Sitting of 27 March 1895

Preamble
The House met at Fifteen minutes after Twelve of the clock.
MOTION.

  PROFIT-SHARING.
  MR. A. J. MUNDELLA MR. A. J. MUNDELLA (Sheffield, Brightside) moved, that it be an Instruction to the Committee on the South Metropolitan Gas Bill that they have power, if they think fit, to insert the following clause:—
  "Subject to the regulations set forth in the first Schedule to this Act, the directors of the company may, at such times as they deem expedient, prepare a scheme for the purpose of enabling persons in the employ of the company and holding ordinary stock to elect a representative or representatives to take part with the directors in the management of the company, find may submit the scheme to a special general meeting of the company duly called with notice of the business to be considered thereat, and the meeting may adopt the scheme either without alteration or with such alterations (not being inconsistent with the said regulations) as the directors may assent to; and the scheme so adopted shall be submitted for the approval of the Board of Trade, and that Board may consider the same, and may either approve the same without alteration, or may suggest any alterations therein not being inconsistent with the said regulations; and if the directors assent to the alterations (if any) so suggested, the Board of Trade may approve the scheme as altered.
  The scheme, when approved, shall he published in The London Gazette, and shall, from the date of such publication, have, during the period prescribed in the scheme, full force and effect."
  He said that this proposal arose out of the Royal Commission on Labour, to the Report of which was attached an admirable Appendix by Mr. George Livesey, the chairman of the South Metropolitan Gas Company, dealing with this subject. He (Mr. Mundella) would not move this Instruction if it imposed any obligation whatever on the gas company. It was not a new departure, because it had already been adopted with great advantage. The
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  Instruction was practically in Mr. Livesey's own words. On February 13, at the annual meeting of the company, Mr. Livesey explained to the shareholders that he was in favour of the clause, and that he should be glad to see it inserted in the Bill, but he was defeated by a majority of one on the board of directors. He knew it would be a satisfaction to Mr. Livesey and several of his co-directors if the clause was inserted in the Bill. If the system of profit-sharing which Mr. Livesey advocated were adopted he (Mr. Mundella) believed it would have the very best possible results when it came into operation.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. J. BRYCE,)suggested that in order to make the instruction more elastic, "insert a clause" should be substituted for "insert the following clause."
  MR. MUNDELLAgladly adopted the suggestion.
  On the amended Motion being put from the Chair,
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsaid, he entirely agreed with the spirit which dictated this proposal. He thought they all felt that it might be very desirable to make some provision, even of a tentative character, for the representation of the workmen on the board of directors; and any company which took the initiative in carrying out such a scheme would deserve well of those who desired to promote good social relations between employers and employed. He was not sure whether the Instruction even now might not fetter the discretion of the Committee. He hoped care would be taken to leave the hands of the Committee free.
  MR. BRYCEthought the object aimed at would command approval in every part of the House. He thought there was nothing more desirable than that the principle of profit-sharing should have a fair chance. As to whether the amended Motion would give sufficient scope to the Committee, perhaps Mr. Speaker would favour them with his opinion.
  *MR. SPEAKERsaid, he was not in a better position to express an opinion on the matter than any other Member of the House. He understood the object to

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  be aimed at was to give the Committee latitude, and, therefore, perhaps, the case would be met by inserting "a clause or clauses."
  MR. MUNDELLAsaid, that suggestion would give more elasticity.
  *MR. SPEAKERput the Motion to the House in the form suggested.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsuggested that they should leave out of the Instruction all the words after "the management of the company." Then the Instruction would simply be an expression of opinion on the part of the House that the Committee might usefully adopt the principle of the proposal, leaving it to the Committee to carry out the details in whatever way it might be thought desirable. He moved an Amendment to this effect.
  MR. BRYCEpointed out that this clause had already been considered by the company, and he was not quite certain that any change in the direction suggestion would carry the same amount of assent; otherwise, he saw no objection.
  MR. MUNDELLAagreed that the alteration would afford still greater elasticity to the consideration of the scheme, but the clause had received the assent of a number of the directors and shareholders. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not press the Amendment.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsaid, in these circumstances he would not press the Amendment.
  Amendment withdrawn, and Instruction agreed to.

  LONDON MUNICIPALITIES BILL.
  *SIR C. DILKEon a point of Order with reference to the Orders of the Day, said that what should have been the first Order of the Day—the Bill of the hon. Member for the Uxbridge Division of Middlesex—had disappeared from the Paper. Hearing on Monday that the hon. Member did not intend to go forward with the Bill, he asked the hon. Member whether he would move on Wednesday that the Order be discharged. He understood the hon. Gentleman to say he would. The Motion had been made the previous day (Tuesday) in the usual manner, and
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  he now asked whether the Motion was made by the request of the hon. Member?
  *MR. SPEAKERsaid, it was done at the express request of the hon. Member. The Motion was placed in the hands of the Clerk, and he put it in the ordinary way from the Chair.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  IRISH LIGHTS BOARD BILL.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNORin moving the Second Reading of this Bill, said it was not of a political or Party character; it would be correctly described as a purely commercial Bill. The people who desired a change in the constitution of the Irish Lights Board were the commercial classes of Ireland, the traders, merchants, shipping community, and the Chambers of Commerce. They felt that, in the interests of trade, the constitution of the Board ought to be altered. For many years there had been a general demand that a new Board ought to be constructed, which was more in harmony with the advanced condition of commercial affairs at the present time. The present Board consisted of 22 members. Five of them were nominated by the Dublin Corporation; the other 17 were a permanent body, their numbers being maintained from year to year by co-option when a member died or resigned. This majority of the Board was not considered to be a popular or representative body. They were practically an irresponsible body, beyond the reach of public opinion, and impervious to public criticism. The nominees of the Dublin Corporation were powerless to effect any change in their proceedings; the 17 solid "irremovables" were always there, and, having the great majority on the Board, they ruled and maintained affairs according to their wishes. This Board had the dispensation of a considerable amount of money. There had been no change whatever in its constitution, except in the name, since it was created by the Irish Parliament in 1786. The only body represented on the Board was the Dublin Corporation. Belfast, with its great and increasing trade, had no

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  representative; neither had Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Galway, Drogheda, Wexford, nor Londonderry. The time had, therefore, come when some serious attempt ought to be made to make a fundamental change in the constitution of the Board. Even the Dublin Corporation, which had five representatives on the Board, was limited to the selection from members of its own body. It was not allowed by Act of Parliament to go to the Chamber of Commerce in Dublin, and to select a suitable person to be a representative, nor to go to the great shipowners of Dublin and select from among them a representative. The Dublin Corporation was obliged to send as representatives the Lord Mayor and the High Sheriff for the time being, and three Alderman; and, although there might be among the Common Councillors men more suited to act as Commissioners, the Corporation had no power to select them. The Bill, therefore, proposed to alter the Board with the view of making it more representative, and to bring it into accord with the modern requirements of commercial life. The Bill was a very simple one. It proposed to constitute a new Board of 19 Members, the Board of Trade to have power to nominate eight of the number. The other 11 members would be allotted thus—two for Dublin, two for Belfast, one each for Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Sligo, Derry, Wexford, and Drogheda. It might not be a perfect Bill. He did not know that a perfect Bill was ever brought into the House, and he was not sure that a perfect Bill had ever left the House. The proposals of the measure might be inadequate and defective, but whatever objections there might be to them, they could surely be met by Amendments in Committee. He claimed the sympathetic consideration of the President of the Board of Trade, who admitted yesterday, in answer to a question put to him, that the present constitution of the Irish Lights Board was a subject that demanded inquiry. From that admission they surely might infer that the right hon. Gentleman would give his assent to the Second Reading of the Bill.
  *SIR A. K. ROLLITsaid, that as this subject had been discussed at meetings of the Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom, he
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  had been asked to second the Bill. He did so because he believed that the principle of the Bill was at any rate to some extent correct, and because he thought the measure made a proper protest against some of the chief features of the existing system. Yesterday the President of the Board of Trade spoke of the zeal and capacity of the members of the Irish Lights Board. He had no personal knowledge of the subject, but he was bound to say they had not been beyond criticism in respect of some matters. The expressions of the right hon. Gentleman had been both denied and doubted. For instance, Mr. Turner, of Londonderry, speaking at the meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce at Plymouth, in September, 1893, spoke of the unsuccessful attempts to secure better lighting on the route followed by the trans-Atlantic steamers, and appealed to the Associated Chambers to help in obtaining better lighting, and bringing about legislation which would amend the constitution of the Irish Lights Board. A defence set up by the Board was, that they had been greatly hampered by the action, or rather inaction of the Board of Trade, and that they had not been able to do as much as they would have done because of difficulties placed in their way by the Board of Trade and the Treasury. There was a singular unanimity of Irish opinion in favour of this Bill. Representations had been made both from the north, south, east, and west, from Belfast, Londonderry, Cork, Limerick, and even from Dublin, which already had some representation on the Board, though he was told that the representation was not satisfactory, and that, on some points, in addition to those mentioned by the mover of the Second Reading, the Dublin Corporation representatives had not received quite the treatment they thought themselves entitled to. In pursuance of these representations, Memorials had been presented to the Board of Trade, and to the Treasury, and so long ago as March, 1894, a Memorial was forwarded from the Associated Chambers of Commerce to the Chief Secretary, which set out the strong expressions of opinion to which he had referred, and which also showed that some of the members of the Board were not quite so regular in their attendance as they might be. A reply was

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  received to the effect that the matter was under consideration. The question was raised again in the House of Commons on June 19th, and the President of the Board of Trade then gave a somewhat similar answer. The subject was, therefore, under consideration for some time, and he hoped that in what appeared to be everybody's business, and consequently nobody's business—at one time it was the business of the Chief Secretary, at another time of the President of the Board of Trade, and at another time of the Treasury—something would at last be done. This was undoubtedly a real Irish grievance. Until 1854 Ireland had its own Lights Board, and managed its own lighting affairs. At that time jurisdiction was transferred to the Board of Trade, and with it £100,000 of accumulated funds, which were available for making the service efficient. He was obliged to confess that, looking at the figures, Ireland had not been treated as liberally as those who had life and property at stake in her seas might reasonably expect her to be. He thought it might fairly be said that the constitution of the Board was one cause of the complaints which were made. He was told that practically the approval of the Lord Lieutenant to appointments to the Board was a mere matter of form, and that existing members of the Board co-opted almost entirely of their own accord. Co-optation was not a principle which in these days completely recommended itself, its adoption was apt to produce a good deal of stagnation and lethargy. The case of Dublin might be quoted for the purpose of showing that the principle of representation in some form was already conceded. The Dublin Members were ex officio, but still they did represent the Municipality. Why should Dublin have representation on the Board and other ports, such as Belfast and Cork, be under a comparative disability? Fifty-five per cent. of the Irish shipping was located in Belfast. Belfast had of its own 125,000 tons of shipping; Dublin, 50,000; and Cork, 24,000. If, as the Mover said, they took into account the shipping which frequented the ports, it was possible Cork would be placed very high in the list, showing that they had a differential system of dealing with Municipalities which was wholly at variance with the
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  statistics on which the representation ought to be based. Yesterday, the hon. Member for King's Lynn (Mr. T. Gibson Bowles) asked whether there was any precedent for elective boards in reference to lighting. There were two distinct precedents—the case of Hull, which had local jurisdiction, and the case of Newcastle.
  *MR. T. GIBSON BOWLESremarked that his question related to general lighthouse authorities, such as the Trinity Board or the Northern Lights Commissioners.
  *SIR A. K. ROLLITpointed out that this was a local demand for representation of various localities, and, therefore, the cases of Hull and Newcastle might be taken as precedents. But there were precedents by analogy in the case of Rivers Conservancy Boards and District Fishery Committees. The whole tendency of legislation in modern times had been in the direction of representation. He doubted whether the Bill should be limited entirely to representation of Corporations. He thought there should be some representation of marine interests and of shipowners. He also thought that the owners of cargoes should have some representation on the Board. He was struck by the remarkable fact that on this Board which dealt with the practical matters of seafaring life, on which the safety of life and property at sea depended, there were apparently only two persons of nautical experience, one being a retired Naval Officer, and the other the Harbour Master of Kingstown, unless an ærated water manufacturer could be included in the same category. The other members of the Board consisted of a timber merchant, two bank and railway directors, two land agents, a wine merchant, a distiller, a draper, a telescope maker, a retired grocer, a pair of Peers, a manure manufacturer and the representatives of the Corporation of Dublin. He thought that a Board which had grown by co-option into a body of that character required some little reformation; and he therefore hoped the Bill, which proposed to give a representative character to the Board and to add to it men of local knowledge and experience in nautical matters, would be allowed to go to a Grand Committee or a Select Committee for consideration.
  SIR D. MACFARLANEsaid, he would prefer to see a Lights Board for the whole of the United Kingdom to distribute the money derived from light dues in an equitable manner, in the interest of the shipping community without regard to nationality. It seemed to him that there should either be more money spent on lighting the coasts of the Kingdom, or much smaller light dues levied on shipping; because there was a considerable surplus, over and above what was spent on lights throughout the Kingdom, which went to the Treasury, and it was a hardship on the shipping community to be taxed beyond what was needed to supply their requirements in the way of lights. But his experience in sailing around the coasts was that there were many places where lights were required; and that undesirable state of things should not be when there was money to remedy it. He had frequently applied to the Board of Trade to have dangerous rocks and currents amongst the Orkney and Shetland islands marked by buoys; and had always been told that there was no money available. But that did not appear to be the case. There was money available; and the shipping community had a right to have all their reasonable requirements met first, before any surplus from the light dues was put into the Treasury. This was not a local question, but a national question. It was not desirable to have separate arrangements for separate nationalities; and what he was in favour of was the establishment of a central body to look after the lighting of the coasts of the Kingdom for the benefit of the whole maritime community.
  MR. G. W. WOLFFsaid, that as one of the representatives of by far the largest shipping port of Ireland, he was glad to put his name on the back of the Bill, though he did not agree with all its details. The constitution of the Irish Lights Board dated from long ago, when the circumstances of shipping were totally different from what they were now; and hostile though he was to the Board, he should say that they had endeavoured to carry out their duties to the best of their ability, but from the nature of their constitution they had not the advantage of that general and local knowledge of maritime
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  affairs which would have enabled them to discharge their functions more effectively and with more benefit to the shipping community of Ireland. Belfast felt very strongly that it had no voice whatever in the management of the lights, or in the placing of the lights on the Irish coast. It felt that all the more because out of the 270,000 tons of shipping registered in Ireland, 155,000 tons were registered from that port, and yet all the endeavours the port had made to get representation on the Irish Lights Board had failed, because the Board was co-opted and not elected. A few years ago there was a vacancy on the Board, and it was suggested to the Board that it should be filled by the Chairman of the Belfast Harbour Commissioners; but the Duke of Abercorn was elected instead. He had the greatest respect for the Duke of Abercorn, but even supposing his Grace had the necessary knowledge of nautical matters, or matters connected with shipping, ho very much doubted that his Grace had the time to attend the meetings of the Board. He thought the Board would have done infinitely better if it had filled up vacancies by the co-option of representatives of the various maritime towns of Ireland, instead of merely electing persons whose social position threw a sort of lustre on the Board. The co-opted members of the Board had the whole management of the affairs of the Board in their hands. There were representatives of the Corporation of Dublin on the Board, but they really had nothing to say to the management of the affairs of the Board, and when those little trips and expeditions were taken, they were carefully excluded. In Belfast they had certain local grievances against the Board which he was sure would have been remedied long ago if the Board were a representative body. They had agitated in Belfast to get a light placed at Blackhead, the northern entrance to Belfast Lough. A steamer, called The Lord Lansdowne, was wrecked there, simply for want of the light, and other vessels were very much endangered. The only answer they got to their application to the Lights Board was that it was a local matter, and that if there was a light wanted there the Harbour Commissioners should put it up, and when it was

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  pointed out that the Blackhead was outside the jurisdiction of the Harbour Commissioners, the Board then replied that they had no money for the purpose. That showed that Belfast had reason to be dissatisfied with the Board. He was sure that if the port had a representative on the Board, its interests would have been attended to. He did not think the proposal of the Bill that the Board should be elected partly by the Board of Trade, and partly by the Corporations of the maritime towns, was a proposal that would work well. He thought the electors of the Board should be persons connected with shipping, or if the election ought to be entrusted to public bodies, the Harbour Commissioners would be more appropriate bodies for the purpose than the Corporations. But questions of that kind could be considered by the Select Committee, to which the matter would probably be referred, and if the result was the passing of a Bill to give a representative character to the Board of Irish Lights, there was no doubt that the interest of the shipping community would be attended to far better than they had been in the past.
  MR. DUNBAR BARTONsaid, he agreed that if the Irish Lights Board had introduced into their body representatives of ports like Belfast and Cork, they would have saved themselves from much of the opposition that was now brought against them. He should not have risen if it had not been for the reflection made on the existing Board by one or two of the speakers, because it was admitted by the President of the Board of Trade the previous day; it had been admitted with great fairness by the Mover of the Bill, and also by the hon. Member, who had just sat down, that this Board discharged its duties efficiently. The hon. Member for Islington was a little bit inconsistent in his criticism. He told them, for instance, that this was a co-optative Board. He believed the hon. Member himself was a member of the Trinity Board, which was also a co-optative Board, and he would therefore say to him: "Physician, heal thyself." He agreed with the hon. Member for Argyllshire (Sir. D. Macfarlane), and he believed it was the true principle that should guide them in this Bill—that there should be uniformity of
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  treatment on this particular matter in the three parts of the United Kingdom. He had very good authority for that, because in the Home Rule Bill it was specially provided that light houses should be excepted from the local legislature, and should be kept under imperial control. The hon. Member for Islington, dealing with the Irish Light Boards, said in effect—
  "Look at the members of this co-optative Board: here are a retired grocer and an ærated water manufacturer."
  But the retired grocer and the ærated water manufacturer were the two members appointed by the Dublin Corporation. The ærated water manufacturer was a very eminent citizen, a very capable business man, and a suitable man to be on the Board. Yet the hon. Member for Islington, in this sweeping manner, condemned the Board which put on these good business men. The particular men the hon. Member selected for criticism were the very men it was desired to bring in by this Bill, and they were appointed by the Corporation and not co-opted by the Board. There seemed to be a misunderstanding as to the powers of the Board. It was supposed that the members of the Board could, of their own accord, provide the lights and make the changes that were suggested in the different localities. That was a mistake. The Board in Dublin, before it could undertake any new work, must first get the approval of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, and before it could embark in any new expenditure, it must first get the approval of the Board of Trade. The hon. Member for Belfast had referred to a complaint from that port on a point which was obviously worthy of consideration. But in that particular case Trinity House coincided with the Board in considering that, as the Board was confined to dealing with ocean-travelling ships in the Channel, the matter was one for the Harbour Authorities, and not for the Board. Again, as to the case from Londonderry, the Board had not got the necessary funds to provide a light, it being requisite first to deal with a more urgent claim from the South of Ireland, which was of more importance, because of the trade to America by the South, than was the case of the Northern

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  port. It was only fair that these matters should be explained, because, whatever might be the constitution of the Board, he believed it had discharged its duty with signal success and satisfaction to those who were concerned. He had mentioned the necessity for uniformity of treatment, but if they were to make any change in the constitution of this Board, there was another principle it would be necessary to observe, and that was that taxation and representation should go together. But the two did not go together in the Bill. It was not the ratepayers of the towns who paid the dues, but the shipping community, and if they were to have taxation and representation going together, the shipping community must be represented on these Boards. In a Memorandum issued by the Chamber of Commerce, objection was taken to the constitution of the Board of Commissioners of Northern Lights, and althought that body had upon it representatives of certain large towns and maritime counties, the Memorandum stated that there was absolutely no representation of the shipping interest, which was preferable to corporate representation. He agreed that such places as Cork and Belfast ought to have representation. But on the Irish Lights Board was Mr. Watson, a director of the Cork Steam Packet Company, who was also an engineer. Surely he was a fit person to be on a nautical board of this kind. Then, again, for dealing with the lenses of these lighthouses, surely a telescope-maker was a most useful member. Sir Howard Grubb was a most distinguished man; and, on all these questions of lenses, there was no one of greater authority. Then among the other members there were Sir Robert Ball, also a great authority on scientific matters, and successful men of business like Mr. Pimm and Mr. Jamieson. They had thus got on the Board gentlemen acquainted with nautical matters, business men, and scientific men, such as Sir Howard Grubb, and he believed that the Board had exercised their co-optative power with great discretion. He did not deny that there were anomalies on the Board, and he agreed that places like Belfast and Cork should be represented, but when they came to deal with this matter they ought to deal with it on two principles, namely—firstly, that
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  there should be uniformity in the treatment of this question in the three parts of the United Kingdom; and, secondly, that taxation and representation should go together, and that the shipping interests who paid the dues should be entitled to adequate representation.
  MR. T. R. BUCHANANremarked, that, as regarded the constitution of the Irish Board, he should not presume to say anything. But his hon. Friend who had just spoken had alluded to the constitution of the Scotch Board. The Scotch Board consisted of the Lord Advocate, the Solicitor General, the Provosts of the four large towns of Scotland, and representatives of the maritime counties. But these latter were the Sheriffs, who had nothing directly to do with navigation, and had no authority whatever on the subject. It was, if anything, far too official a board in that respect, and could not be cited as a board having considerable professional or other authority. With regard to what had been said on the subject of uniformity, he did not think the hon. Member for Argyllshire was to be understood as desirous of having one Lighthouse Board for the United Kingdom. They in Scotland, at any rate, had derived great advantage from the fact that they had a board of their own, acquainted with the necessities of lighting on the coast of Scotland. Trinity House did the same in Scotland as it did in Ireland. It gave a preference to the southern over the northern route. What they in Scotland had urged through the Commissioners of Northern Lights for many years was, that there should be better lighting of the N.E., N., and N.W. coasts of Scotland, not with special reference to any port, but with the view of lighting the coasts better, to assist in the development of the northern route from America to the north of Scotland and England, and to German and other northern European countries. They continually found, when they made those recommendations, the declaration that the Trinity House could not sanction the expenditure. He instanced the case of Rattray Head, a lighthouse which the Commissioners had constantly urged on the consideration of the Trinity House. For many years, also, they had been urging the claims of

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  Flamneel Island and the East Skerries on the East Coast, and only within the last few days, in answer to the hon. Member for Ross, the President of the Board of Trade said that Trinity House had declined to sanction the request.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. J. BRYCE,)said, that his answer was that it was a long time since the correspondence as to this particular lighthouse.
  MR. T. R. BUCHANANtrusted that if there was to be an inquiry thin power vested in the Trinity House would be investigated, which, considering the enormous value of their shipping, what they wanted was not less but more money spent on lighthouses. As to the contrast between Ireland and Scotland, he did not understand the argument of the hon. Member for Islington. Scotland contributed more than Ireland, and received less from the fund, but he confessed this was not a question of rivalry. They wanted the interests of navigation considered; they wanted more money to be spent on lighting, and with respect to that he thought they might build their lighthouses cheaper than at present. Their lighthouses cost more than lighthouses cost in America or in any part of the world. He did hope that this subject, having been ventilated in that House, they should have a full inquiry into it. He could assure the President of the Board of Trade there was a strong feeling in Scotland on the subject. They felt that they did not get their interests fairly attended to by the Board of Trade and that that northern portion especially did not receive justice.
  *MR. T. GIBSON BOWLESjoined in pressing that this subject should be submitted to a Select Committee of the House. The last Committee which sat on it was in 1844— 50 years ago, and since then the Board of Trade had, he might say, come into existence, and had been invested with large and remarkable powers. Undoubtedly the time had come for submitting the whole matter to a Select Committee. The inquiry in 1844 was undoubtedly complete and exhaustive—there were about 1,000 pages of it—but there was now a different state of things from what existed at that time. Neither
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  that Bill or any other Bill could be satisfactory until that inquiry was made. The hon. Member opposite said there was not enough money. That was not the case. The ships and seamen contributed over £500,000 every year. That was put into a general fund. What happened was this. About £100,000 was embezzled for other purposes. Of course he did not use that word offensively, for the right hon. Gentleman was allowed by Act of Parliament to exercise his own discretion. He should have a few remarks to make on the exercise of that discretion at the proper time. There was ample money, but of this large sum £100,000 was taken by the Board of Trade, which applied it to official purposes, superannuations, pensions, and such like. He said that the whole of it should be applied to lighthouses and lightships, or if there was a surplus it should go towards the diminution of light dues, but he believed that this £500,000 was not too much. He knew personally how straitened the Trinity Board were for money, because the Board of Trade would not allocate sufficient funds. He had applied for a light on the eastern side of the Wash, and the only argument was, that the Trinity Board had not money enough. The Member for Argyllshire had said that one Board should manage the whole of the Kingdom, and it was to be presumed he would establish a Government Department. He did not agree with that. He thought three separate Boards better. He thought local knowledge came in here. He did not mean merely with regard to lights—for these bodies were not supposed to be seamen—they managed the men who manage the lights—he meant the power of dealing with local persons, conducting local business in local ways. An English Board might not manage the business to the satisfaction of Scotchmen or Irishmen, and vice versa. The real defect which lay at the root of it was that although there were three Boards, they were all bound hand and foot and placed in the hands of one "Board," whose name was the President of the Board of Trade, for, of course, there was no other Board of Trade than the President himself. They had too much of one Board already, and what he wanted was less of it. He was loth to interfere in an Irish

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  Debate, unless when he could go into the Lobby with his Irish Friends. But it was most important, in the interests of commerce generally, that the Irish lights should be properly maintained. They were told, as an argument for this Bill, that the constitution of this Board was an anomaly. What the wickedness of being an anomaly was he did not know, but there were many anomalies in this world, and there were not a few that worked extremely well. This Board had worked well, and the only question he recognised as having a practical bearing was—Were their lights properly maintained, and did the Board do the business for which they existed? No hon. Member who had supported this Bill had ventured to reply to that question in the negative, and no one who had any knowledge of the lights on the Irish coast could answer it in the negative. On the whole, their service was extremely well done, and what answer was it to that to say that the Board was an anomaly? He did not care how the Commissioners were composed so long as they did their work well. If the Board did not do all it should, it was the fault of the Board of Trade. The fault lay in the fact that it was deprived of sufficient power and money by the Board of Trade, and he did not think any reconstitution of this Board of Lights, even if they got an absolutely ideal Board in Dublin composed entirely of Irish archangels, would work well so long as it was kept financially, and, as to all its actions, under the control of the Board of Trade. The Bill proposed to give the Board of Trade the power to nominate eight members to this Board. The Board of Trade ought not to be encouraged in this way. It had got far too much restraint on Lighthouse authorities already. The present Board had done their duty admirably, and if they had in any degree fallen short of the full performance of their whole duty it was entirely due to their being placed too much under the English Board of Trade and being deprived of the proper quota of money contributed by shipping for lights. He thought the better way of getting the whole system of lights in proper order was not that this Bill should be passed, but that the President of the Board of Trade
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  should agree to refer the whole subject to a Select Committee of this House.
  *MR. W. FIELDsaid, that in a discussion of this kind the fact ought not to be overlooked that this was an Irish question, and, therefore, ought not to be overloaded with English and Scotch issues. The number of questions asked recently in the House in regard to the action, or inaction, of the Irish Lights Board had exceeded the number which had been asked of any Governmental Department in the three Kingdoms. That was a fair proof that complaints had arisen respecting the administration of this Board. As a member of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, moreover, he was aware that many complaints had been made to that body in regard to the want of efficiency on the Board. Lights had been asked for at various places on the coast, and no doubt one reason why they had been refused was the want of capital, expenditure that ought to be provided by the united action of the Trinity Board and the Board of Works. Still, the Lights Board might have done many things for the benefit of Irish commerce which it had omitted to do. The administration of the Irish Lights Board was very different in many details from that of the Trinity Board, especially in regard to the nautical department and the system of apprenticeship, and, if he was correctly informed, the Irish Lights Board actually had not, at the present moment, in their possession an official chart of buoys around the Irish coast. It appeared to him that that was one of the most important requirements of the Board. But the more important question at issue was not the administration, but the constitution of the Lights Board. Members were mainly non-elected and were co-opted, and they exercised authority without responsibility. The members of the Dublin Corporation were the only elected portion of the Board, and they were cleverly shut out by manœuvres common on Irish Boards from any share in the administration, and the consequence was that the Board was managed by three or four irresponsible individuals who could not be brought under the influence of public opinion. The commercial community were not adequately represented on the Board, and he agreed with the hon. Member

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  for Mid Armagh that those who paid the dues should have a larger representation upon it. The question of the reconstitution of the Irish Lights Board had been before the House for the last 20 years, but, like many other Irish matters, it had been shunted aside from time to time for other matters which were supposed to demand more consideration. The matter had now arrived at a stage, however, when it had become absolutely necessary, in deference to public opinion, that the Board should be reconstituted, and, as the President of the Board of Trade had himself admitted that the existing constitution of the Board was anomalous, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would assent to the Second Reading of the Bill, and then refer it to a Select Committee. If the right hon. Gentleman did not support the Bill, he should strongly urge the Mover of it to press the matter to a Division. Why English and Scotch Members should intervene in the discussion of a purely Irish matter concerning the administration of the Irish Lights Board, and endeavour to tack on larger Imperial questions upon it, thus making a settlement of the question more difficult, he could not understand.
  THE MARQUESS OF CARMARTHENsaid, that notwithstanding the concluding remark of the hon. Member who had just spoken, he desired, as an English Member, to make a few remarks on the Bill. His justification for doing so was that the question involved went a good deal beyond the scope of this Bill. The whole question of lights at sea had become one of such wide-reaching importance that it was impossible to deal with it partially. He granted that there was need for great improvement in regard to the lights on our coasts, and foreign countries could set them an example in this respect. The coast of France was infinitely better lighted than many parts of the coast of England and Ireland. But, above all things, a system of uniformity was necessary in the lights along the coasts. For that reason he wished to say a few words in opposition to the Bill. In the first place, he thought the Bill was unnecessary. There was no absolute urgency for it, especially as the President of the Board of Trade had admitted that the
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  Irish Lights Board, as at present constituted, had carried out their duties with zeal and capacity. He disagreed with the Mover of the Bill in regard to the way in which the Members of the Board were to be appointed; for in his opinion the selection of members by Corporations of cities was not a good way of forming a Lights Board. As to the reference of the Bill to a Select Committee, the President of the Board of Trade stated on the previous day that he did not think the Measure would form a good basis for inquiry by such a Committee. Moreover, at the present time, a Committee of the House was dealing with the whole question, and surely the present Bill should be deferred until that Committee had reported. He hoped, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman would not support its Second Reading, and he moved that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
  *MR. RENSHAWseconded the Amendment.
  MR. T. SEXTONsaid, the House could not fail to observe that the rejection of the Bill had been moved by a noble Lord who had no connection with Ireland, and also that the only Irish Member who had opposed the Measure was the hon. and learned Member for Mid Armagh, who represented an inland town, and who appeared to be the standing counsel in the House for all anomalies and lost causes in Ireland. The Bill was one of those minor reforms for which Irish Members had struggled unavailingly for more than 20 years, and looking to the policy of both Parties in the House in regard to Ireland, he should have thought the Bill would be accepted as a matter of course. Hon. Members of the Unionist Party, while they denied the claim of Ireland to Home Rule, had vehemently proclaimed on public platforms their readiness to concede to her reforms of a minor character, and to allow the public opinion of Ireland to be efficaciously applied to all departments of administration, and, therefore, they might have been expected to support the Bill. Then, as to the Liberal Party, as their main policy and the reason of the continued existence of the Government were that they were willing to give to the people of Ireland control over those

  285
  affairs in which Irishmen were principally concerned, it might be supposed that they would have welcomed the Bill, and that the President of the Board of Trade would have regarded it in the light of a boon. There was no department of administration which had been subject to such repeated, continual, and angry interrogations as the Irish Lights Board, and he should have thought the right hon. Gentleman would have welcomed any Bill which afforded an opportunity of placing this Board on a representative basis. The Debate had travelled somewhat wide of the mark. The object of the Bill was limited and specific. As to whether an inquiry ought not to take place, not only into the constitution of the Irish Lights Board, but also into the whole question connected with lighthouses and lights, he could only say he was not willing that any such inquiry should be planted on this Bill. The Bill being for a limited purpose, its promoters had a right to the judgment of the House upon that limited purpose. If there was a grievance in England or in Scotland, let hon. Members ballot and bring in a Bill for their own grievance. It was quite true there was a reservation in the Home Rule Bill that legislation upon trade and lighthouses should be an Imperial function, and it was in the spirit and letter of that reservation that they applied to the Imperial Legislature to correct the existing anomalies. The hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of uniformity of treatment, but there was this vital difference between the three Boards charged with the management of lighthouses, that while the British Boards, the Trinity House, and the Commissioners of Northern Lights, were responsible to British opinion and sensitive to its working, the Irish Board was not responsible to Irish opinion, and disregarded and felt contempt for Irish opinion; and if, after 20 years of labour in this House on the part of Irish representatives, the House refused to read this Bill a second time, the Irish Board would be properly confirmed in their view that Irish opinion was to be despised. When he looked to the personnel of the Board, and, having been for two years an ex officio member, he knew nearly all the gentlemen, he failed to see in what sense they could be regarded
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  as more representative of the payers of light dues than any other class of citizens would be. But he took issue upon the principle. The light dues increased the freights, freights increased the price. The merchant or retailer who bought the goods when delivered from the ship added the freight and the light dues to the price. The consumer paid the increased price, and therefore it was not the persons who nominally paid the light dues, the shipper or consigner, who provided the funds, but the community; and therefore, in committing the election of this Board into the hands of bodies elected by the community, they would in a very real sense give the control to those who supplied the funds. On the present Board there were five gentlemen elected by the Corporation of Dublin, but they were a helpless minority in a Board of 22. He asked the President of the Board of Trade was it tolerable at this time of day that the administration of funds raised by a levy on the public and expended for public purposes so important as the facility of commerce and shipping, and even safety of life, should be confided to a body constituted and perpetuated in the manner of a social club, for perpetual co-optation was nothing more. The weak defence was made that the Board worked very well. To that he replied, in the first place, that the staff of experts under the Board did the work, and, in the next, that it would be impossible in a country like Ireland, where the level of intelligence was tolerably high, to secure, even in the exercise of vicious principle, a thoroughly stupid Board. The Board was a political Corporation. The members co-opted Unionists. They would not co-opt a Roman Catholic unless he was a Unionist: and if one looked through the list of names he would find that every gentleman on the Board, except a couple returned by the Corporation of Dublin, was a member of the Unionist Party. That objection, no doubt, did not affect the question of their efficiency, but it affected administration and patronage. The Board had contracts to make and appointments to give. So far as his experience went, no one who was either a Catholic or a Nationalist need ever hope for an appointment. Such a condition of things was a stigma and an offence and ought to be removed. He

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  submitted that the proposal of the hon. Member for Wicklow was one very suited to the necessities of the case. The President of the Board of Trade might be willing to consider whether the Board of Trade should nominate a large or smaller portion of the Board, and if the Municipal Corporations in the maritime counties were not the most suitable bodies, then in the Schedule attached to the Bill other bodies might be named by way of substitution or addition. Considering that a general inquiry was in progress, which might bear on the subject dealt with by the Bill—though he supposed it would rather be directed to the system of lights and the question of funds rather than the constitution of the authorities—it was very unlikely that the Report of the Commission would concern itself with the constitution of the Irish Lights Board. But even admitting theoretically the possibility that the Report of the Commission might touch on the subject of the constitution of the Board, he should advise his hon. Friend, in case the Second Reading was granted, to agree to postpone the nomination of the Select Committee for a reasonable time, to allow for the receipt of the Report on the Mercantile Marine Fund. Considering the length of time that the grievance had existed, and that they had been agitating against it, and that they had in power a Government friendly to Irish claims, and the irritation that the irresponsible character of the Board as at present constituted caused throughout the country, he did not think his hon. Friend would be justified in casting discredit on his own principle by assenting to the withdrawal of the Bill. While he thought the judicious offer to consider the propriety of waiting for the Report before appointing the Select Committee would be accepted, it should be on the understanding that the Select Committee should be appointed in time to afford some assurance that it would report before the termination of the Session.
  MR. BRYCEcandidly admitted that there had been ample justification for the Introduction of the Bill. There could be no doubt that the constitution of the Irish Lights Board was not satisfactory. It had been admitted for many years past, and had not
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  been seriously disputed by any hon. Member who had taken part in the Debate. While saying that, he admitted that many Members of the Board were competent men, and that their administration of the lighthouses was conducted with zeal and ability. He also conceded that, at first sight, it was absurd that great mercantile and shipping communities like Belfast and Cork should be entirely unrepresented. But when they asked what was to be substituted for the present system of co-optation the matter was difficult. Although a defence could be offered for the other Lighthouse Boards of the country which could not be made for Irish Lights Board they afforded no precedent. Trinity House demanded respect, because of the eminent professional capacity and experience of those who composed it, which shielded it from criticism which might otherwise be passed on its non-co-optative character. The Scotch Board, although no doubt open to criticism, yet was composed of ex-officio persons who were directly connected with particular ports of Scotland, and who brought to it local knowledge which was entirely wanting in the Irish Board. Although these English and Scotch Boards did not create a precedent for the representative system in Ireland, they did not support the present Opposition to the Irish Lights Board. But, while no one had defended the Irish Lights Board, no one had defended the provisions of this Bill except the hon. Member for Kerry. All that could be said for the Bill was, that some change in the law was necessary. If a Resolution to that effect were before the House he would vote for it, but he found in this Bill a proposal that the majority of the Board should be elected by the corporations of certain towns in Ireland—Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Drogheda. He could not see the slightest ground for giving all this representation. If permitted at all it should not go beyond Dublin, Belfast, and Cork. But there was nothing to show that these Corporations in any way represented the mercantile and shipping community. The hon. Member for Kerry ingeniously suggested that the consumers were the persons to be considered, and they were represented by the Corporation. But consumers, as consumers, had not the knowledge required. Local

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  knowledge was not necessary in the sense in which local corporations obtained it. The lighting arrangements of a particular harbour were in the jurisdiction of particular harbour authorities. But these lighthouses were not necessarily connected with any particular harbour, but were intended for the shipping of the whole world. The Fastnet and Tuskar Lighthouses, for example, were for the vast mass of shipping which came to the ports of the United Kingdom from America. Nineteen-twentieths of this shipping came to British, and not to Irish, ports. Localities, if represented at all, should be represented in a minor way, to give the appointment of the majority of the Board to corporations representing localities would encourage the latter to make competition to do things for a particular community instead of having regard to the general interests of shipping off the Irish coast. What the composition of the Lights Board ought to be, he was not prepared to say; that was much too large a question to enter upon then. Whatever were the considerations involved, they went to show that Town Councils were not the bodies to be entrusted with their appointment. With the exception of the hon. Member for North Kerry, no one had defended the proposal to give the appointment to municipal corporations. The hon. Member for Belfast said he objected to the nominees of corporations; the hon. Member for Dublin suggested shipowners rather than corporations. These things being so, he could not find the lead basis in the Bill for a satisfactory scheme or arrangement. The unanimity was limited to dissatisfaction with what existed; but there was not the least unanimity as to the remedies proposed. Although the Bill related to Ireland only, it was not possible to separate Ireland altogether from other lighthouse authorities of the United Kingdom. For the sake of expressing dissatisfaction it was not necessary to give a Second Reading to the Bill; and it was not desirable, because it would be committing the House in a way in which it ought not to be committed with regard to a substitute, whether for Ireland or any other part of the United Kingdom. The Bill was only distributed the day before yesterday, and it was a little hard on Irish light-payers, and on Ireland alto-
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  gether, that the House should be asked to read it a second time before there had been time for it to be considered in Ireland. Bills of this kind ought to be distributed a little longer before the Second Reading, in order that there might be time to elicit opinion in Ireland.
  *MR. T. SEXTONsaid, that on two recent Wednesdays the House had given a Second Reading to two Bills which had been distributed only a day or two before—one relating to the Municipal Franchise and the other to the constitution of Boards of Guardians.
  MR. BRYCEsaid, he was not prepared to assent to the proposition that because the House sometimes did a thing, therefore it was always to do it. So far as he knew, this was the first Bill on the subject, whereas the other topics named had often been before the House previously. It had been argued that there ought to be but one Lighthouse authority for the United Kingdom, and there was a good deal to be said for that view. The position of the Board of the Trade did not seem to be accurately known. The Board had to administer a limited fund upon which there were other charges besides those for lighthouses; it was not in its power to get rid of the other charges; and it did its best, with the advice of the Scotch and Irish Boards and of Trinity House, to make the available money go as far as possible. The Board had given the best proof of its wishes by appointing a Committee, presided over by the right hon. Member for Bodmin, to deal with the whole question of the Mercantile Marine Fund, to see whether anything could be done to supply the painful lack of pence under which the Board suffered, and to report whether there could be a re-arrangement by which greater satisfaction could be given to shipowners and more money set apart for the provision of lights. It was possible that the Report of the Committee might have material bearing upon the constitution of Lighthouse authorities. He did not desire that the House should have to reject the Bill, seeing that it was brought forward with the best intention to remedy a long-standing grievance; and he hoped the House would be relieved from the necessity of voting by the Second Reading being postponed or by the Bill being

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  withdrawn. Further, agreeing to the fullest extent with the indefensibility of the present system, and that the matter deserved and ought to receive immediate inquiry, he was prepared to assent to the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the whole subject of the constitution of Lighthouse authorities to report as soon as it could, though not without waiting for the Report of the Committee on the Mercantile Marine Fund. He hoped hon. Members from Ireland would regard this offer as a substantial advance. The matter would not be relegated to the limbo of good intentions. The House would commit itself to the declaration that this was an important matter deserving the attention of Parliament; inquiry would accelerate legislation; and he, therefore, trusted that the House would not be put to the trouble of a Division.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsaid, there was one observation of the right hon. Gentleman with which he wished to associate himself, and that was his protest against the common practice, by no means confined to Irish Members, of introducing Bills on the first days of the Session, obtaining places for them, and not printing them until a day or two before they came on. There was a Bill on the Paper that day, relating to English land tenure, and proposing to introduce the Irish system into England; it was not circulated until yesterday; and there were other Bills as to which similar complaint might be made. Such a Bill as this, which simply proposed to substitute the elective for the co-optative principle in the formation of the Board of Irish Lights, was less open to objection on the score of late publication than more complicated Measures. As to the rejection of the Bill being moved by an Englishman, it was a matter of Imperial concern; and it would not be practicable to include Irish lights in a Home Rule scheme. Having personally, when President of the Board of Trade, taken great interest in the administration of the three Lighthouse Boards of the United Kingdom, and having visited a large number of lights himself, he could not accept the view of the right hon. Gentleman, that the constitution of the Irish Lights Board was indefensible, that it was not compatible with modern ideas,
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  and that it did not come before them with anything in its favour. He entirely demurred to the favourite view of hon. Members opposite that nothing could be well administered which was not administered by a representative body. Surely the most important test to be applied to any body was whether it had done its work well or not.
  MR. BRYCEsaid he did not intend to commit himself to so large a proposition. All he said was, that the Irish Lights Board had not the advantage of special technical knowledge any more than it had a locally representative character. The Trinity House, although not representative, had the advantage of great professional knowledge and experience, and justified itself on that ground.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHcontended that men like Mr. Watson, Sir Robert Ball, and other members of the Board were as well qualified to administer matters of this kind as any men in the United Kingdom. If the objection taken to the constitution of the Board was worth anything, surely it would apply with much greater force to the constitution of the Scotch Board, which was purely a legal Board, composed of the law officers of the Crown, the sheriffs of certain counties, and a few provosts, who, he believed, never attended. No greater anomaly could be conceived, yet he ventured to say that no lights in the world were so well looked after as those round the Scotch coast. The most important consideration in this question was, that the service should be well conducted, and he was perfectly certain that the right hon. Gentleman would find it a most difficult task to constitute a Board which would carry on this service better than the present Board, whatever might be the anomalies of its constitution. He did not want to enter into the financial part of the subject. That was in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin and his colleagues. If the Board had not had sufficient funds, it was not their fault nor the fault of the Board of Trade. It was the fault of Parliament. Owing to the requirements of existing Statutes, a considerable portion of the sum levied annually as light dues was expended for other purposes not connected with lights, and if any proposal were made to relieve the light

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  dues of that expenditure he did not think much objection would be raised. He thought his hon. Friend the Member for Belfast was right in blaming the Board for declining to co-opt some gentleman representing the commercial and shipping interests of Belfast. He regretted that they should have so exercised their power of Co-optation as to exclude a representative of that City; but that was a very different thing from the proposal in this Bill, which started with the assumption that the Corporations of certain towns in Ireland were the best authorities to choose representatives of the commercial and shipping interests of the country. If there was to be a system of representation at all—and he did not deny that some representation might be advisable—it ought to be something more analogous to the manner in which local Marine Boards were appointed. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, had objected, and, he thought, rightly objected, to the adoption by the House of the principle of representation proposed by this Bill, and proposed that the whole subject should be considered by a Select Committee. He did not quite understand whether the right hon. Gentleman intended that such a Committee should consider the Constitution of Trinity House, and of the Scotch Lights Board as well.
  MR. BRYCE: I intended that it should deal with the Irish Board primarily. All that I have before my mind at present is the desire to confine the work of the Committee to the question of the constitution of the Irish Lights Boards.
  *SIR M. HICKS-BEACHsaid, he would not press the right hon. Gentleman any further, but he would like to say, as regarded Trinity House, that he believed it would be absolutely impossible for any Committee to constitute a Board more thoroughly qualified to administer the Light Service in England than the Trinity House Board. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman, in framing the Reference to the Committee, would be very careful so to frame it as not to interfere with the work of the Departmental Committee which was presided over by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin. The right hon. Gentleman admitted, in the course of his
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  observations, that this subject of the constitution of Lights Boards must necessarily be, to a great extent, mixed up with those financial questions which were the principal subject of inquiry by the Committee of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin. He thought it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to dissociate the two subjects, and he very much regretted that the House had not had the advantage of some observations from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin upon the proposals in the Bill, and he hoped they might hear his views now on the suggestion of the President of the Board of Trade. He would be very sorry to raise any objection to the appointment of a Committee, but two inquiries on the same subject, conducted by different people, and going on at the same time, were not likely to lead to any practical or useful results, and he trusted that whatever might be done in this matter, it would be something that would bring things to a practical issue, and make such changes as might be fair and right in the constitution of the Irish Lights Board without unfitting it for the task entrusted to it, or casting the smallest reflection on those individuals who had so admirably performed their duties.
  MR. LEONARD COURTNEYsaid, his observations would be very few, because he had no authority from the Committee over which he presided to speak on the special question before the House. The reference to that Committee was to inquire into the financial conditions of the Boards of the three countries, and the question whether any change in the composition of the Local Board in Ireland was desirable did not directly come within that reference. Of course they had to consider not only the sources from which the Mercantile Marine Fund was taken, but also the way in which the Fund was spent, and the question whether there might not be some scope for economy in the substitution of one Board for three. The Committee had strictly confined their attention to the question whether any change in the composition of the Boards or a union of the Boards would lead to any more economical arrangement of the Mercantile Marine Fund. He thought it was highly probable that the Committee would be led by

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  their inquiry to suggest that it might be of advantage to substitute an inquiry such as that suggested by the President of the Board of Trade. He was bound to say that the proposal of the Board had not been received with general approbation; nor did he think it at all a practical suggestion, for, if it were adopted, it would still be necessary to have subsidiary boards in different parts of the kingdom, and the conditions under which they would work in relation to the Board of Trade would also have to be considered. He respectfully suggested that this question should be investigated by a Committee, and he should strongly support the suggestion of his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. Therefore he hoped the hon. Member in charge of the Bill would withdraw it. No doubt the Irish Board itself might be dealt with, but they would also be driven to the consideration of the still more anomalous condition of the Scotch Board, and they might have to consider the constitution of Trinity House. These things being necessarily bound up together, was there any advantage in pressing forward the Second Reading of the Bill, even if it were not open to the criticisms to which it was exposed. The hon. Member for Islington had only committed himself in the vaguest way to any approval of the proposals for the election of 11 Commissioners to represent maritime cities, and even the hon. Member for North Kerry had admitted that these proposals were open to criticism. That was not a conclusive recommendation of the Measure to the House.
  MR. SEXTONexplained that what he had said was, that it was evident that the details of the proposals in the Bill must in a measure depend upon the conclusions of the Committee.
  MR. COURTNEYremarked that there were only two substantial proposals in the Bill, one being that a portion of the new Irish Lights Board should be nominated by the Board of Trade, and the other, that the Maritime Corporations should nominate the remaining portion. The hon. Member for Kerry was apparently prepared to abandon the proposal for the nomination of Commissioners by the Corporations. Surely, in the circumstances, it would be better not to proceed with the Bill, but to remit the whole subject to a Select
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  Committee for inquiry. He trusted that the Bill would be withdrawn, the opposition to it being, of course, withdrawn first.
  SIR JAMES FERGUSSONpointed out that the first clause of the Bill provided that the first election of Commissioners to represent maritime cities should take place in January 1896, that the second clause provided that the Commissioners appointed by the Board of Trade should hold office from January 1, 1896, and should act with the persons elected under Clause 1, and that the third clause provided that on December 31 1895, the present Commissioners should cease to hold office. The results of these provisions would not improbably be that for a time, at the beginning of next year, there would be no Board at all. It struck him that there was much truth in the remark which had been made that this was a very Irish Bill.
  MR. H. O. ARNOLD-FORSTERwished to explain why he could not vote with his hon. colleague on this occasion. The hon. Member opposite, he thought, admitted that it was not reasonable or advisable to refer great questions relating to the navigation at sea to a body of gentlemen who might have no knowledge of the subject. [Mr. SEXTON: "I never said so."] But there was obviously need for a reform of the present Board. The proposal in the Bill was, that the majority of the new Board should be elected by persons who were themselves elected, and had no necessary connection with the sea. It was possible, therefore, that the 11 persons elected by the Corporations would not be elected on account of any special maritime knowledge, and so, on a Board of 21 members there might be a perpetual majority unacquainted with what, after all, was the real business of the Board. His hon. colleague had correctly expressed the views of the Harbour Board and Corporation of Belfast, that there was need for a reconstruction of the Irish Lights Board, but after the offers that had been made by the President of the Board of Trade to refer the whole subject to a Committee, he could not give his vote for the Second Reading of this Bill. He believed that he should be representing the views of all those

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  who were really concerned in the navigation of ships in Irish waters, as well as of the Harbour Board of Belfast, if he asked that a material portion of this measure—namely, the portion relating to the election of members of the Lights Board by Maritime Corporations, might be reconsidered.
  MR. J. ROSSexplained that he had come down to the House with the intention of supporting this Bill, for, without doubt, his constituents were anxious that some change should be effected in the constitution of the Irish Lights Board, which was at present unsatisfactory. But he could not shut his eyes to the fact that a most reasonable offer had been made by the Government, and he thought it would be exceedingly unwise to reject that offer. The proposal that the whole subject should be referred to a Select Committee was a thoroughly sensible and practical offer, and, in the circumstances, he should not vote for the Second Reading of the Bill.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 76; Noes, 193.—(Division List No. 35.)

  FARM SERVANTS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  *MR. SEYMOUR KEAYrose to move the Second Reading of this Bill. He congratulated the House and the Scottish people on the fact that such an early opportunity had been more or less unexpectedly presented of bringing forward the question of the state of the Housing of Scottish Farm Servants. This was not only an old but a thoroughly admitted grievance. It had been endured by the farm servants of Scotland for the last 50 years. The Scottish farm servant was an intelligent man, but he was also a very law-abiding man, who bore mutely, to a very great extent, sufferings, which in the case of men of a different stamp would have caused then to band together, and make a great deal more ado. A law-abiding, long-suffering class like this ought, however, specially to commend itself to the consideration of the House. It had been said in certain papers, and perhaps would be said by some Members of the House, that the grievances of farm servants in regard to their dwellings had been dealt with by recent enactments. They were referred to the Housing of the Working Classes
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  Act of 1890, and it was alleged that that Act either provided, or was intended to provide, a means of remedying these grievances. In the first place it would not be said in any part of the House that the grievances had been redressed. Whether the Act ought to have redressed them, was, of course, a very different matter. The only sections of the Act which had any possible bearing upon the question were Sections 30 and 31, dealing with buildings unfit for human habitation. The first of these sections prescribed that it was the duty of the Medical Officer of Health of every district to represent to the local authority of the district any dwelling house which appeared to be in a state so dangerous or so injurious to health as to be unfit for human habitation. The next section went on to provide the means whereby complaints might be made, so as to put the Medical Officer of Health in motion. If it was held that these sections remedied the grievances of the Scottish farm servants, it would come to this, that a farm servant was to be held as not possessing any grievance unless he was living in a house which was actually so dangerous as to be unfit for human habitation. It was a terrible thing to declare that a large section of the most industrious class of the community should be unprotected with regard to their housing by any legislative enactment, so long as it could be held that their houses were not absolutely so dangerous as to be unfit for human habitation. So that even if it had been found that the Medical Officer had been put in motion, the reference to him and the obligations laid upon him under the Act were not of a character properly to provide a remedy for the present condition of the houses of the Scottish farm servants. But, even supposing suitable cases were brought forward, the Act of 1890 only provided that the Medical Officer of Health should apply to the proper authority, and the proper authority, on his report, would make a closing order. It was perfectly obvious that this was a section which might be very applicable to towns, but it could have no possible application to sparsely-peopled rural districts. What would be the earthly use of attempting to put in motion a machinery which resulted merely in a closing order? Supposing such an order was issued for

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  the closing of a great many of the bothies, and even of the married quarters in which farm servants lived, where would the people go when the wretched shanties in which they lived were closed. You might as well close the farms, because the farm servants would absolutely have nowhere else to go. So far as he read the Act it did not provide any power to compel either the landlord or anyone else to repair a farm servant's dwelling. For these reasons he did not think it would be contended that his Bill was unnecessary. The Bill provided, not only that a house must not be dangerous for human habitation, but that it should be provided with sufficient and suitable accommodation in the way of cubic contents, according to the number of people living in it. He was not aware that any officer of health under the Act of 1890 would be justified in saying that he would apply his closing order to a bothy, however small, and were the cubic contents allowed to each person ever so insufficient. The Bill also provided that there should be, where necessary, fireplaces. Then there was the question of accommodation for each sex, which was a most important question, and almost lay at the root of country life in Scotland. The amount of illegitimacy in Scotland, especially in the sparsely-populated districts, was largely caused by the insufficient separation of the sexes in these country shanties. The leading operative provision of the Bill was Clause 6, which said:—
  "If any person, with the written consent of two householders living in the district in which any building used or intended to be used as a dwelling or sleeping place for farm servants is situated, complains in writing to the medical officer of health of that district that such building is in a condition which does not conform to the requirements of this Act and of the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, he shall within eight days after receiving the complaint inspect the same and transmit to the local authority the said complaint, together with his opinion thereon, and, if he is of opinion that the building is in the condition aforesaid, he shall represent the same to the local authority."
  He was curious to know if the hon. Member for Forfarshire, whom he saw in his place, had won his great, and, no doubt, well-deserved success at the polls at the last election, and had at the same time escaped from giving any pledges during the contest that he would do what
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  he could to remedy the grievous state of the farm servants' cottages in his own constituency. He would refer him to a case which was tried in Forfar two or three years ago. It was a case where two farm servants were sued for deserting their employment, and the reason which they gave, and which was not disputed, was that the bothy was unfit for human habitation. There were no beds to lie upon, the floor was composed of protruding stones, while the rain ran down the inside of the walls and the stars could be seen through the roof at night as they lay upon the floor. With the permission of the House he would quote a few passages on this subject from the articles written by the Special Commissioner of a northern newspaper, who, about three years ago, reported on the state of farm servants' houses in Scotland. An inmate of one these places said to him:—
  ''When the lads live in the kitchen they must get some attention, but the bothy just looks after itself. You would never gainsay this if you saw one."
  SIR H. MAXWELL: Will the hon. Member say what part of Scotland he refers to?
  *MR. KEAYsaid this passage referred to Aberdeenshire. The Special Commissioner went on to describe the place:—
  "A glance may be taken at what, for the sake of euphony, may be called the interior economy of a bothy—the exterior, as a rule, may speak for itself, being simply a rough view of a shed, standing somewhere near the confines of the steading. Throw open the door and you will find yourself in a long, low apartment, panelled round with box-beds, and having for chief furniture the 'kists' of the inmates, a deal table, and a paraffin lamp. Here the men live, and move, and have what is called their being. At five o'clock all hands turn out on the cold floor, and, having hastily dressed, proceed to 'meat' their horses and clean the stable. Half-an-hour afterwards they return to the bothy for breakfast. One of their number having been dispatched a quarter of an hour previously to boil the kettle, everything is ready for breakfast—that is to say the kettle. To make porridge would be a culpable waste of time; so each man, seizing upon his wooden cup—Scottice, ''luggie''—throws in about three spoonfuls of meal, and upon that, boiling water at discretion. At eleven o'clock comes 'lowsin' time, and at midday dinner—brose again. Then, when the shades of evening begin to fall, or at six o'clock in summer, the ploughman homeward plods his weary way to bothy and brose once more, when down he flings himself on his 'kist,' and waits the boiling of the kettle, for even brose require some making."

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  When asked about the cleaning of the bothies one of the men replied:—
  "There's a lassie comes from the farm house once or twice a-week to clean the bothy. I've known her come three times, but that's something extraordinary.''
  With regard to the bothies in Forfarshire, he would give the following quotation on the responsibility of the editor of a newspaper called the Plough:—
  "The young men are herded in these hovels in numbers of from two to a dozen. Now, a bothy is famous neither for expensive furnishings nor for bodily comfort. No one in passing a farm will mistake a bothy. It has an appearance all its own. Some bothies have a heap of ashes at the door, others will be known by a window with a straw or paper pane for glass, while others will be known by the primitive means of access allowed to the light of day. No man who saw a bothy can ever mistake one for a more humane habitation. Inside it does not improve; a broken floor, uneven and dirty, the only thing in the shape of furniture being a few rough-looking beds, along with a wooden form, the pot, pan, ladle, and salt box. There is nothing about a farm that receives so little attention as the bothy, not even the pigsty."
  He would add a few lines from the Report of this same Special Commissioner upon the married quarters as distinguished from the unmarried quarters:—
  "I found that my friend shared the general horror that all of his class expressed regarding the houses provided for married men, and many, he told me, rather than live in one of them, went into town when they got married. No one may doubt the truth of this assertion who cares to have a look at some of these 'rickle' houses. Let me describe one in a few words. At the corner of a field by the roadside, if you come across a thatched building of loose rubble, sometimes stove in at one end, and blackened by the weather, with an ugly patch of garden ground showing a few cabbage runts, and a half-dismantled wall in front, the chances are that it is one of the 'cottages' sacred to the family life of the labourer. Enter the low-crowned doorway, and in the dismal "but and ben" you may perhaps make out a few pieces of blackened furniture—a deal table, a few chairs, perhaps a meal girnel, and an old trunk, and one or two "creepies," with little gaping children squat upon their tottering frames. If it is light enough you may discover that the floor is of earth, and the windows of nothing in particular; that the fire of peat or logs burns on a bare hearth, and that the smoke which fills the room in vain seeks escape by a 'hinging lum.' This elegant contrivance is a sort of long wooden box, with a bowie or half barrel at the top to serve as stalk. The roofs are covered with divots, then thatched, and finally 'raipit,' but still it is far from watertight, as you would find if you were an inmate for a day or two in winter. Altogether it is a most despicable apology for a dwelling-house, and was probably
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  built a couple of hundred years ago. But here the bright young farm hand brings his bride, and year by year they begin to degenerate. At thirty-five she is an old woman. I shall not readily forget one of these places I chanced to enter one evening. A path of mud led to a ricketty door that creaked on a rusty hinge, and when it was opened, it disclosed the family circle huddled round a fire of peat and damp sticks. That was the only light. Father and mother sat glum and stoical, as if every gleam of happiness had gone out of their lives, while the children flopped about on the floor. In the 'ben hoose' an elderly man, bleared and furrowed, bent over a volume of smoke with a half-eaten speldron in his hand."
  MR. COCHRANE: Can the hon. Member give the name of the estate and the family?
  *Mr. KEAYsaid, he could not. The remedy suggested by the Bill was the very natural one of putting upon the landlord the statutory obligation of keeping these farm servants' houses on farms in repair. [An hon. MEMBER: "Why the landlords?"] He would tell his hon. friend opposite why the landlord should do it. It might be asked why the farmer should not do it. He would tell the House. Any structure erected by the tenant ipso facto became the property of the landlord. It was no matter where the material or the labour came from. He admitted that the stones, and the turf, and the wood might have been the property of the tenant, but he also pointed out that every structure in Scottish law, and he believed in English law as well, erected by the tenant became, as already said, ipso facto the property of the landlord. He held, therefore, that the tenant could not be expected to keep these houses in repair, for the obvious reason that whatever money he laid out upon them became an asset of the landlord. And not only that, but the farmer would probably have to pay twice over, that is to say he would not only have to build and keep these houses in repair, but his rent would very probably be raised on him in consequence of the improvements which he had effected. It was only equitable, therefore, that the landlord, who was the proprietor and who received the rent of the holding, should be legally bound to keep the houses in a reasonable state of repair and comfort for his toiling men. He knew cases in his own constituency in which large farmers had not only to keep the

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  roofs of their bothies in some kind of repair, but had even to expend large sums in repairing their farm buildings in order not to risk the lives of their stock. And all this was done at the risk of having their rents raised upon them in consequence of their having done so. Living under such circumstances, therefore, it is surely only reasonable that the landlord, and not the tenant, should be made responsible for the provision of healthy dwellings for the agricultural labourers. He need not enter into the details of the Bill, the nature of its sanitary provisions, the method of inspection, the nature of the penalties, and the mode of appeal. These were matters which could be considered or modified, if need be, in Committee. He would only now appeal to the House to pass the Second Reading of the Bill unanimously, and thereby to assert the principle, which he thought would be assented to by both sides of the House, namely, that the same amount of protection to the health and life of the country toilers should be given as was already possessed by workers in the towns.
  SIR W. WEDDERBURN, in seconding, said, that this was a question which had been pressed on his attention in his own constituency, and he thought that the only reason why it had not hitherto been so much considered was because the people affected, though a large and deserving class, were so much scattered that they had not an opportunity of combining and forcing their needs on public notice. The conditions of the Scottish farm labourer were somewhat different from those in England. The hiring of the farm servants in Scotland was for a year, and the hiring was arranged at hiring fairs; so that the farm labourer, when he entered service had no opportunity of seeing the condition in which he would live during his period of service. But having engaged himself, he might go to the farm and find that the accommodation was extremely bad, and yet for a year, or at least for six months, he had no escape from the accommodation without incurring a penalty of some kind. Another difficulty was that there was no hiring agreement for house accommodation, and the servant, therefore, had no remedy. In some cases the tenants had
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  done what they could to improve the servants' accommodation, but they could hardly be expected to do much when the money they expended was lost eventually to them. The landlord, therefore, ought to be looked to in order to make this accommodation good. In many cases the landlords had done their duty in this matter, and they wished to see the law altered so that the careless and indifferent landlords should be compelled by law to do what the good and conscientious landlords already did for their servants.
  *MR. C. B. RENSHAWmoved the following Amendment:—
  "That this House, whilst recognising the desirableness of amending and rendering more effective The Public Health (Scotland) Act, 1867, considers it undesirable to legislate on this subject without conferring the benefits equally on all classes of the community."
  He said that he had listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn, and during a residence of nearly 29 years in Scotland he must say that he had never met with any class of buildings of the character described by the hon. Member. Sad as some of those descriptions were, he did not believe that any hon. Member thought that they correctly described to any considerable extent the actual state of affairs with regard to the houses of farm servants, or any other class of the community in Scotland. If, however, it was the case, then the fact reflected very considerable discredit on hon. Members who belonged to the Liberal Party, because they had enjoyed a substantial majority of the Scottish representation for a long time. The hon. Member had referred to the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, and had pointed out the difficulties of bringing those portions of it which bore on the subject now under discussion into practical effect. He held that the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890 was unnecessary in order to provide a remedy for the state of matters which the hon. Member would make the House believe largely prevailed throughout Scotland. In the first place, there was no reason to suppose that any particular class in the community ought to be dealt with differently from other classes of the community.

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  He could see no reason whatever why, if it could be shown that any houses in Scotland continued in an insanitary condition, some change in the general law of the country should not be made. Its operation would have the effect of remedying any existing defects in the case of houses occupied by the agricultural population or any other class in the community. It seemed to him that the provisions which existed in the Public Health Act of 1867 were, to a large extent, quite sufficient to meet the difficulties of the case, even if they arose in so acute a form as that which had been described by the hon. Gentleman. In the 16th Section of the Act of 1867, with regard to nuisances, very considerable powers were given to the local authorities; there was a provision as to insufficiency of size, defect of structure, ventilation, want of repair, proper drainage, suitable water supply, cesspool arrangements, rendering any inhabited house, building, premises, or part thereof, injurious to the health of the inmates or unfit for human habitation, and constituting a nuisance. Very considerable powers were given, by which local machinery could be set in motion, which would have the effect of compelling anyone who neglected his duty in respect of these matters to respect and obey the law. The Local Government Act of 1894, and the Local Government Act of 1889, had made considerable changes with regard to local powers under the Public Health Act of 1867; and those changes had been in the direction of placing, in the first place, under the Act of 1889, on the District Committee of the County Council, in place of the old Parochial Board, the re-responsibility of administering the Public Health Act in Scotland. That had made an enormous change in regard to the administration of the Act. He did not think that anyone who had been following the course of administrative work in Scotland could have failed to observe that, since the responsibility of the administration of the Public Health Acts had been devolved on the District Committees of the County Councils, there had been a distinct advance in regard to the manner in which those Acts were administered. They had been more effectively administered, and the Executive had been strengthened by the
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  change. The Act of 1894 provided that the Parish Council would now be able, on any application to it, to apply to the District Committee. The District Committee needed no longer to wait on the application of a certain number of householders; but the Parish Council, on its own initiative, or, if moved, could take action; so that a farm servant in any part of Scotland could appeal to the Parish Council and so set the machinery in motion with regard to defective sanitary accommodation of bothies. If in any part of Scotland such buildings as the hon. Member had described existed, the new Parish Council should be urged, on every occasion that necessity arose, to put in force the full powers they enjoyed, and in that way to secure, as everyone wished to see secured, for all classes of the community, the very best possible accommodation that could be provided. Turning to the Bill itself, it seemed to him the hon. Member had had two things in his mind, the bothy system and the question of ordinary houses occupied by the agricultural population. The provisions of the Bill, however capable of application they might be to one of those classes of occupancy, were probably little capable of application to the other class. The Bill provided that every building on a farm used or intended to be used as a dwelling or sleeping place for farm servants after the passing of this Act, shall be provided with sufficient and suitable accommodation in the way of cubic contents, fireplaces, sanitary arrangements, and fixtures. That seemed to him to be an entire departure from anything yet provided by Legislation with regard to any class of houses. What did the hon. Member mean by fixtures? It might mean anything from a hat peg to a telephone. The Bill went on to provide that—
  "And also where persons of both sexes inhabit, or are intended to inhabit such building, with proper separate accommodation for persons of each sex."
  He would like to know what the agricultural population of Scotland had done that in future separate accommodation was to be provided for a man and wife, and that they were no longer to be permitted to live together.
  *MR. SEYMOUR KEAYsaid there was no such provision in the Bill.
  *MR. C. B. RENSHAWsaid, that that seemed to him the simplest and most natural interpretation of the language of the Bill.
  *MR. SEYMOUR KEAYsaid the provision of the Bill was that where both sexes inhabited a building, separate accommodation for each sex should be provided. There was no compulsion that a man and wife must live in the separate accommodation. Separate accommodation was merely to be provided, and, of course, would be used when propriety demanded.
  *MR. RENSHAWunderstood then that if there were two rooms in a house one was to be labelled "For men," and the other "For women," that one should be the husband's room and the other the wife's. That seemed a very extraordinary provision. Then the Bill went on to provide that the local authority was to have power to make bye-laws in respect of matters contemplated in the section. The Lord Advocate knew very well what difficulty there had been in regard to bye-laws under the Local Government Act of 1889. In this Bill, however, it was proposed to enact that bye-laws were to be made without any limitation whatever, as to what the bye-laws were to be about, or without any general guiding rule as to the fixing of them. It was further proposed that—
  "Where it appears to the Local Authority, on the report of the Medical Officer of Health, that the provisions of this Act are not complied with in the case of any building, the Local Authority shall by written notice, to be given within one month after receiving such report, require the landlord to make such alterations and additions therein as may he required to give such sufficient, suitable, and proper accommodation as aforesaid."
  What was the position of a landlord in this matter? Take the case of a farm under lease. The landlord might under this provision be compelled to build entirely new cottages without any consideration whatever in the matter of rent. Take the case of a tenant farmer who applied some rooms, which had been erected for other purposes, to the accommodation of some of his farm-servants. The machinery of the Bill might be set in motion, with the result that the landlord might be compelled to erect entirely new buildings for the accommodation of farm servants. There was one other grave defect in the proposals of the hon.
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  Member, and that was that they did not deal with one of the most difficult problems in sanitary administration. They might require good and sanitary buildings to be erected, but how were they going to secure that those buildings should be kept in thoroughly good order? He was aware of the fact that under the Act of 1867 there was great difficulty indeed in the public authority compelling occupiers of houses to keep them in good sanitary condition. He considered this Bill was unnecessary, because it proposed to deal with one particular class of the community in a different way from that in which other classes were dealt with under existing Legislation. He held that what was necessary and desirable was more vigorous action on the part of the existing local authorities, and a general Amendment of the Public Health Act, which would apply, not to one class, but to all classes of the community. They might then expect to see the public health laws carried more effectively into operation, and the happiness and the comfort in the homes of all classes secured. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.
  *CAPTAIN T. HOPEsupported the Amendment. There was a general feeling on the part of those interested in local administration in Scotland that it was very desirable to have a thoroughly good Act, amending and improving the Public Health Acts, so as to bring them more up to date; but there was, he submitted, a very great objection to taking up the case of one particular section of the community, and especially to taking it up on such poor grounds as had been stated in support of this Bill. He failed to recognise a description either of the Scotch farm-servants or of the Scotch farm-servants' houses in the somewhat vivid passages which were read by the hon. Member for Elgin. He imagined that those who wrote those passages had been accustomed to visit very different parts of Scotland to any he was familiar with. He had no desire to stand in the way of any improvement it was possible to make in the dwelling-houses or in the means local authorities had of insisting that dwelling - houses should be kept in a sanitary condition, but he did desire to see a question of this kind approached

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  as one affecting the whole community. There ought not, in a matter of this kind, to be any piecemeal Legislation. The hon. Member laid great stress upon what he (Captain Hope) believed was practically the custom in certainly all well-regulated farms, namely, to keep separate the labourers of the two sexes. The hon. Member opposite said the Bill provided for separate accommodation, but that there was to be no compulsion to use that separate accommodation. That seemed to him to be a curious provision. He thought it quite right to provide separate accommodation for the sexes; but he did not see the advantage of providing it if there was to be no compulsion to use it. He noticed that Section 6 of the Bill provided that two househoulders should send notice in writing to the medical officer that a building in their district was in an unsanitary condition before the medical officer could take action in regard to that building. But if a building were unsuited for habitation, why should a written notice from two househoulders be necessary in order to put the sanitary officer in operation? Surely it was the duty of the medical officer to inspect such buildings, and if he found them unsanitary to insist on their being put into a state fit for habitation. If a necessity existed for an improvement in the public health Legislation of the country, the matter should be dealt with as a whole, and not piecemeal, and in relation solely to one particular class, or a portion of one particular class of the community. He begged to second the Amendment.
  *DR. FARQUHARSONsaid, the Report on the Housing of the Rural Population of Scotland was a sufficient justification for the Introduction of the Bill; and, besides, the Bill was a necessary corollary to the Local Government Act passed last year. Under the existing law, houses could be inspected and could be condemned by the medical officer if unsanitary; but in many instances it was found impractical to give full legal effect to the medical officer's report, because it would mean that the unfortunate occupier of the condemned house would be flung out on the roadside without a proper substitute being provided for his accommodation. What was wanted was, that the medical officer should be allowed to dispose as well as propose; that he should be able
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  to say that not only that a particular house should come down, but that another, fit for habitation, should be built by the proprietor. As a landlord in Aberdeen, he was not afraid of the Bill, for although it might entail additional expenses on the owners of land, he felt sure that the local authorities would deal leniently with existing proprietors, and would not attempt to put the provision of the measure into operation with anything like a revolutionary rush. As a rule proprietors were compelled to set the houses on their estates in order. If they did not provide fairly good cottages for the labourers they would not be able to let their farms. But there were some landlords whose impecunious condition did not permit them to erect proper cottages on their farms, and he thought they should be assisted in carrying out the excellent object of the Bill by being allowed to borrow money from the State on easier terms than was now possible. The argument of his hon. Friend who moved the rejection of the Bill was simply that, if they could not do everything, they must do nothing. He thought the question the House had to consider was, whether a strong and overwhelming case had been made out that one section of the community should have priority over the other sections in the treatment of their grievances. Such a case for special action in regard to the farm servants of Scotland had, he thought, been fully made out. Never mind the details of the Bill. No doubt, some of its provisions should be amended in Committee; but, looking at the Bill as a whole, he unhesitatingly supported its Second Reading.
  *SIR HERBERT MAXWELLsaid, that, according to the hon. Member for West Aberdeen, the House was not to mind the details of the Bill. For his part, he desired to protest against the growing practice of introducing Bills, and passing them to a Second Reading, irrespective of the nature of the provisions of those Bills. It was to the details of the measure that he took exception. They all wished to see the agricultural labourers better housed, but he doubted whether the Bill provided the best means for securing that desirable object. The hon. Member who introduced the Bill said the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890

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  had been proved to be utterly inadequate for the purpose in view; and in support of that contention he quoted descriptions of the state of things in certain districts of Scotland, which were very deplorable. In the part of Scotland with which he was best acquainted, he was glad to say that the bothie system did not prevail. It had been given up long ago, and the sooner it was given up in other parts of Scotland the better. But he thought the houses described by the hon. Member were fit subjects for the Act of 1890. Was there any medical officer who would pass as fit for human habitation houses in which, according to the hon. Member, the labourers had to lie on the floor, looking out at the stars through the broken roof, through which the water also poured when it rained?
  *MR. SEYMOUR KEAYsaid, the difficulty was, that the absence of power to compel repair and the erection of new dwellings, restrained the medical officers from condemning existing dwellings even when unfit for human habitation.
  *SIR HERBERT MAXWELLthought the hon. Member showed his want of acquaintance with agricultural matters in putting forward such an objection. Everyone who knew anything about agricultural land knew that farms could not be worked without dwellings for the labourers, and if the dwellings were unfit for human habitation, and were pulled down, they must be replaced by others, or the lands could not be worked, Besides, the tenant had his remedy against the landlord. ["No, no!"] There were very few landlords, indeed, who would hesitate for a moment to replace a building that had been condemned by the sanitary authorities. In some cases, he admitted, the building was not replaced. The hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn said that the powers of the Medical Officer were not sufficient at the present time. He must come before the hon. Member in a white sheet. Two years ago, on his own property in Scotland, a cottage was condemned by the local authority. But what was that cottage? It was extremely interesting from an antiquarian point of view as a relic of a past state of things altogether, and the ancient dwelling had been allowed to stand for generations by the roadside. It was a dwelling for which he, as landlord, got no rent; it was not included in any farm, but had been
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  taken possession of by an aged crippled man of, he was sorry to say, very irregular habits. This man was permitted to live in the shanty, and the sanitary authorities condemned it as unfit for human habitation. Nobody disputed that, and least of all himself. It was, accordingly, pulled down. But what was the end of the old man? He was taken to the workhouse, and within six months he was dead, his death being generally attributed to his having to give up his free and easy and somewhat disreputable style of life. Even now the sanitary authorities had considerable powers under the existing Acts. He found that in the County of Renfrew, last year, no fewer than 40 dwellings were pulled down, having been condemned as unfit for human habitation. So, although he was prepared to admit that the words of the Act of 1890 were somewhat rigid and ought to be made more elastic so as to put an end to houses not dangerous to, but unsuitable for human life, still he said that if the present Act was administered with a little more spirit and diligence by the local authorities, landlords would be stimulated to take prompter means for improving the state of matters. He ventured to say that few hon. Members would corroborate the picture that had been drawn by the hon. Member for Elgin and Nairn. He did not deny that in some districts, especially those verging on the Highlands, there were dwellings which it was deplorable to see in any civilised land. But it was also the case that these dwellings were steadily disappearing. This improvement could not be effected in a single year, and the landlord had often difficulties to encounter in the matter. As an instance of this he mentioned that two years ago he visited three labourers cottages on his own property, which he had built about seventeen years ago, and while two of them were now in a perfect state of repair the occupant of the third had by neglect allowed it to become so dilapidated and so filthy that had it stood alone many a man would have said it was unfit for human habitation. It must not be forgotten that, while undoubtedly there were duties incumbent upon the landlords, and very heavy responsibilities for making this provision, there were also duties incumbent upon the tenants and

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  labourers in order to take advantage of this provision and maintain their dwellings in suitable repair. He trusted the Lord Advocate would express some opinion upon the merits of this measure as compared with the suggestion he had ventured to lay before the House as to amending the original Act.
  *THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR,)remarked that they were, of course, only now on the Second Reading, and were not considering whether every clause of the Bill was so worded as not to admit of amendment. He might say at the outset that the objections taken to the Bill were by no means of a consistent or harmonious character. They had been told in some speeches that there was no need for the Bill, and he rather understood the suggestion was that the Bill was not required, because there was no necessity for having the kind of improvements in agricultural labourers' cottages proposed by it. In the second place it was said there was no need for the Bill because the existing Acts of Parliament, and particularly the Public Health Act of 1867 and the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, were adequate to meet the case. But that did not consist with the Amendment which had been moved by his hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire, which was that—
  "That this House, whilst recognising the desirability of amending and rendering more effective the Public Health (Scotland) Act, 1867, considers it undesirable to legislate on this subject without conferring the benefits equally on all classes of the community."
  So that the position of those who approved of this Bill, as they on the Government Bench did, was that they were between two fires. The suggestion was—on the one hand, that the Bill was unnecessary; and on the other, that it was desirable, but that it was too restricted in its scope, and should be made universal. He left these arguments to destroy each other, and he would state very briefly the views of the Government. Something had been said of the condition of agricultural labourers' cottages in Scotland. That, he should say, was a varying condition, there being great difference between agricultural labourers' dwellings in different parts of the country and on different estates. Having known Scotland all his life, he said there had
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  undoubtedly been in many parts a great improvement, but at the same time no one who knew Scotland would say there was not room and necessity for a great improvement in many other places, and on many estates. And so without going into the question as to how far there was a necessity all over the country or over all estates for such a measure, he thought they should be agreed that it was not a superfluity to demand, in the case of agricultural labourers' cottages, some safeguards of the kind proposed by the Bill. It had been asked—Why deal differently with agricultural labourers dwellings from others? He should be glad to see the Public Health Act, and other acts amended, but everyone who had had anything to do with these Acts was well aware that probably no class of statutes was so full of contentious matter or so certain to raise controversies. Wherever they encountered medical gentlemen and sanitary inspectors they got into questions of the greatest difficulty, and on which there were the sharpest differences of opinion. Successive Governments had long been looking forward to amending the Public Health Act, but the Amendments required would be so numerous, and the controversies upon some of the subjects so bitter, that, to accomplish the object in view, must occupy a serious amount of time. But in this Bill there were definite proposals with respect to a particular class of dwellings. What was the position of the agricultural labourer in most parts of Scotland as regards his dwelling? He had to live beside his work, either in the farm-steading or near it, and very often the steading was far from any village or town. Accordingly he was not in the position of a workman who had the choice of his dwelling. If, therefore, there could be special reason for taking up the case of a class which was homogeneous in itself, and which could be dealt with in all parts of the country by a similar remedy, such special reason was established in regard to agricultural labourers' dwellings. It was quite true that under the 16th Section of the Public Health Act of 1867, there were important powers for dealing with insanitary or even inadequate dwellings, but the case had to be proved under the name of a nuisance, which threw a very heavy onus upon the prosecuting party. Again, the words

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  "dangerous to health" under the Act of 1890 also, it was felt, involved too heavy a burden of proof. Some legislation was wanted which should not go the length of demanding proof of nuisance or danger to health if the dwelling was disadvantageous to or unsuitable for human habitation. Now the Bill proposed three things, all of them of a positive and simple character. The first was, that in the case of houses to be occupied by agricultural labourers, there should be sufficient and suitable accommodation. That was the very thing which the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Herbert Maxwell) desiderated, because it described something short of a nuisance or of being dangerous to health, but still disadvantageous or inappropriate for human habitation. The second head provided for the separation of the sexes—a provision which was levelled at the bothy system. No one who had known Scotland as long as he had could contend that the bothy system had not been a source of moral mischief, and, although the system was disappearing, it was not so in all cases, for sometimes unmarried persons of different sexes were still thrown into such proximity that great evil resulted. The third provision was not the least valuable of all, and that was the power to local authorities to make bye-laws relative to what should be required in such dwellings. No one could object to that, because it was in accordance with the whole tendency of modern legislation. Those bye-laws would gradually give a standard to which agricultural labourers' dwellings should come up.
  *MR. RENSHAW: Varying in every locality?
  *MR. J. B. BALFOURthought they would vary very little, because the value of bye-laws was that they tended to uniformity of standard, though he could conceive differences of local circumstances would make bye-laws suitable for one locality unsuitable for another. There was wanted for the rural districts what in Scotland was called a "Dean of Guild" or ædile jurisdiction to direct and regulate buildings somewhat similar to that which had long existed with much public advantage in towns. In regard to the position of the landlord, of course it must be at his cost that the improvements required for health and
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  decency should be made, and he would get the benefit of that at the expiry of the lease in increased letting value. The tenant paid his rent for what was let to him, and the hypothesis of improvements being added must be that the houses let were not fit or suitable for the occupation of the labourers. He hoped the House would give a Second Reading to this moderate and desirable Bill, while leaving it open to amendment in Committee.
  SIR J. FERGUSSONsaid the only difficulty he had about assenting to the Bill was the speech of the Mover, whose description of the state of the housing of the working classes in the country districts of Scotland was altogether exaggerated, and his condemnation of the manner in which landed proprietors performed their duties utterly undeserved. Still, he recognised that it was very desirable the law should be further strengthened in order that houses which were unsuitable for the occupation of decent people should be put into proper repair. He should be sorry to stand in the way of such improvements. From that point of view he ventured to suggest to his hon. Friend the Member for Renfrewshire, than whom there was no more earnest reformer, not to press his Amendment, so that both sides might combine with the Government in endeavouring to make this an adequate and proper measure for the great object in view.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Bill read 2a.

MOTIONS.

  SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (IRELAND) ACT (1887) AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Maurice Healy, Bill to amend the Supreme Court of Judicature (Ireland) Act, 1887.
  Bill presented, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 185.]

  FISHERIES ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. Bryce, Bill to amend the Fisheries Acts.
  Bill presented, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Tuesday next, and to be printed. [Bill 186.]
  House adjourned at Twenty-five minutes before Six o'clock.