Sitting of 24 April 1893

ARMY ANNUAL BILL.—(No. 266.)
Lords' Amendments considered.
Page 4, line 4, sub-section 1, leave out 21, and insert 14.
*MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that this Amendment, which has been introduced in another place, has been introduced with the idea of making the words of the Bill, when it becomes an Act, exactly consonant with

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what I gave the House to understand would be the practice of the Department. I said, as was evidently the intention of the Bill, that the commanding officer should have power to give punishment to the extent of 21 days, but that a Circular would be issued directing that that power should be restricted for the present to 14 days. Exception has been taken in another place to the very idea of the Secretary of State for War, although he is responsible for the discipline of the Army under him, interfering, as it is said, with an Act of Parliament. But I am afraid that that is an operation that goes on every day, because the Queen's Regulations in many instances lay down directions for commanding officers and others responsible for discipline, always within the limit laid down by law. What was proposed to be done was strictly within the powers given by Parliament, and it was thought desirable to make the restriction in the meantime at the commencement of the new arrangement. The House of Lords have thought that it was undesirable, and they have made this change, substituting 14 for 21. It is, I admit, in the direction of the general sentiment on the subject in many parts of the House of Commons when the Bill was before us; and at all events, even if I were disposed in any way to dispute the action of the House of Lords, there is no time to do it now, because this Bill requires to become law before the end of the week. Therefore, as there is no time for further disputation in the matter, I invite the House of Commons to agree with the Lords' Amendment.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree to the Lords' Amendment."—(Mr. Campbell-Bannerman.)
MR. HANBURYsaid, he would like to call the attention of the House to the way in which, the right hon. Gentleman persisted in trying to pass a Bill which was of such enormous importance to the Army. The Bill had been hardly considered in this House, and the right hon. Gentleman would admit that on both sides of the House a good deal of information with regard to the Bill had been brought out at the last moment, and one of the pupils who learned the lesson most quickly was the
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right hon. Gentleman himself. What did the right hon. Gentleman now do? A most important Amendment was introduced in another place; and without any warning whatever, without any Notice on the Paper, at a time which was certainly most unusual—when Members came down expecting Private Business to be discussed—the right hon. Gentleman, on this the second occasion when the Bill was before the House, again attempted to rush it through. He could only say that he was perfectly content to wipe his hands of the whole affair, because he did not think it was the proper way to deal with such an important Bill. It was utterly impossible, without any information whatever before them, without any Notice that the Bill was to be discussed, to discuss it properly on the present occasion. All they could do, as he would do, was to move that the House do not agree with the Lords' Amendment.
Amendment proposed, "That this House do not agree to the Lords' Amendment."—(Mr. Hanbury.)
*MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Perhaps I may be allowed to explain that the course taken is precisely the usual and ordinary course, and I have not departed in any respect from the practice of the House. This particular Amendment which has been introduced in another place is in the direction of a good deal of what the hon. Member himself said.
*MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid, he would like, if he were in Order, to move an Amendment to the Lords' Amendment. He would like to substitute seven days for 14.
*MR. SPEAKER: The Question is that the House do agree with the Lords. The course for the hon. Gentleman to take is to negative the proposition.
COLONEL E. HUGHESsaid, he saw no reason whatever to disagree with the Lords' Amendment, and he supported the proposition.
*COLONEL HOWARD VINCENTthought it would be advantageous for the Army to have 14 days substituted for21. He would like the right hon. Gentleman to tell them whether he proposed now to issue any Memorandum, or whether this Amendment, if agreed to by the House, would prevent any necessity for issuing a Memorandum,

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He fully agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Preston as to the course which had been taken without Notice being given to the House.
MR. DUNBAR BARTONsaid, some people had clearly expressed the opinion that these disciplinary changes which had been introduced into the Army Bill without explanation as to their immediate cause were due to the necessity the Government felt as to extra discipline in case the War Office had to use British troops in Ulster. It was the only explanation he had heard, but he did not say that he admitted it himself. He should certainly support his hon. Friends in any course they might take, because he thought they ought to know what was the reason for these strict disciplinary changes.
COLONEL R. GUNTERconsidered that the increased power given to the commanding officer would add very much to his position, and save a great number of small courts martial.
Lords' Amendment agreed to.
Lords' Amendment, Clause 10, Subsection-3, to leave out Sub-section 3.
*MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: This is a purely consequential Amendment.
Lords' Amendment agreed to.
On another Amendment dealing with the hearing of evidence.
*MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANsaid: The words as they stood might have been read as implying that the commanding officers should first give his decision, and then hear the evidence. This makes it more plain.
MR. HANBURYcomplained that these Amendments were not printed, and thought the right hon. Gentleman was rather transgressing the ordinary Rules of the House, as there was no information before them.
*MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid, it was abundantly clear that the right hon. Gentleman did not himself understand the Amendments, and he suggested that he should lay them in some shape before the House.
*MR. SPEAKER: The right hon. Gentleman has not departed from the usual practice.
Question put, and agreed to.

QUESTIONS.

  COMPENSATION TO WORKMEN FOR INJURIES.
  COLONEL HUGHES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Government is exempt from any liability under the existing Acts of Parliament to compensate workmen for injury caused to them in their employment; and, if so, whether the Government will be prepared to waive their present discretion to compensate, or not to compensate, as they deem fit, and to place themselves in this respect in the same position as other employers of labour under the Bill now before the House?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. ASQUITH,): The answer to the first question is in the affirmative. As to the second question, the Crown cannot be sued, as other employers can, by third persons for injuries caused by the negligence of its workmen. The principle of the Bill is to place workmen, in this respect, in the same position as third persons. The Government have received, so far as I am aware, no representations from their workmen asking for a change of the law. Under the circumstances, as at present advised, I am not prepared to propose that the law shall be altered in the manner suggested.

  SOLDIERS' CLOTHING AND PENSIONS.
  MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War when the soldier will be allowed to dispose of his time-worn clothing on discharge, and when the increase of the number of special pensions for Crimean and Mutiny veterans will be carried out, as proposed in the Army Estimate statement?
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. CAMPBELL - BANNERMAN,): When the arrangements now proposed are finally approved, the clothing in question supplied from and after January 1 last will become the property of the soldier. As regards the special pensions, the extent to which the increase can be carried has not yet been finally settled.

  VOLUNTEER BADGES.
  COLONEL HUGHES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the question of granting some distinctive badge to Volunteers below commissioned rank for 20 years' efficient service is in contemplation; and, if not, will the Government give the question its early consideration?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I can only repeat what I have already told the House—that the matter is under my consideration.

  FRIENDLY SOCIETY REGULATIONS.
  COLONEL HUGHES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether complaints have reached him that the practice whereby alterations of rules in Friendly Societies have to be declared before a Police Magistrate causes loss of time to officers of Friendly Societies in the Metropolis who, in the middle of the day, have to wait for hours among the frequenters of Police Courts to make a formal declaration; and whether he sees any objection to the declaration being made before any Magistrate, or before a Commissioner to administer oaths?
  MR. ASQUITH: No complaints have been received on the subject referred to by the hon. Member. There is no law or regulation requiring a declaration to be made at a Police Court, and not before a Justice of Peace or Commissioner of Oaths, and I understand that no such requirement is ever made by the Registrar of Friendly Societies.

  WAGES AT WOOLWICH.
  COLONEL HUGHES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state what is the present position of the question of raising the Government labourers' wages at Woolwich to a minimum of 6d. an hour; and whether any alteration made will date from April 1, as was the case under the late Government?
  CAPTAIN BOWLES: On the same subject I beg to ask if the Government contemplate introducing a minimum rate of pay of 6d. an hour in the War Office Departments at Enfield and Woolwich?
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. WOODALL,): The work of analysing and tabulating the rates of wages paid in the various Government Departments is well advanced, and it is hoped that conclusions may be arrived at shortly. I may add that the hon. Member has no sufficient grounds for assuming that any specific minimum rate has ever been accepted by the Government.

  THE NEW BATTLE COLLIERY EXPLOSION.
  MR. A. C. MORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that another accident has occurred at the New Battle Collieries, Midlothian, resulting in the death of James Lynch, who was boiled or steamed to death while cleaning out a boiler, there being no person in charge of the boiler at the time he was doing this dangerous work; and whether he proposes to hold a public inquiry?
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Sir G. TREVELYAN,): There has been a full inquiry into the circumstances attending this unfortunate case, both by the police and by the Inspector of Mines. The Report of the Inspector of Mines is made to the Home Office, and any question regarding it should be addressed to that Department. The ease is not one of a character with respect to which a Commission for a public inquiry has ever been issued under the existing law; but such a case would be made the subject of a public inquiry under the Bill which, as the hon. Member is aware, will shortly be introduced.
  MR. A. C. MORTON: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell me the date of the inquiries by the police and the Procurator Fiscal?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: I have not the dates here, but I will supply them to the hon. Member.

  TRIAL BY JURY IN ASSAM.
  MR. PAUL: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for India whether, since the year 1862, all cases committed to the Court of Session in the six districts of the Province of Assam into which trial by jury was then introduced have been tried by jury; whether the great proportion of cases

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  committed to the Sessions were cases of murder and culpable homicide; whether the Governor General in Council by a letter of the 25th August, 1892, suggested to Mr. Ward, the Chief Commissioner, that these cases should be withdrawn from juries; whether any other cases previously triable by juries have also been withdrawn; whether the Chief Commissioner has given effect to the Governor General's proposals by issuing any Notification; whether the Governor General in Council has made similar proposals to the Governor of Bombay to limit the operation of trial by jury, and whether that Government has issued any Notification; and whether the Notifications, if any, issued by the Chief Commissioner of Assam, limiting the operation of trial by jury will be reconsidered by the Government of India now that the similar Notification published by the Government of Bengal has been cancelled with the approval of the Government of India?
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir E. GREY,): My hon. Friend has asked me to reply to this question. From 1862 to 1868 all criminal cases were triable by jury in the Assam Valley districts; from the latter year trial by jury was restricted to the same classes of cases as were so triable in Bengal. The statistics in the possession of the Secretary of State do not enable him to answer the second question of my hon. Friend. The answer to the third, fourth, and fifth questions is, Yes. A similar suggestion was made by the Government of India to the Government of Bombay, but the latter Government have not issued any Notification on the subject. As the Bengal Notification has been cancelled, the Secretary of State has no doubt that the Assam Notification has been, or will shortly be, also withdrawn. If an early Gazette does not show that this has been done, the attention of the Government of India will be called to the matter.

  FERROL HARBOUR.
  MR. GOURLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether a fresh survey has been made by British naval officers of the approaches as well as the inside of Ferrol Harbour,
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  in conjunction with or independent of Spanish officers; and can he state how far the result of the new survey corresponds with, or differs from, the chart in use, at the point where the Howe stranded?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. E. ROBERTSON,): The surroundings taken by officers of the Channel Squadron, by permission of the Spanish Authorities for the purposes of the Court Martial, are given on the chart attached to the papers in the Howe case, which is now in the hands of hon. Members. The chart will furnish the best reply to the second part of the hon. Member's question.

  H.M.S. "HOWE."
  MR. GOURLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will be good enough to state what Report he has received relative to the extent of damages, external and internal, sustained by the battle-ship Howe; whether the vessel is being docked by the salvage contractors or under the control of the Admiralty, and whether she is to be brought home for repairs by Admiralty or hired tug; and can he also state the probable cost of temporary repairs?
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: The injuries to the bottom of the Howe are reported as severe, but that there are no grounds to suppose that the ship is seriously strained. The Howe was not docked by the salvage contractors, and she will he brought home by the Admiralty. The probable cost of the temporary repairs is not yet reported.

  THE AYRSHIRE FISHERY.
  SIR HERBERT MAXWELL (Wigton): I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware of the serious damage caused to the herring fishing on the Ayrshire coast by reason of the refusal of the Fishery Board to prohibit seine-net trawling cast of a line drawn from the Island of Cumbrae to Ailsa Craig, as repeatedly petitioned for by the fishermen of Girvan and Ballantrae; whether his attention has been called to the progressive decrease in the number of herrings lauded at Girvan, as shown by the Harbourmaster's books, and if it is correctly stated as follows: From 12th July, 1888, to 12th July,

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  1889, 8,415 crans; from 12th. July, 1889, to 12th July, 1890, 8,284 crans; from 12th July, 1890, to 12th July, 1891, 5,724 crans; from 12th July, 1891, to 12th July, 1892, 3,044 crans; from 12th July, 1892, to 1st April, 1893, 472 crans; and whether, in view of the poverty suffered in consequence of this state of things among the Ayrshire fishermen, he will direct inquiry to be made into the means which may he taken to remedy it? I wish to explain that I regret the phraseology of the first paragraph seems to imply a charge against the officials of the Fishery Board; but I have no desire it should bear such a construction.
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: The statistics given in the last paragraph of the hon. Member's question, showing the decline of the herring fishing off the coast of Ayrshire, are substantially correct. As regards the main part of the question, I have to state that in response to a request made by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire, the Chairman of the Fishery Board held an inquiry on the 24th January last, at Girvan, as to the seine-net fishing on the Ayrshire coast, and submitted a Report thereon to the Board on the 9th February. If the hon. Member wishes, I shall be glad to show him a copy of the Report, and a subsequent Memorandum which I have received from the Fishery Board. The Board are still doing everything in their power to enable them to come to a definite conclusion regarding this vexed question, both by collecting statistics and making local inquiries as to the effect of seine-net fishing on the supply of herrings; but they consider that they would not be justified in interfering as regards seine-net fishing until they are able to obtain some definite information which will give reasonable expectation that beneficial results would follow their action. In this view I entirely concur.

  THE ARMENIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS.
  MR. FRANCIS STEVENSON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the recently promulgated amnesty of the Sultan, releasing the Armenian political prisoners, will be extended to the Archbishops of Marash and Zeitoum, the Bishop of Moush, and the clergy and schoolmasters who have
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  been imprisoned after an irregular trial; and, if not, whether Her Majesty's Government will use its good offices on their behalf?
  *SIR E. GREY: The amnesty was in favour of a number of Armenians who had been arrested on suspicion, and does not, so far as we know, apply to persons who have been tried and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Her Majesty's Ambassador, as I stated on the 20th March, made unofficial representations on behalf of the Archbishops; but their sentences have been confirmed by the Court of Cassation, and can only be remitted by the Sultan.
  MR. FRANCIS STEVENSON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government will direct that the approaching trials of the Armenian prisoners in Angora shall be attended by a Representative of the British Embassy or by a Consular officer specially deputed for the purpose?
  *SIR E. GREY: It is not proposed to send a Diplomatic or Consular officer specially to Angora; but Mr. Newton, the Vice Consul, who resides there, will be instructed to report upon the trials of the Armenian prisoners.

  RIFLE RANGES IN THE MIDLANDS.
  MR. BILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware of the great inconvenience suffered for several years past by the troops stationed at Lichfield, and by the Militia regiments which assemble there for annual training, owing to the delay in the provision of a suitable musketry range; and whether he will take early steps for establishing an accessible range, either on Cannock Chase or elsewhere in the neighbourhood?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: A suitable musketry range is much required for Lichfield and other stations in the Midlands. One has been inspected on Cannock Chase, but I am afraid its acquisition would be costly, and I cannot, therefore, intimate any decision on the subject.
  MR. BILL: Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to communicate to him some information I have on the subject?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I shall be very much obliged to the hon. Gentleman if he will do so.

  GUN AMMUNITION CARRIAGES.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the Service is provided with some gun carriages so constructed as to carry not only the gun but a considerable supply of ammunition; if so, how long is it since this carriage was introduced, and how many such carriages have been provided for the Service; whether such carriage's are exclusively made for small machine guns, and whether cordite powder is specially used for these guns; whether, when the ammunition-box is wholly or nearly empty, the shake and jar during the movement of the carriage, arising from the diminished weight, are so great that they tend to produce displacement of the delicate parts of the mechanism of the gun; and whether, if such is the case, steps will be taken to obviate for the future the possibility of injury to the parts referred to, and derangement of the mechanism of the gun?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: About 50 of the carriages referred to have been issued to Cavalry and Infantry since the year 1888. They are exclusively for small machine guns; and no complaint of the nature indicated in the question has been received. These carriages will be gradually replaced by others of a later pattern, carrying the Maxim gun.

  RICHMOND PRISON, DUBLIN.
  MR. MAURICE HEALY: In the absence of the hon. Member for North Louth, I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the War Department, by obtaining Richmond Prison, Dublin, for a barracks, has obtained buildings and several acres of land on which admittedly the Dublin Corporation spent over £100,000; whether the War Department are now in dispute with the Dublin Corporation over the lands at the Pigeon House Fort, alleged to be affected by the proposed main drainage scheme; what is the amount of compensation demanded by the War Department from the Corporation on account of the Pigeon House Lands; and why is the value of the new Wellington
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  Barracks, which the War Department obtained at the expense of the ratepayers of Dublin, omitted from consideration in the discussion?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: According to a Return recently made to Parliament, the capital expenditure by the Corporation of Dublin on the Richmond Bridewell was £66,890. The Return shows also an amount expended on repairs, but this cannot be reckoned as part of the value. There is no dispute with the Corporation as to its main drainage scheme; but the Act requires that, before the Corporation can carry it out, the Secretary of State must give his approval to it, and that approval would be contingent on nothing being proposed which would be injurious to the healthiness of Pigeon House Fort. The subject has been referred to, and is still under the consideration of the Army Sanitary Committee, and it is premature to assume that any demand for compensation will arise. I may add that I have every desire to assist the Corporation in attaining an object so beneficial to the health of Dublin. There is no immediate connection between the drainage scheme and the acquisition of the Richmond Prison for the Wellington Barracks. The Corporation, I am advised, has no legal claim in regard to its disused prison. Even if it had, the value would be little beyond that of the land, for the old buildings have been to only a very small extent applicable to the new service.

  COMMERCIAL TREATIES WITH THE UNITED STATES.
  COLONEL HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if there is any foundation for the statement of Dalziel's Agency that President Cleveland proposes to abrogate the 12 Treaties lately concluded by the United States with foreign countries, and providing for the admission of American goods either duty free or at a reduction of 25 per cent. on the duties levied on British goods in reciprocity for admission to the American market?
  *SIR E. GREY: We have not received any intelligence to this effect.

  HAULBOWLINE VICTUALLING STORES.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he is aware that some men working at the Haulbowline Victualling Stores only receive 12s. and 13s. a week; and if he would consider the justice of equalising their pay with that of the men who are similarly employed in England, or of at least granting them the rate of wages paid to the dockyard labourers at Haulbowline?
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: There is only one labourer in the Victualling Yard at Haulbowline in receipt of the rate of pay mentioned, and he gets a Government cottage, free of rent, in addition to his wages.

  TRADE THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL.
  MR. STERN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he would have any objection to supply a Return, in continuation of that granted in 1883, with regard to the trade from the East through the Suez Canal?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. MUNDELLA,): Such a Return is nearly complete, and it will be sent to the printers early next week.

  IRISH CUSTOMS DUTIES.
  MR. A. O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the amount of the Customs Duties collected in Ireland by Excise officers in each of the last three years?
  *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W.HARCOURT,): The figures are as follows:—In 1890–91, £202,212; in 1891–92, £209,624; in 1892–93, £186,385.

  RAILWAY RATES FOR BRICKS.
  MR. NEWDIGATE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether it is within his knowledge that, in spite of the Railway Companies' statement that they were revising their rates so that the increase should in no case exceed 5 per cent., the rates on bricks sent out from the Nuneaton district show an average increase of 12½ per cent.; and whether
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  he will make any representation to the Railway Company on the subject?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I have received no complaint. But I have communicated the hon. Member's question to the Railway Association, but have not had time for a reply.

  RAILWAY RATES.
  SIR JAMES WHITEHEAD: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is now in a position to nominate the Members of the Select Committee on Railway Rates, and to state the terms of the Reference?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I have put the Notice of Motion and terms of Reference on the Notice Paper to-day. The Committee will be nominated in due course.

  KILLALOE SLATES.
  MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether certain Post Office buildings in Ireland require to be roofed; and will Killaloe slates be used in the Irish building contracts in his Department?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Sir J. T. HIBBERT,): I am informed that the tenders for the Post Office roofs alluded to were accepted a year ago on a specification which did not name Killaloe slates; but I may refer to my answer to the hon. Member for East Clare on the 24th March, in which I stated the present policy of the Board of Works with regard to these slates.

  RAILWAY STATION DEPARTMENTS.
  MR. AIRD: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider the desirability of taxing soap, pills, and other advertisements which are in common use in the Metropolis, the railway stations, and even in rural districts into which our railways travel?
  SIR. W. HARCOURT: It is not in contemplation at present to make any change in regard to duties on railway station advertisements; and, if it were, it could hardly be confined to soap and pills.

  GUERNSEY BARRACKS.
  MR. H. S. WRIGHT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether it is intended to build mar-

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  ried quarters for the troops stationed in the Citadel at Guernsey; and, if so, when will they be commenced; and will he state how many married non-commissioned officers and men are at present provided with two rooms; how many with one only; and how many of these rooms are situated on the landings or in the passages of the single men's rooms?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The provision of married quarters for the troops in the Guernsey Citadel will be commenced in about two months. There are, at present, no two-roomed quarters, but there are nine single rooms, live of which are on landings. None are in the passages referred to.

  PAUPER BURIALS.
  MR. MAURICE HEALY: In the absence of the hon. Member for North Louth, I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, by the practice of his Department, a clergyman, by reason of his receiving fees out of the poor rates of a parish for performing the service at the burial of paupers, is thereby disqualified from serving as a Poor Law Guardian of that parish under the provisions of the English Poor Law Amendment Act (5 & 6 Vic. c. 57, s. 14), which provides that no person receiving any fixed salary or emoluments from the poor rates in any parish or union shall be capable of serving as Guardian in such parish or union?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. H. H. FOWLER,): The question whether the receipt of fees for performing the service at the burial of paupers constitutes a disqualification for the office of Guardian came before the Local Government Board for their decision in 1873, and the Board then held that the receipt of these fees did not disqualify.

  THE NORFOLK LOBSTER FISHERIES.
  MR. COZENS-HARDY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the crab and lobster fisheries on the North Coast of Norfolk are in danger of being ruined for the want of regulation; whether an application from the Norfolk County Council for the creation of a sea fisheries district co-extensive with the natural boundaries of the crab and lobster
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  fisheries has been refused by the Board of Trade; and, if so, on what grounds; and whether the Board of Trade will reconsider the application, or take any measures for the protection of the fisheries?
  MR. MUNDELLA: I am aware that the fishermen on a portion of the Coast of Norfolk are desirous that a sea fisheries district should be created, which would include their own and other fisheries. As I understand, they had some difficulty in inducing the County Council of Norfolk to make the necessary application, which was not made until January last. It suggested an extremely limited area, and was, in some other respects, open to objection. The County Council were, however, informed that with their assistance an endeavour would be made to arrange with neighbouring interests for an enlargement of the proposed limits, and negotiations with this object were at once instituted and are now pending.

  THE HULL DOCKS STRIKE.
  MR. DARLING: I rise to ask the Home Secretary whether he can give the House any information as to the occurrence of the great fire at Hull, which has destroyed a large amount of material which would have afforded employment for a great number of the working classes; whether he can inform the House how that fire has arisen, and particularly whether it was an incendiary fire; and whether the Home Office has received any information on the subject?
  MR. ASQUITH: No, Sir; I am without any information except that which appears in the newspapers. I have caused inquiry to be made, and if the hon. and learned Gentleman will put the question down for to-morrow I will give him such information as I have.
  MR. KEIR HARDIE: I wish also to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question of which I have given him private Notice. It is whether the right hon. Gentleman has had his attention called to a resolution passed at a meeting of 30,000 workmen yesterday in Victoria Park, London, protesting against the Naval and Military Forces being used against law-abiding citizens and with the view of crushing the Unionists; and whether the Govern-

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  merit are now prepared to withdraw the Naval and Military Forces from Hull?
  MR. ASQUITH: I only received Notice of this question a few minutes ago, and in a matter of such importance I may fairly ask the hon. Member to put the question on the Paper.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  WAYS AND MEANS—FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

    COMMITTEE
    Considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W. HARCOURT,): Mr. Mellor,—Sir, in laying before the House the Financial Statement of the year, my first duty is to make as clear as I can to the Committee the financial balance-sheet of the year which concluded on March 31, 1893. The financial history of the last six years, which covered the term of the last Parliament, is remarkable and instructive. The right hon. Gentleman my Predecessor in Office, in his first Budget in 1887, had formed a gloomy anticipation of the immediate future of the Revenue, and he took measures accordingly. The Naval Estimates for that year and the next year were largely reduced. The fund set apart for the liquidation of the Debt was considerably diminished. Happily, however, those clouds which seem to have gathered in 1886–7 passed away, and a period of great financial prosperity immediately set in. The Revenue began almost immediately to rise on an ascending curve, which reached its summit level in 1890. The right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer was in possession for several years of handsome surpluses; but in 1891 symptoms of a less favourable kind supervened. The top having been reached, the Revenue began to flag, and the late Chancellor of the Exchequer found himself on a descending curve, and his Estimates for 1892–3 were for a Revenue of £541,000 less than the actual receipts of 1891–2. His calculation for the year which has just closed was for a practical equilibrium with the customary margin without any
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    change of taxation. The Expenditure for 1892–3 was estimated in the Budget at £90,253,000, and the Exchequer issues have been, in fact, £90,375,000, which is an excess over the Estimate of £122,000. I do not desire to oppress the Committee by going into details of very elaborate figures. Of course, all the figures I am now dealing with are in the hands of hon. Members in the Paper which has been circulated. I will, therefore, confine what I have to say to remarks upon those figures which seem to mo to be most material. First of all I have to observe that the Army appears to have cost £89,000 less. That is an apparent and not a real saving. Indeed, the cost has been rather more. There was a surplus coming from grants of 1891–2 which reduced the Exchequer issues of 1892–3. In the Navy there is an excess of £62,000 in respect of 1891–2, which was voted in March. In the Civil Service there was £11,000 loss, and there would have been a larger saving had it. not been for a great increase in the Education Vote. Customs and Inland Revenue are £33,000 less, and Post Office and Telegraphs £199,000 more—an excess of Estimates which was only revealed at the last moment. But for these unexpected sources of Expenditure and Supplementary Estimates, the total would have been well within the mark of the Budget Estimate. It is difficult, if not impossible, to gauge with accuracy the demands of Education Grants, which largely exceed the Estimate which had been formed; and it is impossible, beforehand, to say what the grants for the new year will or will not be. There is always an element of uncertainty. As to the Post Office Expenditure, that is an abyss which no plummet can sound. I shall have something to say on that subject later, which is, and is likely to be, the despair of successive Chancellors of the Exchequer. This is the Expenditure which has been defrayed out of the Revenue of the year. But, besides this, it is very important not to lose sight of the fact that there is a large Expenditure which has been met by borrowing. There was borrowed for the Expenditure of the year £2,056,000. The figures are: Naval Defence Act, £1,150,000; Imperial Defence Act, £285,000; Barracks Act, £535,000; Telephones, £86,000;

    1029
    total, £2,056,000. This, added to the normal Expenditure of £90,375,000, gives a total real Expenditure of the year of £92,431,000. With reference to an incidental matter of some interest, I should like to make a short statement as to the Expenditure upon the re-coinage of light gold. The amount of light gold to he called in was estimated to be about £43,000,000. In 1891 the late Chancellor of the Exchequer sot aside £400,000 to defray the loss on the re-coinage. Up to March 31, 1893, the light gold brought in has amounted to £18,000,000, and the loss upon this has been £298,419 6s. 7d. It is calculated that there remains to be brought in £25,000,000, upon which the loss is estimated at £355,110, or a total loss of £653,530 on the whole. Of this amount probably £9,000,000 will be brought in during the year 1893–4 at a cost of £144,920. The average loss on the sovereign has been 2·639d., and on the half-sovereign 2·923d. It is expected that the whole renewal will be completed in the year 1895–6, and then there will have been achieved a great work, which I congratulate my right hon. Friend opposite on having begun, and one necessary to the reputation of a great commercial country, the transactions of which are founded on a gold standard. I must now pass on to the Revenue of the year that has concluded. The Revenue for 1892–3 is estimated in the Budget at £90,453,000. A decrease of £542,000 was allowed for by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, as compared with the Exchequer Receipts of 1891–2. The actual payments into the Exchequer have been £90,395,000, or less than the Estimate by £58,000. I think the Committee will consider that a marvellous approximation on so vast a sum. No person who occupies my position will fail to render his testimony to the wonderful skill, the experience, and the prescience of the officers of the Revenue Departments, who are able to give such accurate forecasts of the finance of the country. It also proves another thing— the extraordinary exactitude of averages, because when you come to examine the details you will find that in many respects they differ from the expectation; but, on the whole, the average comes out all right. I intend only to deal with the more important items. The Estimate of
    1030
    £90,500,000 has been realised within £58,000. The Revenue from Customs was estimated at £19,900,000; the money actually received into the Exchequer was £19,715,000, or loss by £185,000. I should like to state to the Committee what, perhaps, everyone is not familiar with—the distinction between Exchequer Receipts and net receipts. The Exchequer Receipts are those which the Exchequer receives in the course of the year, and the Exchequer may receive some money belonging to last year. If hon. Members wish to ascertain the yield of taxes they must take the net receipts and examine what is the actual amount of taxation which properly belongs to each year. If, therefore you examine the net receipts the differences are more conspicuous. The Customs net receipts of 1891–2 were £19,828,000, and those of 1892–3 £19,633,000. The falling off in produce was, therefore, £195,000. Comparing the Customs net receipts of 1892–3 with those of 1891–2 we find: (1) a falling-off in spirits of £337,000; (2) tea about stationary (a decline of £12,000); (3) tobacco, markedly better by £182,000; (4) wine, less by £22,000.
    MR. GOSCHEN: Is tea below the Estimate?
    SIR W. HARCOURT: Tea is slightly below the Estimate. There is no confident belief that it is due to the falling-off in consumption. Tea is a commodity in which dealers are very cautious when the Budget is approaching. I do not speak with any certainty, but I have reason to believe that purchases are held back until it is known what is to be done with tea. I pass now to the Inland Revenue. The Budget Estimate was £54,862,000; the Exchequer Receipts, £55,085,000, or more than the Estimate by £223,000. The net receipts were £54,946,000, or £84,000 better than the Estimate. That again, I think, everyone will admit is a pretty close Estimate on a total of £55,000,000. But here, again, it, is not a question of detail; it is a question of averages. The Excise was £435,000 below the net receipts of 1891–2. The loss is almost wholly on spirits. Beer remains about the same as before. The late Chancellor of the Exchequer estimated a fall on spirits of £200,000; but the fall, in fact, has been above 400,000. I remember that in one

    1031
    of his Budgets the late Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of there being a "rush to alcohol." To-day I should rather describe it as a "stampede from alcohol." I also remember that the right hon. Gentleman remarked particularly on the increase in the consumption of one kind of spirit—rum. The discontinuance in the consumption of rum as compared with other spirits is equally remarkable now. Why, I am not in a position to explain. The Spirit Duty is very eccentric, both in its rise and fall. It rises and falls with the condition of trade, but how much and how quickly it is very difficult to explain, and still more to forecast. I now pass to Stamps. Stamps are £245,000 better than the Estimate. The principal head of Stamps refers to the Death Duties, and here, again, the principle of averages comes in. The late Chancellor of the Exchequer estimated a loss on Probate, as compared with 1891–2, of £211,000. The actual loss has been £419,000. The year 1892 is known, and will ever be remembered in the Inland Revenue, as the "influenza year." It produced an abnormal rise in the receipts of Probate Duty, which have since fallen off by nearly the amount of the exceptional produce of that year. The falling-off, therefore, shows that there had not been sufficient account taken of the immensely abnormal rise in the preceding year. In the Legacy and Succession Duty that increase appears in the year following the abnormal receipt of the Probate Duty, because it is collected a year later than the Probate Duty; and therefore is, as I may call it, an après coup of the great receipts of the influenza year, and so came into the receipts of this last year. The right hon. Gentleman estimated the gain in the Legacy and Succession Duty at £232,000; the actual gain has been £671,000. The loss in the one case was double what was expected, and the gain in the other was three times that which was anticipated. Therefore, in regarding this important source of Revenue, we must always set aside the year 1891–2 as altogether exceptional. It made a difference between the year 1891–2 and the year 1892–3 of £838,000, out of a Revenue of £5,000,000 of the entire Probate Duty. Then, as to General Stamps, they have realised, which is a good sign, £49,000 more than the Estimate. The right hon.
    1032
    Gentleman estimated for a fall of £100,000, and, in point of fact, they have not fallen much more than half that amount. That, in the present state of things, may be regarded, I think, as not unsatisfactory. The great falling-off since 1890 on General Stamps has been due mainly to Stock Exchange transactions. It is not due to a falling-off in the every-day stamp transactions of tradesmen. On the contrary, that source of Revenue is rather increasing. Now I come to, perhaps, the most important head of all, and that is the Income Tax. In the Income Tax the yield has been £70,000 better than the Estimate of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. The maintenance of the strength and, I may indeed say, the continual growth of the yield of the Income Tax is simply marvellous; and nobody who has not carefully studied the question can understand how, in all the vicissitudes of trade and the apparent oscillations of property, the Income Tax is a source of constantly increased and increasing Revenue. The right hon. Gentleman opposite did a great deal last year to throw light upon this interesting question. He showed how the yield of the Income Tax did not mainly depend upon the principal and conspicuous trades or decline with their depreciation. He calculated last year, accordingly, on a fall of only £400,000 on a total of £13,810,000 in the year 1891–2, which was the highest point at which the yield of the Income Tax ever stood. There were some people, I know, who were sceptical at that time, who said that prosperity had vanished, that distress had come, that there was great trade disturbance, and that it was impossible that the Income Tax would not fall off to a greater degree. I confess I did not join in those doubts, for I knew that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had means of information to which no one else had access. The right hon. Gentleman used on that occasion some words which I will take the liberty of repeating, because they are the real key to the enigma. He said—
    "If I am to judge simply by the Statistical Returns, by the gossip of the City, by complaints in Lancashire, or by the position of Yorkshire, and if I am to listen and the Committee are to be influenced by the general feeling, they might come to the conclusion that there would be a very large gap in the Income Tax Return of the year."

    1033
    He then proceeded to show that, whilst public attention was fixed on the great staple industries of the country—the cotton, the coal, the iron industries—I use his own words—
    "There is a mighty trade going on, there is wealth being rolled up—wealth of which no published statistics exist, but which is, nevertheless, accumulating and adding to the capital of the country."
    He pointed out that the profits of the cotton trade are less than the aggregate profits of the Medical Profession, and the profits of the coal mines than those of the lawyers. He accordingly put the yield of the Income Tax at £13,400,000 for the year that has just concluded, being £410,000 less than the preceding year. It has, in fact, yielded £13,470,000. The falling-off has not been £410,000, but only £340,000, and the tax has yielded £13,470,000, being £220,000 more than in 1890–1. This is, even in these times of depression, a yield of £2,245,000 to the penny. The growth of the produce of the Income Tax is one of the most remarkable features of our finance. In 1889, when it was reduced to 6d., its yield was £12,700,000. In 1892, only three years later, it was £13,810,000, or £1,100,000 more. Even with the decline last year, it is still £700,000 more than it was in the year 1889. I have had some remarkable figures on this subject taken out, which give the yield per 1d. for the last eight years on each several Schedule separately, which is a far better test than taking it on the whole. These are new figures, and are very well deserving of the attention of the House. They give accurately the real yield of the tax, and are not merely the Exchequer Receipts, which vary very much. Now, in 1886—that is, at the commencement of the last Parliament—the Income Tax yielded £1,980,000 to the penny. In 1893, which has just concluded, it yielded £2,261,000 to the penny. Taking the figures for the Schedules separately, it will surprise many people to learn that the produce of Schedule A, which is land and houses, has actually risen from £670,000 per penny in 1886 to £676,000 in 1893. As everybody will anticipate, it has fallen heavily on agricultural land. It has fallen from £217,000 per penny to £191,000, but it has risen upon houses from £452,000 per penny to
    1034
    £484,000, so that, taking the two to-gether, there is an actual rise upon Schedule A. Schedule B, which is the Occupier of Land Schedule, has, as might be expected, heavily fallen. It has fallen from £48,000 to the penny to £36,000. Schedule D, which is equally remarkable—it is the profits of trades, companies, and so forth—yielded in 1886 £958,000 to the penny, and in 1893, in spite of the ruin which is said to have attended all trades and to have destroyed all profits, it is £1,208,000 to the penny—the highest it has ever reached. Schedule E, which is the growth of salaries of public employés and of the employés of companies—this, I think too, is a remarkable figure—produced in 1882, 10 years ago, a yield of £118,000 to the penny, and in 1893 it is £152,000. I think that is an analysis that is useful, and it is new. When Sir Robert Peel imposed the Income Tax in 1842 the yield was about £770,000 per penny. It is now three times as much. It would have required in his time an Income Tax of 1s. 6d. in the £1 to raise a similar amount. I have laid these figures before the House, because I think that even in times of depression, and what are called bad times, it is well that the House of Commons and the country should know what is the actual condition of things. The steady and vast growth in the produce of the Income Tax and the Probate Duty is the most irrefragable evidence, in my opinion, of the solid advance in wealth both in annual income and accumulated capital of the nation. It is the conclusive answer to those pessimists who assure us that we are being ruined by a vicious commercial system and a false monetary standard. If we had for 50 years been going on a wrong system the results which we should have to record would be very different from those I have laid before the House. And when we are asked what is the result of that system upon which we have constantly acted, and to which we have faithfully adhered, and I am asked for a proof of it, I would say, looking at these Returns, Si monumentum, quœris circumspice. It is true that this trade or that trade, this industry or that industry, may have its "ups and downs," its adversity and its prosperity; but, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite truly indicated last year, there is a perpetual compensation in all directions, and the

    1035
    small rivulets of increasing income from every source and the accumulated savings of the country supply the deficiencies of the larger streams. Every year more money is saved, and more capital is invested, and therefore a larger income is earned. I may, perhaps, have detained the House rather long. The Post Office yields no more than the Estimate, a most unsatisfactory lie-turn, considering the great growth of expenditure. The Telegraphs are £80,000 less than the Estimate, 1892–3, a bad revenue. They are £115,000 less than actual working expenses in 1892–3, setting aside the non-payment of interest upon the purchase-money. If you look at the Telegraph Returns since the purchase, including the moderate interest they ought to pay upon the money, the loss on that commercial transaction has been £4,500,000. The whole of this affair was founded on a miscalculation. Six years ago the deficiency was less than £2,000,000. I have told you it is now more than double that amount, and, for anything we can see to the contrary, it is a revenue which is going from bad to worse, and the competition of telephones is not likely to improve it. There remains the Miscellaneous Revenue. The right hon. Gentleman opposite estimated the receipts for 1892–3 at £2,076,000, and the amount paid into the Exchequer was £2,065,000, or a deficit of £11,000. The Committee must bear in mind that though the Revenue of 1892–3 approximated so closely to the Budget Estimate it is greatly below the Revenue of 1891–2. The deficiency of aggregate Revenue is no less than £600,000, comparing the Exchequer receipts for the two years. The taxable Revenue was £540,000 worse, and the non-taxable Revenue was £60,000 worse. Now, having laid before the House as clearly as I can the state of the Expenditure last year and the state of the Revenue, I am now in a position finally to balance the Revenue and Expenditure of 1892–3. The Revenue was £90,395,000, and the Expenditure £90,375,000, leaving a balance of £20,000, a sufficiently close balance-sheet on a Revenue and Expenditure of over 90,000,000. But this I am bound to say in the presence of the right hon. Gentleman—that but for unexpected expenditure on the Supplementary
    1036
    Estimates we should have fully realised the margin he anticipated. But when we talk of a surplus, even such a miserable mouse as £20,000, we must remember that we have borrowed upwards of £2,000,000 in the course of the year to meet the Expenditure of the year. I will not revive an old controversy between myself and the right hon. Gentleman as to what we are to call that £2,000,000. I have been in the habit of calling it a deficiency of Revenue, as compared with actual Expenditure. I call it a deficit. But I care not what you call it—the House must bear in mind that this balance, which leaves an apparent Surplus of £20,000, is accompanied by the fact that during the year you have borrowed upwards of £2,000,000. I do not know whether I may be permitted to correct an error which I am not sure is entertained by Members of this House, but which I see is entertained elsewhere, that the surplus to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to look is the surplus of the year that is past. That is not so. That surplus of the year that is past is devoted to the old Sinking Fund, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has no control over it. It has nothing to do with the Budget surplus, which is the estimated surplus—namely, the estimated balance on the Expenditure and Revenue of the coming year, calculated on the basis of existing taxation. I must now make a brief statement as to the balances in the Exchequer. On April 1, 1892, the balance was £6,255,000. That included the old Sinking Fund, £1,067,000, leaving a true working balance of £5,188,000. There have been small variations, but on April 1, 1893, the balance was £5,082,000, or a difference of about £100,000, I would say here, on the subject of the balances, that we are subject now to the comparatively new system established by Mr. Lowe, by which the greater part of the Income Tax is collected at the end of the year; and the small balances with which we begin make it necessary to largely use deficiency advances, for a great part of the income does not come in till the end of the year. Before I leave the year 1892–3 I must make a brief statement with reference to the National Debt. The reduction of the Debt proper in the past year has been £6,623,000. Under heads which are not the Debt proper

    1037
    there has been an increase for barracks of £535,000. But, on the other hand, owing to the rise in the price of Consols, there has been a decrease of savings banks deficiencies of £782,000. So that I am able to say that the net liabilities of the State have been in the year concluded diminished by £7,000,000. I should like to say one word as to the state of the Unfunded Debt. This has been largely increased of late years, both by the operations of conversion and redemption, and also by borrowings for Naval and Military Expenditure. On April 1, 1892, it reached a total of £35,300,000, of which there was in the hands of the public, £17,000,000, in the hands of the National Debt Commissioners, £18,300,000. The right hon. Gentleman opposite—and we have often argued this point—feeling that the Unfunded Debt stood at too high a figure, converted £13,000,000 in the hand's of the National Debt Commissioners into a book debt, which now ranks as a Funded Debt. That accounts for the apparent increase in the Funded Debt of £11,000,000. The Unfunded Debt now remains at £22,313,000, and has been increased by borrowing this year on Treasury Bills for Naval and Military purposes by £1,435,000, making a total of £23,748,000. By the use of the old and new Sinking Funds £3,000,000 has been paid off, so that, the total now stands at £20,748,000, of which there is held by the public £14,522,000, and by the National Debt Commissioners £6,226,000. I am glad that it has been found possible in this way to reduce the amount of the Unfunded Debt. It has been reduced, by the resources at the disposal of the Treasury, by £2,468,000. It is the Floating Debt in the hands of the public which alone need concern the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Unfunded Debt in the hands of the public now stands only £679,000 higher than it did in 1886, so that, practically speaking, we have gone back almost to the point at which we were before the conversion operation.
    An hon. MEMBER: What is the total amount?
    SIR W. HARCOURT: £14,522,000 Treasury Bills (and all of them 12 month bills) are now little more than £6,000,000, and no doubt as opportunity serves they may be still further reduced. I have a
    1038
    strong opinion that the less the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in the market the better, and that the business of the country ought to be conducted on a large scale, and that to have to deal with bills at intervals of three months is a thing to be avoided if possible. I think I have now stated to the Committee all that is necessary to be said with reference to the finance of the year that is concluded, and I now conic to the far more interesting examination of the finance of the current year. I will begin with a reference to the estimated Expenditure for the year 1893–4. The total estimated Expenditure for the year 1893–4 is £91,464,000. That is a total excess of £1,089,000 over the Expenditure of 1892–3, or, if you compare it with the Budget provision of last year, an excess of £1,211,000 over that, which my Predecessor (Mr. Goschen) found it necessary to provide for. By far the larger part, of that is due to two items. On Education there is an excess of £310,000, and on the Post Office a real excess of £635,000 over the estimated Expenditure of last year. I hope the House will bear that fact in mind. It would appear from the figures which hon. Members have before them that the Post Office excess is only £400,000; but that is because an addition of upwards of £200,000 was made by Supplementary Estimates to the Expenditure provided for in the Budget of last year. I shall have something to say on the details presently. Taking the figure of the estimated Expenditure as I have given it, let me ask attention to this gigantic total of £91,500,000. That does not represent by any means the whole amount, because, besides the £91,500,000, we raise by Imperial taxation an addition of £7,250,000, which goes to the Local Taxation Fund. Therefore the total sum to be raised by Imperial taxation is really £98,750,000, which is dangerously near the £100,000,000 which a few years ago we thought belonged only to times of war and to extraordinary circumstances. Now, Sir, I would ask the careful attention of the Committee to the few figures I am going to give on the subject of Expenditure. I want hon. Members to consider what has been the growth of Expenditure in the last seven years iu this country. I take the net Expenditure given in the valuable Return moved for by my right hon. Friend the

    1039
    President of the Local Government Board. I am speaking now only of Military, Naval, and Civil Expenditure —expenditure exclusive of the Debt charges— met out of taxes. The increase between the year 1887–8 and the year 1893–4 appears as follows. The Naval and Military Services cost more by £2,600,000, Public Education more by £3,400,000, Grants and Assignments to Local Authorities more by £4,200,000, and other Civil charges more by £400,000, so that the Normal Expenditure of the country under these heads in the course of the last seven years has increased by £10,600,000, or 20 per cent. of Expenditure charged on taxes under these heads. Of course, on the other side must be taken the reduction of the Debt charge by £3,000,000, partly the result of the successful conversion of the Debt by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen), and partly the result of other causes. That leaves a balance of addition to the sum that has to be raised by taxes of about £7,000,000. It may, it is true, be said that the subsidy of £4,000,000 to local taxation is taken from one pocket and put into another. ["Hear, hear!"] Yes; but it is not put into the pocket of the same man, and whether or not it has produced all the advantages which it was intended to secure is a disputed point on which I will not offer an opinion at present. In my opinion, at the commencement of a new Parliament these are figures very well deserving of attention. The question is whether the new Parliament is or is not prepared—and it cannot too soon make up its mind on the subject—to make a similar addition to the Expenditure in the course of its existence. I have called special attention to the Post Office Expenditure. That is not an expenditure which is charged on the taxes, but it results in a loss of net Revenue which has to be supplied by additional taxation. The Estimate for 1893–4 shows an increase over the Budget provision of 1892–3 of £635,000. The increase in 1892–3 was stated by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer at £611,000. Of the increase this year, £486,000 is clue to additions to staff and salaries. Now, let me see the result on the Revenue in the last three years. The estimated increase in the
    1040
    Exchequer receipts under the head of Postal and Telegraph Services in 1893–4, as compared with 1890–91, is £774,000, and the estimated increase in the Expenditure met out of Postal Votes is £1,602,000, so that in three years on the Post Office alone you have lost £828,000 of net Revenue which, of course, you have to replace by taxation from other sources. Now, Sir, great as has been the aggregate Expenditure for which provision has to be made in the Budget, that does not represent the whole case, as it is irrespective of the money borrowed. Up to 1892 we borrowed £5,000,000, and last year we borrowed £2,000,000, so that in the seven years we have borrowed £7,000,000 in all. Debts which have to be liquidated out of the income of the future. If this money had been provided by taxation the figure I have given would have been greater still; but on an average £1,000,000 a year has been paid out of borrowed money. I had hoped that we had come to an end of these borrowings, but that is not the case. We have still remnants of these obligations. In the course of the present year we have to borrow £1,500,000—that is to say, for the Naval Defence Act, £150,000; for the Imperial Defence Act, £150,000; for the Barrack Act, £600,000; for Telephones, £250,000; and for Irish Light Railways, £270,000, making a total of £1,420,000. This is not a very satisfactory statement to make. We have just succeeded in making both ends meet during the past year, having merely a nominal balance of about £20,000, and we begin this year with an estimated increased expenditure of £1,100,000, which is almost entirely attributable to increased expenditure on Education and the Post Office. The Estimate of the Revenue of 1893–4 is based upon present taxation. I need not say that it is a difficult—I had almost said a perilous—task to attempt to estimate what may be the condition of a Revenue which was estimated last year to fall and has fallen by an amount of between £500,000 and £600,000. It is a formidable fact that the fall in the Revenue is the largest in the latest quarter; but the figures I am going to place before the House I place before it with the reliance I feel—and which, I am sure, the right hon. Gentleman oppo-

    1041
    site (Mr. Goschen) will feel—in the foresight, experience, and—I had almost called it—infallibility of the permanent officers of the Revenue Departments. The total Revenue for the coming year we estimate at £89,890,000, or £505,000 less than the Exchequer Receipts of 1892–3. Now, I will give the figures under the different heads. We estimate the Customs at £19,650,000, or £65,000 less than last year; Excise at £25,100,000, or £260,000 less than last year; Stamps at £13,600,000, or £205,000 less than last year; Land Tax and House Duty at £2,460,000, or £10,000 more than last year, and Income Tax at £13,400,000 — that is to say, the same figure as that given by the right hon. Gentleman opposite in his Budget last year, and £70,000 less than the actual Exchequer Receipts of last year. That makes an estimated falling-off in the produce of taxes of £590,000. I now come to the Tax Revenue, which we estimate to be as follows:—Post Office, £10,600,000, an increase of £200,000; Telegraphs, £2,480,000, the same as last year; Crown Lauds, £430,000, the same as last year; interest on Suez Canal shares, £220,000 and Miscellaneous, £1,950,000; or £115,000 less than last year. The produce of the Non-Tax Revenue is, therefore, estimated at, £15,680,000, or £85,000 more than last year. Now, I will make one or two observations upon the details. In the Customs Estimate there is an allowance for a fall in spirits and wines, and for a slight increase in tea and tobacco; this is not a great amount—£65,000. Upon Excise we estimate that there will be a receipt of £260,000 less than last year. We have calculated upon £30,000 less on beer, and £230,000 less on spirits. That, I need not say, is necessarily a very problematical Estimate, as when you have a falling Revenue it is very difficult to say how fast or how slowly it may fall. It may be less than we estimate or it may be more. As to Stamps, we estimate the Probate and Estate Duty at £135,000 more, thus going back to a normal figure, whilst we estimate Legacy and Succession Duty at £380,000 less, and General Stamps at £40,000 more. I have already mentioned that we have taken the Income Tax at £13,400,000—the same as the Estimate of last year. I must now
    1042
    say a word on the Miscellaneous Revenue. This has been largely affected in recent years by the extension of the principle of Appropriations in Aid. Miscellaneous Revenue—always an uncertain item— sometimes overlaps from one year to another. Last year (1892–3) £341,000 due to the Revenue of the previous year was carried over to the Miscellaneous Receipts. This year, perhaps, half that amount may fall in from last year. This item of the Revenue is the residuary legatee of windfalls to the Exchequer. The Miscellaneous Revenue of 1892–3 has had the advantage of the remanet of a quarter's extra receipts in 1891–2 to the extent of £242,000 due to the change in the system of Appropriations in Aid last year. This year the Miscellaneous Revenue will benefit by an occasional windfall from the Treasury Chest Fund. As the right hon. Gentleman opposite is aware, the Treasury Chest Fund is a banking fund or working capital for effecting Imperial payments abroad. It is an accumulation of ancient supplies fixed by Statute in 1873 at £1,000,000, but it has from time to time been reduced. With the diminished number of Treasury Chests abroad, and with an increased resort to the telegraph, the payments can now be effected with a smaller working balance; and it is proposed by Bill to give power to the Treasury to reduce it from £1,000,000 to £700,000, and, accordingly, a balance will be available for the Exchequer, and will be credited to Miscellaneous Revenue, as was done in 1862 by the present Prime Minister and in 1873 by Mr. Lowe, when similar reductions were effected. A Bill for this purpose will be necessary. In order to complete the account of Revenue I will state briefly the Local Taxation Revenue. In 1892–3 there was a fall of £426,000, as compared with 1891–2. That was due to the great and abnormal receipts from the Probate Duty of the influenza year, half of which receipts were appropriated to the purposes of Local Taxation. It is calculated that there will be this year an additional income of £91,000 as compared with the Revenue of 1892–3, so that there will be a partial recovery from the fall. Now, I come to the last chapter with which I shall have to trouble the Committee. I have stated the estimated Expenditure and the estimated Revenue

    1043
    for the year 1893–4, and I have now to state the balance-sheet as it stands for the present year on the basis of existing taxation. The expenditure, as I have said, is £91,464,000, and the Revenue £89,890,000, leaving a deficit of £1,574,000, which has to be provided for. Well, Sir, I think it will be admitted that this is a very serious state of things, and one for which I think the public mind will hardly be prepared. I have seen some very extraordinary calculations on this subject, none of which come approximately to the truth. Before I sit clown I will ask the Committee to consider, first, the causes which have brought this state of things about, and, secondly, how it is to be dealt with. As to how it has come about, the answer is only too easy and obvious. It is partly due to a deficiency of Revenue, not of a very large amount (not much more than ½ per cent. on the whole), which might be easily dealt with; but it is chiefly due to the vast and progressive growth of Expenditure to which I have already drawn the attention of the Committee. Thus, in the current year we have an estimated falling-off of Revenue of £500,000, but a growth of Expenditure to be provided for of £1,100,000, and that due to engagements entered into over which we have no control. I have already pointed out the great growth of Post Office Expenditure. That has been a growth in wages and salaries to meet the engagements entered into some years ago, which are now gradually increasing. I have mentioned the growth of the Expenditure during the past seven years. I have nothing to say on the subject of that expenditure, and I am not going to enter into any controversy with reference to it; but this, at least, I may say—that those who have authorised, who have encouraged, who have insisted upon this vast growth of Expenditure—and I am speaking now without distinction of Parties, for the growth of that Expenditure has not been due to the action of one Party or the other—are bound to provide the moans of defraying it. It is idle to lay the blame, if blame there be, on one Party or another, on one Government or another. I know there was once in this country an economical Party. There is no economical Party now. I believe the
    1044
    Prime Minister and myself are the last survivors of that vanished creed. The saying has been attributed to me that everyone is a Socialist now. I do not know whether I ever said that, but this I will say—there are no economists now. Financial economy has gone the way of political economy, and a Chancellor of the Exchequer preaching against extravagance is "the voice of one crying in the wilderness." We hear a great deal about the stinginess of the Treasury. I wish the Treasury had a little more power, as it has the will, to be much more stingy. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may hold up his hands in despair, like the old steward in the Rake's Progress; but the money is spent, and, as the French say, "The wine is drawn and you must pay for it." After all, the causes of this are not far to seek. Economy was possible, was necessary, and even popular, in former days. Governments were compelled to be economical. The people demanded it, and the House of Commons supported it. Sir Robert Peel was an economical Minister. At that time the nation was poor; capital was deficient, trade was bad, the weight of the Debt was crushing, and taxation relatively to the resources of the people was enormously heavy. People were then obliged to "attend" to the pence because they had no pounds to "look after." But now the condition of things is changed; the nation has grown rich, taxation compared to the resources of all classes is relatively light, and this is probably in proportion to its wealth the most lightly taxed nation in Europe at the present time. Therefore it is, perhaps, not unnatural that anyone who comes forward with a proposal for increased Expenditure is welcomed as if he had discovered a new pleasure. Private Members with large hearts and small responsibilities take up some favourite scheme or some favoured class of the community. They demand higher wages, greater pensions; they desire that the State should undertake now duties, fresh responsibilities, larger expenditure. We are eager to create new empires here and annex fresh territory there, to reduce postal charges all over the world, to relieve more rates, to undertake lifeboats, &c. The country is well agitated, the interests are well organised, the House of Commons is well canvassed,

    1045
    and one afternoon, in the gaiety of our hearts, we pass a Resolution unanimously which is to cost us a few millions when it comes into full operation some years hence.
    An hon. MEMBER: Payment of Members.
    SIR W. HARCOURT: I am not making a Party question of it at all. Neither am I complaining—I am only making it clear. I pointed out the other night with reference to a Motion of this kind that it meant £25,000,000. But all the House said was—"Oh, only £25,000,000; how cheap! Let us have it by all means." All these things are very excellent in their way. There is a great deal to be said for them; there is very little to be said against them. That is quite true; but the time comes, and it has come, when you must pay for them. This is the true inwardness of the growth of Expenditure at the present time, and I take the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) to witness that the growth of Expenditure is not mainly the work of Governments, but that it is forced on the Government by the House of Commons and the country, who really do not seem to care what they spend. J belong myself, as I have said, to the old school, and I would gladly see less money spent, for I think a good deal of it is wasted. But, if I may reverse an old saying, I would say that those who call the tune must pay the piper. I cannot, however, honestly say to the House of Commons or the country, "If you choose to spend the money, you cannot afford it," for, as I have said, the wealth of the country has increased and is increasing year by year. You may find yourselves in temporary straits, but there is no occasion for apprehension or disquiet. The condition of your affairs is sound, solid, and prosperous. The resources of the country are ample and always accumulating. Let me give the Committee one or two figures on this subject. I will just apply one or two tests of the wealth of the country. The property assessed to Income Tax in 1882 was £601,450,000; in 1892 it was £713,000,000; or a growth of £112,000,000. The property charged to Probate and Succession Duty in 1882 was £147,603,000;in l892 it was £241,453,000, or au increase of £94,000,000. Let me take another class. The deposits
    1046
    and investments in the Post Office and Trustee Savings Banks were in 1882 £85,036,000, and in 1892 £128,116,000, an increase of £43,000,000. Take the Building Societies, which is one of the investments of the artisan class. The liabilities of Building Societies in 1881 were £43,730,000; in 1891 they were £51,773,000. The total capital of industrial and Provident Societies in 1881 was £7,837,000; in 1891 £16,118,000. In ordinary Life Insurance Companies the premiums in 1881 were £11,898,000; in 1891 they were £14,565,000. In Industrial Life Insurance Companies the premiums in 1881 were £2,245,000; in 1891 they were £5,467,000. These are fair tests of the growth of the accumulated wealth of almost every class of society. I will give you one other test. I have already mentioned the increase in the Income Tax value of houses, but you do not need to go to the Inland Revenue to ascertain that. If you travel by rail you can see the number of houses of every class that are building in every direction, and that is a proof of the large and accumulated wealth of the country. These belong to what may he called the "saving" classes. But if you examine the consumption of articles of necessity and comfort, you will find everywhere signs of the larger resources of the mass of the people who lie below the classes I have referred to. I state these facts in order to say that there is the means to pay, if you choose to pay, and you must choose to pay, if you choose to spend. There may be temporary depression, but there is no permanent decline. On the contrary, there is a gradual growth in the wealth and resources of the country. I venture to lay these considerations before the Committee with reference to the growth of Expenditure and the causes of it. Now, I want to ask—How, then, is this deficit of £1,500,000 to be covered? We cannot shirk it by ingenious contrivances. It has to be met squarely and fairly. We cannot continue to encounter enhanced Expenditure by borrowing. We have already in the piping times borrowed £7,000,000, the liquidation of which its to fall on the years immediately following, when the Revenue will probably be less and the Expenditure more. We cannot recommend the Committee to have recourse to the plan of meeting its. liabilities by encroaching further on the

    1047
    fund set apart for the liquidation of the Debt. In our opinion that is a fund not to be tampered with in ordinary times and normal deficiencies, but reserved for great emergencies. This is the keystone of sound and solid finance, and we are not prepared further to weaken its foundation. These are courses which the Government are not prepared to recommend. They only tend to encourage extravagance by concealing and palliating for the moment its effects, and, therefore, promoting its growth. There is, in our opinion, only one sound and straightforward method of meeting this deficit, and that is by increased taxation. This is the only policy which is worthy of a solvent and a wealthy nation which finds itself over-spending. Where are we to look, then, for increased Revenue? I concur very much in the opinion expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech in 1889, when he established the now Estate Duty, that one of the most fitting sources for increased taxation was to be found in the large and growing accumulations of wealth which are reached by the Death Duties. The old objections to taxing capital no longer hold good. There were days when the country suffered from a deficiency of capital: that is not so now. If there is any defect, it is in the means of the legitimate and sound employment of superabundant capital which has led to so much dangerous and speculative investment in foreign enterprises. I agree, also, most entirely in the principle enunciated by the right hon. Gentleman in the same speech, when he said—
    "On the whole, I think it will be generally recognised that it is the men whose fortunes are considerable who pay least in proportion to their aggregate income and property."
    Therefore, when I came to the Treasury and there seemed last winter a more favourable prospect, both in respect of Expenditure and Revenue than has since been realised, I spent much time and labour, with the assistance of the able men in the Department and the lawyers, in examining the question, of the reform of the Death Duties. There were two main objects to be aimed at—first, that all property, whether real or personal, settled or unsettled, should be brought into account and valued and taxed on an equal basis; and, secondly, that pro-
    1048
    perties of large amount should pay at a higher rate than those of less considerable value; and for this purpose the whole of the assets should be aggregated so that a progressive graduation should be applied to the total value of the property of all kinds on an ascending scale according to the whole amount. Upon a careful examination there were found to be no insuperable difficulties, though the subject is a complicated one, in giving effect to these principles, and in ultimately, after a lapse of time, deriving from such a reform of the Death Duties a very considerable increment of Revenue. We should have been prepared to have laid before the Committee proposals to this effect tin's year embodied in a Bill; but, unfortunately, we are precluded from this by two conclusive reasons. The first, which is the least material one, is the question of time. Anyone who has considered this subject, or remembers the Debates on the Succession Duty in 1853, will be aware that the questions relating to settlements and to land are of a highly technical character, requiring, or at least lending themselves to, protracted discussion, and that a Bill of this controversial character would demand an amount of time which the House has not this Session at its disposal. But a more decisive reason was to be found in the fact that the proceeds of a tax of this character cannot be immediately realised; and the estimate of its produce in the first year, even with a high graduation, would not amount to one-third of the sum which I am called upon to find. The House will remember that it has taken 40 years for the Succession Duty to reach one-half the Estimate which the Prime Minister originally formed of it. What I have to do is to find the money to cover this deficit, and to find it at once. We are, therefore, with much reluctance, obliged for this year, and I hope for this year only, to postpone the proposals we were anxious to lay before the Committee. It is, in my opinion, a business which demands a solution at a the earliest practicable time. Now, Sir, I suppose the Committee will have anticipated—the House of Commons is sufficiently experienced in these matters to have discovered my secret—that the only tax by which a deficit of such magnitude can be this year adequately met is an addition of 1d. to the Income Tax. [Cheers.] I

    1049
    am glad the gentlemen who spent the money are so ready and willing to pay it. This Id. on the Income Tax is estimated to yield £1,750,000 in the first year, which will just cover the deficit and leave a slight margin for contingencies. I know not if the objection will be taken that this is to place the whole burden on direct, and to place no share of it on indirect, taxation.
    COLONEL HOWARD VINCENT: Hear, hear!
    SIR W. HARCOURT: The hon. Member for Sheffield cheers. I will give him an answer from a quarter he will respect. From whatever quarter such an objection comes, I am sure it will not be from the Benches opposite. In the great struggle of 1885, in which our Government was overthrown, the point of attack chosen by the Opposition was the proposal in respect of indirect taxation upon beer and spirits made in the Budget of Mr. Childers. Having a great deficit to encounter, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to meet his obligations partly by increased taxes on beer and spirits, partly by increase of Death Duties, and partly by increase of Income Tax. The Opposition defeated the proposal for indirect taxation and for increase of the Death Duties; and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol (Sir M. Hicks-Beach), who succeeded as Chancellor of the Exchequer, relied simply on the increase of the Income Tax, which was raised to 8d. It was pointed out at the time that this proceeding practically rung the knell of indirect taxation in the future. That was, indeed, denied; but the statements of the Chancellor of the Exchequer substantially admitted it. The right hon. Gentleman said on July 9, 1885—
    "In such times as these it is, I fear, too true that, for purposes of Revenue, we have arrived at the limits of increased taxation on the most important taxed articles of consumption, except, perhaps, one article only, that of tea."
    It is true he added that such a tax would be so unpopular that a Government could hardly propose it. It is equally impossible now, when the duty has been reduced. He objected to a tax on spirits and beer because it was—
    "Financially unsound to raise the rate of duty on articles the Revenue from which was notoriously decreasing."
    1050
    I have already pointed out to you that the total fall in the last three years in alcoholic duties has been above £1,000,000. The right hon. Gentleman entered into an argument to show that an Income Tax of 8d. was not disproportionately high when the receipts from Customs and Excise stood at £42,000,000, and that when the receipts stood at about the same figure there had been in former years an Income Tax at 9d., and even l0d. If that line of argument be correct an Income Tax at, 7d. cannot be regarded as disproportionate when the yield of Customs and Excise stands at a much higher figure. The objection to placing an additional duty on spirits— in my opinion a very proper source of additional taxation—is that stated by the right hon. Member for West Bristol— namely, that at this moment it is a falling Revenue. The increase of the Tea Duty is out of the question. The addition of a further duty on tobacco by Sir Stafford North cote, some years ago, was a complete failure, and its remission by the right hon. Gentleman opposite has been a signal success. I have, therefore, arrived at the conclusion stated by the right hon. Member for West Bristol, that an increase of indirect taxation in the present circumstances is not possible. We have thought the simple increase of the Income Tax to be the method which secures the requisite amount with the least uncertainty and the smallest disturbance of trade and industry, and preferable to the attempt to raise money by a multitude of small expedients. It may be said that it is unusual to raise the Income Tax, and the Income Tax alone; but I would state that it has been done by almost every Chancellor of the Exchequer who has ever held Office. It was done in 1859, in 1867, in 1868, in 1871, in 1876, in 1880, in 1882, in 1884, and in 1885 it was done. I think that is correct.
    MR. GOSCHEN: It was not done by me.
    SIR W. HARCOURT: That is substantially the proposal we have to make in order to meet the deficit. There is only one minor matter to which I must refer, and that is the change in the Stamp Duty. It is one that will interest the right hon. Gentleman opposite. There have been strong representations made to me, and, therefore, I am pre-

    1051
    pared to make a proposal on that subject. In 1888 the right hon. Gentleman carried a Stamp Duty on a class of securities "which had hitherto escaped taxation on transfer—namely, Foreign and Colonial Share Certificates, and securities transferable by delivery (bonds to hearer) which had not paid the 10s. stamp. There is certainly nothing to be said against the principle of tills impost. On the contrary, there is everything to be said in its favour. They are a class of securities which do not pay, and which ought to pay, Stamp Duty. But, in its operation, this stamp has proved both unpopular and ineffective. It is unpopular because it causes a great deal of vexation and trouble in delivering largo numbers of bonds at short notice, and, being an annual tax, there is difficulty in ascertaining to which, out of a great number of bonds, the adhesive stamp is to be applied. The difficulty is that every single certificate or bond must be examined at each delivery to see if it has already been stamped in a particular year. In the case of a bond, the preliminary question arises whether it requires an adhesive stamp or not. A banker, holding bonds of this description as security for advances, and not knowing when he may have to realise, is embarrassed as to affixing the stamp. Another great objection is in the case of low-priced securities. The stamp being imposed on the face value, the tax may be enormously high as compared with that on high priced securities. It is, therefore, a great hindrance, in dealing with such securities, and loads to such transactions being conducted abroad, where they are not liable to a similar impost. But, in addition to that, the yield of the tax has disappointed expectations. The right hon. Gentleman opposite confidently anticipated £200,000 from it. In the first year it yielded £111,000; in 1890 the amount was £97,000; in 1891 it was £80,000; 1892, £77,000; and 1893, £60,000. It is, therefore, probably not worth while to incur so much inconvenience to gain so little money. But I cannot afford to remit the tax without a substitute. I am given to understand that in the City the dealers would be willing to accept Is. instead of the present 6d. stamp on contract notes in place of the stamp in question. I shall, therefore, include that change in the financial
    1052
    proposals. If, however, the proposal is not readily accepted, it will he withdrawn, and matters will be left as they are. The produce of the proposed change will probably be something less than that of the present stamp, but not a great deal. I have now to state the final balance-sheet. The estimated Expenditure for 1893–4 will be the same as I have already given—that is to say, £91,464,000. The estimated Revenue will be the same as I have already given, only increasing the Estimate for Income Tax to £15,150,000, giving altogether an estimated Revenue of £91,640,000, leaving a margin of £176,000, which is small enough in a falling Revenue. In order to maintain that slight margin, I shall have, I dare say, over and over again to appeal to the House of Commons to aid me to resist Supplementary Estimates. I promise I will do my part in the matter if the House of Commons will do its part. I am happy to say that I am now able to release the Committee from this long history. I have been advised —I may say I have been commanded—to bring in a popular Budget. No doubt, it is a very agreeable thing for any Financial Minister to find himself in a position to introduce a popular Budget, to be able, as often happened to the present Prime Minister, "To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land." But that good fortune does not at all times befall even the greatest financiers. The only sound foundation of a popular Budget is a moderate Expenditure and a buoyant Revenue. Popularity is not, and ought not to be, the main object of the ambition of the Finance Minister of a great country like this. It is not his business to emulate the professors of sleight of hand, who profess to produce something out of nothing, or to make finance depend upon the popular breath of the moment. His first duty is to see that the financial position is clearly ascertained and prudently dealt with. If he has abundant resources, no doubt there is much room for the exercise of a capacity to distribute the gifts at his disposal to the greatest advantage. But in unfavourable times his principal object must be to make the sacrifices he is bound to demand in the manner which will cause the least disturbance to the trade and industries of the country. This is the moderate task which the financial situation has imposed

    1053
    upon me, and which I have endeavoured to discharge. If the Committee are of opinion that the proposals of the Government are adequate and appropriate to the circumstances with which we have to deal, I trust they may receive their sanction.

    TEA.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That, towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, the Duties of Customs now chargeable on Tea, shall continue to be levied and charged on and after the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, until the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four, on the importation thereof into Great Britain or Ireland (that is to say) on—
    Tea.. the pound. Fourpence."— (The Chancellor of the Exchequer.")
    *MR. GOSCHEN: I do not rise to follow my right hot). Friend in the clear and very able statement which he has put before the Committee, nor do I propose on the present occasion either to criticise the castles in the air which he built for next year, or the very cold, dry facts with which we have to deal in the present financial year. The Prime Minister will remember that he thought it wise last year to recommend the Committee to go back to the old system of discussing the Budget very shortly on the night of its introduction, and then to take the fuller discussion of the Resolutions, when they were proposed on the following day. That seems to me to be a far more convenient course than to deal with the figures, which, although they have been placed before the Committee by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with very great clearness, are not so fixed in our minds as to enable us to deal with them. I, therefore, do not propose to make any speech dealing with the matters raised by the right hon. Gentleman. I acknowledge most frankly that the right hon. Gentleman has spoken in a very conciliatory spirit. At one time I thought he was going to pass over all the ashes of controversy without even striking a spark out of any of them; but towards the conclusion of his speech I thought he saw some possibility of discussions ahead. I frankly say, however, that, the manner in which he has discharged his task is such as commends itself to those on this side of the House, as it must to those on his own side. I cer-
    1054
    tainly desire to join in the congratulations which the right hon. Gentleman has offered to the permanent officials of the Customs and Inland Revenue, and also of the Post Office and others, for the remarkable degree of accuracy with which they have been able to arrive at precise Estimates. I remember it was generally thought that these Estimates were too sanguine; but it was with very great confidence I submitted them last year, and I rejoice to think they have been so very nearly realised. I must, condole with the right hon. Gentleman on the difficult task of meeting a rising Expenditure with a falling Revenue. He has not got this year the trying task of having to dispose of a surplus, which, I assure him, is almost as difficult and complicated with as many questions as that of meeting a deficit. In fact, I am quite sure, so far as a Chancellor of the Exchequer's personal convenience is concerned, that the struggle to secure a large portion of the surplus is a much more severe one than the struggle to resist the imposition of taxation. I was delighted to hear the right hon. Gentleman put his foot down very strongly with regard to the increase of Expenditure. He has said truly that this is not a Party question. Sometimes the charge of increasing Expenditure has been flung about needlessly from one Party to another. But I entirely agree with him, and, speaking as an ex-chancellor of the Exchequer, I wish to support him in this respect entirely—that the House of Commons itself is mainly responsible for the constantly-increasing Expenditure which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to meet. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman when he proposes to take the Resolutions again?
    SIR W. HARCOURT: On Thursday.
    MR. GOSCHEN: If that is so, I most certainly do not propose to continue the discussion now.
    MR. MARTINasked from what, date the additional Income Tax would run? A few years ago very great inconvenience was experienced owing to the additional tax having been ante-dated to the commencement of the financial year, and questions arose in several cases as to who was liable for the tax, for instance, in the case of bonds having changed hands in the interval.
    SIR E. PAGETI congratulated the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his Financial Statement, but he had one regret to express in regard to that Statement. The right hon. Gentleman had endeavoured to show that vast wealth had accumulated throughout the country; but he should like to have heard from the right hon. Gentleman one word in respect of an industry which undoubtedly had no share whatever in that vast and rapid accumulation of wealth upon which he had dwelt with such satisfaction. It was only too clear that the great national industry of farming and everything connected with land was at present suffering under a depression which was not merely of a temporary character, but which had already lasted long enough to be considered as permanent, and in respect to which the most sanguine conceived but a faint hope of any improvement. He thought that while the right hon. Gentleman was giving his views as to the vast prosperity of the nation he might have said something of the one industry which shared none of that prosperity.
    SIR W. HARCOURT: I pointed out the great fall in receipts under Schedule B of the Income Tax.
    SIR R. PAGETsaid, it was quite true that the right hon. Gentleman had pointed out that under Schedule B what had been £48,000 had fallen to £36,000, a decrease of 25 per cent.; but he should like to have had that statement somewhat expanded, and it would have been gratifying to those interested in agriculture to receive a word of sympathy in respect of so serious and continuous a loss to an industry which was likely to experience worse times than it had already known. That was not the time to enter into any long discussion with regard to the imposition of an additional 1d. on the Income Tax; but he would say that there was no class upon whom the extra Id. would fall with greater severity than the owners of real property. This increase would be levied upon the gross value, and not upon the net value of the land; and so the owners of land, who wore suffering from a most serious depression, would be burdened to a much greater extent than the wealthy classes, of whose growing riches the right hon. Gentleman had so eloquently spoken. He should also have liked to have heard something
    1056
    from the right hon. Gentleman as to the provision for the superannuation of teachers; for although the right hon. Gentleman had pointed out that the increased Expenditure was due to education, he did not understand that the right hon. Gentleman had made any suggestion as to providing the fund in future.
    SIR W. HARCOURT: That was the suggestion which I said would only cost £25,000,000 to carry out.
    SIR R. PAGETsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had given the figures, but had not mentioned the particular subject in his Statement, and he should like to know to what extent he proposed to make a provision for the improvement of the whole body of school teachers?
    *MR. SAMUEL MONTAGUsaid, the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were, in his opinion, as satisfactory as could be expected under existing circumstances. With a Revenue which had been declining for the past year or two, and which showed no signs of immediate revival, and also considering that the Government had their hands full, it was not reasonable to expect great fiscal changes. But he rose for the purpose of expressing how grateful he felt to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for abolishing the Goschen stamp on bonds and shares. That tax produced little cash and much irritation. In fact, the annoyance felt was out of all proportion to the Revenue. Even its creator, the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, had latterly little to say in its favour, and would have abandoned it if any equivalent had been offered to him. That was hardly a good reason for continuing a bad tax. in these days of keen competition it was most undesirable to handicap British traders to the advantage of foreign rivals. He protested against that Stamp Duty when it was first proposed, and ventured to prophecy that the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer's estimate that it would produce £200,000 was far beyond the probable revenue. It now barely realised a third of that sum, and would, no doubt, decline still further. He wished his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer would also revise the other Stamp Duties on International Securities such as bonds and bills of exchange. The stamps on bonds (10s. per £100) were

    1057
    more than double those which Germany imposed—namely, 4s. per £100; over three times the French stamps, and five times the Dutch and Belgian stamps. They looked well after their traders' interests, whenever possible, when affected by foreign tariffs, and they would protest loudly against differential duties in foreign ports. Why, then, should they handicap their traders with Stamp Duties far greater than their rivals abroad had to pay? The Revenue from stamps on bills of exchange, instead of increasing, had considerably declined during the last 10 years. He believed that was also the case with stamps on bonds. He did not see why they should not have an International agreement or arrangement for identical laws with regard to bills of exchange and bonds. He believed that if these stamps were revised more Revenue would be obtained and trade would be benefited. He noticed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said nothing about the issue of £1 notes against gold, which he had often advocated in the House. He thought they might learn something in that respect from the Irish and Scotch and from their American kinsmen in the United States and Canada. In those countries the £1 note, or its equivalent, five dollars, was preferred to gold. Why should they not obtain the same facility? —why should they be forced to use gold, which many of them did not care to do? The Bank of England should be requested to issue £ I notes in the same way as £5 or £10 notes. He had often advocated in the House that a Municipal Death Duty in reduction of rates should be levied on freehold property in large towns. He was glad to know that his right hon. Friend was in full sympathy with that reform, and he hoped that in the next Budget freehold property in large towns would be compelled to bear its fair share of local taxation from which it had so long escaped.
    *COLONEL HOWARD VINCENTsaid, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was in a state of anxiety as to the public mind not being prepared for a deficit of £1,500,000. He would undeceive the right hon. Gentleman in that respect, for past experience had taught the country what to expect from the present occupants of the Treasury Bench. He only regretted that
    1058
    it had fallen to the lot of the right hon. Gentleman to introduce a Budget the popularity of which he thought was so doubtful. The Budgets of the Liberal Government had always shown decreased Revenue, increased Expenditure, and increased Taxation, and the present one was no exception to the rule. What a contrast this Budget presented to those which had been introduced since 1886 by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen)! The Chancellor of the Exchequer had spoken of the rising Revenue from 1886 to 1890. As the period of Office of the Unionist Government approached its term, the Revenue declined, public confidence diminished, and now, after eight months' tenure of Office by the present Government, the people found Taxation increased, Expenditure increased, no reduction of Income Tax proposed, no Tea Duty diminished, no Currant Duty, Carriage Tax, or other impost reduced. Eight months had been quite sufficient to upset nearly every trade and calling in the country, to destroy all commercial confidence, and to sow suspicion and enmity between all classes of the community. The President of the Board of Trade was not ashamed to declare the other day that the foreign trade had fallen in the six months—September to February last—by over £30,000,000, compared with the same period in 1889–90; that the average number of unemployed in Trades Unions in correspondence with his Department was 23,364, compared with 3,795 under Lord Salisbury; that the exports of British iron and steel were 1,440,000 tons less in 1892 than in 1889; that 41 tinplate mills were closed at the end of February, and 410 cotton mills and sheds, affecting 50,000 operatives, had recently suspended work. In addition to the deplorable state of affairs in the shipping trade, a reduction of wages had just been decided upon by the arbitrator to the Midland Iron and Steel Wages Board; and that would affect workmen in Lancashire, South Yorkshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, North and South Staffordshire, and East Worcestershire. In addition to that, the Home Rule proposals of the Government had made all investments in Ireland absolutely impossible, while refusal to take any steps to blend the Mother Country and the Colonies

    1059
    in a Commercial Union had made Colonial investments also difficult. What a moment to choose to increase taxation! Where were all the promises of a free breakfast table? Where was the hon. Member for Leicester and the hon. Member for the Spalding Division of Lincolnshire, with their anti-Unionist zeal for the abolition of the Tea Duty? Why, the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself declared, on April 22, 1890, from that (the Opposition) side of the House—
    "I am sure we must all feel that this Tea Duty cannot remain upon its present footing."
    What did he feel now? The Unionists reduced the Tea Duty by one-third. The Gladstonians left it alone, and this, although it was not a tax upon a competing import, and therefore paid every farthing of it by the consumers, although it was a tax most unequal in its incidence—200 per cent. ad valorem, on cheap two penny tea-siftings, but only 20 per cent. on the rich man's tea. Again, it was a tax mainly levied on the produce of our own Empire, for the importation of Indian and Ceylon tea was rapidly increasing, while that of China tea was as fast declining. The United Kingdom pretended to be a Free Trade country, because it admitted competing goods free, taxed non-competing goods essential to the people, and not produced in this country, and had duties heaped against it in every part of the world. Never was there such hypocrisy. The £20,000,000 we raised by Import Duties was the largest sum raised by any Custom House in Europe, and in nearly every case the duties were levied on the wrong articles. Why should £3,500,000 be raised from the poor tea-drinkers? Why should raw coffee be taxed 14s. a cwt., chicory 13s. 3d. a cwt., chocolate 2d. a lb., cocoa 1d. a 1b., currants 2s. a cwt., figs, prunes, and raisins for plum puddings and cakes 7s. a cwt., and the Cavendish and negrohead tobacco of the working man 4s. 6d. a lb? Right hon. Gentlemen opposite professed to be great friends of the working man. But the working man had nothing to thank them for, especially in respect of the Budget which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had presented that night. All these taxes on articles essential to the people should be taken off or reduced to a minimum—and the revenue raised there from be derived instead by levying
    1060
    a toll on those productions of foreign labour, which, admitted free on advantageous and unfair terms, caused British factories and mills to be shut up, British wages to be reduced, and British working men, having wives and children to maintain, to be thrown out of employment. He dared say some hon. Gentlemen opposite thought this meant a tax upon corn. Nothing of the kind, at any rate at first, and until the people saw what every other nation understood, that a moderate tax upon foreign corn enabled derelict laud to be cultivated by home labour to feed the people on it. He thought he had exploded the recent fables of the President of the Board of Trade, who declared that last August he saw Frenchmen paying 80 centimes for a bit of bread no English workhouse pauper would touch, by showing that at that very moment the finest French white bread only cost 7d. for nearly 4½1bs., while there many cheaper sorts in the market. He commended to hon. Gentlemen opposite a study of the Reports just laid upon the Table from the Consuls at Bordeaux and Nantes. The former said—
    "The increased Import Duty had no effect whatever upon the price of wheat, for when on June 1st the new rate of Duty (5 francs per 100 kilo) was put into force, values remained the same as before that date."
    The Consul at Nantes wrote—
    "Household bread sells now at an average of 5d. per 41b. loaf, which is a little lower than the average of the three years immediately preceding the imposition of the Duty."
    Why, even the rabid Free Trader at the Consulate at Calais could not contradict this, although, having apparently little to do, he spent much time in writing essays for the Cobden Club. The importation of wheat in grain only amounted last year to £17,000,000 out of a total foreign competing import of about £220,000,000, so it was hardly worth considering. But he submitted, if Her Majesty's Government had the smallest regard for the prosperity of the people and the welfare of British commerce, they would take off the £8,000,000 to £10,000,000 of taxation proposed in this Budget on non-competing products and raise that amount, or even more—so as to reduce the rates and taxes—on the £20,000,000 of foreign dairy produce, on the £12,000,000 of foreign flour, on the

    1061
    £28,000,000 worth of foreign meat, and, most of all, as a start on the £65,000,000 worth of foreign fully manufactured goods, and the £15,000,000 of partly manufactured goods, which came duty free into Sheffield, Birmingham, London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, and Bradford, and which, aided by false marks frauds, reduced the wages of his constituents, and British artizans, put them on short time, and drove them out of employment into the workhouse and across the seas.
    *SIR J. LUBBOCKasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the reduction of liabilities which he stated at £6,600,000 was after allowing for the £2,056,000 borrowed; was it, in fact, a net reduction? He would, under other circumstances, have welcomed a reduction of the Tea Duties; but if the Government of Ireland Bill were to become law the only contribution which Ireland would pay would be the Customs, and if, therefore, they were reduced, Great Britain would have to make up the difference. The Expenditure of the country was increasing, and the whole contribution from Ireland was their share of the Customs Duties. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, now told them that it-was impossible to increase the Customs Duties. That was also a serious objection to the present proposal. We had permanent and, as the Chancellor foresaw, increasing additions to Imperial Expenditure, and yet it was proposed to meet them by increasing a tax, the Irish contribution to which would, so far as Ireland was concerned, go entirely' to Irish Expenditure. The result was that if the [proposals of the Government were accepted, Ireland would, if the Homo Rule Bill became law, be relieved from any of the burden of this increased Expenditure, and the whole weight would fall on the people of Great Britain. Here in the very first Budget they had an illustration how their freedom in dealing with their finances was destroyed by the Home Rule Bill, in the effect it would have in throwing additional burdens on the people of England and Scotland.
    *MR. BARTLEYsaid, the first thing that struck him was the matter of the Alcohol Duties. As he understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Gentleman con-
    1062
    sidered that there would be a very small reduction in the Revenue from alcohol during the past year. Were they to understand, then, that the Local Veto Bill, which was to do so much to reduce the consumption of alcohol in the coutry, which was to shut up so many public-houses, and which was to have such a salutary effect upon the drinking habits of the people—were they to understand that the practical result of the Budget was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not believe that the Local Veto Bill would ever pass, or that, if it passed, it would be of any possible use in reducing the amount of alcohol consumed?
    Sir; W. HARCOURTsaid, he had not calculated that the Local Veto Bill would come into operation this year.
    *MR. BARTLEYsaid, if (he Government believed that the Bill would have any effect they would have taken it into consideration, and therefore they had a sidelight hon. the policy of the Government on this subject—namely, that the Local Veto Bill would never see daylight during the present Session. On the subject of the Death Duties, he wished the Chancellor of the Exchequer had had the boldness of his own convictions and had proposed that form of taxation. He was convinced that large properties did not pay so much in the £1 as small ones, and he was going to move an Amendment on that subject on the Second Reading of the Budget. He agreed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer with reference to the assistance to Local Taxation. A great mistake was made by the aid given to Local Taxation from Imperial Taxation. He was quite sure it led to a large amount of extravagance. Large subventions to Local Taxation were not a benefit to the country, but really injured and retarded it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that there was a very slight decrease in the Revenue—which was a hopeful and healthy sign—but that there was a great increase in the Expenditure, particularly in the Post Office, on Education, and other things. It seemed to him that this House was really the culprit in the matter of the increased Expenditure. They were always in the abstract, being economical; but when it came to absolute practice, few had the courage to do the thing which they knew to be economically

    1063
    right. They ought to pay their public servants of all grades liberally, but he asserted that this House ought not to be made an agency for continually considering the salaries and allowances of the Civil Service. He had been much struck by the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the latest decrease in the Revenue was in the last quarter of the year. That told a most serious tale of a Budget affected by political considerations. Could anyone doubt that they would continue to affect the Budget in coming years? The fact that the last quarter was so much worse than others showed that the country was waking up to the fact that the change in the Government was not a change for the better. He was glad to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that he was not going to reduce the National Debt Sinking Fund, as he had always concurred with those who said that it ought not to have been reduced below £28,000,000. Heavy as our taxation was it was less, perhaps, than that of any other European country; but it was an erroneous notion that an increase in the Income Tax would fall only on the well-to-do classes. It really fell with greatest weight on the people at the bottom of the scale, partly because the development of our prosperity was seen in the increasing number of small incomes and partly because the activity of the Revenue Officers drew in more and more at the bottom of the Income Tax scale. It was here that the Income Tax produced a higher amount every year, and therefore it was that; the increase in the tax would really fall on those with the lowest taxable incomes— those going from £150 to £400. For this reason he had hoped that in proposing an addition to the Income Tax the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have adopted differential rates as between incomes derived from industry and incomes derived from property. Nothing could be more equitable than to recognise the difference between the two classes of income. That recognition was advocated by Lord Brougham when the Income Tax was first imposed; and in Franco the tax was levied not upon industrial incomes, but only upon incomes derived from capital. In proposing an increase the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to take the opportunity of making the differential rates he had referred to. That
    1064
    was his idea, and he would like to see it adopted.
    MR. JAMES A. PICTONsaid that the hon. and gallant Member for Sheffield would have to do a great deal of work on his own side of the House before he made much progress with his extraordinary and reactionary doctrines. The answer to the question what would the advocates of a free breakfast table say to this Resolution was simply that they would vote for it. They might regard it as a melancholy duty; but it was a duty, nevertheless. He certainly looked for much from the present Government, but he did not expect impossibilities. It was clear that, owing to a series of unsound Budgets in the last few years, there was now an accumulation of difficulties which a very Hercules in finance could not sweep away. They all understood why it was impossible now to find the time that would be required for dealing with the Death Duties; but he looked forward confidently to the Government continuing its good work and making more Radical proposals. For that reason be could "possess his soul in patience." Imperfect as the Income Tax was in its incidence, an additional 1d. would cause less privation and inconvenience than any other increase of taxation. One of the causes of the deficit was the increase in the amount of the grants in aid of local taxation, in themselves an evidence of the unsoundness of our finance. He looked confidently to the time when, by a drastic reform in the Death Duties, nearly enough would be provided to carry out the idea suggested by the late Mr. Bright of a "free breakfast table."
    *MR. B. L. COHENsaid, he was sorry any hon. Members should think it their duty to deal with the Budget on Party lines, as he thought the subject was of far too great importance to be dealt with in that way. It was a subject, he would say, that ought to be dealt with on lines of pure finance. He wished to say, with regard to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the amount he would derive from the Death Duties would not help him to any considerable extent to meet the deficit. The right hon. Gentleman could not revise the Death Duties, he supposed, unless he wanted more money; and if he did want more money, it was no reason

    1065
    for not taking the money, because it would not be sufficient, or because he would not get it as early as he wanted it. The fact that he would not get much help from the Death Duties might be a reason for postponing the revision for ever. If this rule was to be applied to the Death Duties, the payers of those duties might look to a prolonged period of protection. He would pay his tribute to the manner in which the proposals had been laid before the House, which enabled the House to grasp with precision the proposals submitted. He would like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he would consider the necessity of making the Stamps applicable to Stock Exchange contracts applicable to all contracts. He did not know how such a proposal would be received, but he would be glad if they could hear what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to say on the subject. He congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on the conciliatory character, as he regarded it, of the statement which he had submitted.
    *SIR JOSEPH W. PEASEsaid, the Budget could scarcely be called a sensational one. What he had to complain of was the Naval and Military Expenditure which, however, had been forced upon successive Governments by hon. Members on both sides of the House by the state of Europe and the enormous armaments of other Powers, and, of course, to some extent by popular panic. He agreed that it was a great mistake to discuss the Budget on Party lines; it should be dealt with on grounds of economics. He would remind the hon. and gallant Member for Sheffield and the Committee generally that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just stated that the Expenditure had been increased during the last seven years by £10,600,000—Army and Navy, £2,600,000; Education, £3,400,000; Local Grants, £4,200,000; Civil Service, £400,000; total, £10,600,000 —that this had been aided by reduction in Debt charges of £3,000,000, leaving £7,000,000 to be raised, and that the country had been passing through one of the greatest financial periods of stress seen for many years. Firms of European reputation, such as the Barings, had been shaken, and the feeling of insecurity had influenced very materially the quantity of
    1066
    foreign orders usually received. A lack of confidence had been produced in the City; it had been passed on to the manufacturers, and it had in turn reacted on the working men. That was the state of things which had to be encountered by his right hon. Friend. Looking at all these difficulties, he thought there were special reasons why the Committee should regard the Budget as a matter distinct from and outside Party politics.
    MR. ARTHUR F. JEFFREYS (Hants,)said, the wealth accruing from the land had been decreasing since the year 1886, and he would like to know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer had considered the great hardship which would be caused to agriculturists by the imposition of the extra 1d. on the Income Tax on land? The Income Tax on land was collected on the gross amount and not on the net, and he was anxious to know whether the right hon. Gentleman would give instructions that the Income Tax should be collected on the net instead of the gross? The Land Tax should be taken away from the Imperial Exchequer and given to the local revenues of counties to be applied towards local expenses. They should be allowed to pay and control in the same spirit of fairness that other industries enjoyed.
    *MR. JAMES STUARTsaid, that among Radicals generally, and more particularly in the Metropolis, great regret would be felt that the Death Duties could not be dealt with in the present Budget. Time and money, however, were the great limitations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but he and many of his hon. Friends viewed with satisfaction the strong and firm way in which the right hon. Gentleman had signified his approval of a drastic reform on the Death Duties. There was another important matter, and that was as to rates on land. He would direct the attention of hon. Members to a Report which had been recently presented by the head of the Local Government Board, and which showed that the rates on land had diminished to a half of what they were in the earlier part of the century. The assistance rendered to the rates in London was 8¾d., while to agricultural districts it was over 10d. He hoped the Government would pass the measure for the equalisation of rates in

    1067
    the Metropolis, and thus relieve the pressure of taxation in London, where it was most felt. He expected they would obtain an assurance that that important reform would be pushed forward as a contribution, pending a more thorough-going reform of London Local Taxation.
    *MR. HENEAGE: The hon. Member who has just sat down spoke for the ratepayers of London. I want to say just a word or two for ratepayers in other parts of the country—in the seaport towns. I want to know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer has considered the desirability of making some provision towards meeting the cost incurred by the Local Authorities of these towns in taking precautions with regard to the prevention of cholera? The Local Authorities had hoped that something would be done to assist them in the anti-cholera expenditure for 1892; but there is no mention of any provision for this year in case there should be recurrent expenditure in these towns. The prevention of cholera is a national concern, and it cannot be effectually undertaken unless through these Local Authorities—the Sanitary Bodies of the seaports. I find, Sir, that the Hull Sanitary Authority spent over £1,150 in the prevention of cholera last year; and the Hull and Goole ports, through their Sanitary Authority, spent over £300 in addition. The total cost of the Humber ports was £2,500. In my own constituency the Sanitary Authorities were put to a great trouble and expense. Now, it is the inland towns that benefit chiefly by this expenditure, and the appeal that I make for some provision to make good the expenditure from the local funds must have the support of hon. Members from Sheffield, Bradford, Lincoln, Nottingham, and even of Derby, Manchester, and Liverpool. Is it fair that the seaports should bear all the expense? In Grimsby we fitted up a steamship as a Cholera Hospital Ship in the Humber, the patients being taken direct, and a medical assistant being on board. The medical officer boarded all ships, and we had the use of several steam-tugs; we supplied all medical wants, and had to pay the cost of the ship, and we are still paying for her. The expense has been exactly £893 11s. 7d. over and
    1068
    above that of the Infectious Diseases Hospital, which has been costly also. I think the House will acknowledge that it would be a fatal mistake to put the Local Authorities in such a position as to discourage them from taking immediate and effectual steps for the prevention of cholera. I do not wish to say anything just now on the Budget proposals, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us some assurance that these Authorities will be relieved from the position in which they are, so that they may not be deterred from the work in which they are engaged by the fear of what, the ratepayers may say afterwards. These Bodies may reasonably look to the Treasury for a subsidy which will enable them to act even more effectually than they have hitherto done in this important matter.
    MR. THOMAS USBORNEsaid, speaking as a member of a banking firm in the Levant, he would draw attention to the fact that a large amount of Stock Exchange business which formerly came from the Levant to London now went to Paris, in consequence of the tax placed on transactions on the London Stock Exchange. He hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer might see his way to adopt some plan by which foreigners might give orders in London without having to stamp the contract.
    *MR. JOHN LENGsaid, that according to a Petition which had been circulated among members from the Convention of Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland, a sum of £50,000,000 of unclaimed money was held by the banks in Scotland, though the total amount deposited with these banks was only £93,825,000. A cypher seemed to have been inadvertently added to the first amount. He would suggest that, by appropriating a portion of this money, the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have found an easy means of meeting the deficiency. Unclaimed deposits in banks should not be appropriated by the bankers, but should, after the lapse of a limited period, go into the State Exchequer. It was the custom for the bankers to appropriate such sums; but that was so much taken from the country, and they ought not to allow it to be done. Then there was the drawback on British spirits exported, amounting to £1,000 a day, or £365,000 a year. It

    1069
    was allowed in distilleries and other establishments where spirits were prepared for export, but it had been demonstrated that, for the expenditure incurred, the distillers and others received a full equivalent in the service of the Excise officers. They would really lose, as they did in some instances, when the Malt Duty was repealed, if the present system were discontinued. He had risen to point this out as a subject worthy of consideration for dealing with on a future occasion; but, in view of all the circumstances, he did not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have dealt with the present crisis in a more simple manner than lie had done.
    MR. WILLOXsaid, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that no economical Party now existed. He (Mr. Willox) was afraid that, that was so, judging by the amount of the Budget, and he was also afraid that it was a matter for which all Parties were equally responsible. The right hon. Gentleman also said that financial economy had gone the way of political economy. Now, political economy in this particular instance had to be somewhat discarded, because he took it that as a Customs Duty increased in amount it was desirable that its incidence should be adjusted equitably among those who bore it. That was not the case in reference to the one duty to which he wished to draw the attention of the Committee. He spoke of the Tobacco Duty, where the remarks of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that those who were well-to-do did not contribute their fair share to the Treasury were especially applicable. They had had it explained that the amount of the increase in the yield of the Tobacco Duty during the past year had been £182,000, and for the coming year a further augmentation had been calculated. The total amount of that duty would considerably exceed £10,000,000 for the year, and that sum was more than one-half of the total receipts from the Customs. They had it in the last Report of the Commissioners of Customs that the quantity of tobacco consumed per head of the population last year was 1½61 lb., equal to a duty of 5s. 3d. per head. It was certainly desirable that the incidence of such a tax should be equitably adjusted. He did not think it was so at
    1070
    present. The great bulk of the tobacco consumed in this country was consumed by the working classes, who usually paid 3d. per ounce for it, and of every 6d. so paid id. went to the Exchequer. How did that compare with the amount paid to the Exchequer by those whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer had described as having considerable means and not paving adequately? A rich man spent 6d. on a Havana cigar, and of that sum less than Id. went to the Exchequer, so that there was a differential rate very much in favour of the well-to-do. To take a familiar case, the duty on spirits raised the price of a nominal shilling's worth to 5s., whereas the duty on tobacco raised the price of that article from 1s. to 6s. 8d. per lb. According to an authority, which would not be treated with disrespect by hon. Gentlemen opposite, the Financial Reform Association, smokers should know that of the 3d. per ounce paid for the common sorts of tobacco, 2½d. went to the Exchequer and ½d. for the tobacco. That was not the proportion in which the tax was borne by the rich, who could well afford to pay, because just as the expense advanced with the high grade article the ratio of contribution to the Exchequer diminished in the same proportion. The commoner the tobacco, the poorer the consumer, the larger the levy that was made on his funds; the richer the man, the higher the price that was paid for the article, the less he paid in proportion to the National Exchequer. The present standard of tobacco taxation was fixed in 1863, but he would take the Committee back a stage further. In was in 1842 that Sir Robert Peel fixed the duty upon tobacco. His standard for foreign cigars was 9s. per lb., so that at that time, under that wise financial administrator, there was some close approximation between the duty and the value. But in 1863 the present Prime Minister, being Chancellor of the Exchequer, an alteration was made in the incidence of the duty, and it was altered very invidiously in both directions. The amount of duty levied on foreign cigars was reduced from 9s. to 5s. per 1b., and the duty on the tobacco which the people consumed was advanced from 3s. to 3s. 2d. It was from that point that the present anomaly began; and it still continued. The immediate effect of that change was to

    1071
    increase in a very rapid ratio the import of foreign-manufactured tobacco, and that state of things had gone on from then till now. The total duty paid on un manufactured tobacco in 1884 was £8,700,000; in 1890 it was £8,470,000, while in 1892 it was, according to the last Report of the Commissioners of Customs, £9,530,000. That showed progress, but not nearly the same relative progress as was manifested in the value of foreign cigars and imported manufactured tobaccos. in 1884 the amount of duty paid upon foreign cigars, which were consumed entirely by the rich and well-to-do, was £344,283; in 1891 it was £473,000; in 1892 it was £503,000. The importation of foreign-manufactured tobacco had been increasing in a still greater ratio, because in 1884 the duty paid on it was £46,000; in 1890 it was £69,000, in 1892 £82,250, so that at the present time there was paid on foreign cigars and foreign manufactured tobacco the sum of £585,000 per annum. He found that the percentage of increase showed far greater relative progress in the import of manufactured tobacco than in raw leaf. He called attention to these facts, not for the purpose of urging an immediate change of duty, because he knew that that would be impossible; but he wished to point out that, just as the duty on foreign cigars and imported manufactured tobacco increased, the proportion paid by the well-to-do people in this country diminished, and the amount of duty levied on the poorer classes increased. It would be found that, while there had been a great limitation of adulteration in this country, there had also been a very great disproportion of taxation. He called attention to this matter rather in view of the prospective time shadowed forth by the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Picton). When, perhaps, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have an opportunity of framing a new and more suitable Budget, the right hon. Gentleman would bear in mind that the incidence of the Customs Duties on tobacco was exceedingly inequitable, unfavourable to the working classes, and in favour of the well-to-do, and would put on a more just and equitable basis of taxation this important article of commerce.
    SIR W. HARCOUHT: I have every reason to thank the Committee for the
    1072
    extreme kindness with which it has dealt with the matters that it has been my duty to bring before it. Some of the subjects I have dealt with hon. Members have not dealt with, very properly reserving their observations until such time as the items can be more specifically dealt with under the several Resolutions. For the present I will confine myself to a few of the questions and suggestions which have been raised. The right hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Heneage) made an appeal on behalf of the seaport towns. I wish the Committee to observe that it is always the case, when a Budget is proposed, that now demands of an extensive character are immediately made, demands founded on principles which might carry one very far. What is the right hon. Gentleman's demand? It is that Imperial funds shall bear the charge of the Sanitary Duties, which are, I will admit, of an extraordinary character, now falling upon the seaport towns. The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to form a very adequate idea of how many more pennies such a demand, if conceded, would add to the Income Tax. That is a calculation into which I think he ought to enter. He will allow me to say that I myself have yet to be convinced of the soundness and justice of the principle on which his demand is founded. After all, seaport towns depend largely for their prosperity on the fact that they are seaport towns; and when these demands are made, the old legal maxim may fittingly be stated "That he who receives the advantage ought to bear the burden." Having in view the position of inland towns, it is not too much to say that the seaport towns should make provision for the security of their own population. If they wore to abandon the precautions which it is necessary for them to take, what would become of Southampton and Liverpool and Grimsby and Hull? Why, of course, the whole of their populations might be infected with cholera at once. Therefore, it seems to me that before the right hon. Gentleman makes this demand he should establish a principle on which alone it can properly be founded. I have to thank the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. J. Stuart) for the way in which he spoke of the proposals I have made. He expressed some disappointment at my not dealing

    1073
    with the Death Duties this year. He' referred to a matter on which I am able to give him, I hope, satisfactory assurances—a matter which demands the sympathy and support of the Government—namely, the promotion of the principle of the equalisation of rates in the Metropolis. That seems to me to be an extremely just principle. That was introduced as regards the poor rate, by my right lion, and venerable Friend the Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. Villiers). He has now asked me that the principle should be extended to other rates that now fall so unequally in different districts in London—namely, the improvement rates; and certainly it is the desire of the Government to give every support to the promotion of a reform of that character. The hon. Members for Hampshire and Somersetshire seem to think that I have not expressed the sympathy I ought to have expressed with the distress in the agricultural industry. I certainly did not go fully into that subject—and sympathy is a quality which does not naturally belong to the Budget Statement. I cannot but express the fullest sympathy of Her Majesty's Government with the losses and sufferings that have been sustained by that portion of the community during recent years. Hon. Members are wrong in assuming that we do not entertain that sympathy for agriculture in its distress that it has a right to demand from all sections of the community. The hon. Member for Hampshire has complained of the distinction between the rating of land and other properties. I, personally, am hostile in principle to any such distinction, and hold that both forms of taxation should be dealt with in the same way; but it is absolutely impossible to deal with the one without the other. I hope it will be possible to deal with the question, and put both duties on the same footing when the Death Duties are considered. That, I am afraid, is all that at this moment I can say. On another point, in reference to the Stamp Duties, an hon. Member opposite suggested a change which actually made my mouth water—namely, that a stamp should be put on all contracts, even in Mincing Lane; but I am afraid it would be almost as much as the life of any Chancellor of the Exchequer is worth to bring forward such a proposal. The
    1074
    hon. Member for North Islington advocated a distinction being drawn in the Income Tax Assessment between industrial and funded incomes. That is the battle that was fought by the Prime Minister in his great speech in 1853. As often as that question has been brought forward, so often the answer has been given that it is impossible to make the distinction. I should prefer to deal with the Death Duties, because those duties secure the additional taxation on the higher and accumulated wealth which cannot be secured by the Income Tax. As to the question I have been asked in reference to the date when the increased Income Tax will come into operation, whether the tax is increased or decreased, it always commences on the 6th of April. That is the date at which the existing tax expires. On the occasion of the Abyssinian War the tax was imposed in November, still, it harked back, commencing as from the 6th of April. It is calculated from the day on which the previous tax expires. For the convenience of their clients bankers deduct Income Tax according to the rate of the previous year. If the rate is lowered, and they deduct too much, then they make the necessary return afterwards; and if they do not deduct enough, as is the case when the rate is increased, then additional deductions are made. I have endeavoured to reply to the questions which have been asked. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Long) offered me £1,000 a day—I think that is what his drawback would come to—but I inquired into the matter the moment I heard of it and found, I am sorry to say, that there is nothing in it. You cannot refuse the drawback on spirits in bond, for if you did you would suffer considerable loss of duty. I will not ask the Committee to pass the Resolution relating to the Income Tax to-night; hut if there is no objection, according to the usual practice, I will ask leave to take the Tea Duty and Resolution with reference to Stamps.
    MR. GOSCHEN: I understand that it has generally been the custom to allow the Tea Resolution to be taken, and for my part I shall offer no objection, on the understanding that we are absolutely free to discuss the whole of the financial policy of the right hon. Gentleman on

    1075
    Thursday night. As to the Stamp Duty, I see no particular objection to its being passed this evening. Of course, if there are any hon. Members who wish to discuss it, doubtless the right hon. Gentleman will not press it. After all, it will not affect the progress of Business one way or the other.
    MAJOR RASCHsaid, he wanted to mention one or two grievances that affected his constituents. The Government should take a great interest in the British fanner, and that being so, he thought they might do something to relieve him of some of his burdens of taxation. Why did not the Chancellor of the Exchequer put a duty upon British wines? Foreign wines were very heavily pressed in that respect, and he thought by putting a duty on home wines the Chancellor would have an easy means of raising the money he required. There was another method by which the right hon. Gentleman might win some popularity in the country districts; and that was by taking steps to prevent transfers of shares for a merely nominal consideration. Such transfers were made too often for the purpose of cheating the Revenue. The money raised in the ways he suggested could be applied to the relief of local taxation, which would be a great relief to the agriculturists, and the right hon. Gentleman would be able to come down next year with a more satisfactory outlook than that which he had to face at present.
    *MR. A. C. MORTONsaid, he had to congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his bold and plain speech with regard to economy. He could not, however, agree that the right hon. Gentleman and the Prime Minister were the only two Members of that House who had economical views, for he had not forgotten that when a proposal was made to reduce expenditure in connection with the Expedition to Uganda the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman voted against that proposal. He wished to protest against the mode of assessing property for the collection of the Property Tax and House Duty. These taxes were paid on the gross value, and not on the net, or rateable, value. That was unfair, and had been acknowledged to be unfair by Parliament. He could hardly expect the
    1076
    Chancellor of the Exchequer to do anything in the matter during the present Session; but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give a promise that it should be considered. There was another matter to which he would like to call attention, and that was the question of Grants in Aid. A sum of over £7,000,000 was collected as Imperial Taxes and given to Local Authorities; but it did not appear in the Budget. The Expenditure for the present year, including that £7,000,000, and a loan of about £1,500,000, would be nearly £100,000,000. He did not believe in Grants in Aid. It was a very bad system, and led to a waste of money. This expenditure of £100,000,000 was a great deal more than the people of the country ought to be asked to meet. Ten millions at least ought to be knocked off. In the first place, he thought the Royal Family cost a great deal too much. This country could not afford nearly £1,000,000 for the expenses of one family, and that sum ought to be reduced by at least £500,000. Of course, it would be no good for him to propose such a reduction. It ought to be proposed by a strong Member of the Government; but it was unfortunate that these matters of expenditure always involved a question of confidence in the Government. In his opinion, the House ought to be allowed to consider them on their merits, and no Government ought to be turned out on a question of reduction of Expenditure. The next question to which he would call attention was the Expenditure on the Army and Navy. Under the present Government the cost this year of the Army was £250,000 more than last year. If this extra money were going to the private soldiers he would not object to it; but, so far as he knew, hardly one penny of it was going in that direction. He had been told that there was a waste of nearly £2,000,000 in the Army Expenditure. He had not been able exactly to discover whore that waste took place. It took a deal of trouble for any hon. Member of the House to find out the way money was spent in this country, and where it went to; and it therefore was not surprising that an humble Member like himself was unable to discover this waste of £2,000,000 in the Army Ex88penditure. He should like, however, to compel the Army Authorities to carry out the work for a sum less by £2,000,000

    1077
    than the present Expenditure. He believed they could easily do it, and as efficiently as at present. There were a great many officers who did nothing, and a great many persons who got pensions to which they were not entitled. Those, for instance, might he got rid of. He did not think there was so much waste in the Navy as in the Army, because the Navy was not so much run after as the Army, and its officers were not so well paid. But still there was a great waste in the Navy. He also thought that Civil Servants were paid too much, and that their pensions should he done away with altogether. The working men had now got votes; but they had nor got pensions, and it would probably come to this— that everybody or nobody should be pensioned, because the man with £1 a week had as good a claim to a pension, and should get it on the same ground, as a man with.£1,000 a year. He did not wish to say anything offensive to the Officers of the House; but there were Officers of the House who were paid £1,000 or £1,500 a year and got pensions, whilst the labourers employed about the House got only £1 or £1 10s. a week, and no pensions, so that when they were old they were driven into the workhouse, or had to depend upon their relatives when they were half-starved. The better way would be to abolish pensions altogether, and let people provide for themselves. When people were certain of pensions, it destroyed their best qualities of self-reliance and thrift, and made them extravagant. He would give pensions to soldiers and sailors and policemen, on account of the danger and nature of their services, but would abolish it in the case of all other servants of the State. Then there were what he would call political pensions. Ex-Ministers got £1,200 or £2,000 a year, to which they were no more entitled than he was. He believed that these ex-Ministers had to make a declaration, that they could not live without this pension. How they made such a declaration he did not know, but there were numbers of Members of the House who could with equal honesty make such a declaration. He hoped the present Government would do away with these pensions, and so save a little for the country. The Chancellor of the Ex-
    1078
    chequer had told them that the Telegraph Service had never paid its expenses, not to speak of the interest of the money paid for the undertakings. It was an undoubted fact that too much money had been given for the Telegraphs. He would, therefore, impress on hon. Members that they should take care, when purchasing such undertakings, that they did not give too much money for them. The London County Council should take that piece of advice. There was a proposal to buy up the London Water Companies, and the County Council were asked to pay a fabulous sum for the works; but if the County Council did not take care they would be bit as the Government had been bit over the Telegraphs. The late Government had tried to make political capital out of the fact that they had passed what they called the Free Education Act. But it seemed the present Government had to pay for it. The present Government had to provide a large sum of money for Education. He did not complain of that, because the money was being put to a good purpose, and would before long yield good fruit. There was also an increase of £600,000 in the Post Office Expenditure. That Department was well conducted, and he did not object to the expenditure so long as the officials who really did the work got the money. He was sorry the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not deal with the Death Duties this year. The matter was most important, for the Death Duties were unfairly imposed, real property only having to pay one-third the amount paid on personal property. He had never had any explanation of this difference of treatment, except the fact that it had always been the general policy of the Government of the country, so long as it was in the hands of the aristocracy, to take the taxes off themselves and place the burden on the middle and working classes. He did not see why the question of the re-adjustment of these Death Duties should not be dealt with in this Session. He would probably be told that Ireland blocked the way, as it had blocked the way for the last 30 or 40 years, or for 700 years if they liked. When they asked anything for Great Britain they were told there was an Irish Bill before the House, and that,

    1079
    therefore, there was no time to do anything for England or Scotland and Wales. He did not think there was a stronger argument in favour of Home Rule than the fact that until Home Rule was out of the way there would be no time whatever to deal with The affairs of Great Britain. There was one subject of importance to which he had heard no allusion in the course of the discussion—that was the subject of a graduated Income Tax. The Liberal Party was pledged to a graduated Income Tax. Everyone would agree that it was not right to charge the same tax on precarious incomes as was charged on incomes derived from well-secured investments, or to tax small incomes to the same extent as large incomes. He therefore hoped the Government would do something this Session to carry out their pledges to establish a graduated Income Tax. He knew the difficulties in the way of the Government in trying to cut down the expenses of some of the Departments; but the Government should not complain when those reforms were pressed on their attention by private Members in the interest of the country. So far as he was personally concerned, he was quite prepared to go any length in the way of economy. Instead of a £100,000,000 Budget he should like at least £10,000,000 knocked off. He was quite certain that they could get the work of the country as well done by getting rid of a number of useless persons. He knew it required a good deal of courage to advocate economy in the expenditure of public money in this House or elsewhere. Representatives knew well how to economise with their own private funds, but when they came to deal with other people's money they found it so much easier to spend; but he was sure that when the democracy was more in power than it was at present the expenditure of public money would be better looked after.
    *MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid, the Budget was a great disappointment to many Members. It was a very great disappointment to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer proving to demonstration that he must impose a graduated Death Duty, and then entirely declining to do so, for he could not help thinking that had it been done the Government
    1080
    would not be in Office another fortnight. But the utter disappointment of the Budget to him lay in the fact of the increased Expenditure under the present Government. During the General Election they were told that the Tory Party was the extravagant Party, and that if the Liberal Party ever came into Office they would carry on the Government of the country much cheaper than any other Party. But instead of that they found that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to avow that the Expenditure that year exceeded the Expenditure of last year by £505,000. That was a great disappointment to him. When the result of the General Election was announced to be a majority for the Liberal Party, he felt it was extremely disappointing; hut that, fortunately, there was one comfort in the situation—government would be cheaper. But he found that, instead of being cheaper, government was £500,000 dearer. He was surprised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not show greater firmness in resisting the demands his various Colleagues had made on him. He thought the First Lord of the Admiralty was entitled to the £14,000,000 he was going to get. He believed they could not curtail the Naval Expenditure, and they might increase it with advantage. But when the First Lord proposed to build these two monster cruisers, which were to roam about the ocean, without making any use of the coaling stations, simply because Russia had some cruisers of the kind, he wondered the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not object. He was also surprised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not curb the Secretary for War. That right right hon. Gentleman had said that the time was passed when an English Army would be sent to the Continent or would be used on the Continent for purposes for which Armies were occasionally employed. If that were so, a great deal of money which was now spent on the Army might be saved, and he wondered the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not try to save it. Then, again, the President of the Local Government Board was an expensive Member of the Government, though his Department was one that might with advantage be abolished altogether. The prodigal son of the Government was the President of the Board of Trade, who was going about the

    1081
    country establishing labour shops and setting up armies of Inspectors. He was surprised the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not curb that right hon. Gentleman also. The simplicity with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to deal with the large Expenditure this year over last year was so great that it amounted to brutality. There was no novelty about it. The right hon. Gentleman proposed no new tax which nobody would feel and which nobody would object to pay. He simply proposed to put an additional 1d. on the Income Tax, which was the last resort of feeble minds, and which anybody could do. The Income Tax was unjust to owners of leasehold property, in which numbers of persons had their money invested. These people had to pay the tax not on the net value of the house, but on the gross value, the effect of which was that they had to pay more than they ought to be called upon to pay. He had another grievance against the Income Tax. In the year 1853 the present Prime Minister explained that the tax was only to last for six years, and in 1874, also, the right hon. Gentleman gave the country to understand that, if he were returned to power, there was no reason why arrangements should not be made for the absolute and unconditional abolition of that tax. Yet now, 20 years after that statement had been made, the tax was not only still in existence, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to add 1d. more to it, and rise it to the highest figure it had readied for several years past. The attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been called by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Heneage) to the fact that an invasion of cholera was feared this year, and that the Authorities of the ports were called upon to bear the whole cost of the measures they had taken to prevent that invasion. The right hon. Gentleman replied that the matter concerned the ports, and was not an Imperial matter at all. He said it was an Imperial affair. In the Government of Ireland Bill quarantine was reserved to the Imperial Parliament. That showed that precautions taken against the importation of disease was an Imperial affair, and that the cost of it was properly charged to Imperial funds.
    1082
    It was not solely for their own protection that the ports were called upon to take these measures against cholera—it was for the protection of the whole country; and he thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer should dole out the money necessary for these measures, for cholera would probably arrive in this country owing to the continuance of the easterly winds. For all these reasons he was disappointed with the Budget. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer must have another 1d. on the Income Tax, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman, if he should have the extraordinary good fortune of being in Office next year, would try to do his duty to the country by curbing the extravagance of his Colleagues on the Treasury Bench.
    MR. S. WOODS: I beg to move that the Question be now put.
    THE CHAIRMAN (Mr. MELLOR,): This is a matter upon which, at the present moment, I cannot accept the Closure.
    *MR. TOMLINSONsaid, the hon. Member for Durham (Sir J. Pease) spoke of the want of confidence existing in financial circles, and of the depression there was in all enterprises, attributing this depression mainly to the transactions connected with the Baring failure; but he (Mr. Tomlinson) thought there was even a more potent cause for the depression. If the hon. Member made inquiries in the City into the cause of the depression, he would find that the first cause was the Home Rule Bill that the Government were trying to push forward; that was the most important factor in the continued depression of our industries. It was not in times of depression of this kind that those who had to do with industrial pursuits looked with equanimity upon an increase of 1d. on the Income Tax, but, unfortunately, it was the tax to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to depend to meet a deficiency. It was, however, all the more intolerable in consequence of the inequalities that remained unredressed or unattempted to be redressed. Several of these inequalities had been referred to, and one which was very deeply felt had come under his own notice. This was, that in estimating the value of property of a perishable kind no allowance was made for depreciation, with the

    1083
    single exception of machinery in factories, and industries which existed by working out material which became exhausted in the process of working were not permitted to make any deductions for depreciation. Mining property was most unfairly treated. Every owner of a mine or property of that kind, if he wished to carry on his business properly, set apart each year a sum representing the depreciation of the capital laid out in the concern; otherwise, when the mine was exhausted, he would find himself without any means of recouping his capital; but no allowance was made by the Income Tax authorities for that depreciation; the Income Tax was assessed upon the full property without any allowance whatever for depreciation. A year or two ago he was present with an influential deputation which brought this matter before the notice of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman admitted it was a serious grievance, and one that ought to be redressed; but he pointed out this was not the only grievance connected with the Income Tax, and that professional men had also grievances to be redressed. He (Mr. Tomlinson) did not dispute for a moment that, if possible, all grievances should be redressed; but his point was that it was the duty of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, who treated Income Tax as a permanent source of revenue, to endeavour to bring the tax into harmony with fairness and justice, and he hoped to see the time when they would find Chancellors of the Exchequer more ready to consider grievances of this kind. He thought it should be pressed upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whatever Party was in Office, that a tax like the Income Tax should be levied upon fair and equitable principles.
    *MR. EVERETTsaid, the hon. Member who had spoken strongly in regard to the Income Tax seemed to have forgotten that when the Prime Minister formerly suggested that the tax might be dispensed with, the country would not accept the suggestion; the Conservatives then came into power, and though they had a large surplus, they did not repeal that Tax. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. A. C. Morton), amongst other interesting topics, spoke of the subject of pensions, and expressed an opinion, that
    1084
    was growing in the country, that we should have to come either to pensioning all or none; and he believed that the country would, before long, come to the opinion that all should be pensioned—that was to say, all who had attained old age. The Chancellor of the Exchequer favoured them with a half-promise in regard to Schedule A, which would be very acceptable to many in this country. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would continue a long time in Office, and that amongst the reforms he introduced would be the charging of Schedule A upon the real income arising from real property, instead of on a sum which as at the present moment was very much larger. The Chancellor of the Exchequer drew a picture of the enormous wealth and continued prosperity of this country, a picture pleasant to look at, but in strange contrast with the state of things that presented itself to the unfortunate people who lived and were interested in the agricultural districts. He spoke only the sober truth when he said the agriculturists were not very far from general bankruptcy. In the Eastern Counties the farmers were almost at their last gasp, the landlords were in the last extremity, the country clergy, who depended on their glebes and on tithes which were yearly falling, were almost beggared, bankers were complaining of the state of things, and did not know how to turn, looking at the dreadful condition of the agricultural world, and mortgagees were now finding that the securities upon which they had lent money had had the very bottom taken out of them, and that the wealth they thought themselves possessed of had largely vanished. In the county from which he came the value of property had decreased nearly £30,000,000 during the past 20 years. If all industries were like that of the agricultural industry, very bad would be the outlook. Notwithstanding the roseate picture of England's prosperity, he regretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have had to come down to ask them for an increased tax. He was sure the right hon. Gentleman could not get more out of the agricultural districts, and it would have to come from those parts of the country that were more favoured than they had been in the agricultural districts in prosperity. The right hon. Gentleman said rightly that

    1085
    larger Expenditure had been the cause of his having to ask for these taxes, and he, for one, most entirely sympathised with the right hon. Gentleman. During the last Parliament the country was subjected to an increase of Expenditure of tens of millions on our Navy and Army. It was a curious thing, but the Conservatives when they came; into Office generally got up these scares, persuaded the country that we were in danger, and the result was that the country allowed them to increase the Military and Naval Expenditure. When the Liberals came into power the bill had to be paid, and then the Liberals were rounded upon, and it was said that directly they came into Office taxation had to be increased, though it, was undoubtedly duo to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. But not only were the taxes to be raised, but the value of the money the Chancellor of the Exchequer took out, of the pockets of the people was very much greater than it was 10 or 15 years ago. A sovereign now represented a larger amount of the produce of the soil, or of the mine, or of the loom, or of the factory than it did 15 years ago. The late Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a very interesting speech in this House in 1883, called attention to the fact that money was steadily increasing in value. Mr. Giffen, the eminent statistician, read a most interesting paper at. the Society of Arts in 1888 in which he confirmed the fact and illustrated it, and by many clear proofs showed that the value of money had risen 30 per cent. as compared with the 15 previous years, and that this rise continued to go on. At the present time the rise in the value of money, measured by commodities, was no less than 50 per cent.: so that when the nation was called upon to pay a tax of something like £100,000,000, it was equal to a tax of £150,000,000 of the money of 15 or 20 years ago. In an interesting article contributed to The Nineteenth Century of the present month by the late Chairman of Committees (Mr. Courtney) it was pointed out that owing to the rise in the value of money the real weight of our National Debt was increasing by hundreds of millions against the tens of millions that; we wore paving off, so that the Debt got heavier instead of lighter. There was a time
    1086
    when the present Prime Minister was able to refer to the Revenue of the country as increasing by leaps and bounds, and when, although the Expenditure was annually increasing, the Revenue was increasing still faster. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer would like to see those halcyon days back again he could have them by allowing the free use of that precious metal which had always in the past been allied with gold. The blindness and infatuation of the present generation had led them to exclude the free use of this metal.
    THE CHAIRMAN: I must point out that the right hon. Gentleman is going a long way from the subject.
    MR. EVERETTsaid, he was only going to urge, in conclusion, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his future treatment of this question, should show a somewhat kinder spirit towards increasing the supply of money by reverting to the old full free use of silver than he had hitherto done.
    SIR H. S. KINGwished to support the views of the right hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Heneage) and to appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on behalf of the home ports. His constituents objected in the strongest way to having the intolerable burden of preventing cholera going inland thrown exclusively upon them. Last year his constituents paid a debt of £150 to preserve the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his constituents from cholera. He, and he believed every Member for a home port, agreed with the right hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Heneage) in considering that the prevention of the spread of cholera was of national importance, and he would strongly urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to re-consider the question.
    *SIR R. TEMPLEfeared that this proposal to increase the Income Tax would be received by his constituents with great regret, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. In his constituency there resided a very large number of clerks upon very modest salaries and scanty incomes, and they felt, indeed they had always felt, the Income Tax acutely. During the years recently passed they were very grateful for two successive reductions in this tax conceded to them by his right hon. Friend

    1087
    the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Goschen), and now this augmentation would press upon them with unexpected severity. Then he wished, once in a way, to express his concurrence with the hon. Member for the Woodbridge Division of Suffolk—he did not often have the pleasure of agreeing with him —and therefore, he had the greater satisfaction of expressing his agreement. He, and all those who represented agricultural constituencies, would heartily concur with what the hon. Member said with regard to the depressed condition of agriculture. These Imperial burdens were growing and pressing more hardly upon the agricultural classes, and he considered this was about the worst time for imposing upon them any increase of the Income Tax; in fact, the agricultural interest was the very last interest that ought to be subjected to any additional financial burden.
    THE MARQUESS OF CARMARTHENregretted that the right hon. Gentleman had not proposed to impose a tax upon a certain article much used. The article he should like to see taxed was the revolver. They all knew there was a tax on carrying firearms, and considering the great harm that was done by the indiscriminate carrying of firearms and revolvers, he thought it was a matter that should receive the most careful consideration of Her Majesty's Government. If the right hon. Gentleman would confer with the Home Secretary (Mr. Asquith), he would find that an enormous number of people were killed annually through carrying these arms. He had taken considerable interest in this matter, and he could assure the right hon. Gentleman that, from the reports that reached him from different parts of the country, the number of deaths occurring through carrying revolvers was something hardly credible. If the right hon. Gentleman would not only place a tax upon revolvers, but would introduce a Bill to compel dealers not to sell revolvers to any person who could not produce a licence for carrying arms, he would do a great deal to put a stop to what is becoming a serious evil as well as something that would redound to his credit.
    MR. J. S. WALLACErose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question
    1088
    be now put," but the Chairman withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.
    MR. BONSORasked from what date the contract note would take effect?
    SIR W. HARCOURT: From the passing of the Act. There is one thing that I should mention, and which I forgot in the Budget Statement, and that is to do away with the exemption which enables dealers in foreign game not to pay the same licence as dealers in English game are required to pay. I was asked a question about it, and I answered I would remedy it, and I propose to submit a Resolution to correct the anomaly. There is also one other small matter I may as well mention. It appears there is growing up a practice in reference to payment by cheques, to have the receipt upon the cheque, and then the man does not pay the 1d. receipt duty because he manages to get it covered by the 1d. duty on the cheque. That is a clear evasion of the law, and we propose in the Bill to do away with that and to make the 1d. duty payable on the receipt however it is paid, whether by cheque or not.
    MR. BONSORsaid, it was a very small matter, but at the same time he should like to have it cleared up. It was a very ordinary custom in business to send a letter, "Dear sir, I have received your cheque," and not to put a stamp upon the letter; he therefore wished to know if the right hon. Gentleman proposed to include letters acknowledging the receipt of cheques under the 1d. duty?
    SIR W. HARCOURT: The hon. Member may be quite sure I will get it if I can.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    1. Resolved, That, towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, the Duties of Customs now chargeable on Tea shall continue to be levied and charged on and after the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and nintey-three, until the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four, on the importation thereof into Great Britain or Ireland (that is to say) on—
    Tea … the pound Fourpence.

    CONTRACT NOTE.
    2. Resolved, That in lieu of the Stamp Duty of sixpence now payable under the "The Stamp

    1089
    Act, 1891," upon a Contract Note, as defined by section fifty-two of the said Act, for or relating to the sale or purchase of any stock or marketable security of the value of one hundred pounds or upwards, there shall be charged for the use of Her Majesty the Stamp Duty of one shilling.—(The Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
    Resolutions to be reported To-morrow;
    Committee to sit again upon Wednesday next.

RAILWAY SERVANTS (HOURS OF LABOUR) BILL.—(No. 265.)

  CONSIDERATION.
  As amended, further considered.
  SIR JOHN GORST: The new clause which I have to submit to the House upon this Bill embodies the principle of a Bill which is now before the House, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull (Sir H. S. King), and I have to apologise to my hon. Friend for having appropriated the idea of his Bill and modified it into a new clause in the Bill of the Government; but, inasmuch as there is no reasonable probability of my hon. Friend's Bill being carried this Session, I dare say, in his zeal for the interests of the railway servants, he will have no objection to the principle of his Bill being discussed upon this clause. In submitting the principle of this clause to the approval of the House I labour under great difficulty, because the Bill of the Government has never been considered or discussed at all in the House. If there had been the discussion which a very important question of this kind demands on the Second Reading of the Bill, I would have appealed to the views and opinions the House then expressed, and my task would have been much shortened, as I could have pointed out how this clause dealt with the principle the House on the Second Reading affirmed; but by some extraordinary proceeding on the part of the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Mundella) this Bill was smuggled through a Second Reading and referred to a Grand Committee, and therefore I am under the necessity of troubling the House with some reasons and principles on which the clause I have proposed is based. In order to defend the principle of a clause of this kind, I must establish the right
  1090
  and expediency of an interference by the state with the hours of labour of adult railway servants. I am not under the necessity of establishing the principle that it is either right or expedient for the State to interfere with the hours of adult workers generally. I know there are a very large number of Members in this House, and of people in the country, who hold that it is the duty of the State Legislature to prescribe what are reasonable hours of labour for all trades in the country. Whenever that question comes up for discussion in this House I shall be quite ready to give my views upon it, and to discuss in the House this very important and to some extent very novel proposition. But we are not to-night under any obligation to either consider that general question or to express any definite opinion upon it, because the right of the State to interfere with the hours of labour of railway servants is based upon exceptional principles. There are two principles which would justify legislation of this kind, and one of the misfortunes of having no discussion of the Second Reading of this Bill is that the House is in the dark as to which of the two principles the Government have accepted in the Bill they are asking us to consider upon Report. The two principles to which I allude are these. In the first place, the State has a right to interfere with the hours of labour of railway servants on the same principle it prescribes the hours of labour of dockyard men and people employed in the Public Service, because the railway servants are really servants of the public. The Railway Companies possess a monopoly; they have extraordinary and extensive powers conferred on them by Parliament, and though in that it is convenient to leave the great work of railway transport to private companies and not undertake it on the part of the State, yet private companies in carrying out this work are really the agents of the State, and the State has the right to see that the persons so employed in the service of the public are not unreasonably worked. That is one principle on which the State may interfere with the hours of railway servants. There is another principle which, to my mind, is, if possible, a stronger one, and that is that the State has a right to in-

  1091
  terfere with the hours of labour of railway servants for the purpose of protecting the travelling public against the risk of accidents. I may state generally that instances have occurred of great disaster entirely, or in a great measure, ascribable to the fact that the servants of a Railway Company have worked unreasonably long hours. There was the case of the terrible railway accident at Thirsk.
  SIR J. W. PEASE: That is not a case in point.
  SIR J. GORST: The man was too long on duty.
  SIR J. PEASE: That is not so.
  SIR J. GORST: I understood that to be what occurred—that the man in the signal-box was too long on duty.
  SIR J. PEASE: It is not so.
  SIR J. GORST: Well, it appears that in four years it has been found by the Inspectors that in 47 cases it was found necessary to call attention to the long hours of work of some of the men, and in 17 cases it was reported that the servants of the Railway Companies who were wholly or partially responsible for the accidents had been at work for an excessive time. That is sufficient to justify my argument that the State has a right to interfere with the hours of railway servants in the interest of the public. The clause of which I have given notice is based upon, and in accordance with, both these principles. The Bill itself assumes that there is to be some interference by the State with the hours of labour of railway servants, and the question is as to the reasonable time that railway servants should be employed. I am asking the House to consider this matter; but the Government, by their mechanical majority, may prevent the House from expressing any opinion upon the subject. If that be so, the Board of Trade will have to decide the question which the House is asked to decide tonight, and which it may be prevented from deciding; and if the Board of Trade cannot decide the question to the satisfaction of the Railway Companies, then the Railway Commission will have to undertake the task. The only question really for the House to decide is whether the House of Commons or the Board of Trade is the best qualified body to say what are the reasonable hours that railway servants should work. I think that Parliament rather than the Board of
  1092
  Trade should determine the question. Parliament is quite as competent to do so us any body of experts at the Board of Trade or any number of lawyers on the Railway Commission. In the House there are many hon. Gentlemen acquainted with the views and opinions of the workers themselves. There are also Members acquainted with railway management, and who know the views of the working classes as to the hours it is expedient for them to work. Another reason why the House should decide the question is that it would very much discredit itself by evading the responsibility of a decision. Great expectations have been formed in the House and great promises have been held out to the constituencies as to its competence and intention to deal with labour questions. But if, on the first occasion when a practical question is submitted for its decision, it should say it is wholly incompetent to decide, the House will be very much discredited in the eyes of the labour constituencies. If this Bill is to have any operation at all, and if it is not to be a mere sham, it appears to me that railway men have a right to some kind of authoritative declaration from Parliament what excess of hours would justify them in making an application to the Board of Trade. As the Bill stands, however, they are absolutely without any guide at all. I suggest eight hours for signalmen and ten for other servants; but these figures are merely put into the clause tentatively and they can be altered in Committee, if the general opinion of the House is against them. I confidently assert that if the Bill stands in its present form it will be a dead-letter, and that the hours of no railway servant in the Kingdom will be reduced by its operation. The clause I propose is so moderate that I am apprehensive lest it may be said to partake of the vices of the Bill, and to be hardly strong enough to do any good. The hours I have taken are those now worked on the best railways. It will hardly be argued that eight hours is not a long enough day for a signalman, or ten hours for an engine-driver, both in the interests of the men and of the public. There are exceptional cases, but the clause I propose gives the most absolute discretion to the Board of Trade and the Railway Commissioners to extend the hours subject to the condition that the

  1093
  reasons should be stated upon the Schedule to be laid before the House. I have been compelled to discuss the clause at some length because there has been no discussion of the principles of the Bill. Whatever are the principles underlying the Bill, the clause is a reasonable and safe extension of them. It merely takes off the shoulders of the Board of Trade and the Railway Commissioners a duty for which they are not specially adapted, and a duty which the House is far more competent to perform. I beg to move the clause standing in my name.
  New Clause (Hours exceeding eight for signalmen and ten for other servants to be deemed primâ facie excessive,)— (Sir John Gorst,)—brought up, and read the first time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause be read a second time."
  *SIR J. PEASEsaid, the right hon. Gentleman laboured under the disadvantage of one who had not been a Member of the Committee on whose Report the Bill was founded. He believed that the Bill, as it stood, would tend, to a greater extent than the proposed clause, to secure the comfort of the men and the safety of the public. The subject had been thoroughly sifted in the Committee. The Board of Trade could, upon the representation of almost anybody, order the company to submit to them, within a specified period, such schedule of time as, in the opinion of the Department, would keep the hours of labour within reasonable limits, having "regard to the circumstances of the traffic and the character of the work." The public were much better protected by the regulations of the Board of Trade, who had full power to bring every Railway Company to account, than they would be by scheduling the hours of labour. The danger of specifying the hours would be that the maximum rates laid down by Parliament would be adopted by the companies instead of the minimum rates which the friends of the railway servants were anxious to obtain. The Report of the Committee stated that the companies which wished that the men should be kept at work long hours were comparatively few. Mr. Harford, Secretary of the Amalgamated Railway Servants'
  1094
  Union, which was the largest union of railway men, stated, when examined before the Committee in 1891, that he did not ask that the limit of hours should be laid down by Act of Parliament. Eight hours in many signal-boxes would be too long; but there were men who worked in some signal-boxes not more than six hours or four hours. There were signalmen who did not do two hours and a half consecutive work in the 12 hours that they were on duty. Four or five passenger trains and two goods trains in the 12 hours were all that they had to signal. It was idle to compare such men with the men at Clapham Junction or other larger places. Major Marindin stated very clearly that he was totally against a Parliamentary limit of hours; and Sir H. Calcraft, who certainly had more experience in connection with the matter than almost any other man, was exactly of the same opinion. It would appear from page after page of the evidence given before the Committee that there were few railway servants, no officer of the Board of Trade, and certainly no railway general manager, who thought it would be for the public safety or for the advantage of the men themselves that Parliament should interfere. Instances had occurred which, he thought, showed that it was time for Parliament to interfere, and the question was—How was Parliament to interfere? Certainly not by laying down hard-and-fast lines as to hours; but by trusting, as this Bill did, the Board of Trade to deal with the circumstances as they arose in special cases. The right hon. Gentleman was mistaken in his view in regard to the matter.
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: I feel somewhat impelled, as an old-fashioned politician, to object to the new doctrine of spontaneous interference with the freedom of contract and the labour of adult men. It is said that this Bill was smuggled through the House on the SECOND READING. I do not see how that could be done if those interested in it attended; but, however that may be, it has received careful investigation in the Standing Committee. There have been undoubtedly notable eases in which serious accidents have occurred, either post hoc or propter hoc, when railway servants have been employed for unduly long hours; but Railway Companies have set their houses in order, and have greatly reduced the hours of their men

  1095
  Nevertheless, the Committee wore satisfied that there were adequate grounds for giving the Board of Trade special power to interfere with the discretion of the companies. That is a very different thing from the House laying down hard-and-fast lines as to the hours of railway servants. It is said that railway servants are in a manner State employés, because the companies have a monopoly; but in these days of unlimited competition, when Parliament authorises parallel lines in every direction, I cannot see how the companies can be said to have a monopoly. The question of what are reasonable hours is one, primarily, for the employers and employed. I do not believe that the House is as capable to judge in such matters. It might as well be said that it is qualified to settle questions of law. Parliament should rather lay down broad rules and interfere as little as possible between employers and their workmen. When a Committee of the House has decided that a certain measure is adequate for the purpose, I hope that the House will not Interfere with that decision. If the House should adopt this principle a very inconvenient precedent may be established. I do not speak as a railway director, or as one interested in the matter; but I am most desirous that the House should not adopt a principle which is extremely inconvenient and beyond the necessity of the case.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. MUNDELLA,): Mr. Speaker, I oppose the clause that is now submitted to the House for reasons similar to those given by the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. The public mind has long been made up as to the necessity of restricting the hours of work of railway servants, not only in the interests of the workmen themselves, but in the interests of the travelling public. Two years ago a Select Committee was appointed to consider the question, and it sat for two years considering how best the hours of railway servants could be brought within reasonable limits. Abundance of evidence was taken, from railway servants, railway directors, and Inspectors of the Board of Trade; and that evidence, much of which is of a remarkable character, has been published with the Report of the Committee, and circulated
  1096
  among hon. Members in the form of two large Blue Books. When I entered on the duties of my office I found this important Report ready to my hand, and it became my duty immediately to take action upon it. I took action as early as I could. On the very first day of the Session, as a matter of fact, I brought in this Bill, and my only regret is that it is not already law and in operation. It is not my fault that it has not been passed. The Bill has certainly not been smuggled through. It was sent to a Grand Committee of 103 Members, and was most carefully considered. So also has the proposed now clause been carefully considered, and it was absolutely rejected by the Committee. There were two Reports presented—a Majority Report and a Minority Report—and both agree that the number of working hours should not be stated in the Bill, but that the responsibility of fixing the hours should rest primâ facie with the Railway Companies, the Board of Trade seeing that they are reasonable. Mr. Harford, Secretary to the Union of Amalgamated Railway Servants, does not wish that the hours should be fixed by the State, but is of opinion that on complaints being received from the men the Board of Trade should have power to order such a reduction in the hours as they might think necessary. I have not called upon the railway servants for complaints, and I should not ask for them before taking action; but if the Bill were in operation I should call upon the Railway Companies for a Schedule of the working hours of all the servants in their employ. The general opinion amongst all people best acquainted with the condition of railway servants is that there should be elasticity in dealing with the hours of working, looking at the varieties of employment, at all the dissimilarities, and all the diversified conditions. This case is not like that of workers in a factory, where work is commenced at a certain hour in the morning and terminated at a certain hour at night. Railway work depends upon all sorts of circumstances. Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman what has happened sine he put his Amendment on the Paper. I have, as he says, received deputations from railway servants. On Saturday, for instance, I received a large deputation from engine men and drivers of eight or ten of the

  1097
  principal railways in the country; and they were all strongly opposed, not to the Bill, but to fixing a hard-and-fast line in regard to hours of labour. They said—"If you do this it will tell against us very seriously." I know that eight hours is quite long enough to ask men to work in a great variety of trades; but you cannot deal with railways as you can with trades. These men said—
  "After a journey we are anxious to get home; we do not want to lodge away from our wives and families. Take the ease of railway servants conducting excursion trains to the seaside. It takes us two or three hours to get to our destination. We spend some hours enjoying ourselves at the seaside, and it then takes us two or three hours to get home. All the time we are away is reckoned in our working hours; and if you tie us down to eight hours, what is to become of us during the time we are remaining at the pleasure resort with the excursionists? Are we to stop there and not come home? "
  If the clause were passed we should have to deal with the evidence of 400,000 railway servants in order to make the necessary exceptions. The right hon. Gentleman says he has no confidence in the discretion of the Board of Trade, and yet he is willing to allow the Board of Trade to make exceptions with regard to the hours of working of all classes of railway servants. He asks—"Is this Bill to be a sham?" Sir, I would ask him—"Does he wish to make the Bill a sham by inserting this clause in it?" Is it a serious, practical clause? It is said—"You may not be able, perhaps, to fix the hours of all railway servants, but you could fix the hours of signalmen." They are satisfied that it would be impossible to fix eight hours as the working day of all railway servants, but they say—"We will make exceptions in all cases where it is necessary to go beyond eight hours." Why, in the case of some signalmen they would be as much over-worked with eight hours as other signalmen with twice that number of hours. In some instances six hours' work is quite sufficient to exhaust a man. One signalman may have to be continually in the box with 40 or 50 trains passing by, whilst another may not have to attend to more than 10 or 12 during the whole day, may not have to be in the box more than two or three hours, and may be able to spend many hours during the course of the day working in his garden. Are you going to lay down the same number
  1098
  of hours in the one case as in the other? I appeal to all who have had to deal with questions of this sort as reasonable and practical men. I am as anxious as the right hon. Gentleman opposite to take care that railway servants shall not he overworked. I have hoard it urged that railway servants will be helpless in this matter unless some stringent rule of law is laid down; but I would point out that a, deputation of railway servants from the North-Eastern system which waited on me to-day showed a frankness and a manliness with regard to their interests in connection with this subject that leaves nothing to be desired, and showed that they are quite able to manage their own affairs. It is said that under the Bill no one is bound to make inquiries; but if anyone—say the secretary of one of the Railway Servants' Unions—were to come to the Board of Trade and make complaint the Board of Trade would be bound to make inquiries. It not only requires that we should make inquiry, but it requires that having made inquiry, and satisfied ourselves with regard to the matter complained of, we are to give orders to the Railway Company to provide a Schedule, and that if they do not comply we are to proceed against them before the Railway Commissioners. As I have pointed out, you have every variety of service on the railways. To begin with, there are over 10,000 station-masters to deal with. These men are on duty more than 10 hours a day, but though on duty they have a considerable amount of leisure; but if a hard-and-fast rule were laid down we should have to forbid these 10,000 station-masters from working more than 10 hours a day. We should have to enforce the same rule in the case of men who have merely occasionally to open gates at level crossings. I am sure that if the House only considers this question in the way in which it was considered by the Committee, it will not allow itself to be led away by the specious arguments of the right hon. Member for Cambridge University (Sir John Gorst) as to the Bill being a sham. If it passes it will be the strongest measure that has ever been placed in the bands of the Board of Trade to administer. It will be open to any hon. Member to complain it be does not think its powers are properly enforced, and it will be for the Minister of the day to answer

  1099
  him. I am sorry my Predecessor in Office is not in the House to answer the right hon. Gentleman who has moved this clause. All I will now say is that, if the measure becomes law, hon. Members may be assured that the Board of Trade will put it into active operation, and that the hours of railway servants will be materially reduced.
  MR. SCOTT-MONTAGUsaid that, as having had great experience in these matters, it would be in the highest degree inconvenient to interfere with the working of the railways of the country. As to the signalmen, no doubt it was desirable, in the interest of the public, that they should not be overworked; but their case might safely be left to the Board of Trade. The exceptions which would have to be made under this clause would include 90 percent. of the men. Besides, it was not necessary to interfere with those Railway Companies who were dealing fairly with their servants. He did not think the clause would have a generally beneficial effect either on the railway servants or the companies. It was an important question how far they were entitled to interfere with the hours of adult labour; but in this case the question was a more serious one still, involving, as it did, the safety of the travelling public. He was sorry he could not see his way to support the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge.
  *MR. BARTLEYsaid, the President of the Board of Trade described this as the most stringent measure over placed in the hands of the Board of Trade. What was its history? It was brought in on the very first day of the Session; the Second Reading was moved at about eight minutes to 12 one night, and he (Mr. Bartley) happened to he discussing it when an attempt was made to closure it at 12 o'clock. He had received a deputation of railway servants with regard to it, and they had expressed themselves as immensely dissatisfied with it. The question was—Did the Bill satisfy the wants of the railway servants and the public? [Cries of "Question!"] That was the point they were really considering.
  *MR. SPEAKER: The point under discussion is the clause of the right
  1100
  hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge.
  MR. BARTLEYsaid, he thought the Amendment really struck at the root of the whole Bill, because the Bill said they were to leave the whole matter to the Board of Trade, and the clause under discussion indicated how the Board of Trade were to be guided in settling the question of the hours of labour by the rule contained in the clause itself. The clause, as the right hon. Gentleman who proposed it had pointed out, would not tie the hands of the Board of Trade. It left complete elasticity; but it did lay down a certain definite guide to the Board of Trade as to what the hours should be. A great many of the railway servants were anxious to see that guide as to the maximum hours of employment laid down. He (Mr. Bartley) was in doubt as to the advisability of laying down rules at all; but as the Bill, which had passed the Second Reading and so been adopted by the House, would give the Board of Trade power to do so, he thought the House should have the courage of its convictions, and, without laying down a hard-and-fast rule, say that, primâ facie, so many hours should be the number worked except under special circumstances.
  *MR. J. WILSONopposed the clause, hut protested against the inference that he was, therefore, opposed to the interests of the railway servants. He had been a Member of the Committee of last year, and he had been the medium through which the views of the railway servants had become known. The Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman did not in any way meet the view of the workmen. It was not in harmony with the Resolution passed by the House last year, and it would not in any way settle the question so far as the railway servants were concerned. The Amendment which would meet with his approval would be one in harmony with the Motion of last year, and with the view of the railway servants, such as had been put forward by their chosen spokesman. The Amendment would give no place whatever to the action of the workmen in arranging the hours they would work on the railways. It gave a right of interference, but that was on the motion of the Railway Companies, and not of

  1101
  the working men; whereas the Bill, as it at present stood, gave that right to the workmen. Looking at the circumstances of employment—in the signal-boxes for instance—it seemed only reasonable that the workmen, if they considered they were over-worked, should make out a case and submit it to the Board of Trade and give evidence in support of it. He was in harmony with the right hon. Gentleman as to the extravagant hours worked by some men on railways, and he considered it a great danger to the travelling public to have men in signal-boxes I 2 hours a day, and men at work on engines 12 hours a day. He should certainly oppose the Amendment, and support the Bill as it stood.
  MR. BANBURYwished to say why he could not support the new clause. It embodied a most important principle, involving the regulation by the State of the hours of adult labour. He had, during the General Election, always stated that should that principle be proposed he should oppose it. His right hon. Friend (Sir J. Gorst) had stated that one of the reasons why he brought the clause forward was that long hours conduced to accidents. The clause, however, would regulate the hours of porters and of men who were employed in a variety of work not in any way likely to conduce to accidents, and he could not support it. He wished to point out that proposals of this kind had a very deterrent effect upon the investment of capital in railways. It was mentioned in the Budget Speech earlier in the evening that a very large amount of capital was awaiting employment. He himself was not a railway shareholder or a railway director; but he could not help saying that if Parliament interfered continually with the interests of shareholders it was not surprising that money was sent out of the country for investment.
  MR. BURNSsaid, the question for discussion was not whether the House should apply the principle of legislative interference with workers' hours, but the manner in which such interference should be applied. He would not enter into the reasons which had induced the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University (Sir J. Gorst) to move his clause; but as one who had had some experience of rail-
  1102
  way men, and who had identified himself with the Scotch railway men in their strike for shorter hours, he preferred the right hon. Gentleman's clause to the vague and general terms of the Bill. The proposed clause was not so rigid as the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Mundella) implied, as it provided for exceptions, qualifications, and conditions, and its advantage consisted in the fact that it provided for a maximum of eight hours for signalmen and for one of 10 hours, exclusive of meal times, for other classes of workers. The House admitted that the railway workmen's hours were scandalously long, and should be restricted in the interest both of the travelling public and of the men themselves, as well as in the interests of those who could not now find employment, because in many places each man was doing the work of two and sometimes three men. He regretted that he could not approve of the line taken by the hon. Member for Durham (Mr. John Wilson). The hon. Member had said that the railway workers were generally in favour of the proposals of the Bill. He (Mr. Burns) ventured to dispute that. The 10,000 Scotch railway men who were out on strike for six weeks, and were told to resort to voluntary effort and. trade union combination, but who, when they did resort to those things, had the police and the military picketed against them, were in favour of a legislative limit of 10 hours for railway servants and eight hours for signalmen, but, at the same time, thought that four or six hours were sufficient in boxes that were exceptionally busy. Mr. Tait was in favour of a statutory limit of 10 hours Mr. Watson, the Secretary of the Railway Workers' Union, thought that eight hours should be the maximum for all railway workers; and Mr. Forman, who spoke for the Irish railway men, supported maxima of eight and ten hours for various classes of workers. He was afraid that Mr. Harford, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway-Workers, preferred in the matter of legal interference to be a politician first and a labour man afterwards. He (Mr. Burns) wanted to ask the President of the Board of Trade this pertinent question. How many more strikes, almost amounting to civil war, were they to have like that which took place in Scotland two years

  1103
  ago, and how many accidents similar to those which took place during the Cardiff railway strike? He was convinced that until the House fixed a legislative limit of ton or eight hours the Railway Companies would continue to dodge the Board of Trade as they did now by their booking times, and it would too frequently happen that the stable door would be locked after the steed was stolen. The hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Sir J. Pease) had said there was no reason for fixing a legislative limit to the number of hours worked, and the House had been treated to a description of the Arcadian signalman sitting in his box—of course with geraniums and roses growing all around—and working two and a half hours a day. Hon. Members had heard that story before. That was the kind of statement to which railway directors always treated the House of Commons, and which was always made at shareholders' meetings; but it represented one case in 1,000. In 1892 the North-Eastern Railway Company employed 2,105 signalmen. The number of cases in the course of the year in which signalmen were employed over 10 hours a day was 2,100, the number over 11 hours was 3,100, the number over 12 hours 19,630, the number over 13 hours 945, the number over 14 hours 505, the number over 15 hours 203, the number 16 hours 160, the number over 17 hours 43, and the number over 18 hours and upwards 8. These long hours had an extraordinary effect upon the increase of accidents. He believed that the butcher's bill which the Railway Directors, for profit, through the long hours they worked their men, provided every year for the delectation of the public was largely attributable to this cause. He believed that 50 per cent. of the accidents to which shunters, goods guards, firemen, and drivers were subject was due to the excessively long hours which had been proved up to the hilt by the Board of Trade Inspectors. Between 1874 and 1892 excessive hours, as he contended, had in the majority of cases been responsible for thousands of deaths and many thousands of cases of injury in the management of rolling stock. It would not do to say that those deaths and injuries were due to unavoidable accidents or to carelessness and negligence when he found that in a number
  1104
  of cases the men responsible had been on duty for 16, 18, 23, or even 26 hours when the accident took place. He was positively convinced that there was a direct connection between the long hours worked and the accidents that frequently took place. In one case that recently occurred a goods driver was on duty on an average 19¾ hours a day, with an average of four to five hours a day rest, whilst shunters had been on duty 36 hours without relief. He was certain that if the Bill passed without amendment, laxity on the part of the officials would take place as soon as trade revived, the supervision of the Board of Trade would be relaxed, and they would see the indiscriminate slaughter of our railway men continued. There had been more than sufficient loose sympathetic talk about doing something in the interest of the railway servants. The railway servants were very much in favour of the legislative limit. Hero and there men wanted to do all the overtime they could get, but the great bulk of the railway workers were in favour of a rigid legislative limit; and that being so, whilst he should prefer to make eight hours the maximum for all kinds of railway work, he should walk into the Division Lobby in favour of the new clause.
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. ASQUITH,): I agree with my hon. Friend who has just sat down that there has been a great deal too much sentimental talk on the subject now before the House. It is because Her Majesty's Government desire to crystallise and to bring to some effective and practical end the widespread conviction entertained by the great mass of those who have investigated this subject that something effective ought to be done to limit the excessive hours of labour of railway servants that this Bill has been introduced, and that we shall ask the House to carry it to a Third Reading. I confess I think that in the latter part of his observations my hon. Friend was, if I may use a homely expression, forcing an open door. No one in this House contends that the hours of railway servants under existing conditions are not excessive; no one except one or two hon. Gentlemen opposite,

  1105
  who, as they have candidly admitted, belong to an old-fashioned school of politicians, has denied the right of this House to interfere with the regulations of large Corporations like Railway Companies, or to interfere with other departments of labour where conditions exist which are detrimental to the health of the labourers and the interests of the public.
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: As the right hon. Gentleman has referred to me, I may say that I supported the Bill of the Government.
  *MR. ASQUTTH: It is quite true that the right hon. Gentleman supported the Bill; but his arguments, if they amounted to anything, were arguments against the Bill. But that, after all, is a comparatively unimportant point. I agree with my hon. Friend (Mr. Burns) that voluntary combination has proved ineffective for the purpose in view. I do not, in the least degree, quarrel with the conclusion he has drawn from the cases he has mentioned to the House that there is abundant evidence that under existing conditions railway servants are not able to secure for themselves without the protection and assistance of Parliament those reasonable conditions of labour which they and the public have a right to demand. Well, then, the real question between us is reduced to one of method or machinery. The argument of those who support the Amendment is that for the purpose of obtaining an end which we all admit to be desirable, and obtaining it not by combination but by legislative interference, it is better to lay down in the Act a specific standard of hours, with power to the Board of Trade to vary it in exceptional cases, than, as the Bill proposes, to enable the Board of Trade to interfere at its own instance or at the instance of any person who brings cases before it. What are the arguments of my hon. Friend in support of his contention that there ought to be a rigid and cast-iron system? I venture to say he has produced no argument whatever. He has exposed to the House the magnitude of the evil, but has not given a single practical authority in support of the proposition embodied in the Amendment. The Board of Trade Inspectors, who have to consider the interests of the public, are of opinion that the circumstances of the railways are so elastic that it is impossible to lay down any fixed rules.
  1106
  Mr. Harford, Secretary of the Railway Servants' Union, is of the same opinion. To cite an illustration of the view of the men themselves, on one railway, out of 1,600 engine-drivers and firemen, 1,300 or 1,350 have declared themselves to he in favour of the scheme of the Bill rather than that of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Therefore, I say, admitting that the hours of labour ought to be limited, that voluntary competition is ineffective for the purpose, and that the statutory interference of Parliament is necessary, the Government took the opinion of competent experts engaged in trade, and have come to the conclusion that the plan proposed by the Bill is is more suited to the attainment of the object in view than that which is proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. It is absolutely essential to remember that the employment of railway servants differs fundamentally from that of almost any other kind of labour. In factories and mines all the persons engaged in production are, by the necessities of the case, obliged to labour together for practically the same length of time; but in the case of Railway Companies with systems extending over a great length of country, and serving great towns and small villages, and with signal-boxes dealing with varying numbers of trains every day, the House must, as practical men of business, come to the conclusion that it is impossible to lay down a fixed rule applicable to a system, and that it is far better to vest an elastic power of administration in a Government Department, which will adopt rules to meet the varying conditions that may arise. I therefore advocate the Bill in the interests of the railway servants and the public, and I ask the House to adopt the Bill as it stands and to vote against the amendment.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 71; Noes 257.—(Division List, No. 60.)
  And, it being after Midnight, Further Proceeding on Consideration, as amended, stood adjourned.
  Bill, as amended, to be further considered To-morrow.

  NORTH SEA FISHERIES BILL. (NO. 259.) COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee road.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. MUNDELLA,): I wish to appeal to the House to allow this Bill to proceed. It is of the highest importance in regard to the influence it will have on the North Sea Fisheries, and there is really no opposition to its principles from any quarter.
  *MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I feel bound to object on the ground that the Bill ought not to he taken at so late an hour. We have here on the Paper no fewer than 53 Bills which it is sought to smuggle through.
  Committee deferred till To-morrow.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 7) BILL.—(No. 29.)
  Read a second time, and committed.

  FINANCIAL STATEMENT (1893–4).
  Copy ordered—
  "Of Statement of Revenue and Expenditure as laid before the House by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when opening the Budget."— (Sir John Hibbert.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 182.]

  CLUBS REGISTRATION BILL.
  The Select Committee on Clubs Registration Bill was nominated of,—Mr. Bucknill, Mr. Burt, Mr. Caine, Mr. Cameron Corbett, Mr. Flynn, Mr. Grice-Hutchinson, Mr. Keir-Hardie, Mr. Hugh Hoare, Mr. M'Gilligan, Mr. Mowbray, Mr. Newdigate, Mr. Herbert Roberts, Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Webster, and Mr. John Wilson (Govan).
  Ordered, That the Committee have power to send for persons, paper, and records.
  Ordered, That Five be the quorum.—(Mr. Marjoribanks.)

  COUNTY OF THE CITY OF GLASGOW BILL.
  On Motion of Sir George Trevelyan, Bill to provide for the constitution of the City and Royal Burgh of Glasgow as a County of a City, and other purposes connected therewith, ordered to be brought in by Sir George Trevelyan, The Lord Advocate, and The Solicitor General for Scotland.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 216.]

  MERCHANT SHIPPING ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Neville, Bill to amend "The Merchant Shipping Act, 1854," and the Acts amending the same, and "The Shipping Casualties Investigation Act, 1879," ordered to be brought in by Mr. Neville and Mr. Willox.
  Bill presented, and read first time. [Bill 317.]

ADJOURNMENT.

  THE DISTURBANCES AT BELFAST.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn." — (Mr. Marjoribanks.)
  MR. SEXTON: In the absence of the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, I have to inquire of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, before the House adjourns, whether his attention has been drawn to the results of the recent incitements to riots in public speeches by eminent politicians upon the state of peace and order in Belfast? I think the House in a few minutes will be disposed to admit that the case requires prompt attention. It was only on Wednesday last that Lord Salisbury said in a public speech that the Ulster people would be very poor people if they could not beat down the local police, and some of our Ulster friends appear to be now engaged in showing that they are not such a poor people, and they appear to be engaged in that endeavour sooner than Lord Salisbury himself expected. I would draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to three incidents which have boon reported. The first appears to have occurred on Friday night or Saturday morning after the result of the Division on the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill, when a crowd of Orangemen belonging to Ballymacarrett, a suburb of Belfast, smashed the windows in one of the Catholic quarters on both sides of the street for a considerable distance. On Saturday morning a crowd of Queen's Island workmen, numbering about 800 or 900, marched in a body from the works, and, passing up North Street, attacked a Catholic crowd. I need scarcely remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Report of the Commissioners who inquired into the Belfast riots of 1886 stated that the deplorable incident which led to the loss of 30 or 40 lives, to the wrecking of many houses, to the destruction of £90,000 worth of property, to the placing of the city in a state of siege, and which preceded riots which lasted three months, was that a body of Queen's Island workmen left their work and attacked a small body of Catholic workmen, driving them into the river, the result being that one man was drowned. According to the Belfast correspondent of The Times, several windows were broken on Saturday, but no person was seriously injured. Yet the police found it necessary to make two or three baton charges, and after one of the charges the police barracks was assailed

  1109
  with stones. At midnight on Saturday a crowd of Orangemen assembled on the Shankhill Road and amused themselves by groaning for the Home Rule Bill, the Prime Minister, and the Pope. They then attacked several Catholic houses, and completely looted one public-house belonging to a Catholic named Connolly, who escaped by a back door from their violence. I wonder if that is the way Lord Salisbury expected that they would show they are not such poor people. I found in The Daily Express to-day a statement that the Protestant workmen at the Queen's Island works held a meeting on Saturday at which they decided not to resume work this morning unless the Catholic minority were locked out. There appeared in that to be evidence of deliberation and design, and it has been necessary to send a large force of military and policy to the works. I am, too, informed that some Catholic mill girls, on going to their usual place this morning, were turned back by force. I have had a number of messages from Belfast which, in my judgment, confirm the account given, and which go to show that there is, as the House may expect, very deep uneasiness and great excitement in Belfast and some dissatisfaction with the control of the police, because in the case of the attack on the public-house, which lasted for a considerable period, it does not appear that any attempt was made by the police to cope with the disturbance. The Report of the 1886 Riots Commissioners stated that they regretted to find that in one of the large works, which was the Queen's Island works, the workmen freely carried away large numbers of iron bolts and nuts, and that no effort was made to check such misconduct. The workmen appeared to have also used iron nuts in their attack to-day, and I am informed that several of the military and police have been seriously injured. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman, in the first place, whether he can afford the House any official statement of the facts; secondly, whether, if it is consistent with the public interest, he can state what measures are being adopted to secure the restoration or maintenance of order; and, further, whether the speeches in which religious rancour has been excited with a view to the instigation of violence in order that such may be used as an instrument of attack upon the will of this Legislature,
  1110
  will be considered by the Law Advisers of the Crown?
  MR. DUNBAR BARTONsaid, that although they had only had a few minutes notice of the intention to bring this matter forward, he felt that one or two of the hon. Member's observations called for immediate answer and refutation. The hon. Member described what had occurred as due to incitement. It was not the result of incitement; it was the result of a monstrous and iniquitous Bill, and he would prove it. During the last six years had there been any riots in Belfast? The last time there were riots, and lamentable they were, equally regretted on both sides, they were provoked by the same cause. There was one thing, and one only, that would produce riots in Belfast, and that was the introduction of such a measure as that now before the House. The hon. Member had read from newspapers accounts of those proceedings, but he made omissions which were very remarkable. He had provided himself as well as he could in the short time he had had with newspaper extracts on the occurrences in Belfast, and he would supplement from The Daily News the account given by the hon. Member for North Kerry. The hon. Member had taken care to omit certain circumstances which, though he (Mr. Barton) did not attach much importance to them, were worth referring to. It was quite true that on the morning after the Division on the Home Rule Bill some Orangemen paraded the streets, cursing—he regretted to say —the Pope; and cursing—he less regretted to say—Mr. Gladstone. [Cries of "Order!" and "Shame!"] He regretted it, but he regretted it less for this reason —that his Holiness had nothing to say to these matters, but he regretted to say that the Prime Minister was the direct cause of this riot. For the looting of the public houses; for the injuries to the policemen; for all the circumstances that had occurred, there was one cause, and one cause only, and that was the Prime Minister and the Government. Before there was any riot what did he find in The Daily News? That the Resident Magistrate warned the people to keep within doors. He thought it was most unfortunate that that advice was not taken. Then what followed? Bonfires were lit in the heart of the Catholic quarters—he did not complain about that; but according to the Daily

  1111
  News some panes of glass were broken in one or two Protestant shops. That was not calculated, at any rate, to promote good feeling. After that the hon. Member for North Kerry passed on to what occurred later on. It appeared that there was a riot between midnight and in the morning, and some violence was used. The hon. Member stated that as soon as the soldiers appeared the rioters decamped. Merely to correct the insinuation which that statement contained, he would mention the regrettable circumstance that the rioters did not disperse until at least one of the soldiers had been injured. He would tell the Government that if they persisted in their policy there would be disorder in Belfast, much as the Ulster leaders regretted it, and though they had done their best to prevent it, and would continue to do their best. In every communication, public or private, the Ulster Members and leaders had urged that there should be no disorder so long as the Bill was not law. If the Bill did become law, then he and his hon. Friends would stand in the streets with these men. In none of the speeches to which reference had been made was there any suggestion that the people should do anything else but preserve order so long as the Bill was not law.
  MR. PAUL: Lord Salisbury said "Put down the local police."
  MR. BARTONsaid, he had not got the report of Lord Salisbury's speech with him, but he ventured to say that the passage quoted did not fairly bear the interpretation suggested by the hon. Member. Not one of the Ulster Members would defend any act of violence in Belfast or elsewhere. All their influence would be used to preserve order in this most unfortunate and exciting crisis. Later in the year they would easily be able to do so, even though the crisis were to continue; because they would then have an organisation equal to doing that and a great deal more. [Cries of "Oh!" and cheers.] It would then only be by means of that organisation that the Government could look for any order; and they would have to thank the Ulster leaders and nobody else for the preservation of law and order in Belfast. He had shown that the hon. Member for North Kerry had not stated the case fairly and fully, but had omitted important circumstances. It was most unfortunate
  1112
  and unsatisfactory that this Debate should have been raised on insufficient information. But there was sufficient evidence to show that the Catholics neglected the warning of the authorities to keep within their doors, and that before a single Catholic house was attacked Protestant houses in the Catholic quarter had been stoned. He ventured to think that there was not a fair-minded man in the House or in the country who was not convinced that the cause of the riots in Belfast was not to be found in the language of public men uttered in discharge of a public duty, that it was not to be found in any bitter feeling between Protestants and Catholics—for he could assure the House that at the great Ulster demonstration addressed by the Leader of the Opposition there was no sentiment more loudly cheered than the sentiment of good feeling towards the Roman Catholics—but as in 1886, so now these disturbances were caused by the Home Rule Bill, and if the Government persisted in that measure they could rely only on the Unionist leaders for the preservation of order in Ulster.
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. ASQUITH,): I very much regret, though I am not altogether surprised at, the tone adopted by my hon. and learned Friend who has just sat down. The hon. Member very generously and magnanimously offered to the Government the assistance of himself and his friends at some remote and contingent date in the future, when they would be prepared to co-operate with the Government in the maintenance of law and order. I confess we should attach greater importance and value to the offer if it were accompanied by some assurance on the part of the hon. Member and his friends that they would make an attempt to allay the feeling which has been excited, and to dissuade the people of Belfast and elsewhere from violent and illegal conduct. The hon. Member said that the responsibility for the violence in Belfast was to be cast on "the monstrous and iniquitous Bill," the Second Reading of which the House sanctioned last week. There are ways known to the Constitution in which people can express their dissent from the proceedings of the House of Commons; and I think that this is the first time there has been an open avowal by a Member of a Party, which professes to be devoted to

  1113
  law and order, that riot and illegality are if not the appropriate, at any rate the natural expressions of persons who object to the action of this House. I will now content myself with placing the House in possession of the information which the Government have received in the course of the day as to what happened in Belfast since Friday night. The official Report of the police states—
  "All was quiet in Belfast up to 11.30 on Friday night. Slight disturbances of no serious importance occurred between that hour and 2 a.m. on Saturday, and were suppressed without substantial difficulty by the police. The city remained quiet throughout Saturday till 10.30 p.m., when Nationalists lit two bonfires on Carrick Hill. A Protestant mob from the Shankhill Road attempted to break through the police, and, being prevented, stoned the police. This mob was pursued by the police as far as Bowers Hill, where they broke into the public-house of a Catholic named Connolly, setting fire to the place. The police succeeded in extinguishing the five and dispersed the mob. Stone-throwing having taken place, two companies of Infantry were brought out. but only kept out half-an-hour on Shankhill Road. A good deal of stone-throwing and glass-breaking took place in the vicinity of the Newtownards Road Catholic Chapel. At 3 a.m. on Sunday morning all was quiet, and so continued Sunday and Sunday night. This morning a small number of Roman Catholic workers went to work at the Queen's Island at 6 a.m. At breakfast-hour six of them were beaten by a crowd of idle men about the shipyard. Some Catholic girls were refused admittance by their fellow-workers in Bedford Street. They, however, intend to present themselves again at the dinner hour. Every possible precaution will be taken by the police for the protection of these work-people."
  I regret I have no information of a later date than that, and therefore I cannot verify or contradict what the hon. Member for North Kerry has said as to the later occurrences. The hon. Member asked two questions—one as to the responsibility for what has already occurred, the other as to the future steps the Government will take to prevent the recurrence of the disturbances. On the first question I will content myself simply with saying that, in the opinion of the Government, a grave responsibility rests upon those who, to whatever Party they may belong, address to a population, divided and excitable as the population of Belfast is, language that is calculated to incite either the one party or the other to acts of violence. As to the future, I can assure the hon. Member that every possible step is being taken by the police authorities
  1114
  to prevent a recurrence of these disgraceful scenes, and to protect every person, of whatever class or religion, in the free exercise of his rights as a citizen.
  MR. JACKSON: I think this is a subject which calls for remarks from some one on this Bench. The Home Secretary condemned the observations of my hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Barton), but I think that any one who has listened to the official account of the proceedings given by the Home Secretary will see that it differs very materially from the statements of the hon. Member for North Kerry. The statement of the Home Secretary went to show that the disturbance was begun, not by the Protestants, as was insinuated by the hon. Member, but by the lighting of bonfires by the Catholics. The Home Secretary did not indicate by his Report by whom those disturbances were initiated, but it is clear from that Report that the disturbances began by the lighting of bonfires by the Catholics.
  *MR. ASQUITH: The disturbances did not begin by the lighting of the bonfires, but they followed the lighting of the bonfires.
  MR. JACKSON: Exactly. That is the point I am endeavouring to bring before the House. If the right hon. Gentleman prefers it in that way, I will say the lighting of the bonfires preceded the disturbances. I have no desire to add to the excitement which is apparently gathering round this question, but I will venture to say, and I think the hon. Member for North Kerry will boar me out. from his own experience, that newspaper accounts of these occurrences in Belfast, especially in connection with Queen's Island, are not always entirely reliable. The hon. Member will remember the case he brought forward some time ago of alleged attacks on Catholic workmen in the Queen's Island—I make no complaint of his bringing it forward; but it was absolutely without foundation. I, therefore, submit that we are not in a position to form a judgment, as the whole of the facts are not before us. If the question is to be raised seriously, let it be done with notice, and after the Government has obtained definite information. With regard to the few words which the hon.

  1115
  Member for North Kerry quoted from Lord Salisbury, I hold that nobody who reads the noble Lord's speech will come to the conclusion that the words bear the interpretation which the hon. Member put upon them. I hope, therefore, the House will not take it that any one on this side accepts the hon. Member's interpretation. On the contrary, we repudiate such an interpretation of the words. I have no wish to underrate the gravity of the situation in Belfast. I have no desire, by any single word, to add to the excitement there. But it must be obvious that the House is not fully informed on the matter, and that the discussion cannot usefully be continued on the imperfect facts before the House.
  *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he had no desire to prolong the Debate, but as the Representative of West Belfast—the district of the city chiefly concerned in these disturbances— he wished to make a few observations. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds had adopted a wise course in deprecating an exhaustive discussion on this matter. He agreed that the matter could not be discussed until they had full information before them. He had made many endeavours during the day to obtain full particulars of the occurences, but he had been as unsuccessful as the hon. Member for North Kerry in obtaining an accurate account of what took place. He would, however, venture to add to the remarks of the hon. Member for Armagh by saying that the people of Belfast, and his constituents in particular, had a very clear and definite view of their duty. They felt and appreciated their responsibility. He had communicated with many men responsible for the peace and order of Belfast, and they had told him that they were aware of the very great danger that had been created in Belfast by the circumstances of the past few months. That the danger did exist was beyond question. They had recognised it, and, as responsible men, had taken every precaution to prevent disturbance. They intended to succeed in this matter, but not by riot. He had been at meeting after meeting at Belfast, at many gatherings large and small, and he had heard but one counsel
  1116
  given, and that was that every occasion should be avoided which might give rise to scones or to that resistance which no doubt in due time would be offered to the Bill if it became law. But the people of Belfast, and his own constituents in particular, had been subjected in the last few months to great provocation. They had been told that they were knaves or fools; that they did not know their own business, and dared not stand up for what they believed to be their own rights. The people of Belfast had been tried beyond endurance by those taunts; and it was no wonder that a few people gave way to passion and created those disturbances. But riots were not peculiar to Belfast. Disturbances had been excited by speeches made in Hull and other English towns, and it was no wonder that a small section of the poor and more ignorant of the population should have given way to the passions which animated them. But while there would be found in Belfast men ready and willing to seize every occasion to guide, to influence, and to instruct those ignorant men who had taken the law into their own hands under a mistaken conception of their duty, it should be remembered that there had been crime and violence in other parts of Ireland, and he knew only of one single instance in which a leading member of the Nationalist Party endeavoured to stand between the perpetrators of those crimes and outrages and their unfortunate victims. But with regard to Belfast, it was an unfortunate circumstance that the Lord Mayor and almost all the leading men had been withdrawn from Belfast owing to a great occasion in this part of the United Kingdom. However, the Lord Mayor and other responsible men had returned tonight, or would return almost immediately, and there was not a man of their Party who did not feel it to be his duty to go back and do everything he could to insure that the law should be observed. He had received, and was daily receiving, communications—not from Belfast nor from the Province of Ulster—showing a state of things which was calculated to rouse the passions of the men of Belfast.
  It being One of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put.
  House adjourned at One o'clock.

Preamble
The Lord Chaworth (E. of Meath)—Took the Oath.
THE EVICTED TENANTS COMMISSION.

  QUESTION.—OBSERVATIONS.
  THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNgave Notice that he would, for reasons which no doubt their Lordships would understand, postpone the following Notice of Motion he had placed on the Paper from Thursday until Monday next:—
  "To call attention to the circumstances attending the appointment of the Evicted Tenants Commission, and to the proceedings and the Report of the Commission."
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (The Earl of KIMBERLEY): Perhaps the noble Lord would not mind putting his Notice down for Friday, as I have a Notice on the Paper which might interfere with it.
  THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNhad no objection to let it stand for Friday, the 28th instant.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, there is some Business to-morrow, I understand, for the Standing Committee, and I therefore beg leave to move—"That the Evening Sitting of the House do commence to-morrow at half-past five o'clock."
  *LORD BALFOUR: May I ask whether that is to be the only Business for to-morrow or not? I think the procedure informer Sessions was that on Tuesdays the House always met at half-past 5.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: There is so little Business to be done at present that we thought that would not be necessary at present.
  LORD BALFOUR: I did not understand whether it was intended. I thought it might, perhaps, be an over-sight.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: We may, no doubt, have to move it later for every Tuesday. Due Notice will be given when the Sittings on subsequent
  1010
  Tuesdays will begin at that hour; but it does not seem to be necessary now.
  Motion agreed to.

  SUFFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL COMMITTEE (BORROWING POWERS) BILL.—(No. 60.)
  Examiners' Certificate of non-compliance with the Standing Orders referred to the Standing Orders Committee on Friday next.
  REGIMENTAL DEBTS (CONSOLIDATION) BJLL.—(No. 59.)
  House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without Amendment: Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 1) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 67.)

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 68.)
  House adjourned at twenty-five minutes before Five o'clock, till To-morrow, half past Five o'clock.