles which can only be ascertained by laborious search through the Law Reports. Also it is the case that the law as it stands contains many arbitrary distinctions. The copyright in books may either be for the life of the author, and seven years afterwards, or for 42 years from the date of publication. There are differences in the duration of copyright as regards lectures, engravings, and sculpture; and musical copyright, as the noble Lord has said, is in a most unsatisfactory and uncertain condition. There are differences in the law, as he has told you, as regards the necessity of registration in the case of books, of paintings, and of dramatic works. But I am not able to go much further in agreement with the noble Lord. I think the very fact which he mentioned—that, in spite of a very large and influential Commission having sat upon the subject for more than two years some 12 years ago, and in spite of a demand from many quarters, nothing has been done, even on the lines of that Commission—is in itself a proof, if any proof were needed, that these matters are highly contentious and very difficult of arrangement. Bills have been introduced in 1881, and many subsequent proposals have been made, for the amendment of the law, but nothing

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has been done up to the present time. I join issue with the noble Lord upon the matter of procedure. He has anticipated an objection that may be urged against him that this Bill is not only a consolidating but an amending Bill: and I understood him to suggest as an alternative course that Parliament should be asked first to consolidate and then to amend.
LORD MONKSWELL: No. I said it would be impossible to do so, because the law, as it stands, is so absurd that you cannot consolidate it without amending it.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: To consolidate the law and then to amend it would be to get rid of confusion in one year, only to find it re-introduced immediately afterwards. I do not think a Bill on so highly contentious a subject could be got through Parliament within the limits of one Session if it attempts both consolidation and amendment; and I would suggest that the preferable course would be that a Bill should be brought in dealing with those points which are contentious and of the greatest importance, and that thereafter the law should be consolidated. There would be no difficulty in arranging that the amending Bill and the consolidating Bill, once the principles were agreed upon, should come into force at the same time. I think there are great disadvantages in attempting simultaneously to consolidate and to amend the law on a subject of this magnitude, because by so doing you greatly widen the subject of controversy, and it would be far better to deal with those matters, which are matters of controversy, in the first instance, and then afterwards to embody them in a consolidating Bill. I am sure that your Lordships, who have listened to the speech of the noble Lord, must have arrived at the conclusion that these matters are not only highly contentious, but are most complicated, and that they raise many difficult questions of policy. I venture to say that so much is that the case that it is quite impossible for a private Member, certainly of the other House of Parliament, and, I venture to think, for one possessing the knowledge which the noble Lord has shown in this House, to deal with the representations and memorials, and even, I might say, the probable deputations which would come upon him
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if it were known that this Bill was really being pressed forward. It touches so many interests that I cannot suppose that the resources of a private Member would be adequate to cope with them. And not only are there questions of law and private policy, but matters of Imperial and colonial policy come into the field. Then, my Lords, even if these objections which I have put before the House do not prevail, I would venture to add another objection, and to suggest that the time at which this Bill is brought forward is not opportune. The noble Lord opposite referred to the American law which has recently passed through their Legislature. But we do not know now the effect of that Act upon our trade. It may be as little as the noble Lord hopes, and I sincerely join with him in the expression of that hope; but certainly the law has not yet come into operation, and we cannot tell what the effect of it will be. I said just now that matters of Imperial policy were also concerned. I believe I am correct in stating that Canada is not satisfied with her position in connection with the provisions of the Berne Convention, and that requests have been made for an alteration on that point. If we begin amending or consolidating the law at the present time when subjects of that kind are under discussion with our colonies, we shall add greatly to the friction existing and to the difficulty of passing such a Bill at the present time. In the Bill itself there are many things of which the Department I have the honour to represent cannot possibly approve. There is one part of the Bill to which I do not think the noble Lord referred in his speech, that is to say, the part which deals with the matter of registration. He himself seems to have-some doubts and misgivings as to whether it is wise to put it forward. I venture to think there can be no doubt whatever that if the provisions in the Bill as they now stand were to be; enacted, they would cast a serious charge upon the public funds of this country, which should not, I think, be proposed at the instance of a private Member, and which perhaps ought not to be brought forward at all, in the first instance, in this House. Something of this kind seems to have been in the minds of the framers of the Bill, because in the pre-

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liminary Memorandum attached to the Bill I find this sentence—
"With regard to registration, the Bill (as was recommended by the Royal Commission) provides for the establishment of a Copyright Registration Office under the control of Government in lieu of the present office at Stationers' Hall, established under 5 and 6 Vict. c. 45. It is felt, however, that the details and formalities of any scheme of registration can only be satisfactorily settled by Government officials, and the provisions of Part V. of the Bill are put forward rather by way of suggestion than as a definitely settled scheme. It may be found desirable, either now or hereafter, to combine the Copyright Registration Office with the Registry of Designs and Trade Marks, and this part of the Bill has, therefore, as far as possible, been modelled on the corresponding provisions of the Patents Designs and Trade Marks Act, 1883."
I am quite certain that a very great deal of discussion and consideration would be required before anything of the nature of a change such as is suggested in this part of the Bill could possibly be accepted. My Lords, I am far from saying that there are not some valuable proposals in the Bill; but I am not able to share in the praise which the noble Lord gives to the draughtsman. We have been told at an earlier period of this evening that doctors differ. I am afraid that differences between men of a trade or profession are not confined to doctors. I have heard draughtsmen differ very seriously, and I have been informed by the comments which I have seen upon this Bill that of the 96 clauses which it contains there are serious objections taken to more than 50 of them, in substance as well as in form. So much is that the case that we believe it would be far easier to draft a new Bill altogether than to endeavour to amend the provisions of this Bill and to bring it into conformity with anything which is likely to be accepted. Under these circumstances, I venture to suggest that it would not be wise to hold out any hopes that this Bill can possibly become law in the present Session, or that in fact it is worth your Lordships' while to proceed further on this occasion. I am inclined to think that to do so would be to lay a very great deal of work upon the House and the Standing Committee —work which the House and the Standing Committee would probably not object to if it were to serve any useful purpose; but work which I believe would be almost entirely thrown away.
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Under these circumstances, without going into the details of the Bill, I venture to suggest to the noble Lord opposite that he should be satisfied with having explained the principles of the Bill, and should not seek to press it further during the present Session.
LORD HERSCHELL: The noble Lord who has just sat down has urged my noble Friend to be very easily satisfied; I think he might as well have urged him to be satisfied with nothing. I shall make no apology for taking part in this discussion, because it is a subject in which I have been long interested, and in which I have the natural interest of one who gave a considerable amount of time to the consideration of the question as a member of the Royal Commission some fourteen years ago, and who is, therefore, naturally anxious to see some fruits at least of the labour that was then bestowed. I have never lost sight of this question from that time, and I have always been anxious to see some effect given to the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners. It certainly is not very gratifying to one's national pride to find that when a Royal Commission pointed out that the law was grotesque and mischievous, and urgently required amendment, we should, 13 years afterwards, when it is sought to come to a conclusion upon the matter, be invited to sit with our hands quietly folded, and not attempt to make the law any better than it is. Surely the Legislature exists for the purpose of remedying imperfect and mischievous legislation. For what are we assembled here from Session to Session except to make the law, in our judgment, better than it is? I am, therefore, a little mortified to find that the speech of the noble Lord the Representative of the Board of Trade is one of a character which is perfectly well understood. I do not want to represent for a moment that the Department to which I belong has any objection to legislation, or that it does not recognise that the law is at present in an imperfect condition; we rather think it should be amended; but we would rather see this Bill stifled and put an end to, and at some future time, in some unsuggested way, in some undefined manner, the law may come to be better than it is. I should have thought, at least, we should have

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been told that Her Majesty's Government would have felt themselves prepared to deal with it. I quite agree with what the noble Lord has said, that if the Government should take it up and deal with it they would be in a much better position to do it than any private Member of Parliament, and I am quite certain that, upon such an assurance being given, my noble Friend would be prepared to stand out of the way and leave the Government to act in his stead. I have been expecting certainly to hear for a long time of the introduction of a Copyright Bill by the Government, and especially by that Department to which the noble Lord belongs. I may say that I have been in communication with those who are interested in the subject, and I was prepared myself, a year after I came into your Lordships' House, to take up the matter; but I was told that those with whom I was dealing were themselves in communication with the Board of Trade, and under those circumstances I said I should be only too happy to leave the matter in their hands, and not touch it myself. Every Session since then I have had some faint hope that at last such a Bill as that would see the light; but the noble Lord does not give any such hope to-night even in what I may call the distant future. As every one admits that the law ought not to be allowed to stand as it now stands, can any good reason be given why an effort should not be made to alter it? As far as public announcements go, it would strike one that the programme of Her Majesty's Government is approaching its end; there is not very much ahead that we have had any intimation of; why should not the Government, upon such a subject as this law, be ready. to endeavour to put it in a satisfactory fashion upon the Statute Book? It is a matter of interest to authors, who certainly, on account of the great advantages which we derive from their work, deserve consideration at the hands of the Legislature, and it is for the advantage of the public, too, that this matter should be settled and the law amended. I quite admit there are difficulties, although I do not think those difficulties are so formidable as they are represented to be by the noble Lord. A great many would, I think, vanish if it were
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known that there was a resolute earnest endeavour to grapple with and conquer them. And, as regards the thorny questions to which my noble Friend has alluded, they are not really so very enormous. He stated that 50 out of the 96 clauses of the Bill were open to objection. I do not know what are the particular points of objection alluded to; but, knowing something of the subject, I think the really difficult ones come to no more than three or four. I cannot agree with the noble Lord either that it would be impossible to deal at once with a Bill which was an amending and a consolidating Bill. No doubt there have been some controversies, but if your Lordships could settle those controversies there would be no difficulty about a Bill which was both consolidating and amending. Then there is some force in what the noble Lord said also upon the other point—that such a Bill could be better dealt with by Her Majesty's Government than by a private Member of either this or the other House of Parliament, and that, as this Bill has colonial and international aspects, and there is always a difficulty and delicacy in dealing with those questions, the Government are always in a better position to deal with them, and they would be more satisfactorily dealt with, I quite admit, in their hands than in the manner in which it would be necessary to deal with them if they were left in the hands of a private Member. Probably that part of the Bill might be left entirely to the control of the Government, the other part being taken up by a private Member. But the matter cannot be left much longer in the condition in which it now is. It would be, of course, impossible to put forward a promise of immediate legislation; such promises ought, of course, not to be lightly given; but I would press upon Her Majesty's Government, seeing the urgency of this question—as there must come under their consideration, if not at present, very shortly, the international and colonial aspect of these questions—it would be a matter of very great satisfaction if they could give the public an assurance that in taking these matters into their consideration they would be prepared to deal with the whole subject in a comprehensive fashion.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I recognise the candour of my noble and learned Friend in the closing observations which he made. I do not deny that there is a great deal to be said in respect of the delay of 13 years—for which, however, I think Her Majesty's present Administration are not entirely responsible—in attempting to carry into effect the recommendations of the Royal Commission. I a little regret the somewhat aggressive tone of the noble Lord who has introduced this Bill to your Lordships' notice. I believe we are all, on both sides of the House, entirely impressed with the importance of the subject and with the necessity of dealing with it, but the noble Lord must know that a great many questions arise in a Bill of this sort, on which there is great divergence of opinion. I am myself disposed to think that it would be rash for any Government to attempt to deal with the question without endeavouring to ascertain the views of many of those who are interested in it. After the lapse of 13 years, it by no means follows that those who entertained certain views at that time entertain them now. A great deal has happened since 13 years ago, and, as the noble and learned Lord knows, many very different theories have been now started with regard to the usefulness of various provisions in the Bill, and, as I have said, it by no means follows that because certain views were entertained 13 years ago they would be found to be entertained now. I am not going to take the responsibility of moving the rejection of this Bill on the Second Reading, and I think the trouble the noble Lord has taken, and the amount of labour he has bestowed in bringing a Bill of this sort before your Lordships, would be very ill-requited if it were summarily rejected without some recognition. I cannot help saying that there are some provisions in it which I should myself oppose if it were a question of agreeing upon clauses; and I will state the reasons why I think it would be very desirable for the noble Lord not to insist upon proceeding further than the Second Reading of his Bill, which in a great measure deals with contentious matters. As has been said by the noble Lord who represents the Board of Trade, the Bill contains undoubtedly a great many matters of considerable difficulty
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and importance. The Standing Committee would, I have no doubt, faithfully do its duty in that respect, and the probability is that there would be a great many Divisions in that Committee upon the various provisions in this Bill, and a great deal of trouble taken in respect of it. There would be controversies, and I am quite sure those controversies would be renewed in this House afterwards, and the notion of passing such a Bill as this now introduced, a Bill so complex, and comprehending so many subjects of difficulty and importance, is, I think, hopeless. Its being brought forward now, in the middle of May, renders it absolutely impossible it could pass into law; and I do not think, until those questions which are the subject of controversy have been solved in some way or other, that the sending of the Bill to the Standing Committee would facilitate its passing in the future. Let me call attention to two matters which the noble Lord himself referred to—the international aspect of the Bill and the inter-colonial relations affected by it. The noble Lord has himself pointed out that by the American Bill international copyright is not to exist unless similar provisions are made in an English Act; and the noble Lord invites us to pass this Bill before the 1st July, because, unless we do so, we shall lose the benefit of the international copyright law as regards the United States. That is one matter. Then the colonies themselves may resent not being consulted upon the difficulties which arise under the Copyright Law. That I grant is not a reason why the difficulties should not be solved. I think they ought to be solved; and, in going so far with the noble and learned Lord, I will assure him that the matter has not been lost sight of. I will go so far as to say, in answer to Lord Herschell, that the matter is occupying the attention of some of the Members of Her Majesty's Government, with the strongest desire to put the matter in shape for legislation; but I think I ought not to be called upon to give a pledge to introduce a Bill on the subject. All I can say is that the subject is occupying the attention of the Government, and that such measures as are possible will be adopted. If it be possible, legislation will be proposed, but in view of the difficulties of the case, I would invite

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the noble Lord, for his own sake and for the sake of the subject, not to insist on going forward with the Bill through the Standing Committee, because the discussions there would be certain to arise afterwards in the House, and altogether such a course would be more likely to delay and prevent than to facilitate legislation. For the reasons I have mentioned and on account of the difficulties and anomalies to which he has called attention now existing in the law, and which I think throw great doubt upon the advisability of Her Majesty's Government or any other Administration attempting hastily to deal with it, I am unable to give any pledge. I can do no more at present than say it is occupying their attention, and again invite the noble Lord not to insist upon going further with the Bill.
THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: I quite agree as to the difficulty of dealing with this subject, but I do not concur with the noble and learned Lord's remarks as to sending it to the Standing Committee. I do not think this is a Bill which could be effectively dealt with in Standing Committee. I believe if a Bill is to be brought in upon this subject, even if it were a Bill emanating from Her Majesty's Government, it should go to a Select Committee, and that Select Committee should take evidence upon it. As the noble and learned Lord has just said, it would be impossible for anybody to proceed in the matter without having first ascertained clearly, as far as they Could be ascertained, what were the wishes of the various classes of people who are affected by the Bill, and I do not think that could be effectively done unless by a Select Committee. Probably it would be too late in the present Session to proceed in such a manner as that; but I hope Her Majesty's Government will consider whether next Session a Bill might not be introduced by themselves on the subject, or, if not, that a Bill might be allowed to be introduced by a private Member, and then sent to a Select Committee. I may, perhaps, mention that some years ago a Bill was introduced by Lord Westbury, and was sent to a Select Committee; but there were great objections to that Bill, and, in consequence of the objections which I myself made in the Select Committee, the Bill was eventually withdrawn. But
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that is a long time ago, and, as the noble and learned Lord has said, the law has now taken quite a different shape. I was rather alarmed at first at the way in which the noble and learned Lord alluded to the very important question of the American law. I now understand that that matter is under the immediate consideration of Her Majesty's Government; but I am quite certain that, whatever may be the proper course to be taken with regard to the amendment of the law—and I express no opinion upon the subject—it is, at all events, not a matter which can be left long without being dealt with. It is quite clear that there is a strong expectation on the part of authors in this country that they will obtain the benefit of that Act, and it is quite obvious that any decision Her Majesty's Government may come to ought to be announced at as early a period as possible, for if not, there would certainly be found Members in one or other of the Houses of Parliament to bring the subject under the notice of the Legislature. I hope, therefore, we may anticipate that before a very long time has elapsed we] shall hear what are the views of Her Majesty's Government upon the matter, and. whether or not they intend to legislate upon it.
LORD MONKSWELL: My Lords, I exceedingly regret that anything in the tone of my remarks should have had the very unintentional effect of giving umbrage to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. Such, certainly, was not my intention. With regard to the suggestion he has made, I am willing to avail myself of the condition he desires I should accept, namely, to give a pledge that I will not ask your Lordships to proceed further with the Bill this Session if it is now read a second time.
On Question, agreed to.
Bill read 2a accordingly.

VACCINATION.

  QUESTION—OBSERVATIONS.
  LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY,in rising to call the attention of the House to certain portions of the evidence printed with the Second Report of the Royal Commission on Vaccination; and to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will provide debtors'

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  treatment instead of criminal treatment for persons imprisoned under the Vaccination Acts; and also to ask how so many illegal sentences of hard labour came to be passed and carried out without interference by the Home Office, said: My Lords, I must ask your Lordships' indulgence, as I am suffering from the prevailing epidemic. The respect which I feel for the noble Lord who was Chairman of the Vaccination Commission would not allow me to put down this notice without first ascertaining that he had no objection to it, and if he will allow me to say so, the reading of this Report has only increased my respect for him, owing to the skilful and impartial way in which the noble Lord conducted the investigation. I believe in vaccination if it is properly carried out with calf lymph, and I do not wish in the least to strengthen the hands of the anti-vaccinationists. I do not propose to go into medical details, but will confine myself strictly to the administrative question, that is, the treatment of those who, unfortunately, have been imprisoned for infringement of the Vaccination Acts. It cannot be denied that those parents who, either from what they have seen or heard, or perhaps have themselves experienced, refuse to have their children vaccinated, are better parents than those who insure their children in several Insurance Offices, or who hand them over for adoption for a lump sum without asking any further questions, and with whom up to the present time the Legislature has not interfered. Without going into the evidence, and without any medical knowledge, it might be assumed that after vaccination became compulsory it had to be cheap, and it must have the proverbial accompaniment of cheapness, and that neither the skill of the practitioners nor the quality of the lymph would be as good as it was at the time that vaccination was voluntary. Dr. Richard, Thorne's answers to Questions 702 and 703 of the first Report point to this defective method of vaccination. He says you know what to expect from some of the sixpenny doctors in London. I wish to refer to Question 6268 and the answer, which quotes the Bishop of Manchester, speaking in 1881 as to the bad effects of making vaccination compulsory within 12 weeks of birth; and in
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  order to show what some medical men are capable of I will read the answer of a doctor, No. 1738, in which he states that he had vaccinated five of his own children within 24 hours of birth: he added, "It will stagger the Commission when I mention it." I wonder one of the Commissioners did not say to him that he appeared to be risking committing manslaughter gratuitously. In order to show, from the evidence given before the Commission as appearing by the Report, that parents refusing to obey the Vaccination Laws have such grounds for their conduct as should exempt them from treatment as criminals when imprisoned, it may be stated that of the 28 witnesses examined by the Commission who had stood out against the Vaccination Laws, 16 said they refused to allow their children to be vaccinated because they knew of 24 cases of children dead or injured by vaccination. These 28 witnesses had been subjected to 413 prosecutions, and had paid amongst them £385 16s. 2d. in fines and costs. Eight of these witnesses had been imprisoned and treated as criminals, that is to say, fed on bread and water, they picked, oakum, wore prison clothes, and slept on a plank bed. In short, they received the-treatment which some persons think too. severe for inciting to crimes of outrage-and violence. One of the witnesses at. Question 6568 mentions Owen Coom, who was imprisoned in March and starved, and who died in August of the same year; and he adds—
  "I mean to say that under this Act some of the best and most excellent parents have been most cruelly treated in prison."
  Joseph Harrison, at Question 6202, says that when imprisoned in Wandsworth Gaol he was first put in the criminal ward, he was then removed by the Governor to the debtors' ward, and after the Governor had communicated with the Home Office, he was again replaced in the criminal ward, and treated as a criminal, and then, in answer to the next, question, he describes the treatment he received. It would appear from this uncertainty of the Governor of Wandsworth Gaol that there is nothing in the Act which prescribes such treatment. Besides the injustice of treating these careful parents as criminals, an injury is done to the bonâfide criminals, and the salutary effect of their sentences

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  must be diminished by leading them to think from the equality and similarity of their treatment that their offences are no worse than that of those parents who objected to vaccination. With regard to the illegal sentences of hard labour of which I have given instances, I would cite the case of one man, Joseph Abel, who was committed with hard labour, but the sentence was not carried out, as his brother paid the fine. Then at Question 5606 it appears that Mr. William Guest was imprisoned with hard labour, and eight days of his sentence were remitted on account of the sentence being illegal. Then at Question 6690 the evidence states that Mr. George Bainborough was also imprisoned with hard labour, and in consequence the Magistrates paid to him £40 compensation, after a writ had been issued. It is probable that other illegal sentences of hard labour have been passed besides these 'three cases which were brought before the Royal Commission, and some explanation is wanted as to why the Home Office did not check such sentences by a circular or public notification. I will conclude by moving for a Return of the number of cases of hard labour, with the names of the Magistrates who passed the sentences, and of the clerks who advised them. As I was not able to give notice of this question before, and the noble Lord who answers for the Home Office may not be able to give me an answer offhand, I must possibly be satisfied with having now formally brought the matter forward, and I will repeat the Motion after the Recess.
  LORD DE RAMSEY: I hope the noble Lord will do as he proposes, and give notice of this Return for which he asks. If I understand him rightly, he asks for the names of the Magistrates and Justices clerks who have unintentionally imprisoned such persons as he mentions with hard labour. I am aware that in one or two instances that has occurred, but, of course, the noble Lord will not expect me to assent to that Return without consultation with the Secretary of State. I will ask the noble Lord to excuse me from following him into the pros and cons of the vaccination question, and I will on the present occasion confine myself to answering his question. I think the noble Lord rather takes it for granted that the cases
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  of sentences referred to in the Report were illegal. In all the cases but one they were strictly legal. The one case which was exceptional was George Bainborough, who was, withoutdoubt, illegally sentenced to 14 days' hard labour. The noble Lord has very properly quoted that case; but as regards the others, I have not been able at all to agree with his remarks. In that case George Bainborough appealed to the Magistrates, and the noble Lord is perfectly correct in saying that £40 was paid in compensation. In the 5th section of the Summary Jurisdiction Act it is laid down that where imprisonment is adjudged in default of payment of a fine such imprisonment shall be inflicted without hard labour, except where the hard labour is authorised by the Act on which the conviction is founded. The Vaccination Acts do not contain any provision as to hard labour, and prisoners, therefore, cannot be legally subjected to that treatment. Special rules have been made by Parliament in the Prison Acts as to the employment of prisoners; but no prisoner who is sentenced under the Vaccination Acts can be compelled to undergo any labour of this sort. Such a prisoner is treated under the ordinary rules for regulating the treatment of prisoners who are sentenced to simple imprisonment. Simple imprisonment, as the noble Lord knows, means imprisonment without hard labour. Under the Prison Act of 1855, such a prisoner may be compelled to work, and may be punished by alteration of diet for neglect of work, but the Prison Commissioners are empowered also to make rules as to the nature and amount of the employment, and such a thing, for instance, as oakum picking is an authorised employment. I hope the noble Lord follows the difference between imprisonment with hard labour and simple imprisonment. Prisoners who are not convicted of offences, but merely committed to prison for noncompliance with an order of the Judge to pay a sum of money, are now treated as debtors under the rules framed by the Secretary of State, and are subject to the special rules applying to debtors' prisons. I hope I have answered most of the points raised by the noble Lord in his question, but. if he will give notice, on a future occasion I shall be glad to give him any further answer he requires.
  LORD HERSCHELL: My Lords, I only desire to say that I am very glad to hear the statement which the noble Lord has just made as to the regulation under which persons so committed are now committed as debtors. I think that even those who are of opinion that vaccination ought to be made compulsory, and obedience enforced by fine, or, in default of payment of the fines, by imprisonment, may well consider that in dealing with persons so committed it is in the highest degree expedient in the interest even of compulsory vaccination not to impose upon them the code of degrading prison punishment which was prescribed and considered necessary in times gone by. The statement of the noble Lord, showing that this is no longer done, is to my mind very satisfactory. I do not know whether he is able to state from what date that has been the case.
  LORD DE RAMSEY: The noble and learned Lord is aware that part of these regulations are by Act of Parliament, and that the Secretary of State has the power of passing other rules, which have to be laid on the Table for 40 days and are confirmed by Act of Parliament.
  LORD HERSCHELL: I mean the date from which these persons have been treated as debtors?
  LORD DE RAMSEY: I think it will be found that it has been so since 1877. I will hand the noble Lord the document which I think he wants.

WATER SUPPLY AT PORT OF SPAIN.

  QUESTION—OBSERVATIONS.
  VISCOUNT GALWAY: My Lords, in the absence of my noble Friend (the Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham) he has asked me to put the question which stands in his name. I will not detain your Lordships by adding any remarks of my own, but simply ask the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to a statement in the Evening News and Post of the 29th ultimo, and to a letter in the Globe of the same date, relative to an alleged water famine at Port of Spain; whether it is a fact that the existing water supply was condemned by Dr. de Montbrun, as causing dysentery and other infectious diseases, as far back as 24th July, 1887; whether the water, in consequence of its insufficiency,
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  has now to be shut off at the mains all night; and if the fires of the 11th and 15th February this year were not attended with great loss of life and property owing to want of water to extin-tinguish them; whether the Director of Public Works for Trinidad, Mr. Tanner, did not on 1st December, 1890, lay on the Table of the Legislative Assembly plans for ensuring a full supply of pure water to Port of Spain; whether anything further has been done in the matter; and if the Secretary of State will avail himself of Mr. Tanner's presence in England to take, in concert with him, such steps as may be necessary to have Port of Spain provided with water?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Lord KNUTSFORD): My attention has been called to the statements in question. I have to state that I am informed that Dr. de Montbrun, a medical practitioner in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in a letter of the 24th of July, 1889 (not 1887, as stated in the question) did express an opinion that the quality of the water supplied was the cause of dysentery. I am informed by the Director of Public Works in Trinidad that in 1889, during an abnormally dry season, it was necessary to shut off the water at the main during the night, but that this was not done in 1890, nor has it been done in the present year, as far as my informant knows. I have no official information as to the alleged want of water for extinguishing the recent fires at Port of Spain alluded to in the question. A statement to that effect was made in the newspapers, but it was immediately contradicted by the Acting Director of Public Works in the colony. It is true that a Report of the Director of Public Works was laid upon the Table of the Legislative Council on the 1st of December, 1890, submitting a scheme for an additional water supply to Port of Spain at an estimated cost of £106,000, but I am not aware whether any action was taken on that Report. I will call for information on the subject, but I need not tell your Lordships that it is for the Legislature and Government of Trinidad to take such steps as they may think right in the matter.

SLANDER OF WOMEN BILL.—(No. III.)
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read, and discharged.
PRESUMPTION OF LIFE LIMITATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.—(No. 104.)
Read 2a (according to order), and committed to a Committee of the whole House to-morrow.
LAW AGENTS (SCOTLAND) BILL. (No. 97.)
House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without Amendment; and re-committed to the Standing Committee.
EVIDENCE BILL [H.L.]—(No. 119.)
Read 3a (according to order); Amendments made; Bill passed and sent to the Commons.

NEWFOUNDLAND FISHERIES BILL.(No. 122.)
THIRD READING.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading, read.
LORD HERSCHELL: My Lords, there is one matter to which I wish to call your Lordships' attention. I find that the delegates sent over here from Newfoundland not unnaturally feel somewhat aggrieved at the view which has found expression in many newspapers in this country, that in the proposals which they made, and which were referred to in the last stage but one of the Bill before the House, they were withdrawing from the proposals which they had made in the first instance. Entertaining, as I do, a very strong view that any such charge against the delegates is unfounded, I think it is only right that I should publicly express that view. I am not going into the controversy as to what was the meaning or the true interpretation of the expression which they used in the offer originally made by the delegates—as to whether they indicated the passing of permanent or temporary measures. On the last occasion I expressed my opinion upon that subject. I did not, of course, intend for a moment to suggest that the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Colonies did not understand the proposal in a different sense, but of this I am quite certain: that there is no ground whatever for the conclusion that the delegates are not stating what is perfectly correct when they say that they intend in that proposal to refer to temporary legislation, and that they
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certainly so understood the proposal they made; and I do not think any candid person can dispute that they may well and reasonably have so understood that proposal, inasmuch as it was so understood by myself and those of my noble Friends with whom I have been in communication on the subject. If we so understood it—if that was the interpretation which we put upon it, coming to the question without preconceived opinions, it certainly cannot for a moment be justifiably suggested that the delegates did not mean and intend that which by many was understood to be the true meaning and construction of the language they used. I am not on the present occasion proposing to reopen the question as to which interpretation is correct, but whatever view is taken upon that point it cannot be suggested that the delegates are not now adhering to the proposals which they intended to make, and believed that they did make, using language which might reasonably be understood to mean what they wished to express when they were first heard at the Bar of your Lordships' House. I think it is only right, inasmuch as they naturally feel sore at the statements which have appeared in many newspapers that they are departing from their word, that I should publicly make that statement. I do not propose to enter further into the controversy upon this question, because if I understand aright, the situation has been materially changed in one respect since the matter was last before your Lordships' House. At the time of the last discussion the noble Marquess suggested that there was no-warrant for our taking the view that the delegates were the absolute representatives of the Legislature of Newfoundland and that even such proposals as they might have accepted might none the less not be accepted by the Legislature of Newfoundland. As I say, the situation is materially changed since then, because, as I understand it, the Legislature of Newfoundland have indicated by a vote-that they are prepared to carry out such legislation as the delegates propose. But I understand that a communication from the delegates to the Colonial Office either has been sent in the course of this afternoon or is now on its way—I am not sure which, and in either case it obviously would be unreasonable that I

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should press Her Majesty's Government for any expression of opinion upon this proposal on the present occasion. If they have not seen it, it would be impossible for them to make any communication, and if it had only recently come to their hands it would be equally unreasonable that they should be asked to give an expression of opinion upon a matter which they might quite properly say required some careful consideration. Therefore I do not press Her Majesty's Government, even if they have received these proposals, for an expression of opinion upon them. All I urge upon the noble Lord and upon Her Majesty's Government is this. Let me say, in the first instance, that I do not know what these proposals are. It would be the greatest possible satisfaction to me, and I believe to all your Lordships, if these proposals were such as Her Majesty's Government might find themselves able to accept; but even if they should not be such as they could accept in all respects, as to which I express no opinion, I do most seriously and earnestly impress upon Her Majesty's Government not to put them aside as unacceptable, and so put an end to any attempt to arrive at an understanding. I hope even if they are not considered acceptable that, at all events, the Government may make an endeavour as far as possible to meet the wishes and views of the delegates, and to arrive at a settlement which will secure legislation in Newfoundland instead of the legislation proposed by this Bill. I do so, not only in the interest of our relations with the colony, but in the interest of a satisfactory settlement of this question in all respects, because I am quite certain that even if Her Majesty's Government do not get all they might think should be accorded by the Newfoundland Legislature, yet on the other hand they must see that if they can secure the means of enforcing the Treaty at present existing by legislation in Newfoundland they are much more likely to be able to effect the object they have in view by acting in that way in harmony with the Newfoundland Legislature and Government than by acting in opposition to them, and by forcing this legislation through in this country, even if they might think that in some respects such legislation would be more
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satisfactory than the legislation proposed by the colonists. It is eminently a case in which every possible consideration and regard should be shown to the colony, consistently with the duties imposed upon Her Majesty's Government. I have no reason to suppose that they will not be willing to show that consideration and regard for those who represent the colony of Newfoundland, and I think that every endeavour should be made to come to an understanding which will bring about a harmonious rather than a hostile settlement.
LORD KNUTSFORD: My Lords, I need scarcely say I regret that any misapprehension should have arisen with regard to the proposal of the delegates, and I should feel especial regret if the misapprehension had arisen from any failure on my part to make clear the decision and views of Her Majesty's Government. I will not dwell upon the point any longer, except to accept the statement which the noble and learned Lord has made, that the delegates from the first only intended to propose that a temporary Act should be passed. The delegates are now, however, aware of the position and views of Her Majesty's Government. I have not seen any proposals that have been sent in to-day, nor am I aware whether any have yet been received at the Colonial Office, but of course every consideration will be given to those proposals. I confess that I have spoken somewhat in vain in this House, and that others who represent Her Majesty's Government have spoken in vain, if we have not succeeded in assuring your Lordships and in convincing the noble and learned Lord that we have every desire to meet the wishes of the colonists, that we have made every effort to do so, and that we are not, therefore, liable to the kind of lecture which the noble and learned Lord has just given us. He has assumed, on the part of the colonists, that we have endeavoured to keep them at arm's length, whereas the very reverse is the case. We have endeavoured at every stage to meet them; all their proposals have been carefully considered; and we most heartily desire that they should pass legislation, and free us from the necessity of proceeding with this Imperial Bill. As regards this special measure, I must observe that throughout all the attacks that have

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been made upon Her Majesty's Government in this respect no reference has been made to the clause now standing as Section 3, which is a protection to the independence of the Colonial Legislature. That has never been sufficiently recognised. We have earnestly desired to keep that independence secure by giving the colonists, at any time, power to suspend the Imperial legislation by passing themselves a measure sufficient to secure the performance of those international obligations by which they, as well as this country, are bound.
THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I had not the slightest wish to make any further remarks upon this subject, but I cannot pass over in silence the remarks of the noble Lord opposite, which I confess I have heard with some pain. The noble Lord talks about my noble and learned Friend having administered a lecture, which, I am sure, was not in the least his intention, and he spoke—which I cannot concur in—of the thoroughly conciliatory attitude of the Government. I had no wish to say a word more on the subject, but as he challenges us upon it I feel bound to say that I think the attitude of the Government has been the reverse of conciliatory. I do not say it in regard to this country, but to the colony; and for this reason: The colony propose legislation which would have met, in my opinion, the whole difficulty; the Government, however, replied peremptorily to that, and demanded permanent legislation. I cannot for a moment see how it can be claimed, on behalf of the Government, that that is a conciliatory attitude. It may be a wise attitude; it may be a prudent attitude; it may be that they are right in the arguments that they have used, but that they have adopted a conciliatory attitude I cannot agree. What we complain of on the part of Her Majesty's Government is that while they have quite rightly intimated to the colony that it is impossible there should not be legislation for the purpose of carrying into effect the Treaty, they have not, since the delegates have put their proposals before them, shown the desire, which I should have thought they would have shown, to come to some agreement with the colony. I must say they have shown, what I ventured on a former occasion to deprecate, that is, a certain
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amount of ill-temper. I say it deliberately—a certain amount of ill-humour on account of the persistent refusal of the Newfoundland Legislature to meet Her Majesty's Government on former occasions. I do not agree with the position which the Newfoundlanders took up. I think it would have been wiser on their part if they had met Her Majesty's Government at the time in a more conciliatory spirit. All that I quite concur in, but I believe we all admit they have very strong grounds of irritation, not against Her Majesty's Government, but on account of the Treaty to the provisions of which they are subject, and although they may have shown a want of conciliatory feeling in the past, that is no reason why we should visit them with punishment in regard to what ought now to be looked upon as by-gones. I will repeat, even though I may be said to be lecturing, which is not at all my intention, that it is in the interests of this country, and of our relations with France, and that it is also in the interest of Her Majesty's Government themselves, that, if possible by any means, this legislation should not be forced upon the colonists. The result, it is quite clear, will be that if the colonists are to have this legislation—and I am not saying that this is yet decided — forced upon them, we shall have to enforce the Treaty against the colonists when they are in a state of great irritation, and I am sure the noble Lord must see that will be a real disadvantage to us; and it is for that reason, and not merely as an advocate of the Newfoundland colonists, which is not a part which I wish to play, but in the interests of Her Majesty's Government itself, that I and those who are with me urge that the Government might have shown a more conciliatory attitude towards the colonists.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I think it necessary to say a few words after—what shall I call it?—the exhortation from the noble Lord opposite. I will not call it a lecture, though he has told us of our hostility and our ill-temper.
THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: I did not use the word "hostility."
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not know whether, if the noble and learned Lord was invested with the right of lec-

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turing us on Sundays, he could have spoken much more frankly than he has done. But it is not the question whether the noble and learned Lord's rhetorical compositions are to be classed an lectures or not: the question is, whether Her Majesty's Government have deserved any such blame as that which both the noble Lords have imputed to them?
LORD HERSCHELL: I beg the noble Marquess's pardon. I imputed, in the whole of my observations, no blame as to the past; I only expressed a strong hope that something might be done in the future.
LORD KNUTSFORD: If you did not impute, you assumed it.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I should have thought that the noble Lord's language would hardly have been relevant unless there was some presumption that we needed a repetition of the very obvious moral maxims which he has used. When you repeat the Ten Commandments in an emphatic tone to anybody you rather impute that the Ten Commandments have not been observed by that person, and that, I think, was rather the tone in which the noble Lord spoke to us, though there was nothing at all novel presented to us, or beyond the power of the most limited capacity, which would prevent our discovering such moral guidance for ourselves. I repeat that the two noble Lords, by presumption or by direct statement, have imputed to us that we have not acted in a conciliatory spirit towards the Newfoundland colonists. I am not aware of any action on our part to which that language can be applied. I am sure that it would not be wrong to say that our patience through years of negotiation has been exemplary. We tried every device of negotiation we could conceive in order to bring about an arrangement between the colonists and the French Government. At their request we laid proposals before the French Government, which we knew it was perfectly impossible the French Government could accept. We did all we could to give full expression to their wishes, and to convince them that the difficulty in which they found themselves, and which we always recognised very heartily, was one which it was not in our power to get rid of. Then, when
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it came to the necessity for a Bill, we had to choose, to find a path, to consider how we should combine what we believed would be the utmost possible consideration for the colony with the observance of our plain international obligations, and the avoidance of the dangers and hazards which nobody in this or the other House of Parliament would be anxious we should incur. What we have said is that legislation must be passed by a certain time, and we have already strained that time to the utmost. At this very moment acts are going on upon the coast of Newfoundland which France challenges as illegal and a breach of Treaties. I do not suppose that the French Government will make any exaggerated or extravagant representations on that head, but that is the fact at the present moment. Our officers have been deprived of all power of interfering for the protection of the Treaties; they are under instructions to report, but, so far as interference with British subjects goes, not to act. It is impossible that we can allow that state of things to go on for an unlimited time. We feel it is absolutely necessary to bring it to a close. If the Newfoundland Legislature will give us the powers we desire, I quite recognise that would be a much more satisfactory mode of doing it than by our taking the powers here at Westminster; but a pressure for a permanent Act is due not to the motives which the noble and learned Lord was kind enough to suggest, not to any anger, provocation, or ill-temper, to which he was pleased to say it was due, but to our feeling of the international hazard involved in the contrary course. Anyone who knows the ways of the British Parliament, the difficulty of getting Bills through the House of Commons, and the way some sudden storm of political disturbance will sweep across the country and prevent the attention of Parliament, even to pressing matters of foreign interest, will know that it is not a safe plan to put ourselves in such a position that for a considerable number of months it would be entirely out of our power to fulfil our international obligations. Again, I say, if the French Government remains what the French Government now is, I do not apprehend that we shall have to look for any unfriendly construc-

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tion of difficulties which may arise on that account. But a consideration which I cannot put aside, and which I entreat noble Lords to reflect upon for themselves, is that we cannot assume that any of these conditions around us are permanent, and that circumstances may not place us in a position of difficulty and even of peril, if we have not always the power of observing what we have acknowledged to be our international obligations. Therefore it does seem to me that we require something more than a temporary Act, an Act which is only to be renewed on the condition that an agreement is come to in the meantime on some very difficult questions regarding compensation and tribunals which the Newfoundland Legislature has placed before us. We shall be exceedingly glad to consider the suggestions which the delegates have made, and we shall make great efforts to come to an agreement with them upon those two subjects. What we do not like is to make our power of fulfilling our international obligations contingent on any accidents which may arise, and upon our obtaining power upon those two points. That is our desire, and against that we must guard. I utterly repudiate the construction put upon our conduct by noble Lords who say that it was influenced by any spirit of ill-temper or (hostility towards the colonists. We are anxious by every means in our power to make their position, which we admit to be difficult and disagreeable, as tolerable as possible. We are anxious to consult their feelings and sympathies as far as we can, but we do claim from Parliament the power of fulfilling our international obligations.
LORD DENMAN: My Lords, it has often been my duty to point out the inconvenience of Resolutions interfering with legislation, and on this question arbitration is extremely inconvenient, because all arbitrations are necessarily lengthy. For 12 years it was my duty to arrange for conducting all arbitrations from the Court of Queen's Bench, and I may mention, perhaps, my method of procedure. My first step was to get together the counsel engaged, and see that they were exactly agreed upon what was the subject of reference. However, though the delays of arbitration
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may be objectionable, I think a little delay would be a good thing on this occasion, and upon the Motion that the Bill do pass, I propose to move that the Bill do pass this day month.
LORD NORTON: My Lords, I must express my own opinion that it is most unpatriotic of the two noble Lords opposite to make this accusation of the want of conciliatory spirit on the part of the Government towards the delegates from Newfoundland. The noble and learned Lord (Lord Herschell) made the accusation by way of insinuation—by way of giving advice to the Government to act in a friendly spirit. The noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) made his attack more directly, and said there had been an unfriendly spirit shown. If it had been true it was unpatriotic to say so. What object could the noble Lords opposite have had in throwing out that insinuation here publicly except to impress the delegates in the first place with the idea that there had been something unconciliatory in the action of the Government towards them; and, in the second place, which is still more dangerous and unpatriotic, to create that impression in the minds of the colonists at the critical moment of a most difficult and delicate question—a question of the greatest possible importance for the interests of the colony, and as regards the foreign relations of this country. But I deny that there is any ground whatever for this insinuation. The Legislature of the colony was called upon from time to time to legislate themselves in the matter, and it was not until they absolutely refused to legislate that the Government came forward with the necessary Bill—for an empowering Act must be passed by one or the other. I repeat that it was not until the colony had refused to act that the Government came forward with their Bill, and then only presenting it as a provisional measure while still pressing them to act, and stating that the Imperial Act was only brought forward as an absolute necessity, telling them—" If you will not yourselves act within a certain time there must be action on the part of the Imperial Government." I have no doubt that there may have been irritation felt on the part of the colonists from the galling annoyance

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caused them by the provisions of the Treaty. But that was not irritation against this country. It arose, as I say, from the difficulties arising from the observance of a Treaty more than a century old, which had become obsolete, and some of the provisions of which were very galling to them. They knew that we were doing all we could on our part, and that we were as anxious as they were to remove that difficulty. They could feel no irritation against us, though they felt a natural irritation at the Treaty which we were doing our utmost to alter, and which they knew we were doing our utmost to modify, in their interests. But, after all, how could it possibly have been the object of Her Majesty's Government, or of anybody else in this country, to act in an unconciliatory spirit while trying to co-operate with the colonists in removing the difficulties arising out of the Treaty? It was our object as much as theirs to remove them; we have acted together for that purpose; and it is quite as much to our interest as to theirs that they should be removed. I do sincerely hope that it will not go out to the delegates or to the colonists that there is any foundation whatever for the insinuation which I think has been most unpatriotically thrown out against the Government on this occasion.
On Question, agreed to; Bill read 3a accordingly, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

STATUTE LAW REVISION BILL [H.L.] (No. 77.)
Read 3a (according to order); Amendments made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.
TRUSTS AMENDMENT (SCOTLAND) BILL.—(No. 108.)
House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without Amendment; and re-committed to the Standing Committee.
HERRING BRANDING (NORTHUMBERLAND) BILL.—(No. 92.)
Read 2a (according to order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House to morrow.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Ordered, That the Evening Sitting of the House to-morrow do commence at half-past Four o'clock.
House adjourned at Seven o'clock, till to-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.