Sitting of 7 June 1894

QUESTIONS.

  THE BEHAR CADASTRAL SURVEY.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSEN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India what are the districts of Behar in which the Cadastral Survey has been actually commenced,
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  and whether these are identical with or adjacent to the districts in which the tree smearing has occurred; how many Europeans and how many natives have been appointed to the Behar Survey parties; what is the average salary of the native subordinates in these parties; whether his attention has been drawn to the statement of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, at Bhagalpur, or elsewhere, that there was some reason to fear corruption and extortion among the native subordinates, and promised that special precautions should be taken to check the extortion; and whether any, and what, special precautions, in pursuance of this promise, have been taken in Behar?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. H. H. FOWLER,: I must respectfully protest against the suggestion which this question implies that the recent smearing of mango trees is the result of, or is connected with, any administrative action of the Indian Government with regard to the Cadastral Survey in a portion of Behar. Questions which make these or similar suggestions are immediately telegraphed to and are published in India, and are not calculated to assist the cause of order and good government in that country. I cannot state the numbers of Europeans and natives respectively appointed to the Behar Survey, but I believe the very great majority are natives; I am unable to give their average salaries. The Regulations issued for the guidance of the Survey Officials in Behar are very stringent; and the landholders have been invited to bring to the notice of Government any instance of misconduct or extortion on the part of the surveying staff, in order that wrong-doers may be punished.

  PUBLICANS ON THE IRISH MAGISTERIAL BENCHES.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in view of the number of publicans who are being appointed to the Magisterial Bench in Ireland, he will consider the propriety of asking the Lord Chancellor to issue a Circular pointing out the statutory prohibitions against Magistrates engaged in the drink trade sitting at Licensing Sessions or on cases connected with the administration of the Licensing Acts?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. J. MORLEY,: This question seems based on the assumption that a considerable number of publicans have recently been, and are being, appointed to the Magistracy. In replying to a question of the hon. Member for York on the 17th of November last, I stated that the number of licensed victuallers placed by the present Government in the Commission of the Peace in Ireland down to that date was 16, and since that date three additional appointments have been made, 19 in all. The 60th section of the Licensing Act, 1872, expressly prohibits Magistrates who are in any way pecuniarily interested in the sale of liquor from adjudicating or taking part in licensing cases, and imposes a penalty of £100 on Magistrates who violate the section, and, as the hon. Member knows, this affects not only licensed victuallers but shareholders in breweries, distilleries, &c. The Lord Chancellor does not at present consider it necessary to issue any Circular for the instruction of Magistrates in this more than in any other department of their duties. If cases are brought under his notice he will deal with them promptly.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Is the right ton. Gentleman aware that at the last Annual Licensing Sessions for the County of Dublin, at Kilmainham, from 12 to 15 Magistrates were forced to leave the Bench on account of their connection with Companies interested in the liquor traffic? May not that happen in other places?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I have heard that a clean sweep was made of the Dublin Bench on that occasion, but I do not see why in consequence the same thing should occur in other parts of the country. But if any hon. Member can inform me of cases in which it does occur I will bring them to the notice of the Lord Chancellor.
  MR. M'CARTAN: Is it not the fact that those who had to leave the Dublin Bench were not publicans but shareholders in breweries and distilleries?
  MR. J. MORLEY: Yes.

  PAUPERISM IN THE LTSTOWEL UNION.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord
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  Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that in the Listowel Union the outdoor relief has increased from £7 18s. 3d. in 1879ߝ80 to £2,992 in 1893ߝ4, whilst the expenditure on indoor relief has increased in the same period from £1,206 16s. 8d. to £2,214 9s.; whether he can give any explanation of this state of facts; and if he will grant a Return as to the financial conditions of the several Irish Unions?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I understand that the statements in the first paragraph are correct. The Local Government Board are informed by the clerk of the Union that some portion of the increase is attributable to the enlargement of the Union in 1891 by the transfer to it of part of the former Glin Union, though I observe that the expenditure appears to have grown steadily for the past 15 years. Notwithstanding these facts, however, I learn from the Local Government Board that the Union is in a fairly sound financial condition. The Board are now preparing from the audited accounts a Return which will show the precise position of the various Poor Law Unions at the end of the last financial year. This Return will be published in the Board's Annual Report, which will shortly be presented to Parliament.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: But is it not the case that this enormous increase of outdoor relief has been contemporaneous with a tremendous increase in indoor relief?
  MR. J. MORLEY: That does appear to he the case from the figures quoted by the hon. Member, which I have stated to be correct.
  MR. SEXTON: Is not this Board, like all other Boards in Ireland, composed to the extent of one-half of persons representing the landed classes?
  MR. J. MORLEY: No doubt it has its full share of ex officio members.

  NILE RESERVOIRS.
  MR. GRAHAM: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been called to the statement made by Her Majesty's Agent and Consul General in Cairo that he did not at all regret the delay which has taken place in dealing with the subject of Nile reservoirs, and that he had persistently urged the neces-

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  sity of dealing with this question with the utmost prudence and circumspection (Egypt, No. 1, 1894, p. 8); and to an article, in the May number of The Nineteenth Century, by Sir B. Baker, who is stated to have been a member of a Technical Commission for the consideration of this subject, in which it is said that, as regards the absolute necessity for the construction of a reservoir with the least possible delay, no shadow of doubt was expressed by any Member of the Commission; and whether Her Majesty's Government would consult independent experts in this country in regard to this subject, and place their opinion at the disposal of Pier Majesty's Agent and Consul General in Cairo for his information and guidance?
  *THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS(Sir; E. GREY,): The statement is correctly quoted. The subject of Nile reservoirs has occupied the attention of the Egyptian Government for four years. After considering the various schemes submitted to them by their experts and others, they appointed an International Technical Commission, consisting of an English, a French and an Italian engineer, to advise them as to the one most suitable for adoption. I have seen the article written by Sir Benjamin Baker, the English member. It gives a clear account of the object and labours of the Commission and the extent to which Egypt will benefit by the construction of a reservoir. It is sufficiently clear from the context that in using the expression "absolute necessity" Sir B. Baker meant to indicate that the advantages of a reservoir were undoubted and convincing now that the barrage of the Nile had been completed. Her Majesty's Government have not been asked to recommend a scheme, and they see no reason for consulting independent experts in this country with regard to a matter which the Egyptian Government very wisely decided to refer to an International Commission of experts on the spot.
  MR. J. W. LOWTHER: Can the hon. Member say whether the Egyptian Government have arrived at any decision on the matter?
  SIR E. GREY: No, Sir; I think the Report is still under consideration.

  ALLEGED INTIMIDATION BY THE IRISH NATIONAL FEDERATION.
  MR. MACARTNEY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed at a meeting of the Shanagolden Branch of the Irish National Federation, reported in The Limerick Leader of the 30th of May, denouncing the Shanagolden shopkeepers who supply the people living on Mr. O'Brien's farm, and calling upon all true Nationalists to assist in crushing out such a cringing spirit; and whether it is proposed to take any action in regard to this branch?
  MR. J. MORLEY: The resolution was published in the newspaper referred to, but the police inform me that the meeting at which it is alleged to have been adopted was not in point of fact held at all, nor has any result followed from the resolution. It is not proposed, therefore, to take any action in the matter.

  THE GODLEY ESTATE, SOUTH LEITRIM.
  MR. TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the tenants on the Godley Estate, near Carrigallen, South Leitrim, agreed, some of them in April, 1890, and the remainder in August of the same year, to buy their holdings at 15 years' purchase under the Ashbourne Act; whether he has been informed that those who agreed to purchase in August, 1890, were not recognised as purchasers owing to the insertion of a clause about turbary, and were processed to the Ballinamore Quarter Sessions last June, and decrees issued against them; that they then agreed to purchase under the Land Purchase Act of 1891, getting the same advantages as those who had previously bought under the Ashbourne Act; that some of this batch have been noticed that they are recognised as purchasers, and that others have not; and that one widow, who sold her cow to meet the demands of the agent of the Trustees, was processed to the Carrick-on-Shannon Quarter Sessions, and had her money returned because it did not include 5s. costs; and whether he will recommend the Land Commission to take immediate steps to rescue the affairs of this estate from a

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  state of confusion, and have the purchases in all the cases properly completed?
  MR. J. MORLEY: The facts, I believe, are accurately set forth in the question. In the case, however, of the widow referred to, lam informed that the matter has since been settled by the payment of 2s. costs instead of 5s. With regard to the sales on this estate, the Land Commission inform me that in October, 1890, 59 agreements were lodged with them under the Purchase Acts of 1885–1888, and that advances have been made in 41 of these cases. In the remaining cases, one application was refused; in two cases the tenants died subsequently to the application; in two cases questions are still unsettled regarding the accuracy of the areas of the holdings; and in 13 cases the applications are still pending in consequence of the solicitor having charge of the estate not having taken steps to complete the same. In addition, 28 agreements have been recently lodged under the Act of 1891, and advances have been made in 21 of these cases. The Commissioners endeavour to prevent delay occurring in completing sales under the Purchase Acts, but they explain that delay is sometimes occasioned by the difficulties which arise owing to the nature of the vendor's title, the inability or want of activity of the vendor's solicitor, and sometimes to the failure of the tenant purchasers to comply with the requisitions of the Commissioners.

  ALLEGED INTIMIDATION BY THE IRISH NATIONAL FEDERATION.
  MR. ROSS: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the report of the meeting of the Athea Branch of the Irish National Federation on the 27th of May, as reported in The Limerick Leader of the 30th of May, in which it is stated that it was proposed to deal openly with those persons who had been written to regarding their dealings with the "grabber." The village blacksmith not having replied, it is now intended to—
  "isolate him and call upon the farmers to leave him alone in his glory with the obnoxious grabber and his aiders";
  and whether he proposes to take any steps to vindicate the law?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I have seen a newspaper report of the proceedings at the meeting referred to in the question. There is no evidence, however, of what took place at the meeting, which was held indoors, and I am informed by the local police that the paragraph has had no effect whatever, nor is it believed it will have any.
  MR. MACARTNEY: But there was a meeting held.
  MR. J. MORLEY: Unlike the other case, in which there was no meeting, there was a meeting in this case, but indoors.
  MR. MACARTNEY: The practical publication of incitements to intimidation have the same effect as if the meeting were held.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELLasked whether it was not an infraction of the law to incite to intimidation?
  MR. J. MORLEY: Cerfainly. If the police find that any injurious effect follows from the adoption of a resolution of this kind at a meeting and its publication in a newspaper, action is taken upon it. But if the effect of taking action would be likely to produce harm, we consider that we are acting prudently in taking no notice.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Do the Government, then, only take action in such cases when mischief has resulted?
  MR. J. MORLEY: No; that is not at all the position I have taken up. What I said was that if the police consider that no injurious effect is likely to follow such resolutions, the Executive Government think it as well to take no notice of them.
  MR. W. JOHNSTON: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that the National Federation is entirely powerless in Ireland?
  MR. SEXTON: Will the Government treat these meetings as they treat meetings held in Ulster, at which threats to declare war against the Queen are made although nothing happens afterwards?
  *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Is it not the case that, since the 14th of April, 36 cases of denunciation of individuals and 23 cases of outrage and assault have occurred, the persons outraged having all been denounced previously?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I must ask for notice of that question.

  RE-DIRECTION OF POSTCARDS AND BOOK PACKETS.
  MR. HENNIKER-HEATON: I beg to ask the Postmaster Genera] whether, until the 1st of June, 1892, there was free re-direction of all halfpenny matter, postcards, book packets, circulars, sample packets, and newspapers, provided that the old and the new address lay within the same delivery district, and whether the whole of London counted as one district; whether the matter on which a charge for re-direction is made amounts to more than half the total of the re-directed matter to be delivered in London; whether he has observed signs of dissatisfaction among the public at the inconvenience caused by the abolition of the old privilege of free re-direction and the general refusal of addressees to receive matter involving payment of fines; and whether he will recommend the Treasury to assent to a restoration of the privilege in question? At the same time, I will ask the right hon. Gentleman whether there has been, since June, 1892, when the new Rule imposing fines for the re-direction of postal matter other than letters and parcels was enforced, a very large increase (approaching 15 or 20 per cent.) in the number of bookpost packets, postcards, and newspapers refused by the addressees, and consigned to the Returned Letter Office; and whether there has, since the same date, been any, and if so what, increase in the amount of revenue derived from fines?
  THE POSTMASTER GENERAL (Mr. A. MORLEY,: The hon. Member has correctly described the Regulation in force prior to June, 1892. The correspondence upon which a charge for re-direction is made is somewhat less than one-third of the whole of there-directed correspondence delivered in London. The number of packets other than letters refused in consequence of the charge for re-direction has no doubt increased since June, 1892; but the records of the Department do not enable me to say how the amount of re-direction charges now collected compares with the amount formerly collected. I am aware that the present system of charging for re-direction of circulars, book packets, &c, gives rise to some dissatisfaction, but the advantage which, on the other hand, the public
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  have derived from the free re-direction of letters must not be overlooked. I am not at the present moment prepared to recommend a restoration of the privilege which local correspondence formerly had over other correspondence.

  JAPAN PARCEL POST.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATON: I beg to ask the Postmaster General whether he is aware that large quantities of small sample packages are exchanged between this country and Japan; and that, there being no parcel post with that country, much inconvenience is caused to-merchants and others; and whether he can see his way to establish a sample and a parcel post to Japan via the Canadian-Pacific route?
  MR. A. MORLEY: There is already a sample post to Japan by the Canadian-Pacific route. Proposals have repeatedly been made to the Japanese Post Office for the establishment of a parcel post between the United Kingdom and Japan; but up to the present time that office has not seen its way to fall in with them. A promise has been made that the question shall be taken up after an inland parcel post in Japan has been established, and its working has been tested.

  THE VOLUNTEER MEDAL.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the medal for long service which Her Majesty has recently decided to bestow upon Volunteer non-commissioned officers and privates will be granted upon conditions similar to those governing the case of commissioned officers?
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN,&c.): The conditions for the grant of the Volunteer Long Service Medal are laid down in the Special Army Order of the 26th of May. They necessarily differ in certain respects from those applicable to the officers' decoration.

  ARMY MEDICAL OFFICERS IN THE HOME DISTRICT.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether there are at present two administrative medical officers of Surgeon-Colonels rank serving in the Home District; and,

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  if so, what duties are assigned to the second officer; if a Surgeon-Major-General is now, and has been for some months, filling a Surgeon-Colonel's post; if so, what are the circumstances that have called for such unusual administration; and whether there is any precedent for it?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: There are not at present two medical officers of Surgeon-Colonel's rank serving in the Home District, though there recently were; but a Surgeon-Major-General now occupies a Surgeon-Colonel's position at Colchester. The reasons for this inconvenient arrangement are: First, that Surgeons-Major-Greneral necessarily servo but a few years in that rank; and second, that the Indian Government will not receive an Administrative Medical Officer who has not two years to serve. The result has been that for some months past there has been an excess of one Surgeon-Major-General at home and a deficiency of one in India. The arrangement is not without precedent; but it is obviously inconvenient, and I have it under consideration in what way a remedy can be applied.

  IRELAND AND THE FLEET.
  COLONEL NOLAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if the Fleet will visit the Irish coast this summer, and if it will visit and make any stay at Galway?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Sir U. KAY-SHUTTLERWORTH,): Some of the ships engaged in the Manœuvres will visit parts of the Irish coast. I fear that Galway will probably not be included in these visits.

  BOARD OF AGRICULTURE PUBLICATIONS.
  MR. LOGAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture if he can now state to the House the result of his communications with the Treasury as to the possibility of exteuding to Members of this House, who desire to distribute the publications of the Board of Agriculture, the privileges now confined to Agricultural Societies, Village Institutions, and similar bodies?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. H. GARDNER,): Yes; I am glad to say that the Treasury have found themselves able to extend to Members of Parliament the same privileges with regard to the publications of my Department as those which are allowed to Agricultural Societies and other Institutions. We shall now be in a position to supply copies of those publications to Members of Parliament at half the published price, provided that not less than 20 copies are taken, and that they are intended for gratuitous distribution.

  HAULBOWLINE DOCKYARD.
  CAPTAN DONELAN: I beg to ask the Civil Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that, owing to the absence of a suitable steam crane at Haulbowline Basin, a gun had recently to be lauded there by means of a temporary shear-legs, involving much expense and risk, and also that no appliance exists for raisiug a damaged armour plate or any other article from the bed of the dry dock; and will these two requirements be supplied during the current year?
  THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. E. ROBERTSON,): From inquiries made at Haulbowline, it appears that no gun has been landed there for the last two years. It was not considered necessary to provide money in the current year's Estimates for supplying more powerful lifting appliances. In case of necessity, temporary shear-legs or other appliances could be arranged, as is constantly done at other establishments.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether, in the event of Her Majesty's ships receiving damage to their armour plates during the coming Autumn Manœuvres, the necessary repairs can be carried out with the present machinery there.
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: I believe so.
  MR. M. AUSTINasked when the alteration at the yard would be completed?
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: I must ask for notice of that question.

  THE LONDON CAB STRIKE.
  MR. BOULNOIS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been drawn to the announcement that on Sunday the 3rd instant the hon. Member for Battersea, who has recently heen nominated to serve on a Committee to inquire into the relations between cab-owners and cab-drivers in the Metropolis, attended an open air meeting in Battersea Park held for the purpose of expressing sympathy with the cab-drivers on strike, at which the hon. Member incited the drivers to continue the strike and maintain the pickets; and whether he will consider the propriety of retaining on a Committee, which is about to commence an inquiry of a judicial character, a Member who continues to take an active part on either side upon the question to be considered?
  MR. C. FENWICK: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on the Committee appointed by the late Government to inquire into the hours of railway servants Members of this House were retained who had previously on platforms in the country publicly pronounced a definite opinion upon the question to be inquired into?
  MR. E. H. BAYLEY: I think it is only right to say that I am to some extent tarred with the same brush as the hon. Member for Battersea, and if any blame attaches to him I ought to share it.
  MR. LOUGH: Can the right hon. Gentleman inform the House whether the terms of Reference to the Committee have been settled, whether the Members have been nominated, and when the Committee will be able to begin work?
  MR. ASQUITH: Yes, Sir. The terms of Reference have been settled and the Members nominated, and as far as I know there is nothing to prevent the Committee from beginning its work at once. My attention has not been called otherwise than by the hon. Member's question to the speech referred to, and I am unable to say whether the hon. Member for Battersea did or did not use the language attributed to him. However this may be, I fail to see that my hon. Friend has in any way disqualified him-
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  self for serving on the proposed Committee.

  THE BASSANTPORE RIOT CASE.
  MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if he is aware that Police Inspector Gaitri Prosonno, who was the chief police witness in the Bassantpore riot case, has been promoted from the fourth to the third grade of Inspectors, with retrospective effect; that the seven men charged by him with having attempted to loot the Bassantpore Police Station were proved innocent before the Sessions Court at Sarun and the Calcutta High Court, and finally acquitted; that the Sessions Judge of Sarun declared that Prosonno had wilfully concealed facts which, if divulged, would have supported the case for the defence, and that his evidence was open to the greatest suspicion; and that the High Court in their judgment declared that the whole of the police evidence was open to suspicion, and entirely failed to prove that the prisoners took any active part in the riot; and, if so, why has Gaitri Prosonno been promoted, instead of placed on his trial for perjury?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: I have no information whether or not the Inspector has been promoted; but I am aware that a special Report was called for after the Session Trial, and that after considering the matters elicited in the further inquiry then made the Local Government came to the conclusion, subject to the clearing up of certain points still under investigation, that his conduct was praiseworthy. The facts are not quite as supposed by my hon. Friend. Of the seven men charged two were convicted, and the Judge held that "on the whole" the police had "given a substantially true version" of the actual riot. He found, however, in regard to three of the accused, that the police evidence, to the effect that they took part in the riot, was not of so satisfactory a character as to justify their conviction. He based this conclusion partly on the disappearance of certain papers which were afterwards accounted for and partly on the fact that on certain points the evidence of the Inspector and a constable had given him the impression that they were trying to conceal facts which, if admitted, might be favourable to the defence. These

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  points were also subsequently explained to the satisfaction of the Local Government. The Inspector's evidence did not affect the two other accused, who were acquitted. I have not seen the High Court's judgment in the case.
  MR. CAINE: Has there been a specific inquiry into the matter?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: Yes.
  MR. CAINE: Will it be possible to have the Report laid on the Table?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: I must wait till I see it before I answer that question. But I shall be able to answer questions on minor points if hon. Members put them.

  THE WELSH CATHEDRALS.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state what portion of the total sum expended upon the fabric of the four Welsh Cathedrals since the year 1703 has been derived from any Welsh National Fund, or from any public moneys raised exclusively within the Principality of Wales?
  MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: At the same time I will ask the right hon. Gentleman whether his attention has been drawn to a letter which appeared in The Times, of the 4th of May, from the Chancellor of the Diocese of Llandaff, in which it is stated that over £30,000 has been raised by subscriptions and offertories for the restoration of Llandaff Cathedral since 1843; whether he is prepared to qualify his statement that £3,425 was the amount so raised; and whether he is now in a position to give full particulars as to the amounts spent on the four Welsh Cathedrals in the present century, showing what portion had come (a) from national funds, (b) from subscriptions and offertories?
  MR. ASQUITH: The sum of £3,425, to which I referred in my answer to the hon. Member for the Tunbridge Division of Kent on the 30th of April as having been raised for the restoration of Llaudaflf Cathedral, is the sum mentioned in the House of Lords Churches and Cathedrals Return of the 27th of June, 1892; but I find that the House of Commons Church Building and Restoration Return, on the 23rd of March, 1876, states that £30,000
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  was spent on this cathedral between 1840 and 1870. The sources of that sum are not indicated, and I have no means of verifying these figures or those given by the Chancellor of Llandaff. On the 23rd ultimo I received from the Dean of St. David's a letter stating that between the years 1704 and 1863, both inclusive, the sum of £11,245 was expended in restoring St. David's Cathedral, the whole of which was contributed by members of the Cathedral Body or other individuals, and that the whole expenditure from 1704 to 1892 was £54,697 (£11,245, plus £43,452), of which £ 10,000 was granted by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Here, again, I can only state the figures as they are given to me, and I cannot make myself responsible for them. I am informed that no grant has been made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the cases of St. Asaph and Bangor, but it would seem upon reference to the two Returns already referred to that £9,969 has been spent out of subscriptions upon St. Asaph between 1840 and 1890, and in the case of Bangor about £21,000. There appear to be no trustworthy materials for any further or more detailed statement of this expenditure.
  *MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: What amount of public funds has been expended on these buildings?
  MR. ASQUITH: I can supply no figures except those which I have already given.
  MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman give a Return showing the amount of money spent on these buildings, and distinguishing public from private funds?
  MR. ASQUITH: There is no trustworthy information on that point.
  MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: Are we to understand that the Government has made their proposal to make over these cathedrals to a secular body without having taken steps to obtain information as to the sources of expenditure upon these cathedral fabrics?
  MR. ASQUITH: No, Sir. It is not a fact.
  MR. PENROSE FITZGERALD: Then it is possible that public money has been spent on these cathedrals, and the Home Secretary either will not or cannot give us any information in regard to it?
  MR. ASQUITH: I have stated precisely what public funds has been so expended. It is impossible for the Government with the material at their disposal to state how much private money has been spent.

  BURMA ASSISTANT COMMISSIONERS.
  SIR SEYMOUR KING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that the Government of India proposes, in spite of objection by the Local Authority, to fill up a vacancy in the first grade of Assistant Commissioners in Burma, resulting from the retirement on the 1st of April of Mr. Macree, a first grade Deputy Commissioner, by importing a gentleman from India who is entirely new to the Burma Commission, with the effect of superseding the entire staff of the second grade Assistant Commissioners, of which the senior shows 10 years' service and the junior over eight; and whether, having regard to the injury likely to result from the proposed arrangement to the Public Service and the inconvenience likely to arise from a block in promotion, he will ask the Government of India to reconsider its intentions?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: On the 12th of last month the services of Mr. A. H. Collins, an Indian Civil Servant of 13 years' standing, were transferred from Bengal to Burma. I am informed that the arrangement was made with the concurrence of the Chief Commissioner; but, in any case, I should not be disposed to interfere in such a matter except upon a complaint by some aggrieved person submitted in the prescribed course.

  STEAM TRAWLERS AND THE RULE OF THE ROAD AT SEA.
  SIR SEYMOUR KING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the effect which the adoption by the British Government in their present shape of the proposed Washington Regulations, respecting the Rule of the road at sea, will have on the steam trawlers' trade, owing to the fact that it is impossible for a steam trawler with her fishing gear down to get out of the way of a sailing vessel; whether any representations have been made by the German Government with regard to the
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  expediency of giving to steam trawlers when their gear is down the right of the road in face of sailing vessels; and whether the French Government has expressed its willingness to abide by the decision of the British Government; and whether he will make an early announcement of the Government's intentions in regard to the matter?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BRYCE,: I believe that it has been stated that the proposed Regulations for preventing collisions at sea will adversely affect steam trawlers at work; but, as a matter of fact, the proposed Regulations make no alteration in the existing Rule of the road at sea so far as steam trawlers are concerned. Representations have been received from the German and French Governments on the subject of the right, of way of trawlers, and it is proposed to deal with the Rules affecting fishing vessels as soon as the negotiations regarding the rest of the Regulations are completed, the Regulations regarding fishing vessels constituting a separate branch of the subject. An announcement of the intentions of the Government will be duly made when a decision has been arrived at.
  *MR GIBSON BOWLES: Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that a steam trawler with her trawl down, and unable to move unless she slips her trawl-warp, is bound to observe the Rule of the road at sea?
  MR. BRYCE: I cannot say that.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: But the right hon. Gentleman said she would be subject to the Rule of the road at sea? Is that so?
  MR. BRYCE: Questions of this extreme delicacy had better be given notice of.

  IMPORTS OF FOREIGN MANUFACTURED GOODS.
  MR.MACDONA: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the Law Officers of the Crown have given an opinion that the Commissioners of Customs had no power under the 16th section of "The Merchandise Marks Act, 1887," to admit foreign goods bearing the name and trade mark of any manufacturer, dealer, or trader in the United Kingdom; and if lie will take

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  care that for the future no such importation of goods bearing English names shall be imported, as was recently the case when several tons of glass bottles were allowed to be discharged in the Thames bearing the name and trade directions of R. White, an employer of foreign labour?
  MR. BRYCE: I am not aware that any such opinion has been given by the Law Officers of the Crown as is mentioned in the question. I believe that my hon. Friend the Attorney General a few days ago said something bearing on this subject; but as he is unfortunately absent from the House I have not been able since seeing the question to ascertain what his precise view is. As regards the latter part of the question, the Commissioners of Customs are not under the direction of the Board of Trade.
  MR. MACDONA: But did not the Solicitor General for the Attorney General give such an opinion?
  MR. BRYCE: As I did not hear the answer, I do not think I ought to say anything on the matter.
  COLONEL HOWARD VINCENT: I shall take the earliest opportunity of drawing attention to this subject.

  TRAWLING OFF THE ISLAND OF FOULA.
  SIR L. LYELL: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether his attention has been called to the trawling that is now being carried on off the Island of Foula by a boat with number obliterated, and so near the coast that the features of the crew can be identified from the shore; whether it is true that the gunboats Niger and Active, now in the North on Revenue service, refuse to interfere, and thus it is fouud impossible to obtain the name of the boat or of its master in order that a prosecution may be instituted; and whether it is the case that he is powerless to maintain the law against trawling in inland waters, and has no right to call on the Admiralty to assist in procuring the identification and arrest of those who break the law?
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Sir G. TREVELYAN): I have obtained Reports from the Fishery Board which corroborate the statement of the hon. Member regarding the illegal trawling near Foula.
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  It is not the case, however, that the gunboats refused to interfere. On the coutrary, H.M.S. Niger, in obedience to special orders from the Admiralty, steamed from Lerwick to Foula on Thursday last, and remained for a day in the neighbourhood of the island. As no trawler was discovered, the Niger returned on Saturday to her ordinary duties at Lerwick. H.M.S. Watchful is now in the Moray Firth, with a view to the enforcement of the law on that fishing ground.

  THE WARINA INCIDENT.
  CAPTAIN BAGOT: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can state if any arrangement has been arrived at with the French Government on the question of compensation to the relatives of those English soldiers who were accidentally killed in the unfortunate collision between British and French troops at Warina, Sierra Leone, in December last?
  *SIR E. GREY: The inquiries necessary to verify the geographical position of Warina are not concluded.

  SEDGWICK SCHOOL, WESTMORELAND.
  CAPTAIN BAGOT: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether he can state on what grounds a notice was sent on the 25th of July, 1893, by the Education Department to the managers of Sedgwick Elementary School, Westmoreland, which was passed in 1883 as sufficient to accommodate 63 pupils, and which had an average school attendance last school year of 463, stating that the class-room could not be recognised beyond the current year owing to its being below the minimum size, and desiring the managers to consider at once the practicability of enlargement: whether he is aware that the class-room in question exceeds the requirements of the Code of Regulations of the Education Department (1893) as regards both internal space and internal area for each unit of average attendance; that the school in question is situated in an agricultural district, and that any enlargement would cost at least £50; and whether, under the circumstances, the Department will insist on the enlargement?
  THE VICE PEESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (Mr. ACLAND,): Notice was given to this school in July, 1893, as stated in the first paragraph of the hon. Member's question. The class-room, while it provides sufficient space for each unit of the infants in attendance, is much below the size which would be considered indispensable in a new class-room. It is difficult in a room of this size to secure proper ventilation and freedom from draughts, and infants also require a reasonable space for drill and marching. I do not, of course, know what the cost of an enlargement would be; but I will communicate with Her Majesty's Inspector, and ascertain how far the arrangement of the room and the provision for the instruction of the infants will enable me to meet the views of the hon. Member. In any case, the grant shall not be withdrawn for the year now current.

  SCHOOL BOARD RATES AND THE EXTRA GRANT.
  MR. BROAD: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether, in cases where, under Section 97 of the Elementary Education Act of 1870, a School Board is entitled to the extra grant, such grant is forfeited by reason of the said Board having in the previous year levied a higher rate than was required for the purposes of that year, in order to provide and carry forward a working balance; and, if not, on what ground payment of the extra grant has been refused to the Stanton and New-hall School Board, whose expenditure for the year 1893 was £1,708 17s. 5d., and receipts, other than those derived from a rate of 8d. in the £1, were £1,380 8s. 4d. only?
  MR. ACLAND: The figures given in the hon. Member's question as regards the case of the Stanton and Newhall School Board are correct, except that he has omitted to mention that at the beginning of the year ended the 29th of September, 1893, the Board had in hand a balance of £252 16s. 11d. This gave the Board a total sum of £1,633 5s. 3d. available towards meeting the expenditure of £1,708 17s. 5d., leaving a deficit of £75 12s. 2d. only, to be met out of the rates. The grant under Section 97 of the Elementary Education Act of 1870
  568
  is not payable unless the School Board satisfy the Education Department that the sum required for the purposes of their annual expenses amounted to a sum which would have been raised by a rate of 3d. in the £1 on the rateable value of the Board's district. The sum required for the year ended the 29th of September, 1893, by the Stanton School Board was, as has been said, £75 12s. 2d., which is less by £89 7s. 10d. than the £165 which would have been the product of a 3d. rate. In these circumstances, my Lords were advised that no grant under Section 97 was payable. The Board can avoid a similar loss of the Section 97 grant in future by so issuing their precept to the Rating Authority as to obtain payment of the amount required from the rates at the beginning of the financial year. This will make it unnecessary for them to retain a large balance in hand.

  THE COST OF THE BEHAR CADASTRAL SURVEY.
  Mr. HENNIKER-HEATON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, with reference to his statement that the cost of the Cadastral Survey in Behar will be defrayed partly by the Government, partly by the zemindars, and partly by the ryots, what proportion of the cost is to be defrayed by the Government; what proportion of such cost has hitherto been defrayed by the Government in Bombay and other provinces of India; whether the ryots have ever been burdened with any portion of the costs; and whether any consideration is to be shown to those zemindars whose estates have already been compulsorily surveyed at an immense cost by the Government or the Court of Wards during their minorities, and are now to be re-surveyed?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: The proportion of the cost of the Cadastral Survey to be borne by Government is still under consideration. In Bombay and other temporarily settled provinces, where the survey is made primarily for the security of the Public Revenues, the whole of such survey is paid by Government. The ryots have not borne any of the costs in the Provinces to which I have just referred. As was stated in an answer given in this House on the 17th of November last, and as is explained at

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  length at paragraph 44, page 78, of Behar Cadastral Survey Papers presented on the 22nd of November, 1893, surveys previously effected will be utilised as far as practicable.

  THE IRISH MAIL SERVICE.
  MR. W. KENNY: I beg to ask the Postmaster General, in relation to the new mail service between London and Kingstown, whether separate tenders will be invited for the railway and steamboat services; if Railway Companies will be excluded from competition for the steamboat service; and whether the conditions on which tenders are sought will specify the minimum dimensions, power, and speed of the steamers to be employed?
  MR. A. MORLEY: Separate tenders will be invited, and Railway Companies will not be excluded from competition for the sea service. The conditions of tender are now being considered, but it would not be convenient to state them till they have actually been decided on.
  MR. W. KENNY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how soon the advertisements for tenders will be issued?
  MR. A. MORLEY: I cannot say exactly, but it will not be long delayed.
  MR. MACARTNEY: Will the conditions for accelerating the service be specified?
  MR. A. MORLEY: Yes.

  CANTYEE CROFTERS.
  SIR D. MACFARLANE: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he can explain why the decision of the Crofters' Commission has not been communicated to certain crofters on the Torresdale estate, in Cantyre, although their holdings were examined in September, 1893; and whether he is aware that great inconvenience is caused by uncertainty as to the amount of rent payable?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: The decision of the Crofters' Commission in this case was communicated both to the proprietor and to the crofters' agent by the Sheriff Clerk on the 6th of January. It is also published in the last Report of the Commission, page 29, as presented to Parliament.

  COMMITTEE ON FEUS AND LEASES.
  DR. MACGREGOR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate if he can now say when the next meeting of the Select Committee on Feus and Leases (Scotland) will be held; and whether he can state approximately when the Committee will be able to report to the House?
  *THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR,&c.): I propose to ascertain the sense of the Members of the Select Committee as to when the next meeting should be held. If the Committee decide to receive further evidence, I do not think that it will occupy more than one day, and it will then be for the Committee to consider as to the Report which they should make to the House.

  SMALL-POX AT LEITH.
  SIR C. CAMERON: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether his attention has been called to the epidemic of small-pox at present prevalent at Leith, and to the statement of the Medical Officer of Health of that burgh that the large increase of cases reported a fortnight ago was attributable to the fact that a large number of people mildly infected with the disease had been going about the streets, and that the sanitary department had recovered infected clothes from pawnbrokers; whether he is aware that the Medical Officers of Health of Glasgow have thought it necessary to warn inhabitants of the city, so far as possible, to avoid Leith, and have stigmatised the measures adopted by the authorities of that town to check the disease as devoid of intelligence and efficiency, and that the collector of Customs has notified the-Leith authorities that if the disease is-allowed to spread he will be compelled to-declare Leith a foul port; and whether the Board of Supervision have taken any steps, and if so what, to assist or guide-the Local Authorities in dealing with the epidemic?
  SIR G. TREVELYAN: I have made-inquiry as to the outbreak of small-pox at Leith, and understand that it is the-case, as stated by the hon. Member, that strong criticisms have been passed by-competent authorities upon the action of the Local Authority of that burgh. The Board of Supervision have for some time

  571
  brought all the pressure they can to bear upon the Local Authority. They have had a conference at which the deficiencies of the burgh sanitation were pointed out, and they took the strongest step in their power by issuing a special Order requiring the Local Authority to deal forthwith with insanitary houses, and by calling upon them to re-organise their sanitary staff. Some improvement followed these measures; but the Board have continued to press the Local Authority to follow the example of the great majority of Sanitary Authorities both in England and in Scotland by adopting the Notification of Diseases Act; and I am glad to say that the Act was at last adopted the day before yesterday. I am informed that in nearly all the cases reported to the Local Authority the patients have been removed to hospital, and that joint action will now be taken along with Edinburgh in combating the epidemic.

  THE COMPANIES (WINDING-UP) ACT.
  SIR A. ROLLIT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade when the Annual Report of the Board of Trade, under Section 29 of "The Companies (Winding-up) Act, 1890," for the year ending the 31st of December, 1893, will be presented to Parliament; and whether the Board of Trade will include in such Report, in addition to the information contained in previous Reports, the names of the Companies ordered to be wound up from the date when "The Companies (Winding-up) Act, 1890," came into operation to the 31st day of December, 1893, distinguishing the cases in which an Official Receiver was continued as permanent liquidator from those in which he was not so continued, giving the date of the winding-up order in each case, and the dates when the statement of affairs was filed and when the first statutory meetings were held; the amounts received by the Official Receiver by the realisation of the assets of each such Company, distinguishing those in which the Official Receiver was not continued as permanent liquidator, and showing how much was in each case received during the provisional liquidatorship; the fees which were respectively claimed and received by the Board of Trade in respect of the Official Receiver's provisional or
  572
  other liquidatorship of each such Company or otherwise in connection therewith, showing how the amount of such fees was iii each case calculated, and distinguishing the part of the Official Receiver's charge which would have been incurred had the Official Receiver not been continued; a list of the cases in which a special manager was appointed under Section 5 of the Act, the nature of the duties performed in each case, and the remuneration paid to the special manager; the amount of cash and securities standing to the credit of the Companies' liquidation account at the end of each period of six months from the coming into operation of the said Act, and of the total income credited to the said account as having been received from investments up to 15th of January, 1894; and of the amount of the interest on investments which, during each such period of six months, has, under Section 17 of the Act, been placed to the credit of Companies wound up under the said Act for the benefit of such Companies, and of the total amount of the dividends or income paid or placed to the credit of such Companies, under Sections 17 and 18 respectively?
  MR. BRYCE: Progress is being made with the preparation of the Annual Report under the Companies (Winding-up) Act, but it is at present impossible to say when it will be ready for presentation. The Report requires so much time and trouble that it was not found possible to present the Report for 1892 until February last. Much of the information asked for by my hon. Friend is at present included in the Reports, and the Board of Trade will carefully consider how far additional information can usefully be given on the lines suggested by him. It would be inexpedient to include in the Return the full particulars asked for in the case of Companies whose liquidation has not yet been completed.

  SIR WEST RIDGWAY'S MISSION TO MOROCCO.
  SIR A. ROLLIT: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Foreign Office intend to publish, and if so when, Sir West Ridgway's Report on his Special Mission to Morocco?
  *SIR E. GREY: The Report in question is of a very confidential nature, and it is not intended to publish it.

  EIGHT HOURS DAY IN THE DOCKYARDS.
  MR. BARTLEY: In the absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University, I beg to ask the Civil Lord of the Admiralty what is the reason for the delay in putting the 48 hours system into operation in Her Majesty's Dockyards; and when it is expected that the system will be established?
  MR. E. ROBERTSON: Some necessary delay has been caused by arranging with the War Office in regard to certain details which it was considered desirable should be identical for the two Departments. These will very shortly be settled and the scheme promulgated, but I cannot give an exact date.

  THE LABOUR COMMISSION.
  MR. BARTLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Reports of the Royal Commission on Labour have been yet made; how many there are; and when they will be laid upon the Table?
  MR. ASQUITH: The fifth and final Report of the Royal Commission on Labour will be presented to Parliament to-day.

  DISCOUNT CORPORATION OF BELFAST.
  MR. E. M'HUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if ho is aware that summonses have been granted in the Belfast Police Courts against four directors of the Discount Corporation of Belfast; and whether, in view of the magnitude of the interest involved, the wide-spread losses caused by the failure of this and other fradulent Companies now in liquidation, and the gravity of the charges made, the Crown intend to intervene in these cases and see that justice is not frustrated?
  MR. J. MORLEY: It is a fact that summonses have been granted against four directors of the National Discount Corporation of Ireland for issuing fraudulent balance sheets and conspiring to defraud. These summonses, I understand, were to have been heard at the Belfast Police Court to-day, though with
  574
  what result I am not yet aware. The present proceedings have been instituted by a private prosecutor, a shareholder in the concern, and I am clearly of opinion, in which the Irish Law Officers concur, that at the present stage the Executive should not interfere in the case. Of course, if the defendants be sent for trial the case will then in the ordinary way come into the hands of the Crown, when the necessary action will be taken.

  GUN PRACTICE OFF THE NORE.
  MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether the gunboats Bustard, Trent, and Landrail have been firing into deep water off the Nore Light; whether it would be possible to fire N.E. from the Black Tail Buoy on to the edge of the Maplins, which would find employment for men holding passes for the recovery of shot and shell, and save Government ammunition?
  SIR U. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH: These vessels fire some distance to the southward and eastward of the Nore Light, according to the direction in which the range is clear for the time being, in order to avoid accidents to boats or shipping. The Black Tail Buoy is too distant; and the value of the extra coal burnt would exceed that of the recovered projectiles.

  THE ORDER OF THE BATH.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will lay upon the Table of the House a copy of the Statutes which govern the distribution by the Sovereign of the several degrees of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath from 1815 inclusive, so far as the same are applicable to officers of Her Majesty's Naval and Military Forces? I may, at the same time, ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether Her Majesty's Government will advise Her Majesty to revise the Statutes of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, so that the same may be brought more into harmony with general sentiment so far as eligibility by rank of officers of Her Majesty's Navy and Royal Marines is concerned, when compared with officers of equivalent rank in Her Majesty's Army, for admission to the Order of the Bath; and that the present proportion of honours and

  575
  distinctions of the said Most Honourable Order awarded to officers of Her Majesty's Navy and Army may be reconsidered and readjusted; and further, that recommendations of officers of Her Majesty's Naval Service for honours and distinctions may be submitted to Her Majesty by the First Lord of the Admiralty, instead of through Her Majesty's Secretary of State for War?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will allow me at the same time to reply to both questions. If by the words "the distribution of the several degrees of the Order of the Bath," the hon. and gallant Gentleman means the allocation of the numbers available for each of the two Services, this is a matter not regulated by the Statutes, but determined by a permanent arrangement between the Departments. If, however, he means the qualifications which are held necessary in the respective Services, these, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary to the Admiralty stated the other day, are not precisely identical in the case of Army and Navy officers, and consideration is now being given to the matter, with the view of seeing whether there is any substantial inequality, and whether the rules and practice in regard to the recommendation of officers for the Bath should be brought into closer uniformity. As regards the mode of submitting recommendations for Her Majesty's approval, I should say that those made by the First Lord of the Admiralty are not subject to any criticism of the Secretary of State for War. The Order of the Bath is necessarily placed, for the purposes of formal submission and of record, under some one responsible Minister, as regards both its Military and its Civil division. That Minister is the Secretary of State for War; but his action in respect of Naval and Civil recommendations is entirely Ministerial. I should not presume to question the propriety of any recommendation made either by the First Lord of the Treasury or by the First Lord of the Admiralty.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: The right hon. Gentleman has not stated whether he will lay a copy of the Statutes on the Table of the House. I have a copy by private favour, but there is no copy in the Library.
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The Statutes do not affect the question in which the hon. and gallant Member is interested. They are very voluminous and have been altered from time to time. There is, however, no reason why the Statutes should not be made public if it is desired.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: What I want is that the House may be in possession of the Statutes. That is the material point. There is no copy in the Library.
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The only objection to laying them on the Table is that it will involve a lot of formality in regard to printing and circulating them, and to get the information the hon. Member wants for them would be like looking for a needle in a bundle of straw. I will put a copy in the Library.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: Has anyone been appointed to the distinguished post of Grand Master since the death of the Prince Consort?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANwas understood to ask for notice of that.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Would not the difficulty be overcome by doing away with these Orders, which are only a relic of the barbarous ages?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: No, the demand seems to be in the opposite direction.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether in his recent statement of the proportion of naval officers eligible by rank on the Active List for the Most Honourable Order of the Bath—namely, "700 to upwards of 4,000 officers of the Army," he included officers of the Royal Marine Corps and of the various Civil branches of the Naval Service; and whether the-said proportion is in accordance with the proportion of officers of equivalent rank now subsisting between the two Services, in view of the fact that Senior Lieutenants of Her Majesty's Navy of eight years' standing now rank with Majors of of Her Majesty's Army?
  SIR U. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH: The numbers which I gave in the answer to the hon. Member for South Antrim comprised all officers of the Navy eligible by rank for the Military Division of the Order of the Bath, and included Marine officers, Engineer officers and Medical officers. These numbers are

  577
  necessarily based upon the qualifications prescribed in the Statutes of the Bath, and not upon the relative rank of officers of the two Services as now existing.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: Out of the total number of 932, how many are allocated to the Naval Service?
  SIR U. KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH: I think I must ask for notice of that question.
  ADMIRAL FIELD: Then I will give it.

  LINCOLNSHIRE AND WORCESTERSHIRE CHARITIES.
  MR. DODD: I beg to ask the Parliamentary Charity Commissioner who are the present Trustees of Cowley's Charity, and of the other parochial charities of Swineshead, Lincolnshire; and how many of them are popularly elected, and how elected; when last accounts were furnished to the Commission of Cowley's, and of the other charities, and what was the amount of the income shown on such accounts; and under what will or scheme those charities are now administered; and when last accounts were furnished to the Commissioners of the charities of Norton, Worcestershire?
  THE PARLIAMENTARY CHARITY COMMISSIONER (Mr. F. S. STEVENSON,): Cowley's Charity is regulated by an Act of Parliament (21 & 22 Vic. c. 81) confirming a scheme of the Charity Commissioners. Rules thereunder were approved by the Board on the loth of May, 1860. The trustees appointed under the scheme are—the Vicar of Swineshead and the Incumbent of Chapel Hill for the time being respectively and six persons named therein, any vacancies occurring to be filled by co-optation subject to the approval of the Commissioners. According to the accounts for the year 1893 the present trustees are—the Vicar of Swineshead, Mr. John Cooper, Mr. Charles H. Sharpe, Mr. William R. Sharpe, Mr. George Bett, Mr. Robert D. C. Shaw, and Mr. Ebenezer Wilson. The last accounts are those for the year 1893, and the income shown therein is about £268. Butler's (or the Causeway) Charity is apparently administered under two deeds made in the reign of Charles I. Trustees were appointed on the 17th of December, 1880, by an Order of the Board. The present trustees are—the
  578
  Rev. Joseph Holmes, Mr. John Cooper, Mr. John Harrison Brown, Mr. Robert D. C. Shaw, and William Sparrow, who are apparently the surviving trustees under the above-mentioned Order. The last accounts are those for the year 1893, the income mentioned therein being about £57. The Poor Charities are regulated by a scheme of the Charity Commissioners of 29th of March, 1888. The body of trustees is constituted as follows:—Three ex officio trustees, i.e., the Vicar and two elected Guardians of the Poor of the parish of Swineshead. Four representative trustees to be appointed as follows:—Two by ratepayers of Swineshead to the exclusion of the Hamlet of Chapel Hill, one by ratepayers of Hamlet of Chapel Hill, and one by School Board of Swineshead, and four eo-optative trustees. The present trustees, according to last accounts, are—The Rev. Joseph Holmes, Mr. John Cooper, Mr. John H. Brown, Mr. William Sparrow, Mr. Robert D. C. Shaw, Mr. George Bell, Mr. George Smith, Mr. Ebenezer Wilson, Mr. William Cheetham, Mr. William R. Sharpe, and Mr. Joel Goodwin. The last accounts are those for the year ended the 21st of March, 1893, the income shown therein is about £213. In answer to the concluding paragraph of the question, there appear to be three parishes in Worcestershire bearing the name of Norton—namely, (1) Norton-by-Bredou; (2) Norton-by-Evesham; and (3) Norton-juxta-Kemp-sey. If the hon. Member will specify the parish to which the question refers, the information shall be afforded.

  FACTORY INSPECTORS' ASSISTANTS.
  MR. FENWICKI beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state to the House the names and nature of previous occupations of the recently-appointed Factory and Workshop Assistant Inspectors?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GEORGE RUSSELL,: The names and previous occupations of the recently-appointed Factory Inspectors' Assistants are as follows:— R. J. Foot, engineer and smith; J. Dean, textile (cotton) operative; H. Miller, steel-maker; F. J. Beaumont, textile (woollen) operative; D. Timothy, colliery

  579
  clerk (a Welshman); F. W. Sedgwick, operative, afterwards clerk in boot and shoe factory; C. H. Morris, shipwright; J. Clark, joiner, employed in a factory, and afterwards engaged in Customs Service (has a certificate of competency as Sanitary Inspector).
  MR. FENWICK: Are there no female Inspectors appointed?
  MR. GEORGE RUSSELL: Not in this batch.
  MR. FENWICK: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the number of cases reported by the Assistant Factory Inspectors in which a breach of the Factory and Workshops Act is alleged to have taken place; whether any prosecutions have followed upon those Reports; and, if so, how many; and whether he is aware of the fact that these Inspectors are not allowed the free use of materials necessary for the effective and immediate discharge of their duties; and, if so, whether he will undertake that such materials shall be furnished them in accordance with his promise to the deputation which waited upon him in February last?
  MR. ASQUITH: Many prosecutions have followed upon Reports made by the Assistants, but it would be difficult and would, in my opinion, serve no useful purpose to give the precise numbers. All representations from the Assistant Inspectors receive careful attention. No complaint has been made officially by the Assistants that any representations of theirs have been improperly disregarded. If there had been any inconvenience from want of necessary materials, the ordinary course would have been to make an application to the Chief Inspector, and lam informed that no such application has been made. On inquiry I find that it is desirable that Assistant Inspectors should be furnished with satchels and measuring tapes, and steps have already been taken by the Chief Inspector for carrying this out.

  IRISH LAND COMMISSION— ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER MR. W. JEFFCOTT.
  MR. M'CARTAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether Mr. W. Jeffcott, who was formerly extensively employed as a landlords' valuer in County
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  Derry, has been recently engaged as a Sub-Commissioner in fixing judicial rents in the county; whether he has been selected to act as a Sub-Commissioner in the Counties of Fermanagh and Monaghan, where he will have to fix rents upon estates which he formerly valued for the landlord; and if he will give the date of his appointment as Sub-Commissioner?
  *MR. J. MORLEY: Mr. Jeffcott states that prior to his appointment as an Assistant Commissioner he was engaged as a valuer, both by tenants as well as landlords, in the County of Londonderry, but that since his appointment he has not joined in fixing the judicial rent in any case in this county, where he had been previously so employed by either party. He never acted as valuer for either landlords or tenants in any of the Unions in the Counties of Monaghan or Fermanagh, from which cases have been listed for hearing on the 5th instant by the Sub-Commission, of which he is a member. Mr. Jeffcott was appointed an Assistant Commissioner in February, 1891. He had previously been a valuer in cases of appeal and rehearing before the Land Commission.
  MR. SEXTON: Have there been any changes lately, and, if so, will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Commissioners to furnish a Return giving the names of the County Court valuers?
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Did I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say Mr. Jeffcott has not been engaged in any case in Fermanagh and Monaghan?
  MR. J. MORLEY: So he informs me. He has not acted there as valuer either for landlord or tenant in any of the Unions from which cases have been listed for hearing at the recent Sitting of the Sub-Commission of which he is a member. In answer to the hon. Member for North Kerry, I will get the date of the last Return and make the inquiry he suggests.

  THE VOLUNTEER LONG-SERVICE MEDAL.
  COLONEL HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if, having regard to the announcement that the Queen has been pleased to institute a Volunteer Long-Service Medal to be granted to Volunteers duly recommended by their Commanding Officers,

  581
  on completion of 20 years' service, the phrase—
  "Service, whether as officer, non-commissioned officer, or private, must have been consecutive,"
  is to be taken as disqualifying a Volunteer who, having served a given number of years in one corps, has, on migration, or under other circumstances of civil life, been forced to quit one regiment, but who, as soon as practicable, has rejoined another corps; and, in such case, if he will be pleased to submit for Her Majesty's gracious consideration the hardship such exclusion will entail on many especially deserving non-commissioned officers and men?
  *MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I appreciate the force of the claim of a Volunteer to have his service regarded as practically continuous when the interruption of it has been brief, and has been genuinely due to such a cause as is indicated, and I am, therefore, prepared to regard service in those circumstances as coming within the conditions, subject to a reasonable limitation in the length of the break.

  THE N'GAMILAND CONCESSION.
  MR. KNOX: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the fact that the concession obtained by Messrs. Nichol and Hicks in N'gamiland in 1889 was recognised by the High Commissioner, and used by the Foreign Office in negotiations with the German Government in 1890 as a reason for making N'Gamiland British territory; that the validity and due ratification of the concession was proved before Mr. Justice Mathew and a jury in an action brought in 1893 by Messrs. Nichol and Hicks against the African and General Exploration Company, in which the jury decided in favour of the plaintiffs, who have been unable to recover their judgment debt by reason of the financial condition of the defendant Company; that the validity of the concession is affirmed by Mr. Buckle, who made a special journey to N'Gamiland to test it, as the representative of interests hostile to Messrs. Nichol and Hicks, i.e., of Mr. Maund and the African and General Exploration Company; and that before the recent Bechuanaland Commission the legal representative of the Chartered
  582
  Company admitted that ho could not dispute the genuineness of the concession; and whether, under the circumstances, the Secretary of State will refuse to ratify the concession; if so, for what reason?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE POK THE COLONIES (Mr. S. BUXTOX,): The Bechuanaland Concessions Commission appointed to inquire into this and into other concession claims were, on the evidence before them, unable to come to any decision on the concession referred to in the question, and recommended that further inquiry should be made. Before coming to any decision, therefore, further inquiry will be necessary.
  MR. KNOX: Does the hon. Gentleman dispute the accuracy of the facts stated in the question? Will he make further inquiry?
  MR. S. BUXTON: I am not able wholly to admit the accuracy of the facts, and I do not understand that the legal representative of the Company could not dispute the genuineness of the concession. We are sending up a small force, and the officer in charge will be instructed to make further inquiry.
  MR. KNOX: Who is the officer?
  MR. S. BUXTON: Lieutenant Hoare.

  BECHUANALAND.
  MR. KNOX: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether Mr. Vintcent, one of three members of the recent Bechuanaland Commission, was legal adviser to the Chartered Company in Bechuanaland, and has since been appointed to a judicial position in the Company's territory; and when the Report of the Commission will be published?
  MR. S. BUXTON: As regards the first part of the question, Mr. Vintcent has not acted as legal adviser to the Chartered Company since 1891. As regards the second part of the question, Mr. Vintcent will, we understand, be nominated as Judge under the Matabeleland and Mashonaland Settlement. As regards the last part of the question, the Report of the Concessions Commission is not suitable for publication; but the effect of the Secretary of State's decision on the various claims (which he hopes to

  583
  complete shortly) will, of course, be made known to the various claimants.
  MR. KNOX: Was Mr. Vintceut appointed a member of the Commission in 1891, the year in which he was also acting as legal adviser to the Chartered Company?
  MR. S. BUXTON: I think the Commission was appointed in 1892.

  EVICTED FARMS IN TYRONE.
  MR. KNOX: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the constabulary at Beragh and Ballygawley, County Tyrone, are employed in watching an evicted farm in the townland of Foremass, on the estate of Mr. Henry Vernon; whether he is aware that the new tenant of the farm resides four miles away, and receives no personal protection, and that there are no cattle or houses on the farm; what, under the circumstances, the police are watching; whether, in consequence of the protection of this farm in the constituency of South Tyrone, the police forces have been augmented; and whether the increase will be paid for by the county?
  MR. J. MORLEY: The police make frequent patrols to the farm referred to. The present occupier of the farm resides a few miles away, though I am informed he is building a house on the farm, and that he has two head of cattle grazing it. The police force at the nearest station has been temporarily augmented in order to make the patrolling as effective as possible, but the augmentation has been supplied from the county establishment, so that no additional cost to the county is involved.

  LANCE-CORPORALS IN INDIA.
  COLONEL WARING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, with reference to the Army Order 110, dated 12th May, 1893, which increased to 32 the number of paid lance-corporals allowed to a battalion of Infantry, if he will explain why, though this Order was received in India in August last, it has not yet been acted upon, so that lance-corporals who left England with drafts subsequent to 12th May, 1893, and who were receiving pay under it, have, in consequence, been deprived of such extra pay on coming on the Indian Establishment; why an Order,
  584
  which is acknowledged by all military men to be a most necessary one and which involves a very insignificant expenditure, should require special consideration after it has been promulgated in India; and whether, considering the well-known difficulty in getting good men to accept the lance stripe, he will endeavour to bring the consideration of the question to an early and satisfactory conclusion?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: It is an old and well-established rule that Royal Warrants or Army Orders which involve an increase of charge are not applicable to India, unless and until they are promulgated in an Indian Army Circular by the Indian Government. The Order to which the hon, and gallant Member refers has not been so promulgated; but since it was issued in England it has been under consideration by the Government of India, and by myself in communication with the Secretary of State for War, and I have every reason to think that the matter will very soon be settled.

  NEWCASTLE WEST PETTY SESSIONS CLERK.
  MR. M. AUSTIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a letter was sent to Dublin Castle by Mr. William O'Sullivan, of Newcastle West, County Limerick, complaining of the conduct of Mr. Dawson, clerk of Petty Sessions there, for having used to him, at Newcastle West on the 11th instant, threatening language calculated to provoke a breach of the peace, and of which letter an acknowledgment was received on the 21st instant; whether Mr. Dawson, after having received from Dublin Castle notice of the complaint, did on the 24th instant (a fortnight after the alleged offence) issue a summons for assault against Mr. O'Sullivan, notwithstanding that a Petty Sessions Court had been held on the 18th instant; whether he is aware of the strong feeling existing in the district by reason of the conduct of Mr. Dawson in connection with this case, and his manner of discharging the duties in connection with his office; and whether he will call the attention of the proper authority to the matter, and inquire as to the very serious charges preferred against this officer under the late administration?
  MR. J. MORLEY: In replying to a similar question put by the hon. Member on Thursday last, I stated that the facts were correctly set forth in the first paragraph, and that the Petty Sessions clerk had summoned O'Sullivan for assault on the occasion referred to. I am now informed that O'Sullivan has been bound to the peace and required to enter into recognisances, or in default to be imprisoned for a month. A cross-summons brought by him against the Petty Sessions clerk was dismissed. It is the fact that this clerk was suspended from his office in 1890 and again in 1891, but on both occasions he was re-instated by the Lord Lieutenant. I have no knowledge of any complaint as to the manner in which he now discharges his duties, and am informed that at the recent official inspection of the clerk nothing came to the notice of the Inspector that would lead to the belief that such is the case.
  MR. M. AUSTIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Lord Muskerry, who presided in this case, had not put in an appearance at Petty Sessions for two years previously? Is he also aware that one of the Magistrates on the Bench strongly dissented from the decision? For what offence was this clerk suspended in 1890?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I am afraid I cannot say for what offence he was suspended. I know nothing about Lord Muskerry's attendance, and I have no right to inquire how he voted. It is quite true Mr. O'Grady, one of the Magistrates, did strongly dissent from the decision.
  MR. M. AUSTIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire what offence it was led to the suspension?
  MR. J. MORLEY: I will see if I can inquire into it.

  HOLDERS OF GOVERNMENT STOCK.
  SIR G. BADEN-POWELL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether there is any objection to a Return being prepared and" presented to this House showing the proportions of Government Stocks held respectively by persons domiciled within and outside the United Kingdom?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Sir J. T. HIBBERT,): I am informed by the authorities of the
  586
  Bank of England that a Return on the subject would involve an immense amount of labour, and it would be very misleading for two reasons: (1) because many foreigners conceal their identity by causing their investments to be made in English names; and (2) the ownership of Stock Certificates to Bearer cannot be ascertained. Under these circumstances, it seems doubtful whether such a Return would serve any useful purpose.

  THE SMEARING OF MANGO TREES IN BEHAR.
  MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if he has seen a Reuter's telegram, dated Simla, 5th June, published in the London papers of yesterday, to the effect that in the opinion of the Government of India the microscopic tests which have been applied to the mud daubed on the mango trees in North Behar prove that in 90 per cent, of the cases the smearing is due to pigs rubbing themselves against the trees; and has the India Office received any information confirming this statement?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: I have seen the telegram to which my hon. Friend refers. I have also received from the Government of India information to the effect that the larger part of the marks are due to animals, though some are certainly done by human agency. The intentional marking appears to have originated early this year in Nepal, and to have spread thence into Behar, being probably intended as advertisement to draw pilgrims to a shrine in Nepal. It is thought that when attention had been called to the matter, some mischievously-disposed persons, finding marks taken seriously, have continued work in certain districts. But it is considered that there is not sufficient evidence to connect the marking with any movement among the natives, nor any substantial reason to suppose that it has any political significance.

  SPECIAL TRAINS FOR INDIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS.
  MR. CAINE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if any Despatch has been received from the Viceroy recommending the stoppage of the use of special trains to convey the Viceroy, Commander-in-Chief, and other members of the Government between Simla and

  587
  Calcutta, on the ground of needless expense?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: No communication has been received from the Government of India on this subject. I am informed that Members of Council other than the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief are not entitled to special trains.

  ELECTRICAL COMMUNICATION WITH LIGHTHOUSES.
  MR. PENROSE FITZGERALD: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will be good enough to state why all the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Electrical Communication with Lighthouses, &c, contained in the First Report, dated 8th December, 1892, have not been carried out, especially with regard to the Scarweather Light-vessel, in the Bristol Channel, and the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse; whether his attention has been called to the paragraph in the Second Report of the Royal Commission, dated March, 1894, in which they state that it is with regret that they have decided to confine their recommendations in this Report to shore lighthouses, but, until more has been done towards effecting the connection of those light vessels and lighthouses which were selected in the First Report as having the strongest claims to immediate attention, they hesitate to add to the list of light-vessels and island rock lighthouses with which electrical communication should be established; and whether, in the interest of saving of life and property round the coasts of the United Kingdom, he will, without further delay, take the necessary steps to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission in their entirety in order that they may complete the list of light-vessels and rock lighthouses with which they consider that electrical communication should be established?
  MR. BRYCE: In the last financial year £10,000 was placed at the disposal of the Board of Trade for the purpose of effecting electrical communication with light-vessels, &c. That money was expended in connecting the "Kentish Knock" and "Goodwin (N. Sand Head)" Light-vessels and the "Gunflcet" Pile Lighthouse with the shore. In the present financial year £11,000 has been
  588
  similarly placed at the disposal of the Board of Trade, and it is intended to expend this amount in connecting the "Haisborough" and the "Shipwash" Light-vessels with the shore and in laying a cable to the "Tuskar" Rock Lighthouse. I am afraid that the other works recommended by the Royal Commission must wait until the Treasury can place more money at my disposal.

  POOR LAW BOUNDARIES IN KENT.
  COLONEL WARDE: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, as the clerks to the Commissioners of Laud Tax are unable to state what are the boundaries of the various Land Tax parishes in the Poor Law parishes of Lenham and Harrietsham, in the County of Kent, he can state where this information can be obtained?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W. HARCOURT,): I am unable to state where this information can be obtained. No one would appear to be in a better position to give it than the Local Land Tax Commissioners.
  COLONEL WARDE: But as that authority is ignorant on the subject, to whom else can I apply?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I am afraid I cannot refer the hon. and gallant Member to any other authority. That is the responsible body. We have nothing to do with it.
  COLONEL WARDE: I will refer to the subject on the Estimates.

  THE FINANCE BILL.
  MR. M. HEALY: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the fact that Section 13 of the Finance Bill, as at present drawn, would include all estates no matter what the amount of the assets if the debts of deceased are within £1,000 of the assets; whether it is intended that in the case, for ex ample, of an estate of £50,000, the section shall apply if the debts amount to £49,000 or upwards; whether, under the section, it is the duty of the Inland Revenue officials not merely to receive affidavits, but also to prepare affidavits, the schedules of assets, the bonds, notices, and other documents required by the Court of Probate; and on what grounds it is considered that, in the case of insolvent

  589
  estates, where no Probate Duty is paid and the State gains nothing, State officials should undertake free of charge the duties of solicitors?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: It is most improbable that eases of this kind would be brought to the Inland Revenue officials, and not to the District Registrar. The former have now power under the Regulations to decline to deal with cases involving complicated questions of law under £300 gross, and they will have the same power under the new system with regard to cases under £1,000 net. With regard to insolvent estates, there were not more than 58 cases in Ireland last year where an estate was insolvent, though the gross value exceeded £1,000.
  MR. DANE: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention has beeu drawn to the position of the District Registrar in Ireland as belug paid by fees? Does the right hon. Gentileman realise the position they will hold should they come under the law?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: No, Sir. I wish it to be understood that the object of this clause is to relieve persons of small property from any legal expenses, even though it may be that the fees of the District Registrar will be less in consequence.

  THE COLONIES AND THE DEATH DUTIES.
  MR. W. REDMOND: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the Government have received representations from the Australian Governments with reference to the proposal to levy Death Duties on colonial property left by persons who have died in Great Britain; whether the attention of the Government has been directed to the statement of Sir George Dibbs, Premier of New South Wales, that the persistence in this proposal with reference to Death Duties on Colonial property would create an unpleasant feeling between the Colonies and Great Britain; and whether the Government will endeavour to agree to the views of the colonies on this matter?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I am informed that a representation has been made by some of the colonies on this subject. As far as I understand it, this is an objection founded on a misapprehension. We have no intention of imposing any tax what-
  590
  ever on the colonies. The only question is whether personal property abroad or in the colonies which is held by persons domiciled here, and which is now subject to Legacy and Succession Duty, shall be subject to the Estate Duty which it is proposed to levy on such property when held in England. I need hardly say that any representation on this subject by the colonies will be most carefully and re-pectfully considered by Her Majesty's Government.
  MR. W. REDMOND: Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer draw no distinction between property held in the colonies and in other places abroad?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The great difficulty in this matter is that if a distinction is made between the United Kingdom and places abroad the duty therefrom becomes really a preferential duty—a preference to those who do not pay and a disadvantage to those who do. I can only repeat that any representation that may be made to the Government by the representatives of the colonies will be most carefully and respectfully considered.

  THE COUNTY OF LONDON.
  MR. BENN: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the Inland Revenue Department appears to be ignorant of the fact that a County of Loudon was formed by the Local Government Act of 1888, and that forms issued by that department are filled up with the names of the Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, although the places to which such forms refer are in the County of London; and whether he will take steps to secure a correct official description in future?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: The hon. Member probably refers to Inland Revenue Establishment Licences, issued by postmasters and sub-postmasters in localities on the confines of the County of London. The forms are issued in blank by the Inland Revenue to the postmasters, who sometimes insert the wrong local taxation description of the locality. These errors cannot always be avoided; but the matter is adjusted at Somerset House by the allocation of the proceeds of the licences to the credit of the county in which they are issued.

  THE SCILLY ISLANDS.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether any steps have as yet been taken under the special provisions of the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, relating to the Scilly Islands, to provide for the election of Parish Councils in those islands?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. SHAW-LEFEVRE,): The Local Government Board have received no application from the Council of the Isle of Scilly on the subject referred to, and the Board have therefore taken no steps with a view to the issue of a Provisional Order under Section 74 of the Local Government Act, 1894.

  LAUNDRIES AND THE FACTORY BILL.
  MR. STUART-WORTLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to a printed circular issued to Members of this House by the Women's Trade Union League, headed Laundries and the Factory Bill; whether that circular refers to a document recently received, which it describes as the Laundries Report of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Factories; has any such Report been made by Her Majesty's Inspectors; and, if so, when; and has it been communicated to others besides the Women's Trade Union League?
  MR. ASQUITH: I had not seen the circular until my attention was called to it by this question. In October last I received Reports on the condition of laundries by the Factory Inspectors. A summary of these, with two Reports from lady Inspectors, was printed, and a copy seems to have come into the hands of the Women's Trade Union League, though it was not officially communicated to them. The Paper in question has been laid before Parliament.

  MR. KINCHANT'S CASE.
  MR. COBB: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that, when recently at the War-
  592
  wickshire Standing Joint Committee an amendment was carried rescinding the previous action of the Committee in refusing a pension to Mr. Kinchant, the late Chief Constable, the motion as amended was not put as a substantive motion in accordance with the 23rd Standing Order of the committee; whether he is aware that about one-half of the members of the committee were absent in consequence of no special notice having been given that the question would come on for decision; whether he is aware that in the steps which the committee took as to refusing the pension they acted upon the advice given to them by the Secretary of State last year, and that the opinion of Mr. Dickens, Q.C., confirmed the legality of such steps, and advised that the pension should be paid, not upon legal, but upon general grounds, which it was the province of the committee, and not of counsel, to decide; and whether, if the committee should ask for his opinion, he would again advise them as to the course which, under the circumstances, should now be taken, before any further payment is made to Mr. Kinchant?
  MR. ASQUITH: I understand that the proceedings of the Warwickshire Standing Joint Committee (rescinding the previous action of the committee in refusing a pension to Mr. Kinchant, the late Chief Constable) were in camera. I am, therefore, not in a position to say what the proceedings were, or whether they were in any respect informal. If there was informality, it is, of course, open to those dissatisfied to take steps to rectify it. Out of a total of 40 constituting the committee 28 attended. The summons to the meeting, sent out several days beforehand, stated that the Police Committee would make a report, and was, in fact, accompanied by a print of such report, and in the report was contained a distinct intimation that the subject of the late Chief Constable's pension would come before the meeting. The opinion of Mr. Dickens that the pension should be paid seems to have been founded upon his view that this was both the just and the legal course. My own view on the matter would not be binding on the committee, but if they desire to have it I shall not be unwilling to express it at their request.

  CHLOROFORM AT KING'S COLLEGE HOSPITAL.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the inquest on Arthur Thomas Payne, who died on Wednesday, 31st May, in King's College Hospital during an operation under chloroform, when it was proved that the deceased was a minor; that his mother had given her consent to the operation, with the proviso that the Hospital Authorities should notify her of the date of the operation; and that no such notice was given to the mother; and whether he will take steps, by legislation or otherwise, to require the authorities of King's College and other hospitals to give notice to parents of patients who are minors, when operations, involving risk of a fatal result, are decided upon?
  MR. ASQUITH: I am informed by the Secretary to the Governing Body of King's College Hospital that the young man referred to was 20 years of age; that soon after his admission, on the 14th of March, his mother was informed that an operation would be requisite, and that she gave her consent without qualification and without any such proviso as is alleged. There does not, so far as I know, appear to be any sufficient ground for legislation of the kind suggested by my hon. Friend.

  CHRIST CHURCH NATIONAL SCHOOL, HAMPSTEAD.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the Christ Church National School, Hampstead, was permitted by the Department to charge a fee of 1d. a week for infants and 2d. a week for older children on condition that the fee grant should be reduced by the excess of the fee income over £20; whether he is aware that in the accounts for the year ending the 31st of March, 1894, £101 9s. 2d. was received as fees and only £12 18s. 3d. deducted; and how it is that this charge on the scholars has been permitted?
  MR. ACLAND: In this case permission was given to the school in 1891, under Section 4, Sub-section 3, of the Act of 1891, to charge increased fees on the scale stated in the question, subject
  594
  to the condition that the excess above £20, received in respect of increased fees, should be deducted from the fee grant. In the year ending the 31st of March, 1894, this excess amounted to £12 18s 3d., which was deducted accordingly.

  ACCOUNTS OF VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education whether the Department employ auditors to inspect the accounts of voluntary schools under Article 18 of the Code?
  MR. ACLAND: The Department is empowered under Article 18 of the Code to employ auditors of accounts to visit schools and inspect their accounts. The usual practice, where there is any reason to suppose that the accounts are unsatisfactory, is to cause the managers to forward their account books and vouchers for inspection in the Department. This is frequently done. I am only aware of one case in which officers have been specially sent to a school to inspect the accounts, but it is part of the ordinary duty of Her Majesty's Inspectors to examine and report upon the accounts.

  TAIN COLLISION.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he has considered the Report of Major Marindin as to the collision at Tain, on the Highland Railway, and the reference in that Report to the excessive hours worked by the signalman at Tain in alternate weeks, and to the excessive hours worked by the guard and brakesman of the up mixed train on alternate days, and to the alternate intervals of rest; whether he has issued any special Order to the Company under "The Railway Hours Act, 1893;" and whether he will in any such Order direct the Company to so re-arrange the work as to avoid the undesirable practice of alternating short days of work with excessively long days of work?
  MR. BRYCE: I have considered the Report referred to by my hon. Friend. As a preliminary step under the Act of 1893, the Highland Railway Company have been asked for a Return of the booked and actual hours of all the guards and brakesmen working between Helmsdale and Inverness. When the Board of Trade deal with this Return considera-

  595
  tion shall be given to the important point very properly raised in the concluding paragraph of the question.

  THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC BILL.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the disappearance from the Order Book of the Liquor Traffic (Local Veto) Bill is to be taken as an indication that the Government do not intend to proceed further with the measure this Session?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: No, Sir; the disappearance of the Bill from the Order Book is due to one of those accidents which will happen even in the best regulated families. I have just been informed by the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury, and the hon. Member as an ardent supporter of the Bill will be consoled to know, that the Bill will reappear on the Orders to-morrow.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman console me a little further by telling me when he intends to proceed with it?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I have tendered to the hon. Member for the present all the consolation I am able to offer.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  FINANCE BILL.—(No. 190.)
  [COMMITTEE. Progress, 6th June.]
  [EIGHTH NIGHT.]
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 2.
  Amendment again proposed, in page 2, line 27, after the word "passes," to insert the words
  "Estate Duty shall not be payable on any property passing from a wife to a husband, or a husband to a wife."—(Mr. H. Hobhouse.)
  Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  Amendment again proposed to the proposed Amendment, to leave out the words "Estate Duty shall not be payable on any."—{Mr. Bousfield.)
  Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the proposed Amendment."
  *SIR J. LUBBOCKsaid, that whatever difference of opinion might exist on other points, all would agree that the Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset was of great importance and raised questions which profoundly affected the social life of the country. And yet how had it been met by the Government? The learned Solicitor General objected on purely technical grounds, but if the principle was right it was for the able draftsman of the Bill to deal with the point. The Chancellor of the Exchequer brushed aside all the equities of the case, and the social considerations urged by his hon. Friend, and resisted the Amendment on purely pecuniary grounds. He told them that if the Amendment were carried "there would be a loss of millions to the Exchequer." But the whole additional amount which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expected to realise from the Death Duties was £3,500,000, and the sum affected by the Amendment could be but a small part of the whole, and he altogether failed to understand how the loss would be so large. In his Budget speech the Chancellor of the Exchequer said—
  "On the best calculations we can get, I estimate we shall not in the long run fall short of an annual increase of £3.500,000. But only a small part will accrue to the benefit of the Exchequer in the present financial year. …We shall only have, say, seven months of the present year under the new system. During the first five months we shall be taking the existing duties. But even during those seven months we shall only be receiving the new duty on personalty. Realty being allowed to pay by instalments, the full increase under that head will take several years to realise. Taking all this into consideration, I cannot count for 1894–95 upon more than a net gain of £1,000,000, from the substitution of the new Estate Duty for the duties which it replaces. The yield may be somewhat greater, but it would not be safe to reckon on it."
  Surely, then, when it was looked into, there was no force in the second objection of his right hon. Friend. However, on this question the considerations of primary importance were not those of money, but were those of equity, and of the effect on our social life. In other cases the Estate Duty would be payable on any given property once in a generation; he did not say in all, because there were the cases of brother succeeding brother, but as a general rule. And if, from one man living to a great age, two

  597
  successions should follow quickly, the chances were that they would be followed by a long interval. Of course, there would be many exceptions, and cases of great hardship. But, as between husband and wife, there would always be two deaths in each generation. Such property, therefore, would pay a double duty; it would pay twice over. Was not that very unjust? How was such a proposal to be defended? Again, was it not contrary to all our feelings, to the universal practice and policy of the civilised world, in so heavy a duty as this, to treat husbands and wives not only as other relations, but even as if they were no relations at all? The policy of a wise Government should be to legislate so as to strengthen as far as possible the ties which bind husband and wife together. But the proposal in the Bill would tend to weaken them, to discourage joint property, and to encourage separate estates. If a husband and wife chose to keep their property entirely apart, there would only be a payment on the death of the husband or wife respectively on his or her property. But if they united their property it would not only pay twice over, but as the two would be aggregated together it would pay on a higher scale. The tendency, then, would be to create separate interests, which would certainly have an unfortunate influence on our social condition and on home life. He submitted, therefore, that the financial arguments used by the Government would not stand the test of examination, and that the loss to the Revenue would not be so large as supposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but they based their support of the Amendment on higher considerations, and maintained that Great Britain was not so poor, that our financial position was not so unsatisfactory, that we need consider ourselves compelled to insist on a tax financially so unjust, and on a policy the tendency of which on family life would be so unfortunate.
  *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir W. HARCOURT,),who was very imperfectly heard, was understood to say that he quite admitted, with the right hon. Baronet, that this was a very important subject, and that the Committee should understand very clearly its bearing. They had before
  598
  them the Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset and the Amendment moved upon that Amendment by the hon. Gentleman below the Gangway opposite (Mr. Bousfield). It was important to distinguish between the two questions raised by the two Amendments. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset proposed that property passing between husband and wife should be exempted from the new Estate Duty proposed in the Bill, but the Amendment upon that Amendment would extend that exemption to the existing Probate Duty. These two questions were very important and pregnant with financial result. He must clearly discriminate between the two, and point out the result of each separate proposal. His right hon. Friend had said that it was surely wrong to treat as other inheritances property passing between husband and wife'; but this had been always done. It was done now. All property which passed under will or under administration in intestacy was subject to Probate Duty, to whomsoever it passed. The authorities of the Inland Revenue estimated that from the present yield of £6,000,000 of Probate and Estate Duty one-sixth might be deducted as the amount that was levied upon property passing between husband and wife. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset was confined solely to the new Estate Duty. It would leave Probate and the existing Estate Duty unchanged. Thus it was fatal to graduation, for personalty worth £1,000,000, if left to a widow, would pay at exactly the same rate as personalty worth £11,000. The proposal was equally fatal to the principle of equalisation, because personalty passing from husband to wife would be chargeable with Probate Duty, but settled or real property would pay nothing. None of this difficulty was ever raised until there was a question of taxing real and settled property. The moment there was a proposal for the levying of a tax upon settled property, this objection was raised for the first time.
  MR. COHEN: We cannot hear a single word of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He has been speaking some time, but we have not heard a word.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he had found great difficulty in dividing his voice so that it could he heard on all sides of the House, but he would try his best to make himself heard. He contended that in dealing with these duties the relation of husband and wife had been considered, and there were certain exemptions. The Estate Duty would be the analogue of the Probate Duty, which did not regard the question of the person to whom the property passed, but the property itself, irrespective of its destination. If the Committee departed from that principle they could not have either graduation or equalisation; there must be a duty which corresponded to the principle of the Probate Duty, which taxed the corpus and on which alone graduation could be founded. But the Amendment would not merely affect graduation and abolish equalisation; it would destroy even the simplification of the duty, because if the Committee were going to exempt this particular class of persons from the Estate Duty, then they would leave extant the Probate, the Account, and the old Estate Duty. In this way the Amendment would strike at every cardinal principle of the proposals of the Government—namely, graduation, equalisation, and simplification of duties. Those were reasons why the Government could not accept the Amendment. Suppose a man possessed £100,000, of which £50,000 was personalty and £50,000 realty. Suppose he left the realty to his eldest son and the personalty to his wife. The realty to his son would pay Estate Duty, and the personalty to the wife would pay under the Probate Duty; the son would pay 4½ per cent, and the wife 4 per cent, under the Probate and Estate Duty. But if the realty was left to the wife it would escape the Estate Duty, and if the personalty was left to the son it would pay 4½ per cent., the State losing nearly half of what it would otherwise receive. That would be a most convenient arrangement, because when the probate was proved all that the beneficiaries would have to do would be to "swop" and carry out the arrangements originally intended, the son getting, the realty and the wife the personalty. The Revenue in such a case would be
  600
  defrauded; and the suggested exemption would simply be an instrument of evasion, which would be absolutely irresistible. He had put that one case, but he might put many others. It was quite obvious if they had one class of property which would be exempt and another class which would not be, they could shuffle the cards in such a way that they would always be able to defraud the Revenue to a very great extent. That would be the result if the Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset were carried as it was, leaving, as he had said, extant the existing Probate and Estate Duty. Take the other hypothesis, and suppose the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member were grafted upon it, and they intended hereafter to exempt all property which came under the existing duty—passing from husband to wife. He had already stated what in the opinion of the Inland Revenue would be the effect of an exemption of that character. It would have the effect of considerably lowering the amount they received, even at present, in respect of Death Duties. At a time when they were obliged to obtain more revenue from the country it would be a strange thing if they should carry an Amendment the effect of which would be to make the Death Duties less than they were at present. He would like to give one other example. Suppose that a man died leaving £1,000,000, and that he left the whole of the money to his wife, trusting to her to distribute it. He had intended, but for this exception, to have given her £10,000 a year for life. The widow would buy an annuity and that would be free from taxation; or, if she invested £250,000 for herself, then what would be the consequence? This property of £1,000,000, under the present rate of taxation, would yield to the Revenue £40,000; under the Bill of the Government, on the principle of graduation, it would yield £80,000. But now the wife, having got the whole of it, would take £250,000. There would then be £750,000 to be divided among the children, which would pay no duty; and the result worked out was that instead of getting £80,000 on the £1,000,000 as was proposed by this Bill, they would not even get the £40,000 they got under the law as it stood at present. The sum they would get would be £16,250, as against the £40,000 which

  601
  they now obtained, and that not before the death of the widow. There would be no possible graduation, and they would have an actual loss, even upon the existing duty, amounting to more than one-half. That would be the result of the Amendment as amended by the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member. He could only describe the Amendment as one which would not only be fatal to the principle on which the Government based their entire Bill, but it would, if adopted, cause a serious loss to the Revenue, as well as import confusion and difficulties into the administration of the various duties. This was not a question of small sums passing, but a question of great sums as well as small sums. There was no proposal to restrict this in any way to small fortunes. With reference to the statement that the proposals of the Government increased the burden of the Death Duties, he would say that the burden was not increased more than one-half per cent, until they got up to £50,000. If hon. Members were going to accept the Amendment, they must not forget that they would thereby destroy the benefit that had long been derived by Local Authorities from the grants made them out of the funds raised under probate, of which they received one-half. If, therefore, they were going to lose £1,000,000 a year of Probate Duty, local taxation would lose £500,000, which were now given as contributions, arising from that duty, to the Local Authorities. Whatever was reserved to them was what would be got under the Probate Duty. Under these circumstances, the Government could neither accept the Amendment to the Amendment nor the Amendment itself.
  MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid, that it had practically been admitted by various hon. Members on the Government side that there was a case to be met, and yet they were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the adoption of the Amendment would be fatal to the scheme of the Bill. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer was right, that only implied that there was something wrong in the scheme; in other words, it must be obvious that, if there was to be injustice or oppression owing to the Amendment not being adopted, the
  602
  proposals of the Bill must be at fault, and graduation, equalisation, and simplification were being sought in a wrong way. The right hon. Gentleman, in defence of his proposals, had again and again told them that they must regard this Estate Duty, not as a duty on successors, not as a burden on successors, but simply as a tax on the corpus of the estate. It appeared to him that this was one of those subtle distinctions to which nothing in reality corresponded. How were they to test on whom a tax fell? He only knew one way—to ask who would have gained if the tax had not been put on, or who would gain if it was taken off. Clearly the successors would gain; therefore, it was idle for the right hon. Gentleman to say that the proposed duty would not fall on the successors but on the corpus of the estate. The longer they proceeded with the discussion the more numerous did the difficulties of these proposals appear to be. He could only assume that if this Budget were passed it would have to fall to the lot of some future Chancellor of the Exchequer to deal with the whole question, and to do so on a more rational basis.
  MR. COURTNEYventured to protest against the method pursued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman had argued in great detail against the proposition of the hon. Member for East Somerset, and had attributed to it a meaning which, no doubt, might be drawn from the words, but which was not the meaning his hon. Friend himself expressed to the Committee, and which he had since-explained he desired to be understood by them. Four or five things which the Chancellor of the Exchequer attributed to the Amendment were due to his misinterpretation of it.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he argued it from the Amendment as it appeared on the Paper.
  MR. COURTNEYsaid, one-half of the right hon. Gentleman's argument was addressed to an Amendment which, in fact, was never moved, and that half scarcely edified the Committee, for he doubted if many hon. Members were able to follow it. The true question before the Committee was the Amendment as amended by the Amendment of the hon.

  603
  and learned Gentleman opposite, and it amounted to this: Should they exempt from duty, leviable upon death, property which passed from husband to wife? The right hon. Gentleman objected to it, and said they could not do it, because it would throw the Exchequer into such a want of equilibrium that no Minister could accept and no Committee approve of the proposal, and that it would leave them in a condition of insolvency. But that was provided for by the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member, who wished to defer for 12 months the practical operation of this Amendment. Would it involve insolvency if an Amendment, being adopted in principle, was thus deferred in operation for 12 mouths? The Chancellor of the Exchequer said certainly. The right hon. Gentleman's additional taxation would bring in £3,500,000, of which £1,000,000 was realisable this year. He had, therefore, only got £2,500,000 to look forward to next year, and he had not proved insolvency. Even taking his own figures, the right hon. Gentleman would only lose £1,000,000, and he had £2,500,000 to look forward to. This loss of £1,000,000 was something very different from what must be argued when the right hon. Gentleman vaguely spoke of millions being as lost to the Exchequer. The loss they now understand was £1,000,000, and the right hon. Gentleman was quite right in taking that full loss, because whatever was deducted from the Local Authorities would have to be made good, and therefore they had to face the possible loss of £1,000,000 in the produce of the Death Duties. His right hon. Friend used another argument against which he must also enter a respectful protest. The right hon. Gentleman said that this objection to the levying of the duty upon property passing from husband and wife was now heard for the first time, because the principle was now going to be extended to the case of real property and settled property, and that the objection was never heard of when the duty was confined to the poorer classes who only suffered under the Probate Duty. Yes, but they were now dealing for the first time with property in this manner. He could speak frankly upon this subject, because he had approved throughout and had supported the extension of the tax to
  604
  realty as well as personalty. He had approved of the inclusion of settled as well as unsettled property, and had absolutely refused to consent to discriminate between the two. Why, then, were they objecting for the first time? Because they were making a great departure in their financial system. They were introducing a new principle of very great value, and opportunity was taken at that moment to call attention to something that had been overlooked. What was the principle? He accepted entirely the notion that Death Duty was payable as a debt to the State. It was a deferred payment. The question here was, whether the lives of husband and wife were to be considered as one life or as two? The right hon. Gentleman himself considered them, for many purposes, as one life. Let him call attention to a peculiarity of administration which showed how the Chancellor of the Exchequer regarded them as one life when he wanted to gain, and how he wanted to regard them as two lives when he desired to gain in another direction. Take the case of a schoolmaster in the country with £120 a year—not a large income—and which just escaped the Income Tax. His wife got £60 or £70 a year as schoolmistress, which was also not liable to Income Tax. But the joint incomes were taken and thus came under the Income Tax. The husband and wife were one; the Chancellor of the Exchequer proceeded in regard to it as if it were a joint and indivisible life. All that they were asking for was that the same sound principles should be regarded in the case of the Death Duties, and that they should not levy duty upon property that passed from husband and wife until the wife died. Such were the complications into which they were led by attempting to base their tax upon technical details. Was it not possible to consider this as a substantial question, and to take the lives of husband and wife as one life? There was a temptation that the husband might pass over his wife entirely if under the operation of this tax she had to pay as well as himself. This matter, therefore, was a very important one, and he claimed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should give it his close attention. All that was urged was that that sound principle should be upheld in regard to the Death Duties. He believed that the proposal of the Government would have an evil social

  605
  effect, and he pressed most earnestly for some further argument which would rise above the details in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer indulged to the mystification of the Committee.
  *SIR A. ROLLITsaid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had recognised the importance of this subject, and he thought it was much to be regretted that he did not attempt to do something more than to meet it by a non possumus. He was sure that some way could be found by which it could be dealt with. This case was raised by the imposition of the new duties, and inasmuch as in dealing with other duties they made exceptions and exemptions, there was no reason why that should not be done in this case. What struck him was that the whole question underlying this matter was that of coincident lives, and where there were coincident lives they ought not to institute the duties on the same scale. With regard to the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that there would be evasions, he should like to say that for his part he had very little belief in evasion. In this country he believed that amongst all classes of persons there was a very strong indisposition to entrust the administration of property to other persons during their own lives. The ordinary practice of husbands, of giving their wives property and with it the power of exercising discretion as to the portions and education of the children, and so on, was a most beneficial one, and one that was followed in the best interests of the children. This was a very great social question, of the highest family importance, and it was because he thought the proposal of the Government would injuriously affect those relations that he should oppose it.
  MR. GOSCHEN: I do not wish to dwell upon the large social question which is raised by this proposal. I wish to address myself to the Amendment which is before the Committee. Important as this question is, if it is to be dwelt with at all and fairly—and there is a considerable opinion that something ought to he done, whatever view the Government should take up—I must say that I should deprecate the adoption of the position of the hon. Member for North Hackney that we can arrange matters for this year,
  606
  and that next year the burden of taxation will be relieved by the increased Death Duties. That would mean a loss of Revenue next year, and, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, would lead to insolvency. It certainly must not be understood that the amount which will come to the credit of the Government next year will be so much greater that there will be no deficit. If I am not mistaken it has been pointed out to us that large as the Estimates are this year, we must look forward to the presentation of very much larger ones next year. We cannot look forward to having any surplus next year, nor will there be available that asset which has done so much this year to help the Chancellor of the Exchequer out of his financial difficulties. Therefore, it may be taken that next year we shall have to provide for the largely increased burdens of State, which burdens will nullify the increased Death Duties. The hon. Member for North Hackney suggests that we should start next year.
  MR. BOUSFIELD: Take the year after next.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: It will be greater in that year than in next year.
  MR. GOSCHEN: That shows the inconvenience which is caused by the Government not putting before the House the naval expenditure of the year.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Oh, I do not refer to increased expenditure on the Navy. I refer to general expenditure. This year it is greater than last year, and the year after next will, no doubt, be larger than next year.
  MR. GOSCHEN: To those of my friends on this side of the House who may be disposed to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for North Hackney, I would say that I think that to take a step of this kind would be unsound finance. I do not think there would be any more difficulty in raising the sum this year than next year. In any case, I do not think we ought speculatively to indulge in a course which would produce such a gap in the Revenue as that which, is suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for North Hackney.
  MR. COHENsaid, he thought the Committee had some reason to complain of the manner in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Solicitor General had met the arguments

  607
  of those who were opposed to the proposals of the Government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been able to say that the principle embodied in the proposal was an unjustifiable one. The only answer which he made on the previous afternoon was that the Government could not accept this Amendment, because it would absolutely upset their Budget. That was no answer to the Amendment, which he might point out was not applied to the corpus of the property, but to the specific property which passed from the husband to the wife. He submitted that any Amendment proposed, no matter from whence it came, ought to be judged on its merits, and that it was no part of the duty of that House to place the Chancellor of the Exchequer in possession of the funds that he required, irrespective of the justice or injustice of the methods he proposed for raising them. The avowed object of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in re-modelling the Death Duties was incidentally to increase the amount which he would receive from these duties, but at the same time to readjust the many anomalies which had existed. While the Chancellor of the Exchequer was trying to extract more money out of the Death Duties as connected with large estates, he ought also to readjust them for the relief of small estates, the value of which had very much depreciated in recent years. He made no appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for mercy; but when the right hon. Gentleman had said he was going to redress the anomalies of the Death Duties, he might fairly consider whether, without prejudicing his receipts, and with the object of rendering the incidence and collection of the duties more effectual, he could not readjust the burdens on the small estates. There were many ways which he could indicate to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of raising large sums of money which had nothing to do with the Death Duties, but which would at all events have remedied glaring anomalies and injustices which the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own proposals did not do. If the Amendment were pressed, he should certainly go into the Lobby in its favour.
  MR. AMBROSEsaid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was proposing to redress the anomalies of the situation with respect to
  608
  the incidence of the Death Duties. He ventured to say that this was the first time that the House had ever been asked to sanction the principle that duty should be paid on property passing between husband and wife, the fact being that directly the attention of the Legislature was called to the matter the distinction was recognised and the exception made. The payment of these duties began with the Probate Duty, and this duty itself began with the fees on probate charged by ecclesiastics; and when the Courts by-and-by began to find it difficult to enforce claims, in the reign of George III., the Probate Duty which had gone to the ecclesiastics was appropriated by the State, and the present system became established. In considering the question as to whether Probate Duty was payable in the case of property situated out of the United Kingdom, the test had always been, ay or no, is it necessary to have recourse to the English Courts? If that was necessary, although that property was situated outside the United Kingdom, in such cases Probate Duty had been payable. The Legislature had never affirmed the principle of payment of duty in cases where property passed from husband to wife. The first time it came before the Legislature was in respect of the Probate and Succession Duty.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: How about the Estate Duty?
  MR. AMBROSEsaid, that was a duty which followed, and was allied to the Probate Duty. He asked the Committee not to take it as a matter of course that the duty ought to be payable under the Estate Duty because it had been payable under the Probate Duty. In his opinion, it was a matter that ought to be considered de novo. What was the ground upon which the Chancellor of the Exchequer based this duty? He told them when they were dealing with Clause 1 that the State had a better right to the property of a deceased man than anybody else. That was a proposition which startled a good many of them. He supposed it would be out of Order to attempt to controvert that proposition now. In the case of strangers, indeed, it seemed to have been accepted by the House. What he wanted to ask was whether the Committee was prepared to confirm that doctrine in the case of pro-

  609
  perty passing between husband and wife. Could it be said that where a man had devoted his life to secure a small competency as provision for his wife and children, that when he was taken away his wife and children should be left to the tender mercies of the world? Would the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that in such a case the State had a better right than the relatives, or that it had any right to intervene at all? If the Government could not manage to raise the Revenue without despoiling the widow and the fatherless the sooner they put into power a Chancellor of the Exchequer more competent to equitably adjust the modes of taxation the better. It was quite true, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer was constantly telling them, that the Revenue must be forthcoming; but that was not all that they had to consider. In order to be just it was possible that they might have to interfere with the principle of graduation. Graduation might be a very good thing. He was not prepared to discuss that now. What he declared was that if graduation meant that in order to maintain that principle they were to do violence to the principle of right, he, for one, said lot graduation go altogether. They were very cute, no doubt, and very suspicious of anyone who had anything to do with the rendering of accounts to the Department, but he objected to the House being governed by the suspicions and fears of the Department. It might be depended upon that if this taxation were made unfair it would be evaded. If the Government wanted to prevent evasion they must make their taxation fair and honourable.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I hope that we may now be permitted to go to a Division upon the Amendment to the Amendment, and we shall then clear away part of the discussion.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I confess I feel myself in some embarrassment over the question now before us, because I think I was the person who first raised what I may call the social aspect of the problem on an earlier Amendment, and I still feel that the arguments I then advanced have all been strengthened by the course of the Debate which has subsequently taken place. All
  610
  that has fallen from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harrow (Mr. Ambrose), from my right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Courtney), and from other speakers equally confirms the view which I believe the whole Committee was ready to entertain yesterday morning—namely, that we cannot regard the wife who inherits from the husband, or the husband who inherits from the wife, as really being equitably in the same position as any other heir. That is a broad principle for which I am prepared to vote. I have, however, to admit that two or three arguments to a certain extent modify that general abstract proposition. In the first place, I cannot quite see my way to support the Amendment to the Amendment, as it appears to only defer the difficulty from this Chancellor of the Exchequer to the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it is possible that I may have an even keener interest in the prosperity of the next Chancellor of the Exchequer than in that of the present holder of the office. I would, therefore, suggest that whatever decision we come to to-night, it should be a decision that would apply to this year as well as to subsequent years. We are then left face to face with the Amendment in its unamended form. As I understand, it is now admitted on both sides of the House that the original Amendment cannot stand as it is, as it would have an effect which my hon. Friend who moved it does not himself intend, and that if we are to embody it in the Bill we shall have to alter the words. There is the further substantial difficulty raised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with reference to the financial necessities of the year. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that if we accept the principle, which I believe to be a just principle, at least £1,000,000 will be lost to the Exchequer. No doubt a loss of £1,000,000 will be a very severe loss. I attach no importance whatever to the fact that certain provisions in our existing system of taxation appear to make the property which a wife gets from her husband pay toll to the State. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harrow (Mr. Ambrose) pointed out just now that the Legislature has never explicitly and of set purpose given its assent to the principle.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Yes, in the Estate Duty.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No; that point never was really raised before; it never has been brought home to the conscience of the House of Commons that it was committing this wrong. We really might have allowed the amount of the wrong as it at present exists to pass unnoticed and undealt with if the question had not been raised. It is only when the Chancellor of the Exchequer has rather gratuitously taken in hand the task of entirely re-casting the Death Duties, of greatly augmenting them, and of dragging into the net of the Death Duties a large amount of money that never was touched previously, that it is brought home to us that this injustice is being perpetrated, and we have the burden thrown upon our reluctant shoulders of seeing whether we cannot remedy it. I admit that, after what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us, the burden is a very heavy one, and I do not quite see my way through the problem at the present moment. I would, however, throw this suggestion out to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the laws of all countries the wife of a husband who dies intestate obtains a third of his property. In the law of Scotland, and in the laws of most Continental countries who derive their system of jurisprudence from the Romans, whether the husband dies intestate or not, and whether he likes it or not, a third of the property goes to the wife. Why should we not endeavour to put this Amendment into such a shape that a third of the husband's property on going to the wife shall not pay the Estate Duty, but that anything in excess of that third shall pay the duty? I do not know whether that proposal can be embodied in the Bill, but it appears to me to be based upon principles of social equity. Let us if we can take hold of this embodiment of the counsels of civilised society and say that a third of the husband's property going to the wife, and, if you like, a third of the wife's property going to the husband, shall be exempt from the duty. One great advantage of this plan would be that it would prevent all the evasions of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has drawn so lurid a picture. He says that if the Amendment be carried
  612
  a man would leave the whole of his property to his wife, and would give her written directions that she should write cheques for two-thirds of it, and hand these cheques to the children, and thus the children would obtain the bulk of the property without having paid a sixpence to the State. That would no doubt be an evasion, and no doubt such evasions would occur if the Amendment were carried in its present form. If, however, my suggestion were adopted and we exempted one-third of the property from the Estate Duty, of course no temptation of the kind would exist, and the wife would feel that she was not paying duty upon that part of the estate which was properly her due. I do not press my hon. Friend (Mr. Bous-field) not to divide upon his Amendment, but I do say that I shall find some difficulty in supporting him in the Lobby if he does.
  MR. BOUSFIELDsaid, he desired to facilitate the proceedings of the Committee, and would therefore withdraw his Amendment if such a course were regarded as desirable. He would point out, however, that his Amendment did not involve any question of postponing the difficulty till next year, and he thought it would- be far easier for those in favour of the principle of the original Amendment to divide on the words he (Mr. Bousfield) had proposed than upon those proposed by the hon. Member for Somerset (Mr. H. Hobhouse).
  MR. H. HOBHOUSEthought it would be better for his hon. Friend (Mr. Bousfield) to withdraw his Amendment. There were various objections to be taken to the Amendment which did not apply to the general principle. If the Amendment to the Amendment were withdrawn he (Mr. Hobhouse) should certainly go to a Division on the original Amendment, if merely as a protest against what he believed to be an unjust principle of taxation. On the other hand, if the Government would promise that at a later stage there should be an abatement made with regard to property passing to a husband or a wife as suggested by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. A. J. Balfour), he was sure that the supporters of the Amendment would prefer not to divide.
  Amendment to the proposed Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  *SIR W. HARCOURT: I want to point out, Sir, that the Amendment on which the Committee is now going to vote is an Amendment that would have the effect of exempting from duty property passing between husband and wife only in the case of real property and settled personalty and would draw the most invidious distinctions between realty and settled property on the one hand and personalty on the other.
  MR. MATTHEWSsaid, he wished to move an Amendment which, if adopted, would make the original Amendment run as follows:—
  "Neither the Estate Duty nor the duties mentioned in the first Schedule of this Act shall be payable on any property passing from a wife to a husband or a husband to a wife."
  Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, before the first word "Estate," to insert the word "neither."—(Mr. Matthews.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'neither' be there inserted in the proposed Amendment."
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I must now point out to the Committee the effect of this Amendment. It will, if adopted, make our finance insolvent, because it proposes not only to abolish the proposed increase under this Bill, but to put an end to the receipt of all the money which is now received on personalty passing from husband and wife. It is not disputed that this amounts to £1,000,000 under the present duty. This is an Amendment, therefore, which I understand the Leader of the Opposition must be distinctly opposed to. It proposes to exempt from the tax not merely property to the extent of one-third, but all property passing from a husband to a wife or a wife to a husband. I cannot believe that the Committee, having to make provision for the Expenditure of the year, is going to give a vote practically to make the Revenue of this country insolvent.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The right hon. Gentleman must remember that this
  614
  Amendment will be followed by one limiting it to all property exceeding one-third of the total amount.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: That is not consistent with the Amendment, which is that neither the Estate Duty nor the duties mentioned in the first Schedule shall be payable on any property, &c.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Cannot you add some such words as "where such property exceeds one-third"?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Might I suggest that we are dealing with very great interests, and that we ought not to deal with them in an inconsiderate way. The right hon. Gentleman has said that the matter is of great importance. We are dealing with a large amount of Revenue not only for this year, but for future years, and we ought to take very great care how we proceed. We have had an Amendment from the hon. Member for Somerset, and that has not been satisfactory, and we have had another from the hon. and learned Gentleman below the Gangway, and that has not been satisfactory. There will be future stages of the Bill, and I would suggest that Amendments dealing with the point under consideration should be postponed until these stages are reached.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that everybody would feel that the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman was animated by a very proper desire that the Committee should deal with the complicated questions in the Bill in a serious spirit, and in a way not to embarrass the present or future Governments or the officers who would have to administer the legislation. What were they to do? The discussion showed that the Amendment did not carry out the intention either of the Committee or its framer. Nevertheless, the Committee generally felt that at all events a point had been raised in dealing with this great social question which they were bound to meet. If they let this opportunity slip the psychological moment would be lost and would not be regained until the Report stage. The alternative was that they should on the spur of the moment frame an Amendment which would meet the views of all parties. The object they had in view was a simple one. The Committee were

  615
  anxious that property not exceeding in amount one-third of the property of a deceased husband or wife should pass to the survivor without paying Estate Duty, and it ought not to be beyond their powers to frame an Amendment giving effect to that view.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he hoped the Committee would vote against the Amendment, seeing that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had admitted that he did not know what the practical consequences might be. He (Sir W. Harcourt) did not know what they would be. He had had no opportunity of ascertaining what would be the effect upon the Revenue of the proposal to exempt one-third, and he trusted the Committee would not assent to it.
  MR. BYRNEsaid, he had an Amendment on the Paper to Clause 4 dealing with the Estate Duty and marriage settlements by way of exemption.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he would ask the Committee in the interests of time and on grounds of common sense to dispose now of the Amendments before them. He could not accept any responsibility for Amendments which apparently did not even carry out the objects of the hon. Gentlemen who moved them. The duty of the Committee with respect to Amendments of this kind was to vote upon them.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, they were all anxious to meet the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. No one was anxious to delay the proceedings. He admitted the difficulty of drafting without further consideration an Amendment which would give expression to their views in a complete and satisfactory way. In the circumstances, he thought the best plan would be to take a vote now upon the speeches that had been made, if he might put it that way—[Cries of "Oh!"]—or rather upon the intentions expressed by the supporters of the Amendment, If they were not allowed to vote for the intentions of those who had spoken, but were compelled to vote for the actual proposal, they might get into a hopeless mess. Let them vote upon the policy adumbrated by his hon. Friend, and reserve for the Report stage the very
  616
  difficult task of embodying it in specific words.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he did not understand what it was to vote upon the speeches of hon. Members. The Judges who would have to administer the law established by this Bill would not administer it according to hon. Members' speeches, but according to the words put in the measure. Let it be quite understood, before they proceeded to a vote, that this Amendment was one for exempting real and settled property from Estate Duty. It would not relieve personalty.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that the right hon. Gentleman was one of the greatest obstructives in the House. He (Mr. Balfour) had done his very best to-bring this discussion to a peaceful end, but the right hon. Gentleman could never resist the temptation of introducing into Debate mere electioneering considerations calculated to embitter their discussions. What they were going to vote on were the expressed intentions of the persons who proposed the Amendment. If that were not done, it would be necessary to devote whatever time was needful to amending the Amendment, and the Government would be responsible for the delay that might take place.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Let us vote on the Amendment. Members can put what construction they like on it.
  Amendment to the proposed Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Question again proposed "That those words be there inserted."
  *SIR J. LUBBOCKsaid, he would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman opposite whether he would not effect his object, and at the same time carry out the view of the hon. Member for Somerset, if he were to add to the Amendment—
  "Provided that the amount of property so passing shall not exceed one-third of the whole estate."
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That would be an improvement.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: It is open to the same objection. It is an endeavour to put into the Bill a proviso that neither the House nor the Government have had an opportunity of examining. We do not

  617
  know what effect it would produce. If such a proviso is to be moved, I have again to ask the Committee not to entertain it.
  *SIR J. LUBBOCK: I prefer the Amendment as it stood, but in hopes of securing some concession I move the Amendment.
  Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, at the end thereof, to add the words—
  "Provided that the amount of the property so passing shall not exceed one-third of the whole estate."—(Sir J. Lubbock.")
  Question put, "That those words be added to the proposed Amendment."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 201; Noes 241.—(Division List, No. 79.)
  Question,
  "That the words 'Estate Duty shall not be payable on any property passing from a wife to a husband, or a husband to a wife 'be there inserted,"
  put, and negatived.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHreminded the Chancellor of the Exchequer that yesterday, in the course of the discussion on the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Bodmin, he had practically admitted that some relief was justifiable in the case of small annuities not exceeding £100, and especially in cases of survivorship between husband and wife. When the matter was further discussed on the Motion of the hon. Member for North Islington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in his opinion, the question of survivorship was one more properly to be raised on the Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset, of which the Committee had just disposed; and it had been intimated that some statement of the intention of the Government in the matter would be made when that Amendment came to be considered. But no such statement had been made, and he had, therefore, placed an Amendment on the Paper before the rising of the House in the hope of eliciting some definite intimation from Her Majesty's Government of what they proposed. A general feeling of sympathy had been manifested in the Committee with the object of the Amendments. On such annuities, as far as the survivor was concerned, Estate Duty should not be
  618
  payable. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Islington would have relieved the survivor from payment of Estate Duty, not merely on the portion to which he or she had themselves contributed, but on the whole value of the annuity. With that proposition the Chancellor of the Exchequer had expressed sympathy, and he should be glad now to hear a statement from the Solicitor General on the subject, as to whether the Government was prepared to make any concession on the point.
  Amendment, in page 2, line 27, at end, to insert,
  "Estate Duty shall not be payable upon the survivorship to any annuity for the joint lives of husband and wife."—(Sir M. Hicks-Beach.)
  Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Mr. R. T. REID,&c.)was not aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had come to any resolution on the subject; but he might state that the matter was not at all precluded by not being dealt with under this clause. Where an annuity was enjoyed by husband and wife jointly, and each of them had contributed a portion of the capital, under the proposal the survivor would not be called upon to pay upon more than he or she had contributed. But the Amendment of his hon. Friend would relate to annuities of all values, and if that were the case a husband and wife might expend a capital sum of £20,000 in the purchase of a joint annuity for the purpose of evading payment of duty on the passing of the property from husband to wife. Probably his right hon. Friend's Amendment was not intended to extend to large annuities of that kind, but only to small annuities, and he would therefore, no doubt, hardly feel inclined to press it.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHexplained that he really moved the Amendment on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's suggestion that the point would be better discussed on the previous Amendment. It was for that reason he had asked his hon. Friend behind (Mr. Bartley) to postpone his Amendment. It might, perhaps, be too soon to ask for any definite statement from the Government, but he hoped it would be clearly understood

  619
  that the point raised would be met by some definite proposal. That was certainly the understanding yesterday.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid, cases often occurred where husbands settled small annuities upon their wives in the shape of "pin money," from£100 to perhaps£500 a year; and he was advised that in such cases the husband, if his wife died, would have to pay on receiving back his own money—or, in other words, he would have to pay for ceasing to pay his wife an annuity for her own purposes.
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, that where a man granted something out of his property for a time, reserving to himself the reversion, he was only, in fact, depriving himself for a time of his own property.
  MR. BRODRICKpointed out that the words were—
  "any annuity or other interest purchased either by himself alone or in concert or by arrangement with any other person."
  An annuity might be payable under a marriage settlement made between a husband, wife, and her father, and the view taken by lawyers was that in that case payment would have to be made. The right hon. Gentleman could not deny that if the husband failed to pay on receiving back his money when his wife died, his estate would remain liable to the extent of an annuity which had been paid out of it for 30 or 40 years. Surely an estate should not be called upon to pay under such circumstances. That was a point which the Solicitor General ought to take into consideration. Undoubtedly the question of evasion—"getting round" the enactment—would have also to be considered, and the Solicitor General had remarked that the Amendment would apply to large annuities. But if the husband died the wife should not in any case be asked to pay upon her own money where the parties had agreed to put their funds together. If the one who had contributed least died, the other would have to pay on the larger amount which he had himself contributed.
  MR. BARTLEYreminded the Chancellor of the Exchequer that on a previous occasion he had brought forward cases of a joint annuity to two persons, referring specially to husband and wife, and the Chancellor of the
  620
  Exchequer stated that he had much sympathy with cases of that kind, but that the point had better be discussed on the Amendment of the hon. Member for Somerset with regard to property passing by death. Had the Chancellor of the Exchequer yet made up his mind or not whether he was going to take this matter into consideration? He had stated yesterday that he was pressed by his own followers just as much as by Members on that side to make an exception in the small joint annuities. The question was, what was a small annuity? Could it be said that an investment of £1,000 had been made in that way in order to evade the Death Duties? It had been suggested that where two people purchased an annuity for their joint lives, with reversion to the survivor, one-half of the duty should be payable on the death of each. That, he asserted, was a most unfair arrangement, because it could not be said that it fell in until the death of both, and, therefore, it could not in any sense be said to be a final passing at the death of one. It might technically, in a legal sense, be so, but in common sense it could not be regarded as a final passing when it was a joint annuity possessed by husband and wife in order to secure that both of them should have a competency while either of them lived. He quite agreed that if it was thought desirable it should be limited in amount. To those who had had to do with these things it was well known that these annuities were not common in sums over £30, £40, or £50 a year, and he should be prepared to limit it to annuities of not more than £52, which would be £1 a week. He did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman would be prepared to accept an alternative, of that kind, but he thought this was a, case in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer might announce that he would give way. If the right hon. Gentleman would agree, either now or on some-other stage, to accept the principle of this Amendment on a limited amount, he thought he would relieve a great many persons of considerable anxiety and would do something that would not affect the stability of the Budget.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he entirely adhered to what he said yesterday upon, this subject. He stated yesterday why

  621
  he thought it might lead to a great deal of evasion, but he also thought that in regard to small annuities there was a question well worthy of consideration if limited in some such way as suggested in the speech of the hon. Member, and with respect to those he should be prepared to give further consideration to the proposal. The matter had already been referred to the officers of the Department to consider what could be done in the matter.
  MR. WARNERthought the Chancellor of the Exchequer might extend it to brothers and sisters.
  *SIR A. ROLLITsaid, the constant argument of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the risk of evasion from probate. He (Sir A. Rollit) did not think it would have so much influence as was attributed to it, but he objected that those who did not evade should be more stringently dealt with because there were those who might. The best and proper course was to strike at the evasion itself. With regard to the question raised by the hon. Member for Surrey (Mr. Brodrick), he hoped that it would be carefully considered, because he was satisfied that if the Bill remained as it was that very great injustice would be done to such annuitants.
  SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsaid, that after the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he would ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
  MR. COURTNEYonly wished to say one word before the Amendment was withdrawn, and it was that the question regarding brothers and sisters should receive some attention when the right hon. Gentleman considered the question of small annuities.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  MR. BUTCHERsaid, his Amendment was to substitute for "Estate Duty shall not be payable in respect of" the words "property passing on the death of the deceased shall include."
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, line 28, to leave out the words "Estate Duty shall not be payable in respect of," and insert the words "property passing on the death of the deceased shall not include."—{Mr. Butcher.)
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, he was inclined to accept that Amendment.
  Amendment agreed to.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTONsaid, that Sub-section 2, page 2, ran—
  "Estate Duty shall not be payable in respect of property held by the deceased as trustee for another person under a disposition not made by the deceased."
  The Amendment he proposed was that the words "under a disposition not made by the deceased" be left out, and that the words—
  "Nor upon any property which would have been free from Succession Duty under the 12th section of 'the Succession Duty Act, 1853"
  be inserted. The Amendment achieved a double object, as he thought—it improved the clause in the first instance, and it dealt with a matter that he thought ought to be dealt with by the Bill. Dealing first with the omission of the words, he contended that the omission would be an improvement in the language and meaning and, in fact, ought to be made, "Estate Duty shall not be payable in respect of property held by deceased as trustee for another person under a disposition not made by the deceased." What did it matter whether the trust was held under a disposition made or not made by the deceased if it was a bonâ fide trust? The property was equally passed by it, and it was quite immaterial whether there was a legal estate left on passing the property. If the person exercising that power reserved to himself no beneficial interest in the property, it was just the same as though he actually assigned the property; the result was the same if bonâ fide a declaration of trust was made for valuable consideration—it might be in the case of marriage, which was valuable consideration, or for money consideration. A trust, he admitted, was an awkward mode of conveying property, and would not be good conveyancing from a lawyer's point of view, but the effect was just the same as if the property were assigned. If he declared for value that he held a house for another person, it was just the same as if he assigned that house to the other person, if the declaration of trust was a bonâ fide declaration. If it was a

  623
  fraudulent trust for the purpose of evading payment of duty, then he apprehended it was hit under the other clauses of this Bill, and particularly under Sub-section (c). These were the points he made with reference to the omission of these words. Perhaps the Solicitor-General would allow him to move the omission of the words first, as that was really quite a distinct Amendment from the other.
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, line 29, to leave out from the word "person," to end of Clause.—(Mr. T. H. Bolton.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  MR. R. T. REIDagreed with the hon. Gentleman in dividing his Amendment into two, because really they were two distinct Amendments rolled into one. The intention of the hon. Member was limited to the words "under a disposition not made by the deceased," and the case mentioned by the hon. Member was that a man might become trustee for another person where valuable consideration had passed. As he had stated before to this Committee, they had always held that such transactions would not come under the Bill, but they had put down an Amendment in his name at the end of the clause—though whether it was better to put it in the clause or in a separate clause he would not now say, but it was certain that an Amendment of this character was a debt due from the Government to the Committee. They intended to insert words to meet all cases in which valuable consideration had been given, and he thought that was an answer to the objections.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTONasked if the hon. and learned Gentleman would amend the clause he had put down by omitting the words "for good consideration in money or money's worth," and inserting in their place "valuable consideration in Good consideration in money or money's worth" was different from "valuable consideration," as it would not cover the case of marriage.
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, he knew there was an immense distinction, and he would deal with that when the matter arose, but in the meantime he said they in-
  624
  tended to protect all commercial transactions of the character the hon. Member referred to. But the hon. Member went further and asked, "Why restrict it to 'dispositions not made by the deceased'"? If a man by deed of trust made himself trustee of his own property, the property would escape the Death Duties. In that case they might as well throw out the Bill, because all that a man need do was to execute a trust, leave it in his drawer, and on his death nothing would be payable, for the reason that according to the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman
  "Estate Duty shall not be payable in respect of property held by the deceased as trustee for another person."
  But as the first and main part of the Amendment of the hon. Member was met by another Amendment, he trusted he would not press it.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTONsaid, he deferred to the legal authority of the hon. and learned Gentleman, but he would suggest that a man who was trustee for himself alone was the owner of the property; if he, however, created a trust in favour of another person another class of considerations came in, and that of itself might create a dealing with the estate which would subject it to duty. However, as the point he had been contending for had been conceded in the Amendment put down by the Solicitor General, and he had the assurance that the case of valuable consideration should be treated as distinct from the consideration of money or money's worth, he was prepared to withdraw the Amendment.
  MR. R. T. REID: No, no. We all know that valuable consideration includes marriage; but all I have said is that I am dealing with commercial transactions.
  MR. GRANT LAWSONthought it was the intention of the Committee that property that passed from a trustee without any beneficial interest in it should not be charged on his death and used for purposes of aggregation to increase the rest of the duty payable on his estate. The condition was this: that a bare trustee, with no interest whatever, was trustee under a deed of trust or settlement made by himself. When he died the whole property

  625
  had not only to pay duty on his death, but be aggregated with his other property. He would give a simple illustration. Suppose a father settled money on his daughter on her marriage, and made himself and A trustees, when A died no duty was payable under the words as they stood, because A was trustee under a disposition not made by himself. Then the father died, and the property was aggregated with the whole of the property of the father, and duty would be paid upon the whole of it. Surely that was not the intention of the Committee.
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, the answer to that was that what passed on the death of A was worthless beyond the obligation of his duty. Property meant holding a beneficial interest, whether legal or equitable.
  COMMANDER BETHELL: Give us a concrete case.
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, he would do so. Suppose he were trustee for an estate of £10,000 a year, and he died, in law the entire legal estate of £10,000 a, year passed, but in equity nothing whatever passed; therefore, on the death of the trustee all that passed in point of fact was the legal ownership, clothed with an equity that made it absolutely valueless.
  MR. GRANT LAWSONsaid, the answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman was that there must be some meaning in the words. If they took the converse, that Estate Duty should be payable in respect of property held by the deceased as trustee for another person under a disposition made by the deceased, the Estate Duty would fall on the bare trustee.
  MR. BYRNEsaid, he had put down an Amendment in the same sense and precisely because the same difficulty occurred to him. Though he accepted the reference of the learned Solicitor General he would urge him so far to yield to their views as to omit the words, as lie did not think it could possibly do any harm.
  MR. W. AMBROSEagreed with the view expressed by the learned Solicitor General. The point was that they were not taxing the individual but the corpus of the estates.
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, it was of course a question of drafting, but the
  626
  matter had been very carefully considered by very eminent authorities. He thought it was quite impossible to leave out the words "under a disposition made by the deceased," otherwise a man might make a declaration of trust of £10,000 in favour of some other person, keep it in a drawer until he died, and then it might operate. He did not suppose hon. Gentlemen wished to occupy the time of the Committee by a mere drafting Amendment. If hon. Gentlemen and those who were apprehensive on the point would consider the section, and, after the same mature consideration that had been given to it by the Government they thought their apprehensions were well grounded, then the Government would meet them.
  MR. COURTNEYagreed that it was a purely drafting Amendment. What they meant was, that where there was a bonâ fide trustee, in that case there should be no question arising. These technical words were not sufficient to meet the case they proposed to meet, and he therefore suggested the learned Solicitor General should consider whether his object would not be better met by the Amendment suggested.
  *SIR A. ROLLITthought that in the case of a bad disposition it did not matter who made it; the real question was whether it was a good disposition or not. He regarded the difficulty as met in the manner suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Courtney), and the insertion of words making any good disposition necessarily a bonâ fide one was the way to meet it. To create a wholesale disability because occasionally an evasion occurred, was a violation of the first principles of legislation.
  MR. HALDANEthought there was no doubt the matter would be considered between this and Report, and, under those circumstances, he hoped the question would now be disposed of.
  MR. DARLINGwished to come to the assistance of his colleague on the same circuit, the Solicitor General, by saying that there really was not this difficulty alleged by the Chancery lawyers against the drafting of the section as it stood. All that a person creating a trust had to do if he did not want to get into a difficulty with the Revenue was to put

  627
  another person in as trustee. What had been pointed out as likely to occur could only occur where a man was so perverse as not only to create a trust, but to create himself a trustee.
  *MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid, that suppose A created a trust and made himself and B trustee, and B died. A would then be left alone as trustee, he having created the trust, and under this clause the property would be liable to the duty. He distinctly understood the Solicitor General did not defend the clause on the ground of principle, but on the ground that it was necessary to prevent evasion. First of all, he submitted that under (c) the hon. and learned Gentleman had already ample means of preventing evasion of this kind, inasmuch as it included property settled by the deceased in which any right was reserved to himself. Surely that was sufficient protection against any trust created not bonâ fide, and he submitted that to put in a defining and charging clause provisions to prevent evasion was not the way to proceed, and it seemed to him that if a man held under a bonâ fide trust it did not matter one farthing who created that trust—whether it was himself or Julius Csesar. The Solicitor General could not defend the words, and on the point of principle if he wanted words to prevent evasion let him leave out these words and put in other words, so that the subsection should read that Estate Duty should not be payable in respect of property held bonâ fide by the deceased as trustee for another person. The whole question was whether a trust was made in good faith or evasively in order to defeat the statute, and he thought the insertion of the words "bonâ fide" would meet the case.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTONsaid, that if the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Bodmin were accepted he should be willing to withdraw his Amendment.
  MR. BUTCHERsaid, the hon. Member for Deptford had gallantly come to the rescue of the Solicitor General, but he thought the hon. and learned Gentleman had suggested the wrong remedy. The hon. Member said that all the deceased had got to do was not to be the sole surviving trustee. But the true fact was this: What the trustee had got to do was not to die. That was really the
  628
  only way out of the difficulty, and as that remedy was not always available, might he suggest that this was really a serious objection in point of substance, because it would come to this: Where a person was left sole surviving trustee under terms of a will, the property which passed in which he had no interest would come under the definition of property passing on his decease. If the words were left out, as proposed by the Amendment, he saw no case in which any evasion or evil could arise. He must protest against the continual answer which was given to them when they pointed out the absurd results that would follow from the adoption of the words in the Bill. They were told, time after time, when they pointed out these absurdities, that the object was to prevent evasion. He really thought that was not the proper way, with great respect, in which to avoid evasion. If there were evasions which could be brought about let them be met in direct ways, and in ways that would not produce other and perhaps greater injustices.
  SIR W. HARCOURTthought this matter had now been sufficiently discussed. The whole point was a question of drafting, so far as he understood it. The Government had taken the very best advice they could, and they thought that was the best way of dealing with the subject. They had had the advice of the Attorney General, than whom they could have no more competent authority, the clause had been the subject of a great deal of consideration and discussion, and finally drawn in the form in which it appeared in the Bill, and the Government must adhere to it.
  SIR R. WEBSTERsaid, that no one would dispute the great experience of the learned Attorney General in these matters, but he would like to point out that this was a little more than a mere question of drafting. The right hon. Member for Bodmin had pointed out a serious difficulty that might arise, and other gentlemen had also pointed out that under the words of the clause as it stood cases might occur where property which had been held by the deceased bonâ fide as a trustee might become chargeable. It was most important to exempt bona fide trustees, but

  629
  under the ambiguous wording of the clause, property held by bonâ fide trustees would form property which would have to pay duty, and that was certainly contrary to the object of the Government and the Committee.
  SIR W. HARCOURTwas understood to say that between this and the Report the Government would consider the matter, and if it appeared necessary would endeavour to frame words to meet the objections of hon. Members.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTON: I could not hear what the right hon. Gentleman said, but I gather it was to the effect that between this and the Report the matter would be carefully considered.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Certainly.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTONsaid, under these circumstances, he would withdraw the Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTON*MR. T. H. BOLTON moved, in page 2, line 29, at the end of Clause, to insert,
  "nor upon any property which would have been free from Succession Duty under the 12th section of 'The Succession Duty Act, 1853.'"
  The hon. Member said, that Section 12 of the Succession Duty Act of 1853 provided that no Succession Duty should be payable where the predecessor and successor were the same person. There was an express provision in the section that a successor should not in any case be chargeable with duty in succession taken under a disposition made by himself, and no person should be chargeable to duty upon an extinction or determination of any charge, estate, or interest created by himself. That was at present the law, and he ventured to suggest there were good reasons for maintaining it. Take the case of a man who, to provide for his son, granted to the son an annuity for life, and the son died in the father's lifetime. Under the present Bill there would be a duty payable, but that could hardly be the intention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This was really a matter for careful consideration. It had been under the consideration of the Council of the Incorporated Law Society. That body had called attention to it, and had recommended that there ought to be a provision extending the protection of Clause
  630
  12 of the Succession Duty Act to the Estate Duty. He could give several other cases, but it was unnecessary to trouble the Committee with them. The object of the Estate Duty was to tax a family estate passing on death, and it was not to inflict duty when really no estate practically passed, and in the case he had mentioned to charge, perhaps, a considerable duty would be to inflict a real injustice. This was a matter which had perhaps escaped the attention of the Government, but it was one which required attention, and involved an alteration in the clause which ought to be made. He begged to move the Amendment.
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, line 29, to leave out from the word "person," to end of Clause, and insert the words—
  "nor upon any property which would have been free from Succession Duty under the 12th section of 'The Succession Duty Act, 1853.'"— (Mr, T. H. Bolton.)
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  SIR R. WEBSTERventured to think this was a point which had been overlooked. This was not really Death Duty. Take the case of a father in his lifetime making a settlement upon a son for life of so much money; the son died, and the property came back to the father. There had been no instance there of Death Duty ordinarily leviable, and it had never been treated as succession. It was a matter of principle, and not any question of drafting. It was no evasion or escaping from that which it was desired to charge. There were cases in which a man provided temporarily for the disposition of his property in his own lifetime. It was in no sense or purpose a dealing with a case where there could be either evadence or avoidance, and some words should be introduced to prevent the tax including a succession which was not in reality a succession.
  SIR W. HARCOURT,whose remarks were almost inaudible in the Gallery, was understood to say that Lord Stowell, with the object of avoiding Death Duties, made a settlement on his son. The son died intestate and the father was his heir. The same property thus paid Death Duty on the death of the son and again on the death of the father. The Amendment

  631
  could not be accepted at once; but, if the matter were allowed to stand over, it should be carefully considered.
  *MR. T. H. BOLTONsaid, on this assurance he was willing to withdraw the Amendment, reserving to himself the right to again bring forward the question on the Report stage if the right hon. Gentleman took an adverse view of it.
  *MR. POWELL WILLIAMSsaid, he would give the Chancellor of the Exchequer an instance within his own knowledge which would show the necessity of making some alteration. A father settled upon a son £1,000 a year until the son succeeded, on the death of a relative, to £5,000 a year. As the Bill was drawn it seemed as if the £1,000 would be liable to duty when it fell in, and it was clearly necessary to provide against cases of that kind.
  MR. BARTLEYsaid, there was another case he should like to mention occurring in the insurance world. A parent paid an annual sum in order to buy a largish sum, varying in amount, at a certain age for his children. If one of such children died he took it that under this Bill this money, which would pass to the father, would be liable to duty. The money did pass at death, but surely this was not a case which should come within the purview of the Bill.
  *SIR A. ROLLITasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer also to take this case into consideration—namely, a settlement on a daughter on marriage. Supposing the father settled upon his daughter a life estate with remainder to the issue, and an ultimate reversion to himself in the event of failure of issue. The daughter died, there was no issue, and the ultimate trust in the father's own favour took effect. Then there was accession, but not succession, because it was his own property. Surely that ought not to come within the purview of the Bill.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  MR. BYRNEsaid, he desired to ask the Chancellor a question on a point of Order. He had placed the following Amendment down to Clause 4:—
  "Page 3, line 11, at end, insert,—
  If upon the death of the deceased an estate in dower or by courtesy or any other like estate in any property passes to the wife or husband of the deceased, the
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  provisions of this section shall apply in like manner as if the property had been settled by the will of the deceased in the manner in which the property actually devolves upon his death.
  "Neither Estate Duty nor further Estate Duty shall be payable in respect of property comprised in a marriage settlement and not in the aggregate exceeding at the date of the settlement in value or amount the sum of £10,000, so long as such property is enjoyed under or by virtue of the settlement by the wife, husband, or issue of the settlor."
  He put the Amendment to Clause 4, which dealt with settled property, because he thought that was the proper place. What he desired to know was should he be entitled to bring it on there, or must he move it before they reached the end of Clause 3.
  THE CHAIRMAN: I think the hon. and learned Gentleman will be entitled to bring it on on Clause 4.
  The following Amendment stood in the name of the Solicitor General:—
  "Clause 2,page 2,line 30, after 'deceased,' insert nor include property passing under a disposition made bonâ fide for good consideration in money or money's worth given or reserved for the use or benefit of the person making the disposition to the extent of such consideration.'"
  MR. BYRNEsuggested that this Amendment should be postponed until a later stage, or brought up as a new clause. It raised a question of great importance, and there were one or two points as to which he should like to communicate with the Solicitor General before the hon. and learned Gentleman moved the Amendment.
  MR. R. T. REIDconsidered the request reasonable, and assented to the postponing of the Amendment as suggested, and which it was agreed should be brought up as a new clause, the Government having collected the views of hon. Members acquainted with the subject.
  MR. GRANT LAWSONsaid, that if lands were held under lease for the lives of A, B, and C, on the death of the last of those the estate went back to the man who left it. That was really a passing of property from one hand to another at death. Clause 1 declared that on the passage of property Death Duty became payable, and payable, too, not on the amount received by each individual successor, but on the full value of the property that passed. He did not

  633
  think that such a case as that was covered by the Amendment the Government had put down, and he therefore begged to move the second of the Amendments he had placed on the Paper.
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, after line 30, to insert the words—
  "Estate Duty shall not be payable on any property leased for the life of another, or for the longest of two or more lives, upon the expiration of such lease."—(Mr Grant Lawson.)
  Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, that one of the subjects which the Solicitor General intended to include in his promised clause was the subject of leases for lives, and therefore he did not see what object the hon. Member had to gain by moving the Amendment.
  SIR R. WEBSTERsaid, he would advise his hon. Friend to withdraw the Amendment; but, at the same time, he would like to bring to the notice of the Government that this was not a question of consideration, or of money, or of money's worth, but a simple question of machinery by which a term of years was arrived at by a landlord and tenant in an arrangement for the letting of lands, and was not met at all by the language of the clause of the Solicitor General.
  MR. GRANT LAWSONsaid, that if they were agreed as to the principle, the form of the words was immaterial, and as he understood that duty was not to be payahle under the circumstances he had mentioned, he would withdraw the Amendment.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, there should be no misunderstanding in the matter. The Government had not agreed to anything; they simply kept the matter entirely open, and if the hon. Gentleman desired a Division on his Amendment he could take it.
  *MR. POWELL WILLIAMSthought that the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be accepted. He respectfully asked the right hon. Gentleman to consider the case of a lease for three lives, all the lives of which had dropped out and the property had reverted to the original grantor. In many cases, under such circumstances, the grantor would give a new lease, with fresh lives inserted, on a fine being paid, and the
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  unfortunate person to whom the new lease was made would have the fine increased by the amount of the new duties. That was a hardship that should be removed.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  COLONEL KENYON-SLANEYrose to move, in page 2, line 30, after "deceased," to insert—
  "(3) Where Estate Duty has become payable in respect of any property but has not been fully paid, and by reason of another Death Estate Duty becomes again payable in respect of the same property, so much of the former Estate Duty as has not been paid before the occurrence of such death shall cease to be payable."
  The object of the Amendment was to secure that if a man died before he had cleared off the duty payable by him on his succession, the successor should not be liable for the remainder of the instalments in addition to his own Succession Duty. He thought that a very just proposal. It might be fairly argued that a person who was paying in instalments his Succession Duty, and who died before he had completed the instalments, had at least completed his succession, and ought not be charged for that which he had not enjoyed; and that in any event it would be unfair to saddle the successor not only with what he himself owed to the State, but what his predecessor owed to the State for a possession he had not altogether enjoyed. If such a thing were unjust, it was most certainly inexpedient. It was not expedient that encumbrances arising under the Death Duties should accumulate on a property; and it was not expedient that the State should be, in that way, the cause of an owner being forced to sell his estate to another to clear off the Death Duties. In order to illustrate what he meant he would take a case, which, it would be admitted, was possible. He would take the ease of an, agricultural property valued at £50,000,. but bringing in only a net annual income of £1,000. Supposing the elder brother, a soldier, succeeded to that property in 1884. Under the provisions of the Bill he would have to pay £2,500 duty on the estate, and had eight years to pay it. Supposing he was killed in action in 1885; and was succeeded by another brother, soldier or sailor, who would have to pay another

  635
  £2,500 in eight years, and who was killed in 1887, and was succeeded by a third brother, who would have to pay another £2,500. The result would be that in a few years there would be three charges amounting to £7,500 on an estate the net annual income from which was only £1,000, and that, of course, would mean ruin and bankruptcy for the unfortunate owner, and for the artizans and labourers who depended for a livelihood on the maintenance of the property. He therefore urged the favourable consideration of the Amendment on the Government.
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, line 30, after the word "deceased," to insert the words—
  "(3) Where Estate Duty has become payable in respect of any property but has not been fully paid, and by reason of another death Estate Duty becomes again payable in respect of the same property, so much of the former Estate Duty as has not been paid before the occurrence of such death shall cease to be payable."—(Colonel Kenyon-Slaney.)
  Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, that Clause 5 dealt with the question of instalments, and the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Gentleman would be more in Order on that clause. He wished, however, to state shortly the views of the Government in the matter. They started with the proposition that real property and personal property must for the purposes of this duty be put on the same footing. Therefore, the death was due instantly on the death of the owner, and the payment of it in instalments was an indulgence. But they could not found on the instalments the argument that the death of the successor released him from the obligations to pay the charge. With regard to the argument of the hon. and gallant Member as to several charges being placed on the property because of the death of several brothers in succession, he would point out that if it were personal property there would be no doubt that the sum would be paid; and the question was whether real property, because it was real property, was to he placed in a different position from personal property. The Government said "no "; they thought that realty and personalty should in this matter be
  636
  treated in the same terms. He would also point out that some of the largest properties in the country had resorted to insurance, as one of the best and most economical means for providing against the contingencies to which the hon. and gallant Member had called attention. In any event, if the hon. Member was not satisfied with that explanation, the proper place to raise the question was on Clause 5.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsaid, he thought the Committee were indebted to his hon. and gallant Friend for the clearness and fairness with which he had put before them a case that would, in the circumstance suggested, be a great hardship to owners of real property. It was a necessary consequence of the attempt of the Government to assimilate the duty on two things which were not like each other. He entertained some little hope that the hardship to which his hon. and gallant Friend referred might be to some extent met by a reasonable consideration of the position of real property when they came to consider the question how the value of real property was to be ascertained. Under the circumstances, he would advise his hon. Friend to raise the question on a later clause.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Clause, as amended, agreed to.
  Clause 3.
  MR. HANBURY MR. HANBURY (Preston) moved, in page 2, line 32, after "property," to insert "liable to such duty." The object of the Amendment was to remove an ambiguity. The words of the clause were sufficiently strong and wide. They laid it down that all property passing at death should be aggregated, and what he by his Amendment tried to prevent was that property, not distinctly liable to the Estate Duty, should be brought into the aggregation and taxed. Take the case of a man not domiciled in this country, who had £ 1,000 abroad and £ 1,000 in this country. Undoubtedly, they would not be able to touch the £1,000 of personalty abroad; hut as he read the clause the £1,000 abroad would be aggregated with the £1,000 in this country and the successor would have to pay duty on the £2,000. Again, no realty abroad would be liable to this Estate Duty; but he was

  637
  afraid that in the case of persons domiciled in this country, and foreigners and colonists, the clause would bring in realty abroad. If his words were accepted, it would make it quite clear that in aggregations of property no property would be introduced that was not in itself liable to duty.
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, line 32, after the word "property," to insert the words "liable to such duty."—{Mr. Hanbury.)
  Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
  MR. R. T. REID: We accept the Amendment. I think the addition of the words will improve the clause.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACH*SIR M. HICKS-BEACH moved to amend the clause by leaving out the words "so passing," and inserting the following words:—
  "Of which the deceased was competent to dispose beneficially by will, or has disposed of by donatio mortis causâ or gift made within 12 months of death."
  He said, they had now arrived at what to his mind was the most delicate and difficult portion of this very delicate and difficult measure, and he thought that as a layman he owed some apology for trespassing on grounds almost sacred to Members of the legal profession. But he had waited for some time before taking action to see whether someone more competent than himself would point out the extreme difficulty of aggregating all the property of a deceased person for the purposes of the Estate Duty. The Committee had decided on the first clause of the Bill that the Estate Duty should be a charge not upon the interest of the successor but on the estate left by the deceased; and that it should be levied in a graduated scale according to the aggregated amount of the value of the property. He was not assuming too much when he assumed that in the opinion of those responsible for the measure aggregation, at least to some extent, was necessary for the purposes of graduation. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in introducing his Budget, had pointed out the difficulties, the inconvenience, and the unpopularity that would result from an
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  attempt to graduate the Income Tax, owing to the impossibility of obtaining the aggregate amount of the income of the person to be taxed without an inquisitorial investigation, which would render the tax most obnoxious, and therefore the right hon. Gentleman turned to the Death Duties as forming the proper field for graduation by the method embodied in this Bill. In his opinion the difficulties in the way of graduation, though not the same as in the case of the Income Tax, would be very great in the case of the Death Duties. There was, in the first place, the objection on principle, which had been placed before the Committee by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Isle of Wight when he proposed that the Estate Duty should be levied upon the succession rather than upon the estate, and when he showed, with the sympathy of a very considerable portion of the House, how unfair it would be that the individual succeeding to a very small portion of an estate should pay Death Duties upon that portion, not according to the value of the portion to which he had succeeded, but according to the value of the whole estate, the greater portion of which had passed away to other persons. He would not, however, further touch on the question of principle, as it had already been fully argued; but would confine himself to what he believed to be the practical difficulties of the course proposed by the Government. It was clear that under this clause as it stood all manner of different properties passing under different titles and administered as parts of different estates and trusts would have to be aggregated together for the purposes of graduation. Those properties might, on the death of the deceased, be vested in almost an infinite number of different persons. How would it be possible for the various persons interested in the different properties included in the deceased's estate to communicate together with the object of ascertaining the total aggregate value of the estate? Every one of them was interested in the aggregate amount of the estate, for it was to determine the amount of Death Duties which was to be paid by that portion of the estate in which each was personally interested; and the proposal of the Government to aggregate all the

  639
  different estates belonging to or vested in completely different persons appeared to him to be a prolific source of disputes and quarrels as between those persons, both as to the amount which each separate portion of the estate might properly be valued at, and also as to the amount which the whole might properly be valued at. It was obvious that no one could tell what the aggregate amount of the estate was, and therefore what the graduated amount of the Death Duty upon that estate might be, except by adding together all the items of which the estate was composed and thus obtaining the aggregate amount of the whole. There was not only the danger of dispute as to value, but there was also the risk that each of those persons might suffer from some fraudulent representation on the part of another about a matter of which he was necessarily ignorant; there was the risk of mistake by someone who returned his portion of the estate at an insufficient amount, and thereby secured that the aggregate amount would be furnished at less than it ought to be; and at some future time, when perhaps the estate of the person who had made the mistake had been disposed of by him, others interested in the same estate might be pounced upon by the Inland Revenue for additional Estate Duties. One might multiply ad infinitum the number of persons who would be separately accountable for the Estate Duty under this Bill. None of them need necessarily be relations or even connected with one another; they might be absolutely unknown to each other. The first result of this would be very great delay. An estate of large amount might be composed of many different kinds of property. The deceased might, as the saying goes, have his eggs in a good many baskets; and the fact that all these different kinds of property might be vested in so many different persons would add indefinitely to the great delay in the valuation. It might be said that these persons had an interest in concealing their existence from one another, because in so far as any portion of the property was not accounted for and did not come into the aggregate of the whole estate for the purpose of Estate Duty, to that extent the aggregate value was lowered for Estate Duty. Instead of disclosing their interest to one another
  640
  and helping one another to ascertain the aggregate amount of the whole property, their advantage lay in precisely the opposite direction. Meanwhile the position of the executor, which was never enviable, was made a hundred times worse by this Bill. The executor was primarily responsible not merely for the payment of the duty on that portion of the estate which was vested in himself, but also for disclosing as far as he could and, if he chose, for paying the duty on other portions which were not so vested. He could never be quite certain that he had a complete account of all the different portions of the estate, and therefore he could never be sure that he had correctly ascertained' the aggregate amount of the whole estate. Until he had ascertained the aggregate amount correctly, he could not with safety pay one single legacy, because he could not say what rate of duty would be payable and what funds he ought to reserve for the purpose. Not only so, but the beneficiaries of an estate under settlement could never be certain how much their beneficial interest amounted to until they knew what was the graduated scale of duty payable on their interest. Therefore, they would have for an indefinite time very great difficulty in dealing with their reversion, if they should desire to do so. He knew the Bill provided that after two years the estate should be closed and the graduated duty fixed, but even then, if the Commissioners chose, they might decline for an indefinite time to determine what the graduated amount of the duty should be. So that for two years, at any rate, as he contended, it would be impossible for the executor to pay legacies or wind up the estate or discharge himself from his duties. He should like to know, under such circumstances, whether, when the Bill passed, if it ever did, the Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be quite as popular as he now supposed it to be. The legatees very often would be persons to whom early receipt of their legacy was a matter of supreme importance, who might be looking to the legacy to pay their debts, to start themselves or their children in some career in which an early start might make all the difference to their success in life. In future, every legatee, the payment of whose legacy was delayed through the opera-

  641
  tion of this Bill, would be an enemy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had made such a proposition in this would-be popular Budget. He might be told that the difficulties he had pointed out were due to the law of inheritance and succession; and that they would be remedied if on the death of a person holding personalty and realty, personalty and realty alike passed to his executor. The faults of the Bill could not be excused on that account, because they had to consider the law as it was at present, for it was on the existing state of the law that the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were based. And he ventured to say, from the information laid before him by men experienced in those matters, that the practical difficulties of working the proposed scheme of aggregation were so great as to be almost insuperable. He had ventured to suggest au alternative. The first part of the clause, as amended by the Amendment he now proposed, and by a further Amendment which stood on the Paper in his name, would read as follows:—
  "For determining the rate of Estate Duty to be paid on any property passing on the death of the deceased, all property 'of which the deceased was competent to dispose beneficially by will, or has disposed of by donatio mort is causâ or gift made within 12 months of his death,' shall be aggregated so as to form one estate, and the dut3r shall be levied at the proper graduated rate on the principal value thereof; 'and all property comprised in a settlement a beneficial interest wherein accrues on the death of the deceased to any person other than the settlor or the deceased shall be similarly aggregated and the duty shall be levied at the proper graduated rate on the principal value thereof, and all property a beneficial interest wherein accrues on the death of the deceased to any person by the severance of a joint tenancy shall be separately charged, and the duty shall be levied at the proper graduated rate on the principal value thereof.'"
  The effect of this, as he had been advised, was that property passing by will, whoever might be the beneficiaries, to the executor; property passing under settlement, whoever might be the beneficiaries; and property passing by severance of a joint tenancy, would each be aggregated separately. He hoped his suggestion would not be met by technical objections, for, though it might not be the best way possible of dealing with the matter, he was convinced that it would
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  meet, to a large extent, the practical difficulties he had pointed out. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would no doubt contend that the result of separately aggregating the properties would reduce the aggregated amount on which duty had to be paid, but it would not do so to a very large extent. By this Amendment, also, the suggestion of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Wight that the Death Duty should be levied on succession instead of on the death of the deceased would be partly met. Supposing a man left his landed estate in settlement to his eldest son, that son would pay duty on the whole estate. If he left £10,000 by will to a younger son, that would be aggregated separately, so that the younger son would only pay according to the value of what he received.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: Would you aggregate all the settlements?
  SIR M. HICKS-BEACH: No, each settlement separately. This measure must be considered not on financial grounds only, but also in regard to its practical working. He contended that in practical working it would create enormous difficulties owing to the delays that would be caused and the impossibility of the different persons who were accountable for the payment of the duties on the different portions of the estate communicating with one another. The mere delay in the payment of legacies would of itself be a great public evil. Those were matters the Committee ought to seriously examine into before adopting the Government scheme of aggregation, which had been submitted, he believed, without the extreme difficulty of carrying it out having been adequately considered. The question was not to be treated as one of a Party character. It was as much his desire as it could be that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Revenue should receive all the money to which it had a fair claim, and that the proposals of the Budget might be so administered as not to work any injustice or create any public grievance. He, therefore, hoped that in the interests of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself the Government would be able to accept the Amendment.
  Amendment proposed, in page 2, lines 32 and 33, to leave out the words "so passing," in order to insert the words—
  "Of which the deceased was competent to dispose beneficially by will, or has disposed of by donatio mortis causâ of gift made within twelve months of death."—(Sir M. Hicks-Beack.)
  Question proposed, "That the words 'so passing' stand part of the Clause."
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I have no reason to complain—quite the opposite—of the tone and object of the right hon. Gentleman in proposing the Amendment. It is only natural he should desire that proposals such as those made in the Finance Bill, involving, I admit, heavy burdens, should be made to work with as little oppression as possible. I myself share in that desire, and I may repeat what I said in introducing the Budget, that so long as the principles on which it is founded were accepted, the Government had an open mind entirely as to the methods and machinery for carrying it out. First of all, in regard to a proposal of this kind, I have considered whether it is consistent, or reconcilable, with the principles on which the Budget is founded. Of course, in order to make graduation of any value, there must be aggregation. One could not graduate except upon the amount which passed at death. If the total amount was split up into a number of small fragments graduation disappears. The whole ratio of graduation depends upon aggregation. If the wealth of a rich man was to be split up into any number of fragments, either by settlements or in any other way, that would strike at the very root of the principle of the Budget. It is a case of the large stream receiving small rills. If you proceed, not upon the stream, but upon the rills, the whole virtue of our proposals disappear. I am told that we are to graduate upon separate settlements. Thus a man with £100,000 has only to make 10 settlements in order to reduce himself to the appearance of having only £10,000. It is obvious that in a case of that kind there would be evasion of the duty. The right hon. Gentleman has said that I desire to have more money. I cannot say that I desire it, but I certainly require it. It is by the adoption of the principle of graduation that I propose to obtain it, and I do not think
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  it is unreasonable that I should decline to accept an Amendment which practically destroys graduations. So much for the principle. The right hon. Gentleman has also referred to the question of administration. I can only say that this point has been long and carefully discussed by the most competent authorities of the Inland Revenue, and that I have taken great pains to ascertain what the practice was and whether the difficulties which have been suggested were insuperable. If necessary, the Government will make further provision in order that no delay shall occur in administering these estates. These are matters of machinery. The provisions have been day after day under the consideration of those who will have to administer them, and as such the Government recommend them to the House. If we are wrong we shall have to take the consequences. The proposal to split up property in this way is fatal to the Government's doctrine of graduation, and therefore the Government cannot accept it.
  MR. GOSCHEN: The right hon. Gentleman in his opening remarks said that of course the Government could not accept any Amendment inconsistent with the principles which he laid down and to which he gave expression in his Budget speech. It strikes me that the right hon. Gentleman has laid down certain abstract principles and then endeavoured to carry them out. He says that administrative difficulties must give way in order that his principles may be maintained. I am afraid I cannot follow that argument. If we are asked to follow that, I must inquire what would have happened to all our present taxation if previous generations had proceeded on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's plan? It is one of the first propositions in taxation that taxes should be as easy to collect as possible, and taxes have been condemned, not only on account of injustice, but also if they caused so much friction and oppression in realising the amount expected from them as to cause a real grievance to the taxpayer. What I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to do is to propose a workable scheme land not to lay down propositions with which he meets us at every turn, and which involve the rejection of every

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  Amendment which, in the right hon. Gentleman's opinion, is not in accordance with them. But I will leave these administrative difficulties to gentlemen more capable of dealing with them than I am. I should like to say a few words as to the financial part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech. The right hon. Gentleman seems to me to exaggerate the possibilities of evasion in saying that the millionaire might split up his fortune into so many tenth parts. The right hon. Gentleman has forgotten one of the main points which is generally in his mind—the nature of real property. It is the large landowners whom the Government wish to tax. Does the right hon. Gentleman suppose that one of the large estates would be broken up in order to avoid aggregation?
  SIR W. HARCOURT: There might be a dozen settlements.
  MR. GOSCHEN: That is merely a technical objection. If that is the chief difficulty that the right hon. Gentleman feels I am sure that it can be met by the exercise of his own discretion and the ability of the officers of the Inland Revenue. They will be able to stop more difficult holes than that. Under this Amendment the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not indeed get the whole of the aggregation, and I am glad that is so, because the aggregation proposed by the Government involves considerable injustice as well as administrative difficulties. This proposition sins against one of the right hon. Gentleman's own cardinal doctrines—that taxation should be levied according to ability to pay. The proposals of my right hon. Friend's Amendment are a compromise. They would permit large aggregations; but they would treat settlements separately. Apart from the administrative difficulties, I am prepared to argue that graduation is unjust with regard to settlement where the interest of those who derive the benefit is totally distinct from the interest of those who inherit by will. I admit that the proposals would involve some loss to the Exchequer, but nothing like what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has anticipated. His example was one which is most unlikely to occur. The right hon. Gentleman takes the case of the millionaire. An ordinary man, however, who has not an immense for-
  646
  tune would settle it according as the interests of his wife and children required. He would divide it into fractions on this account, and not to avoid aggregation. The right hon. Gentleman did not attempt to grapple with the most powerful arguments of my right hon. Friend (Sir M. Hicks-Beach) as to the difficulties that would ensue upon the adoption of this scheme. The right hon. Gentleman had said that reliance may be placed upon the ingenuity of the Inland Revenue officers to find a method by which they can collect this duty in the case of an aggregated estate. I quite endorse all the commendations he used concerning the Inland Revenue Authorities. They are almost as ingenious in stopping leaks as solicitors are in finding how to evade a tax. But not all the ingenuity nor all the activity of the officers of the Inland Revenue will enable them to overcome difficulties which are inherent in the principles which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has attempted to carry out in this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had been advised in regard to this matter by the Inland Revenue officers. If the right hon. Gentleman first lays down a principle and then asks the officers of the Inland Revenue to find some method of carrying that principle into effect, it is of course the duty of those officers to do their best to carry out the views of the right hon. Gentleman however, impossible it may be to do so. The right hon. Gentleman may tell us that he has endeavoured to do the best he can compatibly with his first object, which is to obtain additional revenue, but if the right hon. Gentleman's first object is met by insuperable difficulties his original plan ought to be modified. One of the chief difficulties which are inherent in the right hon. Gentleman's plan is the enormous delay that it must necessarily involve. The gathering in of all the rills of an estates as the right hon. Gentleman calls them in that picturesque language which I am glad to say he often employs to lighten up what must otherwise be a very dull subject—must necessarily occasion very great delay in the administration of an estate. The right hon. Gentleman has spread his net so wide in his endeavour to bring everything into it, including property outside the United Kingdom,

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  that it is almost impossible to say how long the administration of an estate will last. The very perfection of his dream makes it the more difficult to carry it out in reality. It has been pointed out that the delay and inconvenience may all be shifted from the general body of legatees to the residuary legatee, but the difficulty of ascertaining what the residuary legatee is to have will now be more difficult than ever. The whole principle of graduation involves the difficulty that it is not till the last moment that it will be known what the whole estate has to bear. My right hon. Friend proposes a compromise, and we venture to put it to the Government that for the purpose of securing the smoother working of this measure, and in the interest of the public and of the taxpayer, the right hon. Gentleman should agree to the compromise which my right hon. Friend offers. The Amendment, if adopted, may to a certain extent affect the revenue to be obtained from the duty, but, on the other hand, it would greatly facilitate the working of the Bill, and would prevent the friction and enormous expense which might otherwise be incurred. My right hon. Friend pointed to many difficulties besides delay. I do not feel competent to argue the question of those difficulties any further. While we acknowledge that if the Amendment be adopted some revenue may be lost, we are anxious to assist the Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove some difficulties which we believe to be inherent in the proposal as it stands, and which all the ability of draftsmen and Inland Revenue Authorities will, I think, be unable to overcome.
  *MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid, the Committee would have been very much struck with the entire absence of enthusiasm on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in defending the principle of aggregation, which was the central principle—he was going to say the central absurdity—of the Bill. [Ministerial cries of "Oh!" and "Divide!"] The Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone so far as to say that he had an open mind on this subject. ["Divide!"] This was the first time in the course of these discussionsߞ["Divide!"]
  MR. HANBURY: I rise to a point of Order. I beg to call atten-
  648
  tion to the fact that the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Brunner) is constantly interrupting.
  MR. BRUNNER: I wish to ask, Sir, whether it is in Order for an hon. Member to describe the principle of a Bill of which the House has agreed to the Second Reading as an absurdity?
  THE CHAIRMAN (Mr. J. W. LOWTHER): I do not think there is anything out of Order in that.
  *MR. GIBSON BOWLES: It is a pity that the hon. Member has been so long a Member of this House as to have forgotten all its Rules, and even the common courtesies of debate. The hon. Gentleman went on to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had absolutely declined to discuss the principle of aggregation; he had only said that without it he could not apply his graduation scheme. The right hon. Gentleman had had nothing to say in principle against the Amendment except that it would be fatal to this eternal principle of graduation. The objection of the Opposition was not to graduation in principle, but to this graduation. They said that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted to apply the principle of graduation it should be applied not to the amount left by the dead man, but to the amount received by the survivors. The right hon. Gentleman said he had no objection to the whole of the duties being paid out of the residue, but he seemed to have forgotten that the whole basis of the doctrine of taxation was that if a man wanted apples he must go to the orchard, and that if he wanted Death Duties he must get them not from the dead man but from where the money was, or the persons to whom the property had passed. The right hon. Gentleman said that the executor would know everything, Very often the executor knew very little indeed about an estate. It was a very common thing for an estate to consist very largely of realty, with which the executor had nothing to do, or of separate trusts, with which also the executor would not concern himself. It was a common thing for a patron of the arts in his youthful days to admire an actress and to make a settlement upon her, with remainder to her child. Subsequently the art patron got married, and

  649
  made another settlement, appointing, perhaps, his brother-in-law executor of his will. He did not tell his brother-in-law about the other settlement. He could assure the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this was no uncommon thing.
  SIR W. HARCOURT: In what class of society are these settlements generally made?
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: In the class of society to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself belonged. The unfortunate principle of aggregation never could work, and if the officers of the Inland Revenue had told the Chancellor of the Exchequer that they thought it would, he was of opinion that they were extremely mistaken. It was a matter for regret that in framing the Bill the Chancellor of the Exchequer had departed from all the principles of taxation hitherto known to the tax collector. The right hon. Gentleman levied his tax not on the property taken by the beneficiary, but on the property left by the deceased. He taxed a man who no longer existed—nay, a property which no longer existed, inasmuch as it was already broken up into various properties. He followed the ghost of the dead man and sought to levy the tax upon the property that existed while that man was alive. When a man died his estate was not necessarily capable of being at once wound up. The experienced officers of the Inland Revenue Department would tell the right hon. Gentleman that estates had constantly to be reopened, added to or diminished, in consequence of accretions or diminutions which had taken place since the death. Under the Chancellor of the Exchequer's scheme, whenever there was an aggregation or a diminution of an estate, there would be an alteration in the rate of duty payable, and an entire reopening of the question of duty from top to bottom. In the case of an estate of £500 distributed in five legacies of £100 each the duty payable would be 2 per cent., and each legatee would pay his £2 and go away with his £98. A short time afterwards it might happen that the value of the estate was found to have increased to the value of—to take an extreme case—£1,000,000. He could assure hon. Gentlemen that stranger things than that had happened
  650
  in the history of legacies. This property being aggregated the duty on the £100 would become not £2 but £8. There was £6 more to get from each legatee, and how was it to be got? The legatees had, perhaps, gone away. Was the executor to pay it? Or, instead of the estate becoming greater, it became reduced in value. Money would then have to be returned to the executor, and how would he be able to return the amounts to the legatees, who might have removed to some other country, or who might have died. The beauty of this system of taxation was that until you had I aggregated you could not graduate, and until you had graduated you could not levy your tax. He submitted that they never could aggregate finally as the estate would have to be kept open for ever, the Bill saying "if at any time." He hoped the Committee had gained some idea of the enormous complexity that this aggregation would cause. The Inland Revenue Department was full of books containing records of deceased persons and their properties. These books had been open well nigh 100 years, but under the system proposed they would have to be open 1,000 years. Whatever other result the Bill would have it would enormously increase the complexity of this taxation. These considerations alone ought to make the Committee hesitate before they adopted this ridiculous device of aggregation.
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. H. H. FOWLER,said, he would recall the attention of the Committee from the speech just delivered to the Amendment before the House, which was not directed against graduation or aggregation. Taken in connection with subsequent Amendments, it contemplated two or three classes of aggregation, and made graduation depend on the description of the property. Seven-twelfths of the property in this country passed from father to child; another large portion passed from father to child by way of settlement; and in a third class of cases men on their marriage settled their property upon their wives and children. The right hon. Baronet proposed that I they should take a man's property and divide it into two sections. In an ordinary case of a man dying worth £100,000, leaving a certain interest to the wife and

  651
  the rest in equal proportions to the children, the property would be taxed according to the gross amount on the scale, of graduation that Parliament in its wisdom had seen fit to adopt, and no objection could be raised on the ground of injustice—except in so far as objection could be taken to the principle of graduation altogether. But suppose the father settled £25,000 each on two daughters on their marriage, and left £25,000 each to two other children by will, under the Amendment they would find themselves in this position: the estate would be taken as only worth £50,000, and so far as aggregation was concerned the other two £25,000 would be dealt with separately. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was quite right when he said that the Amendment struck at the whole root of the Bill. It mattered very little whether the property was disposed of by will or by settlement. The result of the case which had been put would be that a man would I die worth £100,000 and would bequeath £100,000, and yet part of his estate would pay duty as if he had died worth £50,000, and the other portions as if he were worth £25,000. If the Committee did not mean to produce that result they would not accept the Amendment. The amount of property which would pass on the death was £100,000, and, whether it passed by deed or will, the Revenue wished to get at it as a whole and to tax; it as a whole. That was the principle of the Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was right in saying that the Amendment proposed would produce a wholesale system of evasion. It would encourage men to begin giving life interests and making separate settlements; and by such au alteration this scheme, whether right or wrong, would be completely nentralised as regarded aggregation and graduation. The right hon. Gentleman had drawn a depressing picture of the absolute impossibility of the officials at Somerset House being able to ascertain the facts with regard to settlements, but the administrative difficulties which had been suggested were largely imaginary, because there was not a settlement in existence on which Succession Duty had been paid of which there was not a note at Somerset House. There might be some illegitimate transactions
  652
  carried out, as had been suggested, by the aid of the mysterious relatives to whom allusion had been made; but the affairs of most people in the great bulk of these matters were known to professional advisers, family trustees, and executors. An executor never allowed a residuary legatee to touch the residue until all accounts at Somerset House were passed and the whole matter closed; and that practice would prevail in the future as in the past. He knew of no other administrative difficulty entailed by the proposed aggregation. He did not think that real property would be divided in the manner suggested. The object aimed at was to treat a man's fortune as a whole; and the machinery existing and to be provided was adequate to deal with any difficulties that might arise. He respectfully urged upon the Committee that the right hon. Baronet's Amendment would practically neutralise the whole Bill.
  MR. BANBURYwished to mention a difficulty which had arisen in his own experience in the case of a family in which the father died four years ago leaving £100,000 settled on the widow, to be divided at her death among his children. According to Clause 17, this amount of £100,000, having paid Probate Duty before the passing of this Bill, would escape the Estate Duty; but if this clause were to apply and the widow died next year leaving £3.000, her executor would have to aggregate that with the life interest on £100,000, and he would have to pay Estate Duty on £103,000, for which the entire bequest of £3,000 would not suffice, and therefore the unfortunate person to whom the widow had left £3,000 would find himself liable to au amount of duty which would leave him considerably minus.
  MR. R. T. REIDsaid, no doubt the case mentioned by the hon. Member raised a difficult question, and he was not certain that he had grasped all the facts stated so fully as to be able to deal with the case on the spur of the moment, but if they were reduced to writing he would answer any question based upon them.
  MR. BANBURYsaid, it was a case that had actually occurred, and he was the unfortunate executor. He hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman would consider that point.
  SIR R. WEBSTERsaid, the hon. Member had only put in a complicated shape an illustration of cases that must occur, and which ought therefore to receive attention from the Government through the Solicitor General or those who drew this clause. The case put was one of a class which brought out in strong relief what would happen under the subsection on the passing of property if any benefit was reserved when the entire property would be aggregated. With regard to the observations of the Secretary of State for India and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he contended that it was no answer to the case in support of the Amendment to say it was contrary to the principle of the Bill, and that therefore the Amendment could not be accepted. He denied that Somerset House knew all about settlements. The only class of settlements that Somerset House knew of, so far as he was aware, were those on which Succession Duty had been paid. No machinery, or Regulations, or Rules existed, as far as he knew, whereby Somerset House knew anything about settlements except in a very small number of cases. Quite apart from that, what right had an executor to call upon a trustee to give him the necessary information for the purposes of aggregation? It might be said a clause would be inserted to give him power to obtain the information by litigation, or that there might be an originating summons taken out in the Courts in order to get a power of discovery; but the Committee stood face to face with this difficulty, that the Government were seeking to aggregate properties of a different kind, with different incidents, and the control of which rested in different hands. The only practical and sensible method of dealing with the case was to require that property passing by will and property passing by settlement should be aggregated separately. He did not deny, with regard to settlements, that it was possible to imagine persons setting to work to break up their property into small amounts and appointing beneficiaries to whom separate interests might be given, and that in that way they might be able to reduce the duty payable; but the suggestion that a millionaire might make himself into 10 men with £100,000 each, or 100 men with £10,000
  654
  each, was, he should say, rather an absurd illustration. Then it had been said that a man would break up his property into various lots and settle each lot separately, but in favour of one and the same person. Of course, if he did that, no objection would be raised to the whole being classed together again and made to pay duty on the full aggregate scale. The simple remedy for such evasions would be to equalise more the rate of graduation at the lower end of the scale, and make up for the deficiency that would accrue by a readjustment of the rates levied on the larger estate. It was difficult to accept the statements made by the Government that they were unable to adopt this or that reasonable Amendment because its terms would have involved a great reduction in the return to the Revenue. That was not true, and if the Members of the Government opposite would afford an opportunity of working out the figures with paper and pencil he would undertake to convince them of it in a few minutes. Of course it was impossible at that moment to enter into calculations of that kind. Why did the Government refuse to make any improvements whatever in their scheme? His right hon. Friend had not exaggerated I he case at all when he said that there wore a number of persons whose property would be subjected to an uncertain amount of taxation, and that until the principal value of the property could be ascertained nothing could be done. The winding up of estates, therefore, would be delayed simply on the chance of the Government being thereby able to squeeze one more drop of blood out of them. It had been always assumed throughout the Debate by those in charge of the Bill that there would be a residuary legatee out of whose pocket these duties could be got. That was a fallacy. There were two ways of leaving property by will. The first was by cutting up the whole of a property and willing away each individual part, in which case there would be no residue at all; and the other way was to make the residue the principal bequest after the payment out of the estate of certain specified sums. Suppose, again, that after paying away the legacies as directed there should not be sufficient residue left to pay the duty. In that case the legacies would have to

  655
  be reduced pro rata; and therefore it would be necessary to ascertain exactly what the actual duty would be before any payment out of the estate could be made. Considerable delay must in many cases occur before this could be determined, especially where part of the estate was difficult to realise or was situated outside the limits of the Kingdom. It was obvious, looking at the question from a practical point of view, that they must not compromise matters. It was the duty of the Committee to see if some remedy could not be found to meet this difficulty, which at the same time would not limit the amount that the Exchequer would finally receive. From the practical point of view they should endeavour to find some way whereby, without seriously diminishing the total result to the Exchequer, a remedy would be provided against the objections which had been pointed out. One right step in that direction was that property passing under will should be aggregated by itself. He protested against the doctrine that because the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made up his mind that he wanted so many millions and so many hundred thousands, that therefore they were to impose a scheme and devise machinery unworkable in practice, which would inflict upon the people who had to pay a great amount of inconvenience and hardship, and when these inconveniences and hardships were pointed out to be told that the Government would not attempt to remedy them because the compromise proposed was contrary to what they were pleased to call the principle of their Bill.
  MR. WYNDHAMobserved that the Secretary of State for India had said the proposal now before the Committee struck at the very principle of graduation and aggregation, as embodied in the Bill. Perhaps, after the speech to which they had just listened, the right hon. Gentleman would admit that his expression was forcible, and that this compromise did not go quite so far. Undoubtedly, it would mitigate the force and diminish the effect of those two principles, and he would ask the Committee whether such mitigation and diminution might not be desirable from a point of view which English Members in that House were only too apt to overlook, though hon.
  656
  Members from Ireland and Scotland, in the first place, examined every provision in a finance or Budget Bill from that point of view, and that point of view alone. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, when they moved an Amendment, asked "What class are you thinking of, and who will benefit?" Might he not, upon somewhat parallel lines, ask what nation would suffer if these principles of aggregation and graduation were applied to the full extent in which they at present stood in the Bill? In which of the three countries of this Kingdom were the large estates which had to be assessed as a whole, and graduation to be calculated upon their whole size, and which would contribute a yet larger share of revenue than was now contributed by England as contrasted with Ireland and Scotland. Last year they were plunged into calculations as to the relative contributions of the three countries, and it came out that out of every £100 contributed from England, £70 went to Imperial objects, and only £30 returned to this country. Out of every £100 contributed by Scotland and Ireland, the reverse ratio-obtained for £70 went to Ireland or Scotland, and ouly£30 were devoted to Imperial purposes. Was it true, or was it not, that in consequence of this adoption of the principle of aggregation and graduation they would derive a far larger revenue from England? Was it not true that the great estates were situated in England? And if they were to be regarded as a whole, and graduation assessed upon them as a whole, they would add to the total sum derived from England, without adding to the amount of money returned and spent in England. If that were true, the contrast, already sufficiently glaring in 1893, would be yet more scaring and unjust as regarded the predominant partner in 1894.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, he thought the very frank observations of the hon. Member for Dover were worthy of notice. It was perfectly true that the principles of aggregation and graduation would to a greater degree affect England than Ireland or Scotland. The "predominant partner," as it was properly termed, was the richest partner, and as such must be prepared to make the largest contributions to the burdens imposed. Ireland and Scotland maintained that they were

  657
  more heavily taxed in proportion than England; and now it appeared the great objection to aggregation, which was the substratum of graduation, was that the great properties of England would have to contribute in a greater ratio than Ireland and Scotland. He was perfectly prepared to join issue with the hon. Gentleman on that ground. It was the comparative immunity of great properties in a wealthy country like England that was the basis of the proposed reform. If it were proved that aggregation would produce the result indicated by the hon. Member, it would be one of the greatest reasons for the Government adhering to the proposal in the Bill and opposing the Amendment. This question had now been discussed very fully from both sides, and he hoped the Committee would come to a decision. There was an entire answer to the objections to the administrative difficulties in the fact that all these difficulties existed now with regard to the Succession Duties. But the question to be decided was whether they were to aggregate the whole property of a man for the purpose of determining what ratio he ought to pay; and he could not accept as an answer to that proposal that it would bear more heavily on the richer persons and the richer country than on the poorer persons and the less wealthy countries of Ireland and Scotland.
  MR. W. LONGsaid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had adopted the practice apparently most easy and agreeable to him when presented with a fair and reason able proposition, put forward on the part of the people who, at all events, believed that they had a grievance, and that the incidence of this taxation would be un fair and unjust. The right hon. Gentle man did not attempt to grapple with the difficulties that were fairly and reason ably presentedߞߞ
  SIR W. HARCOURT: I have answered them before. I was answering the Member for Dover.
  MR. W. LONGasked how did the right hon. Gentleman attempt to answer the Member for Dover? By turning his speech as referring to the incidence of taxation on large properties in England into a political speech, from the point of view of Party politics in this House con-
  658
  nected with totally different subjects. He noticed when the hon. Member for Dover alluded to the incidence of this tax upon a large number of big estates in England his statement was received, as similar statements had been received before, with jeers by hon. Gentlemen opposite. Hon. Gentlemen were perfectly entitled to use their political power to the best of their ability in order to give effect to the principles they believed in, but he submitted it was not necessary or decent for them to jeer at men for presenting opinions which not only they themselves but those they represented believed to be true. They believed that this tax as proposed would operate unfairly to England. Let hon. Members opposite make use of their political power to impose these burdens if they thought they ought to be imposel, but they need not insist on accompanying their work by jeering at those who endeavoured fairly and reasonably to put the position of those whom they represented before the Committee. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had treated the argument of the hon. Member for Dover as a claim for Great Britain, as the predominant partner, for immunity from burdens she ought to bear. His hon. Friend did nothing of the kind. What he endeavoured to show was that, whether the tax was fair or unfair, at all events by far the larger burden would be thrown upon England, because there were a larger number of these large properties in this country. How did the Chancellor of the Exchequer deal with the proposition? First of all, he turned away from the real issue by re-introducing Party politics and difficulties between the different countries, and then he turned into an issue even more unjust. The Government had laid it down times out of number that their object was in graduating this taxation to cast an increased burden on the rich. The Chancellor of the Exchequer used those terms himself. That was an issue upon which they were willing to fight hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Government said their intention and object was to cast their increased graduated taxation upon those who were rich, and, therefore, able to pay it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer claimed that the State had a right to take from the deceased the State's share of the deceased's

  659
  property before anything should pass to his successors. The Government were going to cast this upon property as it devolved on the successors without regard to what share the successors got in the estate of the deceased. He would put one simple case before the Committee, and ask whether if their (the Opposition's) estimate of the incidence was correct the Government were justified in saying they were going to tax people according to their ability? Let him take an estate divided into a million of personal estate, a large amount of real estate, and a certain amount of loose personalty. The original personalty had been settled; a portion of the land had been settled, and the remainder of the estate was only available for disposition. That passed under settlement—passed under will, and what -happened? The testator had no power over the settled estate; no power over the portion of the real estate, and he disposed of the rest partly to his own successors and partly out of his family altogether. If the smaller amount passed to his own legitimate successors they would have to pay, not upon the basis of what they received from the estate, but upon the basis of the whole estate being calculated for the purpose of this Succession Duty. They believed if the Amendment were carried this injustice would be rendered impossible, because if they were to introduce the words suggested they would exclude from the calculations that portion of the estate which the testator had no power as to the disposal of, and that portion of which he had only within his own power of disposition at the end would be the portion on which he would pay.
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: Did he settle the £1,000,000?
  MR. W. LONGreplied no. It was where he succeeded under a settlement, and had no power of settlement at all. He succeeded to it, and it passed on his death out of the direct succession.
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: It will not be aggregated.
  MR. W. LONG: What will prevent it? Is it quite clear that being settled it would be excluded?
  MR. H. H. FOWLER: Yes, as it was going out of the family.
  MR. W. LONG: Not going out of the family. The right hon. Gentleman
  660
  knew that there were such things as sons and daughters and nephews and nieces, and sons and daughters sometimes considered they were entitled to prior consideration over the nephews and nieces, and if the greater part of the estate passed over to the nephews and nieces it would not pass out of the family, but out of direct succession.
  MR. W. MOULTON: It would not be aggregated.
  MR. W. LONGsaid, most certainly there were very different opinions upon this point. He had put the case he had submitted before practical men, and he had been assured that if this succession had taken place after this Bill had become an Act of Purliament that the Estate Duty would have been payable upon the estate aggregated as a whole.
  SIR W. HARCOURTwas understood to say that this was not the case.
  MR. W. LONGsaid, he was not a lawyer, and was not competent to express an opinion on the language of the clauses of the Bill which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said would no doubt have hereafter to be decided by Courts of Law. They were fighting this Bill not because they wanted to evade just liability and responsibility, but they asked the Government if they were going to tax the rich that they should in reality tax the rich and not those whose ability to pay would not come under that description. The Amendment, in his opinion, would still more ensure that the duty should be payable in its increased degree by those best able to bear the burden. It was not desired in any way to relieve the rich of the payment of a burden they were able to bear, but what had been contended all through was that the Bill did not lay the burden on the right shoulders.
  MR. MOULTONsaid, it seemed to him that the speeches that had been delivered of late could not, even by the persons who had made them, be supposed to go to a mere amendment of this Bill. I Let them look at what the proposed Amendment was. It was to aggregate— that was, graduate according to the property—only that passed by testamentary disposition. The references beyond the testamentary disposition were really only colourable forms of that same

  661
  testament and same disposition, and, therefore, included. They were not arguing here whether graduation was to he according to the amount of the legacy or the amount of the estate. Both these points had been decided, and the Committee ought to accept the decision loyally. Gould anybody in this House think that they could honestly except, as a ground for graduation, that fraction of a man's property that he might choose to pass on by testamentary disposition? Every one knew that by settlement a man could do pretty nearly the same as he could by will. How could anyone stand up and justify graduation, if it was not based on the total wealth of a man? That which passed by settlement might be nine-tenths of a man's wealth, and this Amendment proposed to exclude all that. Could it be said that such an Amendment did anything but strike at the root of the Bill? and could it be said to be a loyal acceptance of the decisions the Committee had already arrived at? He was not standing on any technical ground, but he did say that graduation by that fraction was in no way graduation according to the power of a man to bear the burdens. It must be by his total wealth; by his total wealth being taken, that which could be passed on by testamentary disposition, and so much as he had enjoyed and had passed on to him under settlement as might be considered family wealth which he could take advantage of in arranging the disposition of that which he had left himself competent to dispose of at the end of life. If that wee so, it was impossible to draw a line between testaments and settlements when they were coming to a question of graduation. What was the reason for doing it? The reason was, they were told, that the machinery would be inconvenient. Were they going to abandon a principle of taxation that they thought to be just because it required care in arranging the machinery? For remember this was not a trivial abandonment of something that would be more trouble than it was worth. It was an abandonment of what might be nine-tenths of the whole property passing, and therefore an abandonment of the whole system of the Bill so far as graduation according to wealth was concerned. And, forsooth, the reason—and, it was
  662
  suggested, sufficient reason—for this was that it would be difficult for an executor to know exactly what the amount of the property passing under settlement was. But even supposing for a moment that was an adequate reason, and assume they were incapable of taking precautions that settlements should be known by the Inland Revenue officials just as much as wills. Suppose they admitted that, how much farther were they? The trustees of the one settlement would not be the same as the trustees of another. The consequence would be that the whole of this settled property would be split up into little bits, and the whole system of graduation with regard to settled property would have to be abandoned. He did not venture to say that this Amendment was out of Order; but if ever there was an Amendment which was diametrically opposed in principle to the previous decisions of the Committee—though it was not in form— surely it was this one. Those who were in favour of making the weight of this taxation fall upon all the wealth that a man practically left behind at his death could not give any countenance to a proposal like that under consideration.
  MR. BUTCHERsaid, he thought the hon. and learned Member had grossly exasperated the effect of the Amendment. The object of the Amendment was simply to remove one of the many impracticable and many unjust proposals of the Bill. And how did the hon. and learned Member justify his extraordinary description of the Amendment? He said, "Do you suppose we are going to tax only the fraction of property a man leaves by will? No; we shall tax his total wealth." But what was a man's total wealth? He held that the total wealth of a man was the property which he was competent to dispose of by will. "No," said the hon. and learned Member, "we have not only to consider what a man disposed of at his death, but also what he disposed of by settlement 10, 20, or 50 years ago." It was a most extraordinary statement that property which a man had placed entirely outside his power of disposition years ago by settlement was to be considered part of his wealth by will. Settled property ought to be left out of consideration. To say that property which a man had settled and parted

  663
  with 10, 20, or 30 years ago still formed part of his wealth was like saying that an individual who had not backed Ladas yesterday and who had lost £50,000 out of a capital of £100,000 over the race was still worth £100,000. The Government proposed that property passing under a man's will, property passing under settlements made by himself, and property passing under settlements made by somebody else, should all be aggregated and form an artificial fund for the purposes of Estate Duty. The view of the Opposition was that the only class of property which could be dealt with justly in that manner was property passing under a will. The plan of the Government was impracticable and unjust. There had been an expression of pious hope on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the difficulties would be overcome, but the right hon. Gentleman had not shown how. With regard to the injustice of the measure, he would ask, what justification was there for aggregating property of which a man could dispose at his death with property which he could not so dispose, it being settled property in which, perhaps, he had only had a life interest? With regard to the point of evasion, it was, of course, right that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should seek to provide against it, but on the principle adopted the Government would be unjust to the honest man in order to avoid being lenient to the dishonest man. If evasion was to be prevented it should be dealt with in a properly and clearly drawn clause that would not hit the honest man but would hit the dishonest man. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had endeavoured to justify his proposals by his present need of money. There would have been more weight in that argument if the new duties were to be imposed for one year only; but the injustice the Bill perpetrated would, if it passed, be inflicted for many years, for it was not likely, after the present experience of remodelling taxation, that any Government would for a long time to come seek again to alter the Death Duties. That was another reason why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should endeavour to remove the injustice involved in the Bill as it now stood. Reference had been made to the system
  664
  adopted in the colonies. He had looked into the Acts of many of the colonies dealing with the Death Duties, and he had found that, while the principle of graduation was adopted, in not one case was aggregation applied on the principle adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Amendment would remove from the Bill that which, if it was allowed to remain, would make the measure impracticable and in many respects very unjust, and therefore he hoped it would be agreed to.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, instead of arguing these Amendments, generally contented himself with the suggestion, directly or indirectly, and with more or less politeness, that hon. Gentlemen opposite to him were interested in the Amendments they moved. He, at least, was not interested in any of the cases which had been raised during the discussion. The hon. Member for Dover pointed out that England would be more heavily mulcted than Ireland or Scotland. Well, he lived in Scotland and not in England. Much had been made of the case of a wife inheriting from a husband or a husband from a wife. He was a bachelor. The whole Bill might be said to concern those who were to inherit large properties. Unhappily, he had no expectations. Therefore, he hoped it would not be suggested that he was animated by personal feeling. In answering detailed objections to the measure the Chancellor of the Exchequer relied a great deal on the principle of his measure. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that difficulties might exist, but urged that the principle could not be over-ridden. That principle was that every atom of property in which a man was himself interested was, at his death, to pay duty on the aggregation of the property. But that principle was violated in the second sub-section of the very clause under discussion. His hon. Friend the Member for the West Derby Division quoted a case where an immense sum of personalty was settled on persons not in lineal succession to the possessor. There was a chorus from the Ministerial Benches that that property would not be aggregated. [Ministerial cries of "Hear, hear!"] Then what became of

  665
  the principle? He did not object to the sub-section; it was a concession to equity. But it was diametrically opposed to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer called the principle of his Bill. Therefore, the principle of the Government was not one without exception; and he hoped that no more would be heard of the principle as preventing the Government from accepting this Amendment. As to whether property enjoyed by a man under settlement ought to rank with property under his absolute disposition, he agreed that, if the successors were considered, it mattered no whit whether the property came by settlement or bequest. But that was not the principle of the Government. They said that the successors were not to be considered at all, but only the dead owner, who was to be posthumously taxed. While he did not go as far as his hon. and learned Friend, he urged the more moderate contention that a man ought not to be taxed in the same way with regard to property in his own disposition and property tied up beyond his power to untie at the time of his death. It had been pointed out that the administrative difficulties of carrying out the clause would be so great that it was worth while, from an administrative point of view, to make an alteration. Such considerations had modified our whole system of taxation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself said that he was in theory in favour of a graduated Income Tax, but that it was administratively impossible, and therefore he did not carry it out. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, accordingly, was himself human; he was subject to the limitations of administrative convenience, and that should induce him to listen favourably to such arguments as the Opposition were able to lay before him. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India had told them that Somerset House was acquainted with every settlement in the country, and that, therefore, when any one of them died it would be the simplest matter in the world to discover how much property he left by will and how much by settlement, and to aggregate the two. He did not know by what system of secret espionage Somerset House became acquainted with the private affairs of people.
  SIR W. HARCOURTsaid, Somerset House became aware of settlements when Succession Duty was paid.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he did not know how far that affected the difficulty which had been pointed out. Every single embarrassment they now; had to encounter in dealing with Succession Duty would be multiplied ten thousand fold by the fact that every settlement the deceased had made would act and react on every other settlement or sum of money which had belonged to the deceased. In asking the Committee to divide with his right hon. Friend, he admitted that this was in the nature of a compromise, and that those on his side of the House looked at the matter with somewhat different eyes from gentlemen on the other side, because they thought the equitable system was to tax the man who received and not the man who left the property. That principle he was not now arguing, as they had already divided on it, but he did think they might compromise between the opinions held on both sides of the House and adopt an Amendment which, while it did not carry out to the full the equitable view of the Opposition of dealing with the Death Duties, did relieve the officers who had got to collect the tax and legatees who would be kept out of their legacies. Let it be remembered that the compromise suggested would get rid of a great many practical inconveniences—inconveniences so great that he was sure that long before the period of 20 years named by his hon. and learned Friend it would be necessary for some successor of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to revise the system the right hon. Gentleman was endeavouing to establish.
  Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 169; Noes 129.—(Division List, No. 80.)
  Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.—(No. 164.)
  Read the third time, and passed.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 9) BILL. (No. 238.)
  Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; to be read the third time To-morrow.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 10) BILL, (No. 239.)
  Reported, with an Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
  SELECTION (JOINT COMMITTEE).
  Sir J. MOWBRAY reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had discharged the following Member from the Joint Committee on Canal Rates, Tolls, and Charges Provisional Order Bills:—Mr. Brunner, and had appointed in substitution: Mr. Joseph Richardson. Report to lie upon the Table.

  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have agreed to,—
  Local Government Provisional Order (Housing of Working Classes) Bill,
  Local Government Provisional Orders Bill,
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill,
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill.
  That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend the law relating to the Limitation of Actions." [Limitation of Actions Bill [Lords.]

  SAVINGS BANKS (SOCIETIES) BILL. (No. 233.)
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 1.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again To-morrow.

  LOCOMOTIVE THRESHING ENGINES BILL.
  The Select Committee on the Locomotive Threshing Engines Bill was nominated of:— Sir Alexander Acland-Hood, Mr. Everett, Sir
  668
  Walter Foster, Mr. Jeffreys, Sir John Kenna-way, Sir John Kinloch, and Mr. Strachey.
  Ordered, That Three be the quorum.—(Mr. T. E. Ellis.)

  FOOD PRODUCTS ADULTERATION.
  Ordered, That the Committee upon Food Products Adulteration do consist of Seventeen Members.
  The Committee was accordingly nominated of:—Colonel Bagot, Mr. Bolitho, Sir Charles Cameron, Mr. Channing, Mr. Coleman, Mr. Colston, Mr. Frederick Frye, Mr. Herbert Gardner, Mr. Maurice Healy, Mr. Jeffreys, Mr. Kearley, Mr. Lambert, Mr. Horace Plunkett, Sir Henry Roscoe, Sir Mark Stewart, Colonel Warde, and Mr. Yerburgh.
  Ordered, That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records.
  Ordered, That five be the quorum.—(Mr. T. K Ellis.)

  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.
  Copy presented,—of Revised Regulations, under "The Elementary Education Act, 1876," Section 24, as to certificates of age, proficiency, and school attendance [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT (GENERAL REPORTS).
  Copy presented,—of General Report for the year 1893, by the Reverend C. D. Du Port, one of Her Majesty's Chief Inspectors, on the Schools in the East Central Division, comprising the Counties of Berks, Buckingham, Leicester, Northampton, Oxford, Rutland, and Warwick [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  CHARITY COMMISSION.
  Copy presented,—of Report of the Charity Commissioners for England and Wales (part of Forty-first Report [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  DEATHS (STARVATION, &c).
  Address for "Return of the number of all Deaths in the administrative County of London in the year 1893 upon which a coroner's jury has returned a verdict of Death from Starvation, or Death accelerated by Privation (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 476, of Session 1893ߝ4), together with any observations by the Local Government Board with reference to those cases in which applications have been made to the Poor Law-authorities for relief."—(Mr. Talbot.)
  House adjourned at twenty-five minutes after Twelve o'clock.

PERJURY, HILL—(No. 67.)

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
  THL LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord HERSCHELL): My Lords object of this Bill is to consolidate all the Statutes on the subject. As your Lordships may be aware, the enactments relating to the offence of perjury are to be found in a great number of Statutes. By various Statutes at Common Law the offence is made subject to penalties. Under the Bill the offence of perjury will consist in false swearing committed in a judicial proceeding, whilst all forms of perjury are classified under one heading. The Bill does not make any substantial alteration in the existing law, although it gives legislative effect to a certain portion of the Common Law. It is a Bill entirely of details, and its provisions will have to be carefully considered; but I think your Lordships will have no difficulty in giving it a Second Reading.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Chancellor)
  LORD ASHBOURNE: I am sure your Lordships will have no difficulty in assenting to the Motion of my noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack to give a Second Reading to this Bill. It is very desirable there should be found in one Act the provisions now distributed over several. My object in rising is not to criticise the Bill or what has been said by my noble and learned Friend, but merely to say that at a future stage of the Bill I may possibly ask for an explanation of Section 9, which proposes that the provisions of the Bill shall apply to Ireland, in order to see what changes, if any, are sought to be made by that section in the existing law.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 4) BILL.
  House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without Amendment: Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 4) BILL.—(No. 45.)
  House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without Amendment: Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.—(No. 70.)
  House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without Amendment: Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 1) BILL.—(No. 75.)
  Read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
  PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.—(No. 76.)
  Read 2a (according to Order).
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 8) BILL). (No. 73.)
  Read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
  ARBITRATION (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.] (No. 78.)
  House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without Amendment; and re-committed to the Standing Committee.
  TROUT FISHING (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]—(No. 85.)
  Amendments reported (according to Order), and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
  OUTDOOR RELIEF (FRIENDLY SOCIETIES) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 88.)
  PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 89.)
  PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 90.)
  COMMONS REGULATION PROVISIONAL ORDER (LUTON) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Bead 1a, to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 91.)
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (GAS) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read la, to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 92.)
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES) (NO. 2) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 93.)
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (NO. 8) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 94.)
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (POOR LAW) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 95.)

  RAILWAY RATES AND CHARGES PROVISIONAL ORDER (EASINGWOLD RAILWAY, &c.) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; Read 1a, to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 96.)
  House adjourned at twenty minutes before Five o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.