Sitting of 24 July 1896

ROXBOROUGH SCHOOLS, LIMERICK (CORRESPONDENCE).
Return [presented 18th May] to be printed.—[No. 312.]
EAST INDIA (MADRAS PRESIDENCY) (EVICTIONS).
Return [presented 11th June] to be printed.—[No. 313.]
EVENING CONTINUATION SCHOOLS.
Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 9th July—Mr. Hobhouse]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.—[No. 314.]
RAILWAYS (IRELAND) BILL.
Reported, without Amendment, from the Standing Committee on Trade, etc.; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed [No. 315]; Minutes of Proceedings to be printed [No. 315]; Bill to be read the Third time upon Monday next.
QUESTIONS.

  ASHFORD FIRE BRIGADE.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATON: On behalf of the hon Member for Kent, Ashford (Mr. LAURENCE HARDY), I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General—(1) whether he is aware that communication has been established by means of electric bell circuits between the fire station at Ashford and the residences of the officers and members of the brigade, and also between the fire

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  station and the police station; that, similarly, electric bell communication has been established between a very large number of fire brigade stations throughout the kingdom and the residences of their members and the local police stations; and that such communication is maintained without charge solely for the purpose of facilitating the prompt extinction of fire and the saving of life and property; (2) whether the postal authorities in March last gave notice to the fire brigade at Ashford, and to the other fire brigades above referred to, that the use of electric bell communication for the purposes aforesaid was an infringement of the Postmaster General's exclusive telegraphic rights under the Telegraph Act of 1869,32 and 33 Vic, c. 73, and further staled that the Department was prepared to undertake the provision of such circuits; (3) whether he is aware that the electric bell communication referred to is employed without charge for transmission, and that the Department could in no case derive any profit from it; and, (4) whether, if advised that a technical breach of his telegraphic rights has occurred in these cases, he will, nevertheless, waive his rights in the matter, and remit all fines and penalties incurred; or, if this should be impossible, introduce a short Bill enabling him to do so?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. R. W. HANBURY,): The Postmaster General is aware of the existence of the communications referred to in the first paragraph of the hon. Member's Question. He is also aware that the object of such communications is to facilitate the prompt extinction of fire and the saving of life and property, and that at Ashford and, as a rule, elsewhere no charge is made for their use. It is the fact that the notice referred to in the second paragraph was given in the case of Ashford. The Postmaster General is advised that the telegraphs which have been provided at Ashford constitute an infringement of his exclusive rights, but it is not a case in which he would think of imposing onerous conditions, or of exacting fines and penalties, and he has no doubt that the matter can be suitably arranged with the local authorities.

  ARMY PENSION (HUGH MURRAY).
  MR. M. McCARTAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, with reference to an Army pensioner, named Hugh Murray, now of Annsborough, near Castlemellan, County Down, whether he is aware that Murray, who was discharged from 1st Dragoons on 5th January 1864 as unfitted for service, and afterwards from 2nd class Army Reserve on 30th June 1892, after a combined service of 19 years, received only 4½d. a day of pension; whether he received a good conduct badge before leaving the line regiment; and, whether his case will be inquired into with the view of having his pension increased.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. J. POWELL WILLIAMS,): Hugh Murray was discharged from the Army in consequence of ill health, brought on by his own indiscretion, with under 6 years' service. He served subsequently in the 2nd class Reserve for nearly 27 years. Half of this latter service counting towards pension, he was finally discharged with 19½ years' service, which entitled him to a pension of 5½d. a day, including a penny for a good conduct badge. He has received all that can he granted under the Royal Warrant.

  IRISH LAND COMMISSION (LAND CERTIFICATE).
  MR. MAURICE HEALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state the reasons why the Land Commission consider it necessary to retain the land certificate issued to tenant purchasers by the registrar of titles during the continuance of the purchase annuity; whether the attention of the Land Commission has been called to the fact that the issue of the certificate could not injure them in any way as their mortgage debt is expressly mentioned both on the face of the certificate and on the register, and that the effect of the retention is to compel proprietors, who wish to borrow money on the security of their holdings, to execute a legal mortgage at heavy cost, whereas if they held the land certificate they could borrow without

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  law costs by merely pledging the certificate; and, whether the Land Commission will consider the desirability of withdrawing the rule which they have made on this subject?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): The Land Commissioners consider it is essential that they should retain the land certificate so long as the advance is outstanding, because, if it became necessary to sell the holding for default of payment of the instalments, it is necessary that the original land certificate should be deposited with the registrar of titles, either to be cancelled or to be endorsed according to the circumstances of the transfer. It is evident that if the certificate was in the hands of the defaulter, delay and embarrassment would be caused in selling holdings for default. The rule in question was framed after consultation with Mr. Justice Monroe, the then head of the Registration of Title Department, and that rule makes it a condition to the making of an advance that the land certificate should be so retained by the land Commission. Tenant purchasers are in no way in a worse position with regard to obtaining loans on the security of their holdings than they were previous to the passing of the Local Registration of Title Act. A copy of the land certificate is in every case furnished to them in lieu of the copy conveyance which was formerly issued to them. Under the circumstances stated, the Land Commission do not consider the rule referred to should be withdrawn.

  LAND PURCHASE ACTS (ADVANCES).
  MR. MAURICE HEALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether any of the ten millions voted for land purchase under the Purchase Acts of 1885 and 1888 still remains unissued; what the amount of the advances sanctioned under the Act of 1891 up to the present date is; and, how much of the last-mentioned advances are now represented by guaranteed land stock and how much by consols?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Of the £10,000,000 voted for land purchase under the Land Purchase Acts of 1885 and 1888 the sum of £9,979,220 has
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  been issued; the sum of £20,780 still unissued comprises applications to the amount of about £10,000 which have not yet been either sanctioned or refused, while the remainder represents offers which have been made to the Land Judge for the purchase of estates for sale in his Court, but where the purchase has not yet been finally completed. Loans amounting to £2,683,805 have been sanctioned under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1891, up to June 30th last. Of the amount so sanctioned loans amounting to £2,479,064 guaranteed land stock have up to this date been issued under the last-mentioned Act, and, with the exception of a small sum—about £2,300—that has been cancelled, the entire of this stock is in existence. The National Debt Commissioners, however, hold £1,558,862 of this stock, which has been exchanged for an equal nominal amount of consols as provided by section 15 (2) of the Act of 1891.

  POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS (COUNTY ANTRIM).
  MR. McCARTAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, with reference to an influentially-signed memorial, recently forwarded to him, about the very unsatisfactory postal arrangements with the district of Ballinlea, Moyarget, County Antrim, whether he has yet made inquiry into the matter, and with what result?
  MR. HANBURY: Inquiry has been made as to the possibility of improving the postal arrangements at Moyarget and Ballinlea, as suggested in the Memorial recently forwarded by the hon. Member. It is found, however, that even the existing service to Moyarget and Ballinlea is conducted at a loss, and the desired improvement could not be effected without largely increasing the deficit. The Postmaster General regrets that he is therefore unable to meet the wishes of the memoralists?

  POOR LAW VALUATION (DOWNPATRICK).
  MR. McCARTAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether he is aware that the gross poor law valuation of

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  the holding of Mr. James Bailie, of Portlinghan, in the union of Downpatrick, is £240; that in May, 1889, his fair rent was fixed at £120; and that, notwithstanding the admittedly reduced value of his farm, he is still obliged to pay rates and taxes on an amount double the annual value of his farm; (2) whether he is aware that gene-rally in the north of Ireland the poor law valuation of an agricultural holding is very much in excess of the actual value; and (3), whether he will make inqniry with the view of having this state of affairs remedied?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The facts appear to be as stated in the first paragraph. The area of the holding is 220 acres, and the valuation of the buildings on the holding, and comprised in the total valuation of £240, is £20. I believe that in the north of Ireland the rateable valuation of land is frequently higher than the judicial rental. There is no power under the Valuation Acts to alter the valuation of laud. I hope to look-further into the general question during the Recess.

  IRISH MAIL SERVICE.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, if he will give an undertaking that the proposed arrangements for the new postal service between Ireland and England will not be put in force without an opportunity being given for discussing the same in Parliament next Session?
  MR. HANBURY: It would not be possible to carry out the accelerated service between Ireland and England on the 1st April next if the suggestion of the hon. Member for West Kerry were adopted and the arrangements were to be left undecided until next Session.
  SIR T. ESMONDE: As this is a matter of very great importance, might I ask whether an opportunity will be given for discussing it before the end of the Session?
  MR. HANBURY: I am afraid not, as I do not think there is any Vote or Estimate upon which the opportunity would arise.
  SIR T. ESMONDE: As this arrangement is most unsatisfactory, we shall
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  have to consider what steps should be taken.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: Might I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman would give an undertaking that these arrangements will not be entered into prior to the proposed conference on the subject between the Post Office Department and the various public bodies interested?
  MR. HANBURY: I will find out whether the Post Office can give that assurance, but I cannot personally give it now.
  MR. J. C. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, with reference to the proposed changes in the mail service between Dublin and London—(1) whether he will insist on the saving of an hour on all the four services between Euston and Kingstown; (2) whether he will arrange that the time so saved will be utilised by making the hour of leaving one hour later in all the mail services except the night train from Euston; and (3) whether he will embrace the opportunity for providing third class accommodation for passengers on the mail trains between Holyhead and Euston?
  MR. HANBURY: I answered a similar Question yesterday. The main objection to delaying the departure of the mails for an hour, either from Dublin or from Loudon is, in the first place, that it would cost a great deal of trouble to the Post Office to have the delivery an hour later in London or in Dublin; and, in the next place, by delaying these trains an hour a connection would be missed at Cheshire with Warrington and the North; and as one train certainly from London carries both the Scotch and the Irish mails, the proposed delay would necessitate having an extra train.
  MR. FLYNNasked for an answer to the portion of his Question having reference to the saving on the four services between Euston and Kingstown.
  MR. HANBURY: The Post Office will insist on saving half an hour by the boat, and, as I have already explained, there is to be a saving of half an hour by the railway.
  MR. FLYNNrequested an answer to the third paragraph of his Question.
  MR. HANBURY: No; the Postmaster General has no power to enforce that.
  MR. W. FIELD: Will pressure be brought to bear upon the London and North Western Railway Company to provide similar facilities on their line as are provided all over the country on other lines?
  MR. HANBURY: As a matter of fact, the Irish mails are carried more rapidly than the Scotch.

  YEOMANRY CAVALRY (LONG SERVICE MEDAL).
  VISCOUNT VALENTIA: I beg to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the War Office, whether Her Majesty's Government will consider the strong claims of the Yeomanry Cavalry to a special long service decoration and medal; and, if not, why this honour, conferred upon Volunteers, is withheld from the Yeomanry Cavalry?
  MR. POWELL-WILLIAMS: This question has been considered on several occasions; and it has been decided that the medal and decoration for long service shall not be given to the Yeomanry Cavalry. The force differs from the Volunteers in that it is a paid force like the Militia and regular Army. There is the further reason that it is not considered desirable to encourage yeomen to serve so long as 20 years; which in most cases exceeds the limits of efficiency.

  RATE COLLECTION (IRELAND).
  MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether his attention has been directed to the resolution passed unanimously by the South Dublin Board of Guardians in last September, asking the Government to take into consideration the cost of collecting poor rates and other rates by the Collector General's Department, and requesting them to pass a Bill granting power to the Guardians to collect their own poor rates or to employ other public bodies to do so for them; and whether he will introduce legislation on the matter next Session?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: My attention has been drawn to the resolution refered to. I can only repeat the
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  statement already communicated to the Guardians, that the matter is not one with which the Government can undertake to deal.

  ARMY SUPPLIES (FOREIGN).
  MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office, whether he can state the average annual amount for the past five years paid by the Treasury for supplies of foreign meat, corn, hay, and straw imported from other countries for the use of Her Majesty's troops and horses; and whether it is the intention of the Government to support and continue this system?
  MR. POWELL-WILLIAMS: It has been repeatedly explained that the amount paid for foreign meat and forage cannot be stated, inasmuch as in the contracts for meat a collective price is paid, the contractor being at liberty to supply foreign meat up to (50 per cent. of the whole; while in forage contracts a standard of quality is fixed, but the place of origin is not inquired into. As previously stated, the question of continuing the present system is under consideration.

  FAIR RENT APPLICATIONS (IRELAND).
  MR. EDWARD M'HUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state the number of fair rent applications in respect of the second judicial term which have been made to the Land Commission, and also the number of such applications already made to the county courts in Ireland; and, if he will further state the additional number of tenants who will be entitled to make such application on the, 1st November next?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The number of applications to fix fair rents for a second statutory term made direct to the Land Commission was 879 up to 22nd instant, and to the Civil Bill Courts 193, of which 97 have been transferred to the Land Commission. As I have already pointed out, the Land Commission have no means of ascertaining the number of tenants who will be entitled to apply to have judicial rents fixed for a second term on any stated date.

  ENGLISH AND IRISH MAILS.
  MR. MICHAEL FLAVIN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that the English and Irish mails due in Limerick from Dublin at 10.35 a.m. are frequently delayed at Limerick Junction and do not reach Limerick before 1.25 p.m.; that this delay at Limerick Junction causes still greater delay in the delivery of mails to the towns of Rathkeale, Newcastle West, Abbeyfeale, and Listowel and other towns on the North Kerry line, and also on the other side to towns situated as far as the Athenry and West Clare Railway; whether, owing to this delay, letters which should reach Listowel at 1.20 p.m. do not arrive there before 8 p.m., when they cannot be answered on the same day; and whether, considering the very grave loss and inconvenience to the public which this delay involves in so many towns in the south-west of Ireland, he will make inquiry into the matter with the view of having this unnecessary delay avoided?
  MR. HANBURY: The results of a failure of junction between the day mail train from Dublin to Cork and the day mail train from Limerick Junction to Limerick are accurately described by the hon. Member, and in making any new arrangements with the Waterford and Limerick Railway Company the Department will consider whether a larger margin at Limerick Junction should not be provided with a view to reducing to a minimum the number of failures.
  Mr. FLAVIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that all important letters from England, Dublin and Belfast, arrive in the greater portions of of Kerry and Limerick eight hours late, that therefore the replies are necessarily 16 hours late, and whether this is not a long standing grievance?
  MR. HANBURY: That may be so, but, as I have said, new arrangements will be made with the Company almost immediately.

  CONSTABULARY STATION (CARNLOUGH, COUNTY ANTRIM).
  MR. McCARTAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a
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  memorial from Carnlough, county Antrim, signed by the clergymen of different denominations, the magistrates, and the leading inhabitants of the district, asking for the establishment of a constabulary station in that town, has been presented to the Lord Lieutenant; whether he is aware that the import and export trade for last year exceeded 75,000 tons, that there are 200 working men engaged at the quarries and other works in the vicinity, and that the town is situate on the coast along the much frequented road between Glenarm and Cushendall; and, whether, considering that Carnlough is a promising fishing station, and is rapidly becoming one of the most favourite summer resorts in the North of Ireland, he will consider the desirability of having a police station established there with as little delay as possible.
  MR. R. T. O'NEILL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that a memorial was sent to the Lord Lieutenant from the inhabitants of Carnlough, in the county of Antrim, asking that a police station should be established there, and stating that the police from the nearest station at Glenarm are not always available when disturbances occur; that the prayer of the memorial was refused, on the ground that the police at Glenarm are sufficient to deal with the disorder that must occasionally arise at a seaport town like Carnlough; and, whether, considering that the memorial was signed by leading inhabitants of all classes and creeds and politics who are best qualified to judge of the requirements of the neighbourhood, he will cause further inquiries to be made and take steps to supply the wants?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: In reply to this Question and the next standing in the name of my hon. Friend, the Member for Mid Antrim, the memorial referred to has been received and the statements of fact in both questions are substantially accurate. The Divisional Commissioner has personally inquired into the matter, and he considers that the arrangements for additional patrolling by Cyclists which have now been made will quite meet the case, and that at present there is no necessity for the establishment of a police barrack.

  LOANS TO FISHERMEN (IRELAND).
  MR. P. J. POWER: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, with the object of enabling fishermen in Ireland to provide themselves with better fishing boats and gear, and in view of the condition of the money market, the Treasury can make loans to fishermen on easier terms than those now offered?
  MR. HANBURY: As the rate of interest on such loans is already as low as 2½ per cent., I cannot hold out any hope of still further reductions.

  VOLUNTEER MEDICAL STAFF.
  DR. FARQUHARSON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that a good deal of dissatisfaction exists in the Volunteer Medical Staff at the withholding from them of the outfit grant of £10 on appointment, and the further grant of £10, after passing through a course of instruction, allowed to their combatant brethren; and, will he endeavour to secure uniformity of treatment in this matter?
  MR. POWELL - WILLIAMS: The outfit allowance to combatant volunteer officers was granted in order that it might reduce the difficulty in obtaining officers. The conditions as regards medical officers are not similar.

  LANDING OF LIVE CATTLE AT BELFAST.
  SIR JOHN KINLOCH: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether it is the case that the English Board of Agriculture have advised the Irish Agricultural Department to prohibit the landing of live cattle at Belfast to be slaughtered, under the provisions of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, as it might lead to the introduction of disease; and, if so, why are live cattle allowed to be landed in Great Britain?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. WALTER LONG,): In reply to inquiries addressed to the Board of Agriculture by the Irish Government as to the proposed establishment of a foreign animals wharf at Belfast, it was pointed out that our experience in the past in
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  Great Britain had shown that such wharves must necessarily be attended with a certain risk of the introduction of disease, whilst the small extent of the trade expected, and the fact that fat cattle are exported from Ireland in very large numbers, went to show that no real necessity for a wharf existed. The requirements of Great Britain and Ireland in regard to foreign animals are in no way similar, and any arrangement which might result in the interruption of the Irish export trade is obviously open to the very gravest objection.
  MR. G. W. WOLFF: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, (1) whether the refusal by the Irish Executive to grant the joint application of the Ulster Steamship Company, Limited (trading with Canada), and the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, for permission to erect a foreign animals wharf at Belfast, under the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, for the slaughtering of animals on arrival, was due to the action of the Board of Agriculture in London, to whom the matter had been referred from Dublin; (2) whether such wharves are, with the sanction and approval of the Board of Agriculture, established at Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol, Deptford, and several other of the large shipping ports of the United Kingdom; (3) whether any cases of transmission of disease to British cattle from such wharves have been reported; and, if so, from where, and when; (4) whether he is aware that all cattle shipped from Canada are subjected to a rigorous examination before shipment, and also that the Canadian authorities absolutely deny the existence of pleuro-pneumonia in the Dominion of Canada; and, (5) whether, in view of the disadvantages to which Belfast is subjected in comparison with other large seaports, both of England and Scotland, by the refusal to allow cattle to be imported, he will advise the Executive in Dublin to reconsider their decision?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The Irish Government consulted the Board of Agriculture in this matter, but of course they acted on their own responsibility. The inquiries in the second, third, and fourth paragraphs of my hon. Friend's Question should be addressed to the President of the Board of Agriculture. As regards the last paragraph, I can only

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  say that the whole matter has received the most careful and anxious consideration of the Irish Government, who are unable, in the interests of the cattle trade in Belfast and Ireland generally, to alter the decision already arrived at.
  MR. WOLFF: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether representations have been made to him by the High Commissioner for Canada protesting against the entire prohibition of the importation of Canadian cattle into Ireland, which would be the effect of the refusal to allow the establishment of a Foreign animals' wharf at Belfast; and, if so, whether he will use his influence to induce the Irish Executive to reconsider their decision?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN): A representation was made to me by the High Commissioner on the subject, which was duly transmitted to the Irish Office, and received the careful consideration of her Majesty's Government, who regret, however, that they are unable to reconsider their decision in the matter.

  CHARGE OF MURDER (COUNTY SLIGO.)
  MR. JASPER TULLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—(1) whether his attention has been directed to the case of Michael Muldowney, a prisoner serving a sentence of penal servitude for life, who, after two trials, in the first of which the jury disagreed, was convicted by a special jury in Sligo in 1884 for an agrarian murder; and, (2) whether, seeing that other prisoners convicted at the same time on the evidence of the same two informers for participation in the same offence, were let off with sentences of 10 years' penal servitude, and in view of the elements of great doubt in the case, and of the fact that Muldowney has been now 12 years in prison, he will recommend to His Excellency the propriety of reconsidering all the circumstances connected with this case, and advising a mitigation of Muldowney's sentence?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Muldowney was convicted of murder in July, 1884, and sentenced to death; the sentence, however, was commuted to penal servitude for life. There had been a disagreement of the jury on the occasion
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  of the first trial of the convict. The second paragraph is based on a misapprehension of the facts. Five others were charged at the same time as Muldowney, and one of these was likewise convicted and sentenced to death, though in this case also the sentence was commuted to one of penal servitude for life. A nolle prosequi was entered in the cases of the other four prisoners, and there were no persons sentenced to 10 years penal servitude for participation in the offence. The Judge who tried Muldowney has reported that he was convicted on evidence which, in his opinion, was clear and conclusive. It is not within my province to recommend the exercise of the prerogative of mercy.

  PRESERVATION OF LIFE AND PROPERTY AT SEA.
  MR. ALFRED THOMAS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the state of the law in respect of loading and manning ships, he will use the means at his disposal to ascertain whether the mercantile nations of the world would join in promoting a Congress to consider, discuss, and recommend to the several nations represented uniform regulations for the better preservation of life and property at sea?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OFTRADE (MR. C. T. RITCHIE,): Our experience of conferences of this kind is that they are attended with many difficulties, and I doubt the expediency of promoting such a one at present.

  TELEGRAPHISTS' LEAVE.
  Sir ALBERT ROLLIT: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, will he explain for what reason a notice has recently been posted at the Central Telegraph Office stating that the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury have decided that the maximum amount of sick leave and ordinary leave combined which an officer may have on full pay in any one year shall be strictly limited to six months, although it has hitherto been the practice to exclude ordinary leave in computing the period during which full pay in sickness is given?
  MR. HANBURY: The Civil Service Orders in Council of 1890 allowed a period not exceeding six months' continuous sick-leave on full pay to the upper and second divisions. A Treasury Circular of May 1892, expressed the opinion that the six months on full pay in any one year should include all sick leave and ordinary holidays. In April 1896, the Treasury decided that abstractors and assistant clerks, whose total leave and sick-leave on full pay had been limited to a period not exceeding six weeks, should have that maximum extended to six months. The Post Office thereupon issued the notice referred to in the Question, having apparently omitted hitherto to circulate the Treasury decision of 1892.

  SLAUGHTER OF FOREIGN CATTLE (UNITED STATES AND ARGENTINE).
  MR. R. ASCROFT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture when the requirement of slaughter at the port of landing was first imposed in the case of United States and Argentine cattle; what was the number of such cattle imported into the United Kingdom in the four years preceding the imposition of slaughter, and in the four years 1892 to 1895; and, what was the amount of dead meat (beef and mutton) imported in the periods 1881 to 1885, 1886 to 1890, 1891 to 1895, inclusive?
  MR. LONG: United States cattle have been required to be slaughtered at the port of landing since March 1879, and Argentine have always been subject to that requirement. The number of cattle imported from the United States was approximately 300 in 1875, 400 in 1876, 11,500 in 1877, and 68,000 in 1878. In the last four years the numbers have been 397,000 in 1892, 249,000 in 1893, 381,000 in 1894, and 274,000 in 1895. Very few Argentine cattle were imported prior to 1891. In that year we received about 4,000 head; in 1892, 3,500; in 1893, 6,900; in 1894, 9,500; and in 1895, nearly 39,000. The imports of beef averaged about 1,000,000 cwt. in the period 1881–1885 1,300,000 in 1886–1890, and 2,700,000 cwt. in 1881–1895. No figures are available as to the imports of mutton in 1881–1885. In 1886–1890 they averaged rather over 1,000,000 cwt., and in 1891–1895 2,150,000 cwt.

  PLEURO-PNEUMONIA.
  MR. ASCROFT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture what was the number of cattle and sheep in the United Kingdom at the date of the last Return, and what their estimated value; what has been the amount paid as compensation for cattle slaughtered to prevent the spread of pleuro-pneumonia in each year since the passing of the Pleuro-Pneumonia Act of 1890; and, at what rate is such compensation payable?
  MR. LONG: There were 10,753,000 cattle and 29,775,000 sheep in the United Kingdom at the date of the last Return. No official estimate of their value exists, but if £9 per head in the case of cattle and £1 per head in the case of sheep be taken as a fair average, the value of the cattle would be nearly £97,000,000, and that of the sheep £30,000,000. Compensation for cattle slaughtered to prevent the spread of pleuro-pneumonia is payable where the animal is found to be affected with the disease at the rate of three-fourths of the value of the animal before it became so affected, with a maximum of £30. In every other case the full value is paid, with a maximum of £40. The amounts paid in Great Britain only by way of compensation have been £128,000 in 1890, £146,000 in 1891, £43,000 in 1892, £18,000 in 1893, £6,000 in 1894, and £145 in 1895.

  LIGHTHOUSE ILLUMINANTS.
  MR. HORACE PLUNKETT: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the Report of Sir Robert Ball, F.R.S., Scientific Adviser to the Commissioners of Irish Lights, respecting a continuous pulsating lighthouse gaslight for first-order lighthouses inspected in practical operation by Sir Robert, and also the letters which have passed between the Trinity House, the Commissioners of Irish Lights, and others, respecting Sir Robert's Report, and describing the recent trials of that form of light made by the Trinity House at Blackwall?
  MR. RITCHIE: The Board of Trade have not received any copy of the Report referred to.

  INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL (QUEENSTOWN).
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether, in view of the unsatisfactory state of the law in regard to the admission of children to industrial schools, as disclosed in the case of Anne Barnett, tried before Mr. Justice Holmes at the recent Cork Assizes, he will consider the desirability of making such alteration as will prevent any repetition on the steps taken by the Head Constable at Queenstown to secure the admisson of children to an industrial school?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: There can be no doubt that committals to industrial schools are not infrequently made contrary to the spirit of the law, but the fault appears to lie rather with the administration of the law than with the law itself. Such a case as that referred to in the Question is of rare occurrence in connection with a constabulary officer; but it is to be feared that children are too frequently sent out with instructions to beg, in order that the magistrates may be induced to commit them to an industrial school. Apart from this particular case, the matter has already engaged my attention, and a circular was recently issued to magistrates sitting in Petty Sessions, pointing out the advisability of adjourning applications for committal to industrial schools pending the necessary inquiries as to the merits of the case.

  LOCAL LOANS STOCK.
  MR. J. J. SHEE: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what are the actual rates of interest at which the Treasury have borrowed money since 1890 for the Local Loans Fund, and what are the actual dividends they have been paying on Local Loans Stock?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,): The interest fixed by law on the Local Loans Stock is 3 per cent. No Local Loans Stock has been issued since 1890—the repayments have sufficed for fresh borrowings.

  ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY (WEIGHTS AND MEASURES ACT).
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary
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  to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland will he explain why it is that the sergeants and acting sergeants of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who have discharged certain duties as ex officio inspectors under the Weights and Measures Act, have not received the remuneration to which they are entitled?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: There has been no unnecessary delay in the payment of grants to the ex officio Inspectors of Weights and Measures. Proposals have been made and are now before the Treasury with a view to a moderate increase in the remuneration of these officials, and the orders for payment will be issued as soon as practicable.

  CONSTABULARY REGULATIONS (IRELAND).
  MR. J. J. CLANCY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that at the Petty Sessions held in Edenderry, King's County, on the 15th instant, charges were preferred against several parties by constables who were unable to attend in court to prosecute them; that in their absence the head constable of the district took upon himself the duty of acting as complainant, calling and examining witnesses; and, whether such a practice is sanctioned by the Constabulary Regulations; and, if not, what notice he intends taking of the matter?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The nominal complainants being absent on duty the head constable, with the permission of the Bench and the full concurrence of the defendants, proceeded to call the witnesses who proved the charge. The head constable did not examine any of the witnesses. There was nothing illegal in this course, nor was it contrary to the police regulations, and it was adopted for the convenience of the defendants, in order to spare them the trouble of attending on a second occasion.

  BERRIEW SCHOOL.
  MR. J. G. TALBOT: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can repeat the assurance given to the House on the 3rd

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  September 1895 that opportunity should be given for considering a Bill having for its object to provide that the scheme for the Berriew School shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament in the manner prescribed by law?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I shall be quite prepared to repeat the assurance for which my hon. Friend asks.

  VACCINATION (ROYAL COMMISSION).
  MR. TALBOT: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether there is any nearer prospect of a Report from the Royal Commission on Vaccination, which has not been sitting for several years, so that the uncertainty which prevails in the public mind upon this question may be removed?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: The Report is being prepared with all possible speed.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  Mr. H. C. F. LUTTRELL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he could give information as to what Bills would be proceeded with on Monday should time permit?
  SIR GEORGE TREVELYANasked when the Scotch Rating Bill would be proceeded with?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: I have considered the whole course of business in the immediate future, and I have come to the conclusion that it will be for the convenience of the House that the following business should be taken and in the order named. On Monday I propose to take the following Bills:—Uganda, Conciliation, Coal Mines, Truck, Locomotives, Telegraphs (Money) Finance. On Tuesday I propose to take the Report, and I am even bold enough to hope the Third reading of the Irish Land Bill. [Nationalist cheers.] On Wednesday and Thursday I shall complete the stages of the smaller and less controversial Measures of the Government, and on Monday week I shall take the Committee stage of the Scotch Rating Bill and continue that until it be finished.
  MR. JOHN DILLONsuggested that it was time they should know what course the Government intended to take with regard to the Irish Equivalent Grants Bill.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: My own strong impression is that that Bill would be a suspensory Bill—keeping the money.
  MR. DILLONsaid he thought he could speak for the Irish Members when he said they could not agree to that. It was a very contentious matter. He should have no objection to its being a suspensory Bill himself so long as opportunity was given for its being properly discussed.
  MR. LUTTRELLasked what non-controversial Bills would be proceeded with on Tuesday, supposing there was time?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: The Bills I have mentioned for Monday will be put down for Tuesday if they are not finished on the former day.
  SIR G. TREVELYANasked if it was intended to take the Finance Bill in case it was not reached on Monday in reasonable time; also in case the Irish Estimates were finished by Twelve or half-past Twelve to-night whether any other business would be taken?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: If we are fortunate enough to get through the Irish Estimates about the time mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman I think the best thing the House can do is to go to bed. [Cheers.] I should not take the Finance Bill at an unreasonable hour.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLITasked what Estimate would be taken next Friday?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: We begin on Class II., and take the Home Office Vote first.

  IRISH TREASON FELONY PRISONERS.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he would consider the question of advising Her Majesty the Queen to exercise Her Royal clemency by granting a free pardon to the Irish treason felony prisoners on the sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty's accession to the throne?
  MR. MICHAEL DAVITTasked whether it was not the invariable custom among the European Powers to exercise the prerogative of clemency on occasions of this kind, and whether Her Majesty's Government could be equally magnanimous with the European Powers?
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: I am afraid I cannot answer the latter question, as I am not aware how the facts stand. With regard to the first question I have nothing to add to the general statement of policy I have already made, and it is manifest, as the hon. Gentleman will see, that the lime has not arrived for considering what ought or ought not to be done on the sixtieth anniversary of Her Majesty's reign.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  SUPPLY.
  Considered in Committee.
  NINETEENTH ALLOTTED DAY.
  [Mr. J. W. LOWTHER, Chairman of WAYS and MEANS, in the Chair]
  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1896–7.

    CLASS IV.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That a sum not exceeding, £616,077 (including a Supplementary sum of £3,375) be granted to Her Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1897, for the Expenses of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland."
    [Progress, 17th July.]
    MR. JOHN DILLONsaid the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (17th July) on the question of the arrears of the fee grant which were due to Ireland rendered it impossible for the Government to remain in their attitude of refusal to pay. The
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    position was curiously analogous to that taken up by the Treasury in regard to the land stock. It was exactly the same principle—heads I win, tails you lose. If an arrangement worked unfavourably to Ireland, Ireland must accept it; but if, owing to an alteration in circumstances, it appeared that Ireland would profit by the arrangement forced upon Ireland by the Treasury, then the arrangement must be changed to the detriment of Ireland. In illustration of the fact that the Treasury were continually on the watch to defraud Ireland and Scotland of their fair proportions of the grant, he directed attention to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech, which had evoked much interest in Ireland. When he came into office the right hon. Gentleman said that he examined carefully the whole situation, and he arrived at the conclusion that the course adopted by the Treasury was not a just one, and that the Board of Education in Ireland would have got more than was granted if they had asked for it. As a matter of fact, the right hon. Gentleman said they had got, during the three years complained of, all the motley they had asked for. The Secretary to the Treasury admitted that an injustice had been done, that Ireland had not obtained her full share of this grant, and asserted that the fault was that of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, who failed to obtain what Ireland was entitled to. The arrears had been refused on the ground that the financial transactions for that period were closed.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. R. W. HANBURY,)said that with reference to the first two years, all that had been asked for had been paid, but there was the year 1894–5 when the Commissioners asked for the full nine-eightieths in time from the late Treasury, and it was not granted.
    MR. DILLONmaintained that the Commissioners did their best to ask for it, and were met by a refusal from the Treasury. Besides, it was not their duty to ask for it; it was the duty of the Treasury and the Irish Government to see that Ireland got all that she was entitled to. The contention that the Treasury was debarred from opening up the closed accounts, even though an

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    injustice had been done to Ireland, was disposed of by the Estimates for the present year. A claim was made early last spring by the Commissioners owing to the Supplementary Estimate presented to Parliament for the English Education Vote. They were entitled to £3,400 in excess of what they received the previous year, and although the financial year was allowed to close and all the accounts were finished without a Supplementary Estimate for the sum this year, in the new financial year the Secretary to the Treasury had presented an Estimate for £3,000 due in respect of the last financial year. Thus the argument was disposed of that it was not competent for the Treasury to open up past financial transactions. There appeared to be a dispute about the correct sum at stake, but let the Committee take it at £100,000. If this was considered by the Treasury to be a small sum the fact was only an additional argument in favour of settling the question. It was largely a question of sentiment and of feeling, though of great importance to the National teachers of Ireland. He called the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the very remarkable letters published by the Archbishop of Dublin since the last Debate, designed to show in opposition to the right hon. Gentleman that formal application had been made to the Treasury and refused, that in 1894 Ireland was entitled to £234,000 but only received £210,000, and that the Commissioners called attention to the fact that the Scottish grant for the year had been paid on the proportionate principle and refused to Ireland. Was the right hon. Gentleman able frankly to say that the policy of the Treasury was a continuous policy? Did he repudiate the policy of his predecessor?
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,): I do not repudiate it.
    MR. DILLON: But you have admitted that an injustice was done. ["Hear, hear!"] Was it worth while for a mere £100,000, or some trifle over, to persist in a wrong? Let them frankly admit the wrong and remedy it.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid he troubled the House on this matter for a few minutes the other day. He was then very much pressed for time, and was unable to state
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    fully the position of the Treasury. He must entirely decline the responsibility which the hon. Member attempted to place upon him. He was not responsible for the action of the Treasury under his predecessor in office, nor were the permanent officers responsible. He was only responsible while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and no longer, and, as the hon. Member had admitted, he had taken action which should have been taken by the late Government. But it was open to the Irish Members to question the conduct of the late Government on this subject.
    MR. VESEY KNOX, said they had done so.
    MR. DILLONsaid a successful attempt was made to question the late Government, because this change was initiated as a result of the questions of the hon. Member for Derry.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid no serious attempt had been made by the hon. Members opposite to obtain from the late Government those arrears which they were now asking him to provide. He should say, on the part of the Treasury, that the hon. Gentleman was not quite fair in his suggestion as to the motives that actuated that Department. He suggested that the policy of the Treasury was one of "Heads I win, tails you lose," and that it had carried out this policy with regard to the fee grant as well as with regard to the proposal in the Irish Land Bill to substitute cash for Land Stock. The Treasury repudiated any desire to act unfairly towards any part of the United Kingdom. The proposal with reference to Land Stock came from the Irish Office, and not from the Treasury, and it was the original suggestion of the Scotch Education Department that the change to the ten shillings grant should be made. The hon. Member said it was a simple matter to pay the arrears now asked for. That was not so. He demurred to the statement in the report of the National Board with reference to the amount of the arrears. But even they only asked for £72,000, and the difference between that and the sum of £120,000 named by hon. Members arose from the fact that the National Board did not include one-fourth of the grant for 1892–3 which had not been paid in the course of that financial year.
    MR. DILLONsaid he accepted the figures of the Archbishop of Dublin.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, with all respect to the Archbishop of Dublin, he was wrong. What happened in 1892–3 was this. The Act named a certain sum as Ireland's share of the fee grant, but only three-fourths of the sum was paid to Ireland in the course of the financial year at the instance of the Commissioners of National Education themselves, because the conditions under which they paid the teachers made it impossible for them to pay the whole amount in the financial year 1892–3. The payment due to the teachers for the last quarter of the year fell into the next year's account. There had been no loss to Ireland in that matter.
    MR. KNOX: Will you pay it to us now?
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, if Parliament decided to stop this fee grant for the United Kingdom, on March 31st next, what would happen would be that neither England nor Scotland would receive any more after that date, but a quarter's grant would be paid to Ireland after the close of the present financial year. The arrears which were claimed by the National Board amounted to £72,000, the greater part of which sum represented the difference between the amounts actually voted to Ireland by Parliament for the years 1892–3, 1893–4 and 1894–5, as compared with 9–80ths of the sum voted in the original and Supplementary Estimates for England and Wales for those years. He had shown by his own action that in his opinion it was fair under that system, from which they had now departed, that Ireland should receive 9–80ths of the original and Supplementary Estimates of the fee grant: for England, and that had been done for 1895–6. The hon. Member said that because £3,375, which should properly have been voted in 1895–6, would be actually voted in 1896–7, therefore any arrears in previous years should be treated in the same way. His reply was that this £3,375 was really part of the sum which would be due to the teachers for the quarter ending March 31st 1896, and which would only become payable in the first quarter of the present year. Therefore, it was not an
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    arrear in the sense in which the hon. Member suggested. The hon. Member then stated that he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had alleged that it was the fault of the National Board that they did not receive these sums for 1893–1 and 1894–5 in the course of those years, and he said that the Board had asked for them at the proper time. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) still maintained that they had not done so. What they did was to write to the Irish Government in the autumn of 1894, calling attention to the fact that they did not receive what they considered a proper amount for the current, or the previous year, and asking that the grant for 1895–6 should be put at £234,000 instead of £210,000 (which was done), and also that arrears should be paid to them for the previous years.
    MR. DILLONasked whether it was not the fact that in 1893 the Treasury wrote that under the official interpretation of the Act, the National Board was only entitled to £210,000?
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERdid not believe that that was so. At that time the National Commissioners had not made the request which they subsequently made in November 1894. However, he did not want to press that point. The statement he had just made he believed to be the actual fact, but whether it was so or not, it had no material bearing upon the question at issue. They had now changed the system. They had given the full grant asked for by the National Board for 1895–6, and acting under legal advice, they had altered the system in the manner originally suggested by the Scotch Education Department, so as to place it on a much fairer basis—namely, that, each of the three countries should receive 10s. for each child in average attendance. That being so, the hon. Member asked that this sum of £70,000, or whatever it might be, should be given by way of back pay to the teachers who happened to be in the service in 1892–3, 1893–4 and 1894–5. That did not seem to him a reasonable way of utilising this money. He admitted Ireland had a claim to the money, but it would be infinitely better and more appropriate that it should he devoted to increasing the solvency of the Teachers'

    619
    Pension Fund, which was now practically bankrupt.
    MR. KNOX: What about the Convent teachers?
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid they were very few, and they were paid by results. He could not admit there was any claim on the part of individual teachers for this payment. He looked upon it as a debt due from the Exchequer to the cause of education in Ireland. Individual teachers had what Parliament had voted for them in the years in question. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose admitted it was amply sufficient, and, as a matter of fact, in each of the three years 1892–3, 1893–4, and 1894–5 the National Education Commissioners returned an unexpended balance of £582 for the first year, £3,035 for the second, and £867 for the third year. What they proposed was that a grant of £10,000 should be given towards the deficiency in the Pension Fund. If they could not allocate a further sum to that fund, what would happen to the teachers would be either that the benefits they anticipated from that fund would be reduced, or that their contributions would have to be increased. Their proposal to give £10,000 a year to the Pension Fund would help to make that fund solvent, and they would be able in that way to benefit the teachers far more than by giving them back payments. That was the simple policy they proposed. He had looked into this matter with great care, and he had endeavoured to act impartially, and he believed this to be the proper way of dealing with this sum which he was anxious should be devoted to Irish purposes. He hoped the Committee would agree to that suggestion.
    MR. J. J. CLANCYsaid that the admission of the right hon. Gentleman was a very valuable one indeed, for he had now admitted that there was a debt due to Ireland for these years, 1893–4 and 1894–5. That was exactly what the Irish Members were fighting for the other night.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: I admitted it then.
    MR. CLANCY: Yes; but at the end of a rather angry Debate. The Irish Members were content with the right hon. Gentleman's admission that there
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    was a debt due to Ireland of some amount at all events, and the only really practical question before the Committee was, how was that amount to be made good? The right hon. Gentleman proposed to make it good by subsidising the Teachers' Pension Fund. He did not recognise that as an equivalent at all. Why was that fund bankrupt? Its bankruptcy was due to an actuarial miscalculation by the Treasury. At any rate, the official who committed that blunder was appointed by the Government, and the Government were, therefore, morally responsible for it, and for the bankruptcy that had resulted from it. He did not at all admit that £10,000 a year to the Teachers' Pension Fund would make up for the money which the right hon. Gentleman admitted was due to Ireland. That fund did not bring any benefit to the teachers in Convent schools. The right hon. Gentleman said that they were few in number; but whether they were few or many they ought to be paid. He had no intention of blaming the present Chancellor of the Exchequer or the present Secretary to the Treasury. They were only now carrying out what their predecessors had neglected to carry out. It was their predecessors that he blamed, and the indictment the Irish Members had brought against them had been proved up to the hilt. Still, even if the right hon. Gentleman was not responsible for the action of his predecessors, he was now in such a position that he was bound to make up this sum. He would not have hesitated to attack the late Government if he had known in time of what he could only call their nefarious transactions.
    MR. G. W. WOLFFsaid this was a rare occasion when he found himself entirely in accord with hon. Members opposite. ["Hear, hear!"] Differing from them as he did upon almost every point of politics, it was somewhat of a treat now to be able to agree with them. Very full were they of Irish grievances, and with the greater part of their complaints he had no sympathy, but there could be no doubt whatever that this withholding of education grants from Ireland was a grievance of which Irishmen had good cause to complain. The amount was not large in itself, but it was considerable from an Irish point of view and as a

    621
    Unionist he felt keenly on the point. The grievance was real and could easily be redressed, and it would be a great mistake on the part of the Government not to take the opportunity of satisfying hon. Gentlemen opposite. That this money had been withheld had been admitted on all sides, and now with his admission the right hon. Gentleman promised to make it good with a grant of £10,000 to the Teachers' Pension Fund. Of this fund surely he had heard on more than one occasion that if ever it approached a state of bankruptcy the Treasury would come to its aid, so that the fund would be assisted by the Government anyhow. ["Hear, hear!"] No doubt the £10,000 to the fund would be an advantage, but really there was no guarantee that the grant would be continued beyond the present year, certainly, there was no assurance that it would lie-come a permanent charge. It could not be foreseen how long his right hon. Friends would continue in occupation of the Treasury Bench. ["Hear, hear!"] It could not be foreseen at what interval the real friends of Ireland, as they were called, would return to power and resume the policy of robbing Ireland on the quiet they had pursued hitherto. He was not, therefore, satisfied, though he fully appreciated the desire of his right hon. Friend to make this reparation for the sins of his predecessors. There was not sufficient guarantee that Ireland would get back the money she had lost, and something more should be done than this £10,000 and the promise for the future. It would be a graceful action, and much appreciated by the Irish people if a grant were at once made of the whole amount due.
    MR. KNOXsaid that as he pressed this matter upon the attention of successive Governments, he felt some gratification at having at last from the representative of the Treasury a practical admission of this claim. He supposed that he had asked some hundreds of questions on this matter from time to time, and he had pressed it more than once in Debate, and now there was some prospect of an understanding being arrived at. In the first place, on the part of responsibility, lie-fully and frankly admitted that the share of the right hon. Gentleman was less than that of his predecessor. He (Mr. Knox)
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    pressed this matter on the attention of the late Chief Secretary in the House in 1894, and in and out of the House he had attempted to force it upon the notice of the Treasury, until the change in the spring of 1895, when another £20,000 was given. He would have pressed it more persistently, but that there were many points of financial detail difficult to grasp and not interesting to Members generally; and it was not until the Archbishop of Dublin, with unrivalled power of clear financial judgment, took up the question and forced it home that it was possible to get Members to understand it. There were other reasons for not pressing it so strongly as it might have been pressed on the late Government, but, so far as he was concerned, he was quite as ready to make the demand upon the late as upon the present Government. Why the right hon. Gentleman was made personally responsible might be explained by applying a commercial analogy quite fitting to the question. Say the Treasury occupies the position of a joint stock company. The directors had changed, the previous directors were responsible for previous short payments. It could not be said the Government or the present directors had left undone anything they ought to have done, but the liability of the company remained, and that was the position of the Treasury. The company had appropriated to its own use money they should have handed over to Ireland. That was the real position; and, avoiding all personality, the Treasury was a standing commercial concern, and the directors for the time were responsible for the administration of its affairs. The right hon. Gentleman admitted the case to this extent, but he contended that the debt was not due to individual teachers, but to Irish education. Without committing himself to this statement entirely, he admitted that the Government would find considerable difficulty in making the distribution among teachers, and he believed that the teachers themselves were not averse to the principle the right hon. Gentleman had enumerated that this debt should be regarded as a debt to Irish education generally. But would the debt be discharged by the proposed grant to the Pension Fund? He was not satisfied that it would. Personally he was in a haze still about this Pension

    623
    Fund. All he could understand was that the fund was under the direct control of the Treasury. The Commissioners of Education had power to make regulations at the suggestion of the Treasury, and while there was undoubtedly power with the Commissioners to increase pension grants to teachers, as they did upon the Actuarial Report nut before them some years ago, they had no power to decrease grants secured to existing teachers. As he understood, it would be considered a breach of faith towards existing teachers who had made contributions year by year, if reductions were made in the payments promised, and on the faith of which promise they had contributed. The position then was this. It would be possible for the Treasury to prevent liabilities accruing to future teachers. The fund was, he understood, barely sufficient to pay existing liabilities, and it would be possible for the Treasury to prevent any future teachers from receiving grants from it, but practically they could scarcely take up such a position. If they did so they would revert to the position in which the teachers stood before the Pension Fund was started. What was the position then? Though there was no pension scheme of that kind, there was a grant made of £9,000 a year.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: £7,000.
    MR. KNOXthought it was £9,000, but say £7,000. This was a grant every year for the Irish teachers. The history of the grant resembled that of many such grants to Ireland. The Imperial Government discovered they had the Irish Church surplus to dispose of, and that by throwing this charge upon it, they could relieve the Estimates. By the fact of establishing the fund the Treasury were saved £7,000 a year. He admitted he was groping in the dark in endeavouring to get at the facts, but here he arrived at the position that if the Treasury exercised as regards the Pension Fund the full extent of its powers, they would stand exactly where they were when they made an annual grant of £7,000. So that the most that could be said of this offer of £10,000 was that it was £3,000 gain, but it was not secured in perpetuity by any Act of Parliament. One other point he wished to allude to. They had got an assurance from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the
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    Teachers' Pension Fund would be made solvent, and that £10,000 a year would be devoted to that purpose. In his opinion it would take double that sum to make the fund solvent, and he thought the Government should tell them plainly whether they meant to give only £10,000 a year, or whether they proposed to devote whatever sum might be necessary to make the fund solvent, which, as he had said, would be much more than the £10,000 a year. What he should ask of him was that they should give an undertaking that they should secure by Act of Parliament in perpetuity a sufficient sum that would make the fund solvent. He would also like to call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the schools which were not paid from the Pension Fund in the same way, such as the Convent and the Monastery Schools. About one-eighth of the children in average attendance in Irish schools were to be found in Convent or Monastery Schools, and one-fifth of this £155,000 due to the teachers might be said to be due to those schools. It might be said that it would be wasteful to pay down in cash to those schools without some security, the sums to which it was found they were entitled. He suggested that it should be paid to the Convent Schools in order to enable them to improve their machinery of education, or for such other purposes as the National Board might declare to be desirable. He had only to say in conclusion that the Irish Members could not give an answer to the offer made by the Government in regard to the Teachers' Pension Fund, because they had not that offer clearly before them; and he thought it would be well if more light was thrown on the subject from the Treasury Bench.
    MR. SAMUEL YOUNGsaid that as a commercial man he could conceive no difficulty in going into the account, ascertaining the exact sum due to the Irish teachers, and the most satisfactory settlement of the question would be to hand the money over to the Commissioners of National Education.
    MR. JAMES DALYwas surprised at the niggling, pettifogging manner in which the Government were dealing with the question. It was not denied that the teachers had been defrauded of a certain sum of money. Why, then, do they not get

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    that money? The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said he was not responsible—that the blame should be laid on the late Government. That was about the shabbiest excuse that could be given, because the present Government had succeeded the late Government, and if the late Government owed a debt, it was the duty of the present Government to pay it. The present Government would not let the Irish people manage their own affairs. It was bad enough for the Irish people to be deprived of their native Parliament without being defrauded by the English Treasury of the money to which they were entitled. But it was only another instance of the way in which every Government, whether Liberal or Tory, treated Ireland. The Chief Secretary had informed him, in reply to questions, that an audit of the teachers' salaries was made every five years, and that if it were found that too much money had been advanced for the purpose, a refund of the balance had to be made to the Treasury. Would it not be, then, but an act of simple justice if the same course were adopted in this case, and the Treasury made to disgorge to the teachers of Ireland the money it owed them. It had been admitted that the late Government were the first to put their hands into the pockets of the teachers; but if the Liberal Party were to obtain Office again, and were to continue the same policy, they should count not on his support, but on his strongest opposition.
    MR. J. H. YOXALLthought that it would be well to accept the present temporary arrangement. Hon. Members assumed that they would get this £78,000 for the teachers as well as an annual grant of £10,000 for the Pension Fund. His experience of the way in which teachers' pension questions had been dealt with led him to doubt very much whether it would be easy to get both those sums for the Irish teachers. If the Government were pressed now they might think it more economical to give the £78,000 as a lump sum; whilst an annual grant of £ 10,000 would probably be of much more benefit to the teachers. It would be wise to wait until the views of the teachers had been ascertained. They were the real creditors. He hoped the Chief Secretary would give his personal atten-
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    tion to the principle on which the educational work in Irish schools was tested, assessed and remunerated. The question could be dealt with without raising any sectarian, financial, or political difficulties. In Ireland the system of payment by results, which had been abandoned years ago in England and Scotland, was still in full swing. It compelled the teachers to look on the children as mere machines for the grinding out of grants. Each separate subject was tested in the case of each particular child
    MR. H. O. ARNOLD-FORSTERagreed that in practical politics the Treasury could not permit the Pension Fund falling to the ground. If the present question had never arisen, and the fund had never become embarrassed as the result of actuarial miscalculation, it would have been the duty of the Minister concerned to submit to Parliament a vote for the necessary pecuniary aid. But the Committee ought to know what were the facts—what was being offered. The calculation in reference to the Pension Fund would shortly be completed, and pending the completion, the present arrangement might be temporarily accepted. He wished for some further explanation of the statement made the other night that a certain sum of money had been paid back to the Treasury by the National Commissioners. There must be some other view of that fact than that the Pension Fund was sufficient for its purposes. How else could the Secretary to the Treasury consent to a considerable increase in the grant for the present year?
    MR. JASPER TULLYthought it was strange that this mistake had not been discovered sooner. Their complaint, however, had been met sympathetically by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the offer of £10,000 a year to the Pension Fund was something substantial. He agreed that the system of payment by results was simply the means of turning the children into machines for money-making for the teachers. Subjects which were of little use to the children in later life were taught in preference to more useful subjects, simply because they earned larger grants. He knew of inspectors who had discouraged the teaching of book-keeping. There was the greatest difficulty in finding any of the boys who were turned

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    out from these schools who knew even the simplest rules of book-keeping. The children should be taught something that would be useful to them in the struggle for life.
    SIR ALBERT ROLLIThoped it would not be out of place for an English Member to speak on this question. ["Hear, hear!"] The subject of finance between the various branches of the United Kingdom was an extremely difficult one, and he confessed that in reading the Parliamentary papers on the subject, he found it very difficult to arrive at any final conclusion perfectly satisfactory to himself. Therefore he urged that a question like this, which enabled the matter to be brought into a small focus, should be thoroughly threshed out, and the most complete financial justice done to Ireland in dealing with it. A large portion of the Report of the National Board of Education was occupied with purely financial considerations, instead of dealing with the broader aspects of education, and he regretted that any such question should be permitted to arise. He hoped that the question which had been raised would not be dealt with by a mere compromise. He had heard what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said on this subject, but it seemed to him an extremely rough and ready mode of dealing with the matter that the payment should be postponed. It appeared evident that whatever had been done amiss in this matter rested with the late Government, but the British Treasury, at all events, was continuous, and if there had been any financial injustice done to Ireland, they had no right to postpone the matter or treat one branch of the United Kingdom unequally as compared with another. He had heard in Ireland very strong expressions of gratitude to the former Chief Secretary (Mr. A. J. Balfour) on the part of the teachers, who felt that he had remedied many injustices. He thought that in all branches of the United Kingdom they ought to act on the German principle, and in order to make their education great they ought to make their educators great. Unless the teachers could devote their whole minds to their work, without being hampered by anxiety as to their future, they would never be able to do justice to education, and for this reason,
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    and not only for the teachers but also for the State, the superannuation of teachers ought to be fully and fairly provided for by legislation. With regard to the need for more commercial teaching in the schools, he was afraid it did fail to exist only in Ireland. He had no desire to minimise the importance of the higher classical education, but modern languages and the modern conditions of commercial success ought not to be neglected. He believed it was quite possible to reconcile culture and commerce, but if one was to be sacrificed it must be that one which was not absolutely essential. He thought the modern tendency not to recognise results was being somewhat overdone; results were, after all, a very important test of what was being done in education. It was undesirable to press the principle to an extreme, but they ought to test their teachers and scholars by looking to results.
    MR. P. C. DOOGAN, dealt with the history of the Pension Fund. He pointed out that after the passing of the Irish Education Act, the Government having gone out of Office did not give the Education Commissioners a chance of making any estimate. If the Commissioners wanted to increase an estimate they had to ask the permission of the Treasury. The Report just issued seemed to him to be the vindication of the Commissioners of National Education against the disgraceful reflections which had been cast upon them by the right hon. Gentleman on the Treasury Bench.
    MR. HANBURYasked the hon. Member what disgraceful reflections he referred to; what he had said was that they had failed to ask for the full amount.
    MR. DOOGANsaid that he admitted that, but, because it was not within their power to ask for the full amount, that was a disingenuous statement. Any impartial person would say that no blame whatever attached to the Commissioners. He did not think that Irish Members, on behalf of the teachers, could accept the offer of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer to pay this £10,000 to the Pension Fund in lieu of what was due to them by the Treasury. He could not understand

    629
    why the Treasury themselves did not pay what was due to the Pension Fund of these overworked and underpaid Irish teachers. Another fact was that the Treasury was three months in arrear in their payments to the Irish Education Board. How was it that the Treasury were not equally in arrear in their payments to the English and Scotch Education authorities? The knowledge that the English Treasury were in arrear in their payments to the Irish Education authorities would have an exceedingly bad effect in Ireland, and would operate detrimentally upon the whole system of Irish National Education. It was the duty of the Government to see that no real injustice was done to Irish education through the negligence of the Treasury. No teachers could properly discharge their duties if what they had justly earned were not paid to them. He hoped that the Government would see their way to do justice to the Irish teachers, and that, until some definite arrangement had been arrived at, the Government would hand over the money that was due to the teachers to the Irish National Board of Education, and so remove the bitter feeling that had arisen with reference to this question. After all, no State contribution gave a better return for the outlay than that which was given towards education. Parliament voted large sums for naval and military purposes, and yet it was unwilling to grant sufficient money to enable Irish Education to be efficiently carried on. In the main, education in Ireland had been fairly successful. He contended that in reference to this matter a great financial wrong and injustice had been done to the Irish teachers, and he hoped that the Government would see their way to remedy the grievance under which that deserving body of public servants suffered. ["Hear, hear!"]
    MR. T. M. HEAEYsaid that for many years the Government had had before them the complaint of the Irish National Board of Education that the Teachers' Pension Fund was deficient, and was in fact in a position of actuarial
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    insolvency, and yet they had taken no steps for the purpose of placing the fund on a sound basis by making up the deficiency. He wanted to know when the Board of National Education had first reported to the Treasury that the fund was insolvent. How was it that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had arrived at the conclusion that a sum of £10,000 a year was a fair equivalent for the £24,000 which it was admitted was due to Ireland in respect of this matter? The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury had last week thrown the blame for the deficiency upon "the late Treasury." What did the right hon. Gentleman mean by the expression "the late Treasury"? He might just as well have, referred to "the late British Empire." The right hon. Gentleman said that the "late Treasury," as represented, possibly, by some clerk, refused certain information.
    MR. HANBURYexplained that he had said that it was the political chiefs of the Department who had failed to do their duty.
    MR. T. M. HEALYhad thought the right hon. Gentleman intended to make an attack upon Sir John Hibbert.
    MR. HANBURY: No; it was an attack upon the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, who ought to be here to-day.
    MR. T. M. HEALYasked by how much the Teachers' Pension Fund was actually deficient, and why the nuns were not to have a share in the sum of £10,000 a year which was to be offered to the National Board. The nuns, he maintained, were entitled to one-eighth of it. He wished also to know whether this business was to be transacted by statute. If it was proposed that the money should appear annually upon the Estimates, they could never be sure that it would not be withheld. Would the scheme of the Government make the Pension Fund actuarially solvent? Whenever the Nationalist Members drew attention to matters of this kind they were met by the statements of one Member of the Government after another, each of whom commanded the support of a skilled

    631
    permanent staff. It was hard on private Members, who had not the same means of obtaining facts and figures, that they should have to wrestle with different sets of political athletes, or, to vary the phrase, with the trained acrobats of the Treasury Bench. [Laughter.] He trusted that the Treasury had consulted the National Board before proposing this compensation scheme. If they had not done so, they had added insult to injury.
    MR. HANBURY, replying to the question whether the £10,000 would be made payable by statute or be merely charged on the rates, said that sufficient for the year must be the £10,000 thereof until they could obtain more accurate information as to the position of the Pension Fund than they had at present. The hon. and learned Member complained that he had no means of ascertaining the condition of the fund. Well, to a great extent the Treasury was also ignorant on the subject, because a large number of actuarial calculations were involved. A Committee had now been sitting for some time, and had gone very carefully into this question, and the Treasury had promised that when the Report was presented a full and complete statement of the condition of the fund would be laid before Parliament. Until the Report was ready they were, necessarily, somewhat in the dark.
    MR. KNOXwished to know what the offer of the Government really was. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, first, that he would give £10,000 a year; and, secondly, that he would make the fund solvent. As a matter of fact, he knew that £10,000 would not make the fund solvent.
    MR. HANBURYsaid that the only promise made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the promise of £10,000.
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked whether, under the provisions of the statute which established the Pension Fund, the Consolidated Fund was not liable to make good any deficiency in the Pension Fund?
    MR. HANBURYreplied that his impression was that the statute to which the hon. Member referred did not make the Consolidated Fund liable.
    MR. W. FIELDdid not think the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman a satisfactory one. The Irish Members had not yet been assured that the £125,000 due to Ireland would be repaid. All sections of Irishmen were dissatisfied with the manner in which this financial business concerning education had been conducted during the past year. There were two or three other points to which he wished to draw attention. Whilst he recognised that it would be unwise probably to abolish the system of result fees altogether, he maintained that at present the system was abused. Clever pupils were sought for throughout the country, and they were crammed and used as money-making machines for educational institutions. As regarded technical education, the Irish system was worse than that of any other civilised country in the world. For example, they had hardly any agricultural education, and yet agriculture concerned two-thirds of the Irish people. The residences of the teachers, too, in many places in the country, were certainly unfitted for the habitation of gentlemen occupying such a position. Some time since it was promised that the amount of grant for teachers' residences should be increased, but it had not been increased; and he hoped the Secretary to the Treasury would direct his attention to that practical point. The question of retiring gratuities for teachers, again, was a matter calling for urgent attention. The miserable allowance properly due from the fund had been denied—refused by the rich Treasury of Great Britain, which owed Ireland £125,000, whilst the families of these poor creatures were allowed to fall into destitution and want by reason of red tape. And there was a greater question behind all this, because undoubtedly people pointed to this sort of thing and said—"This is the way England treats Ireland." Moreover, the Secretary to the Treasury could not give them any satisfaction as to the position of the fund. Two quinquennial revisions were due—that was to say, the great British Treasury was 13 or 14 years behind as regards the Pension Fund of the Irish National teachers. Why, if the Irish nation were 13 or 14 years behind in their

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    taxes, what would become of her? [Laughter.] He hoped a more satisfactory answer would be forthcoming.
    MR. KNOXwas sorry after the statement of the Secretary to the Treasury, to put the Committee to the trouble of a Division, and he should therefore move the Amendment standing in his name—to reduce Item I by £50. The words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were clear, that he was going to make this fund solvent. If that were so, he would say that the offer should be considered. Admittedly, the debt was due. But it appeared, in the first place, that the convent schools were to get nothing; and secondly, the teachers were only to get £10,000. This sum was not enough to make the, fund solvent, or anything like it. He should be very much surprised if it was the case that the Treasury had no information at all of the amount of money that would be required to make this fund solvent. They had further a statement that the £10,000 was not to be secured permanently, but "sufficient for the year was the £10,000 thereof." The offer made was not at all satisfactory, and he moved the reduction of the Vote by £50 in respect of the fee grant.
    MR. J. C. FLYNNcommented on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's intimation that in future the Treasury were to consider whether the fee grant was not to be altered from its present basis, and that while in England it was to be upon the capitation grant of 10s. per child in average attendance, it was not to be so as regards Ireland and Scotland. Irish Members must at once proclaim their dissent from any such doctrine. The Irish Members dissented from the principle, whether in regard to Rating Bills or Education Bills, that the Treasury could alter financial relations according as it pleased. Hints were now being thrown out that because nine-eightieths were found to work favourably for Ireland and Scotland, they must revert to the 10s. capitation grant, and that, if the 10s. capitation grant was found to be unduly favourable to either Ireland or Scotland, those countries would be driven back to the principle of nine-eightieths. He protested against the doctrine that the Treasury should apply a different measure of treatment
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    to those countries according as it suited their ideas of finance. The accuracy of the figures in relation to Ireland was confirmed in 1891, and nothing had since occurred to show that they were wrong. As far as the future of the fee grant was concerned, therefore, Ireland would insist that the bargain made in 1888 should be adhered to, and that the Treasury should abandon the new principle of the 10s. capitation grant. In the matter of education generally, he showed that the Commission had recommended that the average attendance of 70 in rural schools should be reduced to 60, but the Lord Lieutenant had refused to sanction the change, probably because he was afraid of the Treasury. But, in carrying out the suggested reform, a portion of the £125,000 could be usefully spent in this direction.
    MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORsaid he had quoted from memory the provision of the Act under which the Tension Fund was started, and its application to the repayment to the Consolidated Fund of the deficiencies arising from the fund itself. The section did refer to repayment to the Consolidated Fund, but not in the particular form indicated. The Act also dealt with another point to which he wished to call the attention of the Treasury. There ought to be laid on the Table of the House every year a statement showing the expenditure and receipts in connection with the fund for the year ended December 31 previous, and also a statement of the stock purchased and held up to date. On inquiring of the authorities in the Library whether they had such Returns, he found that the last Return was rendered in 1893, but that the Act had not been complied with either for last year or the year before. It looked, therefore, as if those responsible for the conduct of the fund, not having a satisfactory tale to tell, had not sent in the usual annual Return, and thus the House was left without the information which under the Act it was entitled to receive.
    MR. J. CALDWELLwas glad to hear that the Treasury had admitted that the sum claimed on behalf of Ireland was justly due to her. The principle had been admitted that Ireland was to receive nine-eightieths of what had been paid to England for the fee

    635
    grant up to now. Now, with regard to the way in which they were going to apply the money to Ireland, they were going to give the money back in the shape of £10,000 a year to the Pension Fund. In Ireland education was managed differently from education in England and Scotland. It was managed by a central authority. As to these equivalent grants, it was a system which would give them an unending amount of trouble before they had done with it. They had now got round to the principle for which he contended in 1891, but the extraordinary suggestion was made that it was the Scotch Office which was responsible. What had the Scotch Office to do with Ireland? ["Hear, hear!"] What they were contending for was a principle, and they should support this Amendment, for they knew that they suffered, if not to a degree equal to that of Ireland.
    Question put, "That Item I (School Grants) be reduced by £50."—(Mr. Knox.)
    The Committee divided:—Ayes, 105; Noes, 154.—(Division List, No. 347.)
    MR. J. P. FARRELLdesired to call attention to certain matters upon this Vote. He thought it would be generally admitted that in a great many ways the education of the children of Ireland was not in such a satisfactory condition as it should be. In the first place, the school books in use were lamentably deficient for the purpose of imparting the instruction necessary for the training of the young mind, or for fitting the children for the battle of life. The very same style of book was now in use as that which was introduced 50 years ago, containing diffuse quotations from the writings of Archbishop Whateley and other examples of that character, dealing with problems that could be of no benefit to the children of the working classes. These books ought to be replaced by others which would contain lessons of a practical kind. They were living in a very progressive age, and if they were to properly equip the rising generation, in an educational sense, and give them a knowledge of the various questions which were at the present day affecting the welfare of the people as a whole, they should do so, not
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    according to the antiquated notions of 25 or 30 years ago, but by imparting an up-to-date practical instruction to their children, as was done in Germany and other continental countries, as well as in America. One of the subjects that were neglected very much by the Education Board in Ireland was the study of the native language. It was quite true that efforts, proceeding, he supposed, from philanthropic quarters, were being made by individuals and societies throughout Ireland to keep this matter in the forefront. But this was not enough. What objection could there be to making the Irish language one of the subjects for teaching in the elementary schools? If such a thing were done there would be no difficulty in obtaining the necessary staff of teachers, and once they began to learn the children to speak the native tongue its revival would speedily take place. He read in an article a short time ago that while some years back the English language was spoken by 31,000,000 people, in 1896 150,000,000 were speaking English. He thought the English people, as a whole, had robbed Ireland of quite enough without robbing her of her language. Englishmen were proud of the spread of their own tongue, and why should Irishmen not endeavour to bring about a revival of their own native language. He urged that the study of Irish should be made a compulsory subject in elementary schools. Turning to the grievances of the National school teachers, he complained that, in consequence of the fact that the Education Board was not licensing a sufficient number of schools, the openings for a deserving class of school teachers were not such as could be desired. For instance, in the town from which he came there were three first-class assistant teachers, all of them thoroughly well qualified to take charge of a school. One of them had been waiting 14 years for a school, but in consequence of the niggardliness of the central authority there was no opening to be found for these deserving young men, and they had to work on at a beggarly £50 a year. Then there was the question of monitors, a most deserving class also; and in consequence of the fact that there was no opening for the assistant teachers, there were no adequate facilities for the appointment of monitors. As regarded

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    the principal teachers themselves, grave discontent existed among them on the question of the capitation allowances. They said the capitation allowances were totally inadequate since the Education Board had given education free and debarred them from the right to receive remuneration from the scholars. He claimed that the teachers of Ireland compared most favourably with those of any part of the Three Kingdoms, and yet they were exceedingly ill-paid, having regard to their educational qualifications and equipment. The right hon. Gentleman, he admitted, had shown no disposition to treat them unkindly. This subject of educational progress lay at the very root of the whole social system. It was absolutely necessary, if they wished to train up an orderly and law-abiding class of citizens, they should give them a good sound education. The question of the constitution of the Education Board in Dublin was another matter which called for inquiry at the hands of the Government, because, whatever might be said as to the capabilities of the gentlemen composing it, the Board did not command the confidence and respect of the country generally. He was satisfied that the right hon. Gentleman would have, sooner or later, to settle the constitution of that Board in accordance with the predominant religious feeling of the people. The majority of the Board was composed of men who neither politically nor religiously sympathised with the people of Ireland.
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I think the Board is half Protestant and half Catholic.
    MR. J. P. FARRELLsaid he accepted the correction of the right hon. Gentleman, and was glad to hear that such was the case. He did not think, however, that that fact was altogether so satisfactory as they could wish it to be. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to consider what he had said on this subject, in which the very greatest interest was taken in Ireland.
    MR. DILLONsaid he sympathised most warmly with the views expressed by the hon. Member for Cavan with regard to the Irish language, and he hoped a successful attempt would be made to revive the study of the ancient Irish tongue, which had been persecuted
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    out of the land. It was one of the most interesting languages in Europe, and there was no reason why the people of Ireland should not be able to speak their mother tongue. He believed this subject would be brought up year after year until the language got proper recognition, both in the primary and secondary schools of the country and in the University. He now desired to allude briefly to a subject of great importance, namely, that of model schools. He understood that while it would not be in order to move any reduction on the general administration of the Vote in Ireland, they were not precluded from referring to the whole Vote by reason of the fact that a reduction had been moved on Item I.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid that the rule was that, after a reduction had been moved upon an item the Committee could not go back to a previous item. It was open to the Committee to discuss the whole Vote, but the hon. Member would have to confine himself to dealing with the matter in purely general terms, and not discuss items.
    MR. DILLONsaid he was always under the impression that the rule only excluded them from raising a specific Debate as regarded some specific item, and moving a reduction in regard to it. It seemed somewhat hard that the moving of a reduction on Item I. should exclude them from discussing the general administration of the Vote.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid it was the rule of the House which bound him as it did the hon. Member. When a question had been proposed for omitting or reducing any item, no Motion could be made or Debate allowed upon any preceding item. He might say, as an illustration, that he allowed the discussion just now upon the Celtic language on the ground that it was not referred to in any previous item. It was a matter of general interest in connection with the Estimate, but he stopped the hon. Member as soon as he came to the question of teachers' residences, because for that there was a special sum down in a special item.
    MR. DILLONsaid the question he desired specially to refer to was the

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    management and administration of the Board in connection with model schools, and he fancied that, on a matter so essentially a part of the general administration of the Board, he should be in order in discussing it. He would direct his attention to the fact that it stood in exactly the same position as the general Vote for teachers and for the general administration of the Board.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid the hon. Member would see that there was a special Vote for model schools.
    MR. DILLONdesired to point out that there was also a special Vote for all the teachers in all the schools, and if that ruling stood they would be absolutely precluded from saying anything on the Education Vote at all.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid that the hon. Member would remember that the Vote was under discussion some hours last week, and that it had been under discussion some hours that day, and about an hour ago a Motion was made on Item I. and a decision was taken upon that item. He was bound by the Rules of the House, and he could not allow a discussion upon a previous question.
    MR. DILLONsaid he wanted to clearly understand the ruling. Was it the Chairman's ruling that they could not discuss any part of the administration of the Board with regard to model schools after that decision had been taken?
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid it depended. He allowed a discussion upon the Celtic language because that was a matter of general policy. He had also allowed a discussion with regard to the composition of the National Board, because there was no item relating to that. But a matter of administration as to which there was a special item in the Vote he did not think could be discussed after a discussion upon Item I.
    MR. FIELDsaid he should like to ask whether there was any opportunity at a subsequent stage on which a discussion could be raised, as the Chairman's ruling had been quite unexpected by hon. Members on that side of the House.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid he did not think his
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    ruling was unexpected. He had made it many times both this Session and last Session. It had been ruled pretty steadily since 1868, when the Order was passed. He would remind the hon. Member that he had had an opportunity at the commencement of that day, and also last week, when this Vote was under discussion.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILLasked if it was not possible for an hon. Gentleman to move a reduction on an item far away down, and so preclude any discussion on any of the preceding Votes.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANSsaid that would be perfectly possible and it had frequently been done, but hon. Members had risen and said they wished to discuss matters on a previous item.
    MR. TULLYasked if it would be possible to raise the question of religious education as applied to these model schools.
    THE CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS: As applied to model schools, no, because there is a specific item dealing with that.
    MR. HENRY BROADHURSTexpressed the opinion that any money which the Chief Secretary thought it right to ask for for the purposes of Irish Education would be granted almost unanimously. He had no hesitation in saying that his constituents would support him in assisting the right hon. Gentleman to put an end to the scandals which they had heard disclosed in the speech of the hon. Member for Cavan. That hon. Member had revealed a state of things which no English or Scotch or Welsh Member would tolerate for a moment, and he trusted the Chief Secretary would make application to the House for funds on every occasion when it was necessary to supply such obvious necessities as the hon. Member for Cavan had pointed out. He entirely agreed, too, with the view that some assistance should be given for the cultivation and development of the Celtic language. It might be said that this was a mere matter of sentiment, and that therefore it was frivolous and useless to spend public money upon it. Even if it was a matter of sentiment, was not patriotism made up of sentiment, and he did not see why they should not

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    encourage patriotism in the case of Ireland just as they encouraged it in the case of Scotland and Wales. There was not a Scotchman worthy of the name who did not glory in being a Scotchman; he showed it on any and every occasion—["Hear, hear!" and laughter]—and Englishmen joined in his glorification. Why should they not try and cultivate the same feeling in Ireland? Speaking for himself, he knew nothing whatever of the Gaelic language, but he had heard it spoken; he had heard it used for public purposes, and for purposes of religious instruction, and in appeals to the patriotism of the people, and he could not help feeling proud of belonging to a country which had so many component parts as that language represented. He was entirely in favour of the appeal which had been made by the Irish Members to the Chief Secretary. With regard to the request for more money for education in Ireland, he believed the English people would heartily support the Chief Secretary in making a more liberal provision for that purpose.
    MR. MACNEILLsaid he would appeal to the Chief Secretary to encourage the Celtic language in Ireland. In his own constituency there was a large population who only spoke Irish, and who could neither read nor write English, not because they were wanting in intelligence, but because sufficient educational facilities had not been offered them. Donegal was once a great centre of learning—a fact which was evidenced by the existence in that part of Ireland of many literary treasures in the Irish tongue; and a cultivation of that language would open those treasures to the people. Though illiterate, the Donegal peasant was a man of much natural intelligence, and the better the education he received the more valuable would he become, not only to Ireland, but to the whole Empire. The teaching of Irish need not detract from the study of English. Both tongues could be taught together, and the Chief Secretary would do a good work educationally, and in the development of character, if he brought into the Irish system of education a complete and thorough means of teaching Irish grammatically and structurally, and in thus opening the treasures which that language concealed.
    MR. MAURICE HEALYsaid that the best way for satisfactorily settling this and other questions affecting Ireland would be to place them in the hands of the Irish people themselves—to give them a Parliament of their own in which they might discuss and give effect to them in their own way. ["Hear, hear!"] He would not trespass on the time of the Committee by dwelling on the general question of the educational policy in Ireland further than to say that he thought his hon. Friend was well advised, and did a useful work in raising the question which was before the Committee. Occasional glances at the Reports of the English and Scotch Education Departments convinced him that the educational methods in England and Scotland were steadily improving. He wished he could think that improvement was proceeding at the same rate in Ireland. In his opinion the steady improvement in educational methods in these islands was largely due to the criticism which educational methods received year after year from English members in this House, and that when those Members rose they were not received with a deprecating start from the English Minister of Education, who was the director of the English educational policy. One of the glaring defects of the British system in Ireland was that one gentleman had to answer for all departments of Irish life, a fact which taxed the energies of the most robust men. In the matter of singing it was notorious that within the past 20 years, public school singing in England had been improved to an extent which no other country in the world could boast of. That was not so in Ireland. In England a great improvement had been effected through the development of the tonic sol fa system. In Ireland that system was almost unknown. Take the teaching of spelling. He held that a child could easily, by a proper system of teaching spelling, be taught to read in such a way that at five years old he or she could read the newspapers. If they took up the reports of the English School Inspectors they found that the teaching of spelling, and, through it, the teaching of reading was receiving constant study and attention. In Ireland that was not so. The whole system of elementary

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    education in England was enormously in advance of anything that existed in Ireland. Whereas there had been an immense advance during the last 20 years in educational methods in England, in Ireland to-day the system of education was what it was 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago. It was perhaps unfair to expect the right hon. Gentleman to devote his attention to this important matter in the way an English Minister did, but he asserted that if they had in Ireland an Education Department which would do for Ireland which the English Education Department was doing for England, the system of elementary education in Ireland would be enormously and vastly improved. As to the teaching of Gaelic in Irish schools he entirely shared the view that it would be preposterous for any one to hope or desire to expel or exterminate the English language in Ireland. For good or evil the English language must always be the most important or predominant language in Ireland, but all he and his Friends asked was that the Government should do for the Irish language in Ireland what they willingly and cheerfully did for the Gaelic in Scotland and for the Welsh language in Wales. There was a large juvenile population in Ireland who were still solely Irish speakers. That population had to go to school, and the question was, how they were to be treated when they were got there. The Irish Education Department treated them as if they were English children. English books were put into their hands, and they were taught to spell o-x, ox, and d-o, do, and were put through all the rest of the elementary course of learning to read as if they were already acquainted with the English language. For all practical purposes the books put into their hands might as well be written in Greek or in Sanscrit. An intelligent way to deal with this problem, and the way which was strongly recommended by the late Sir Patrick Keenan, was to deal with the children as Irish children; to teach them first of all to read in Irish, and then, through Irish, to teach them to read in English. The one effect of the present method of dealing with the children was that when at 12, 13 or 14 they left school, they were, for all practical purposes, as ignorant of English as they
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    were the day they entered it. From an educational point of view alone, it was of the utmost importance that the Irish Educational Department should treat Irish children as the children in the Highlands of Scotland and as the Welsh children in Wales were treated. No one desired that the children should not be taught English; on the contrary, he advocated the teaching of them in the way he desired because he believed they would learn English better. Of course, the direct result of the adoption of what he advocated would be that they would teach the children English better and do something to keep the ancient language of Ireland alive. He was pained to see the attitude assumed by the hon. Member for South Belfast, who represented what might be called the Philistine view—the view that all knowledge was to be estimated and computed by its value in pounds, shillings and pence. That was a short-sighted view of the subject, and one which no one of the intellectual eminence of the Chief Secretary would take. That was not only a Philistine view, but it was a view that had done much harm to English interests in Ireland. The view advocated by the hon. Member for South Belfast was the same that was put forward three centuries ago by the poet Spenser in his survey of the state of Ireland, when he advocated the total suppression of the Irish language, on the ground that "where the speech is Irish, there the heart must be Irish too." But if English Statesmen wished to see the day when their work in Ireland should be respected and loved, they must not strive to suppress and exterminate Irish nationality, but must foster and encourage it. The hon. Member for South Belfast, in what he had said that evening, did not really express the views of his own class in Ireland, for the bulk of the work done in recent years in furtherance of the Irish language and literature had been done by the descendants of Protestant settlers. The most intellectual and successful workers in the field of the Irish language and archaeology had been men of Protestant descent. The Irish language was being studied now in Germany, and France, and Italy, and the work done in Germany alone in the last 30 or 40 years for the Irish language far surpassed anything done in these

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    islands in the same period. The interest that the Irish language excited among scholars and philologists was constantly increasing.
    MR. W. O'MALLEYsaid that in order that the English language might he taught successfully in Ireland, it was absolutely necessary that there should be a, sufficient number of teachers who knew the Irish language. At present on the western seaboard there was a great dearth of Irish speaking teachers. That was much to be regretted, as many children through want of proper teaching grew up in ignorance of English, and that was very disadvantageous to them when they had to go to other countries, as many of them unfortunately had to.
    MR. DOOGANcontended that the number of Irish speaking teachers ought to be increased. The backward state of education in Ireland as compared with England was, he believed, largely due to the system of payment by results. It encouraged the practice of crude and cruel cram, and only developed one faculty of the mind, namely, the memory. Under this system teachers were prone to devote themselves chiefly to the education of the bright children, and to leave those who were slow to take care, of themselves. The whole system was based upon an erroneous assumption. It assumed that children of the same age and class had the same mental capacity. But they would not get three children equally gifted in the same class. He thought that many of the subjects should be eliminated from the school programme, and that the children should be trained with a view to develop all their faculties and with due regard to morals and discipline. The mere dry bones of a system of payment by results operated injuriously to the efficiency of the national education. Not one penny of public money was paid on the results of individual examination of pupils in England and Scotland. Why then should the system continue year after year in Ireland? It made the lives of the teachers miserable and tended to give the children a hatred of education and of school life. He pressed the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland once for all to have this pernicious system abolished or greatly modified.
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    On the return of the CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS, after the usual interval,
    MR. FIELDsaid he wished to voice the feelings of the many societies in Dublin which advocated the encouragement of the teaching of the Irish language in the national schools in Ireland. He asked that the result fees with respect to the teaching of Irish should be raised to the same standard as those given for proficiency in foreign languages which were not of commercial value. The system of national education in Ire-was wrong from the beginning. The National Board of Education was composed almost entirely of eminent educationists, professional men, and divines, and did not include any practical commercial man who knew the wants of the Irish nation from a commercial and practical point of view. The result was the children were taught to be memory machines, and did not receive the technical education which was now so necessary. The result was, an article was being produced for which there was no demand. There was no country in Europe so deficient in technical education at the present time as Ireland. Industrial or commercial training was almost unknown in the national system of education of Ireland, and yet that system was frequently praised as an almost perfect institution. This was a matter that vitally concerned the material prosperity of Ireland, and unless there was some amount of material prosperity in the country the people could not be contented and happy. Besides, an ignorant people were more difficult to rule than an educated people, because education enabled a man to take a broadminded view of things and to look beyond the narrow and sectional interests which perhaps influenced those about him. In countries abroad, children were given a commercial or a technical education; they were fully equipped with the armour of experience and knowledge to enable them to fight successfully in the battle of life. But in Ireland the girls were not taught to sew or cook; the boys were not given an agricultural or manual training; they merely learned pages of books by rote, with the result that they were utterly unfitted for positions in life

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    for which they were destined. These might seem novel assertions coming from the Irish Benches. But, unfortunately, they were absolutely true. Until the system of national education in Ireland was made more practical it must be a complete failure in the future, as it had been, to some extent, in the past. The whole system required to be reconstructed, in order to fit Irish boys and girls for the struggle with the youth of other countries.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid the greater part of the discussion on the Vote had centred round two questions—the constitution of the Board of National Education, and the teaching of the Irish tongue in the Elementary Schools of Ireland. It was complained that the Education Board was not sufficiently representative, and one hon. Member had suggested that, in order to cure the evils of the system, an autocrat in the person of the Chief Secretary should step in. The Chief Secretary might be an autocrat in many departments of Irish public life, but so far as education was concerned the Commissioners were supreme, subject, of course, to the rules under which they worked, and all the Chief Secretary could do was to bring those suggestions before the Board. He could not force them on the Board, even if he agreed with them. He was sure he need not be suspected of throwing cold water on the study of the Irish language, which was once—though it could hardly be said to be so any longer—the national tongue of Ireland. He had not attempted the study of that language in Ireland, but he did once make a serious attempt to master it as it was spoken in Scotland. He could not, however, say that that attempt had been very successful, for after a few weeks or months of study he had to give it up as a bad job. [Laughter.] He knew something of Greek and Latin, but compared with Gaelic the study of Greek or Latin was a trifle. [Laughter.] Undoubtedly the language had a very valuable and interesting literature—more so in Ireland than in Scotland—but it appeared to him that in those days its study was more the concern of scholars and philologists than of practical men. ["Hear, hear!"] So far as elementary education was concerned, the question that had to be
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    dealt with was, what would best equip for their future business in life those who passed through the Elementary Schools. ["Hear, hear!"] He thought he noticed two different trends of thought in the discussion. Some hon. Members contended that the study of Irish should be encouraged in order that it might become once more something like the national tongue of Ireland. They would like to see Erse restored as a national language, but any expectation of that kind was absolutely chimerical; and, if it were not, he doubted whether its fulfilment would be an advantage to the Irish people. One hon. Member wished the study of Irish to be encouraged in the elementary schools in order to increase the spread of "our tongue"—meaning by that a tongue which the hon. Member did not himself speak—[laughter]—and another hon. Member wished to see the study of Erse encouraged from sentiments of patriotism. No doubt there was a strong feeling of the kind in Wales, but he did not think there was a desire in Scotland to perpetuate the knowledge and practice of the Gaelic speech. It was not desirable artificially to stimulate the study of the Irish language, but if there was a natural inclination to study it he should not stand in the way. If the education in the elementary schools was to fit the children for their place in life, the study of Irish could not be particularly encouraged. But there were some districts in Ireland where the Irish tongue was still the national language of the people, and there probably the best way of teaching the children would be first to teach them to use their own language properly. As to the salaries of teachers in Ireland, they were undoubtedly smaller than those of teachers in England, but the circumstances and systems of the two countries were different. One third of the salaries of English and Scotch teachers was derived from local sources; in Ireland the whole burden was borne by the State. Then, again, many of the Irish schools were very small. The proportion of children to teachers was double in England to that in Ireland. As to the importance of making the elementary education in Ireland more practical and useful, and less of mere book-learning, he entirely sympathised with that object. He had no

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    power to impose his views on the Commissioners, but understood that they themselves were moving in this direction, and in a short time he hoped to see a real development in the direction so much to be desired. ["Hear, hear!"]
    MR. FIELDasked whether some commercial men could not be introduced on the National Board?
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that there were already two commercial members on the Board.
    Original Question put and agreed to.
    2. £605 to complete the sum for Endowed Schools Commissioners, Ireland—Agreed to.
    3. £1,643 to complete the sum for National Gallery of Ireland,—
    SIR THOMAS ESMONDEcalled attention to the small sum allowed (£1,000) for the purchase of pictures for the National Gallery of Ireland. This was very unfair when it was remembered that the National Gallery in England got anything they asked for from the Treasury. It was not often possible to buy a good picture for £1,000.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid he would be very glad to see a larger sum voted for the purchase of pictures, but the hon. Member knew the hardn+ess of the Treasury's heart. The hon. Member said that the Trustees of the English National Gallery had only to come to the Treasury to get all they wanted; but he did not think that would be the account given by the Trustees themselves. For the present year the grant in aid to the National Gallery in London amounted to only £5,000, and, on the principle of the equivalent grant, he did not think it would be fair to claim more than £1,000 for the gallery in Dublin. He entirely sympathised with what the hon. Member said with regard to the difficulty of buying good pictures with so small a sum, and he certainly thought it would be reasonable, if more could be granted, that the authorities should be allowed to accumulate the money, so that when occasion offered it might be possible to buy a really valuable picture.
    SIR THOMAS ESMONDEpointed out that not many years ago the National
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    Gallery in London got as much as £75,000. He would suggest that, when an occasion offered of securing some good pictures, the Treasury might consider the possibility of making a special grant for the purpose.
    Vote agreed to.
    4. £2,450 to complete the sum for Queen's Colleges, Ireland,—
    MR. DILLONsaid this Vote raised one of the most important and burning questions in Irish affairs. They were told by Unionists that they had only to bring a really substantial grievance to the notice of the House of Commons to have it remedied. Here was a grievance of a quarter of a century's standing. It had been defeated over and over again, and it had been admitted as a crying grievance by both Parties. The present Government were in a peculiarly strong position for dealing with the question of university education in Ireland. The Irish Catholics were assured that, if a Unionist Government were returned to power, this question would be finally settled. There were four great teaching universities in Ireland, three endowed by the State and one by ancient endowments. Dublin University had an immense income from ancient endowments, and while it was true it was nominally an unsectarian institution, it was, in reality, a Protestant college. Nearly 50 years ago the system of Queen's colleges was set up for the specific purpose of meeting the grievances of the Irish Catholics. These colleges were established in Belfast, Cork, and Galway. The college in Belfast had passed entirely into the hands of the Presbyterians, and they had made it a great institution. The colleges in Cork and Galway were established to meet the wants of the Catholics in those great Catholic centres, but, from the day they were established to the present hour, the Government had persisted in running them on a system which made them unsuitable to the wants of the Catholics. If the wishes of the Catholics had been consulted, these colleges would have brought untold advantages to the people of Connaught and Munster. Cork College had done somewhat better than Galway, but they had both failed in the purpose for which they

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    were intended. He did not know any subject in which this Government might be more reasonably expected to legislate than this. When he brought the question before the House on a former occasion, the Chief Secretary said it was a matter in connection with which the Catholics had suffered a great grievance, and one which demanded legislation. He was perfectly well aware that the previous Conservative Government passed a Bill to set up the Royal University in Ireland to meet the wants of the Catholics. The Royal University had done a certain amount of good work, but it did not supply the primary want for the higher education of the people, and that was a great teaching institution. Catholics who could not go to the Queen's Colleges were denied a University education. That was a cruel disability for them to labour under, and a Government like the present, who had the power to remedy the grievance, ought to take the very earliest opportunity of applying themselves to it. The college of Belfast had been recognised as a Presbyterian body, and the whole administration of the college was based on the principle that it had to cater for Presbyterian students; but Galway was run in such a way as to make it difficult for Catholics to enter the college. The Government should make a frank declaration that they intended to tackle this great problem of university education on the principle of treating all religious denominations equally. Irishmen had never been able to accept the Queen's College system as an adequate substitute for a university system. They were entitled to demand that there should be in Dublin, side by side with Trinity College, a teaching institution, equal in prestige and in position, which should be acceptable and open to the Catholic youth of Ireland. Nothing less than this would satisfy the Irish Catholics.
    MR. W. JOHNSTONdemurred to the statement that Belfast College was exclusively a Presbyterian College.
    MR. DILLON: I said it was practically, not exclusively, a Presbyterian College.
    MR. JOHNSTONshowed that a large number of the students were connected with the Church of Ireland, and they
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    were proud of the large number of Presbyterian students who took advantage every year of the education given in Queen's College. He should like to say a few words as to the endowment of a Roman Catholic University. He was strongly opposed to anything of the kind. They regretted if the Roman Catholics did not take advantage of the existing system side by side with Protestant students. He ventured to urge that they should have such educational institutions that they could all meet on a common platform.
    MR. T. HARRINGTONsaid it was quite true, as they were told, that they had Dublin University, and that it, like Belfast Queen's College was open to Catholics, but it reminded him of what Cromwell said: "What do they want with churches, ours are open?" What was the use of talking about Trinity College being open, and the Queen's College open, so long as the system under which they were conducted precluded Catholics from attending them?
    MR. JOHNSTON: The hon. Member for Waterford is a Trinity College man.
    MR. HARRINGTON: Yes, and I was at Trinity College myself, but that is not an answer. They desired for their country a system of education which would not preclude the great majority of the people from partaking of it. Everybody knew that it was impossible for Catholics to have a university education under the present system. They could not enter the colleges or avail themselves of them. It was the duty of the Government to address themselves to that difficulty. It was their duty to see that by some means the Catholics of Ireland were placed on the same terms of equality with the Protestants in the matter of education. They had now the Protestants governing Trinity College and the Queen's College, and under these circumstances it was absurd to say that they were placed on an equality with the Protestants.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid he could only deal with the matter generally. He regretted that the Roman Catholic hierarchy did not approve of the University, so that contemporaries might be brought up side by side. However, as the hon. Member had said, they must take facts as they found them, and

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    the Catholics had shown their absolute sincerity by refusing to allow their children to attend the colleges. No one who knew Ireland could deny the difficulty of the problem. He himself, in the short time he had been in Ireland, had to recognise it. It was his unfortunate lot to have to dispense a great deal of patronage. It had been his desire that that patronage should be shared to an equal extent between Protestants and Catholics, but he was certain that everyone in his position had felt the difficulty of finding Catholics who were fit to hold these positions, and the difficulty was largely due to the absence of a Catholic University education. That was a proposition which no one could deny. Most of the endeavours to solve the question had, he was afraid, been failures, which had brought more or less discredit on those who had attempted its solution. He did not know if he was to try and solve it that he should be more fortunate than those who had preceded him. He was not in a position to pledge the Government in this matter; but he repeated that, so far as he personally was concerned, he should be glad to try and make a solution of the problem, and it would be a great pride to him if, before he ceased to hold the office he now held, he could feel that even some step had been taken towards the solution of a problem which, he was certain, was intimately bound up with the future prosperity of Ireland. ["Hear, hear!"]
    MR. MACNEILLhad heard with pride the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but remarked that at the same time there must be some limit to the patience of the Irish people. The Chief Secretary spoke of a future Catholic University as a thing to be hoped for—as a pious inspiration. But in August, 1889, the present First Lord of the Treasury promised the Irish Members, in language which would admit of no equivocation, that a Catholic University should be a primary matter with the Conservative Government. At the time he made that promise it was near the end of the then Parliament. But the Chief Secretary was now at the beginning of an Administration, and had great facilities and power. A Catholic University could easily be founded, and if founded on the same revenue as Trinity College he had no doubt of its
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    success. The only Protestant institution that had been prosperous in Ireland had been Dublin University. The revenues of that great University were less than the revenues of two or three of the ordinary colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and when such a success could be achieved with a University founded wholly in favour of the minority, what could be done with a University founded in favour of the majority? The hon. Member for East Mayo had stated the absolute demand of his co-religionists that there should be a teaching college in Dublin equal in power and emoluments to Trinity College in Dublin. So far as the mechanism was concerned, it was quite ready to the hon. Gentleman's hands. All he had got to do was to add a second College to Dublin University, to which the Catholics could go with sympathy, and find a Catholic atmosphere, with nothing at all in the studies derogatory in tone and sentiment to their religion. Let them have a college in which Catholic priests were Professors just as Protestant clergymen were in Trinity College. No body of men had a higher claim to teach the Catholics than had the Catholic priests. They had simply a genius for teaching. Referring to the Colleges of Galway and Cork, he said they had every appliance ready to their hand; a magnificent staff of professors and beautiful class rooms and buildings, but these colleges were not administered sympathetically in regard to the mass of the surrounding population, who were Catholics. The right hon. Gentleman, without the necessity of passing any Act, could easily manage to convert these colleges into denominational colleges in the same sense in which Trinity College was denominational, and if that were done the success of Queen's College, Galway, all through Connaught, and of Queen's College, Cork, all through Minister, would be as great as was the success of the Belfast College throughout the Presbyterian and Protestant element in Ireland. Was the right hon. Gentleman aware that the President of the Belfast College was a Presbyterian? [Mr. W. JOHNSTON: "We are all proud of him."] He should be glad, in the same way, to see the President of Galway or Cork College a Catholic priest. He admitted that theoretically

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    Trinity College was practically open to everyone, but it had, in reality, always been an exceedingly Protestant institution. He would ask the Government to form this subject of University education into some practical scheme, and not to rest content with the expression of a mere pious opinion.
    MR. WOLFFdid not think even hon. Gentlemen opposite would accuse him of having any very narrow sectarian views. If he could get all the young men in Ireland educated in Protestant colleges he would do so, but failing that he would prefer to have them educated as good Catholics. He denied that the Queen's College in Belfast was entirely a Presbyterian college. There was nothing on earth to prevent Catholics going there. If the Presbyterian doctrine was taught there, or if the atmosphere generally were Presbyterian and would in any way interfere with Catholics, he would say that hon. Gentlemen opposite were right; but the grievance that hon. Gentlemen raised was that no religion whatever was taught there. He thought education in Ireland ought to be strictly non-sectarian. He could not help thinking that it said very little for the opinion hon. Gentlemen had of their own faith, if they were afraid of their young men going for a few hours a day to a college in which their religion was not taught. The Queen's College in Belfast had been a very successful college, but the colleges in Cork and Galway had failed, not through any fault of their teaching staff or professors, but simply because the Roman Catholic clergy would not allow their young men to go to any college whatever of which they had not the entire control in their own hands. ["No, no!"] Then why did they not go?
    MR. MACNEILL: Because they didn't choose to.
    MR. DILLON: I want to know if the Queen's College at Belfast had none but Catholic professors, how many Presbyterians would go there?
    MR. WOLFFsaid that was a question which he could not answer, but he did not think the question of the religion of the professors should be taken into account. If the University education did not succeed, the fault did not lie with the Government; it lay entirely
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    with the Catholics, who would have nothing to do with any college of which they had not the entire control.
    MR. FLYNNasked whether the hon. Gentleman had ever heard of the Mansfield College in Oxford?
    MR. WOLFF: Was that college founded by the Government?
    MR. FLYNNcontended that did not affect the question. He agreed that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman was conciliatory, and one might have thought it sympathetic if some of them on those Benches had not remembered that they heard exactly the same speech seven years ago uttered by his distinguished brother when he was Chief Secretary. The First Lord of the Treasury then said:—
    "I do not deny that I regret that the Roman Catholic clergy have felt it their duty to discourage members of their religion from taking full advantage of the Queen's College in Galway, or of Trinity College, Dublin, which is now open to every denomination. But in this matter regrets are vain things, and we have to take facts as we find them. I am afraid it is perfectly clear that nothing which has hitherto been done will really meet the wants and wishes of the Roman Catholic population in Ireland. That being so, we have no alternative but to try to devise some scheme by which the wants of the Catholic population shall be met other than that which at present has been attempted. I do not think that this would be the proper time for me to suggest even in outline the main lines of what the scheme ought to be, but we ought to make some attempt, if possible, to carry out a scheme of the kind I have indicated."
    He was afraid they had not advanced very far on that road since that time. They often heard of a certain place being paved with good intentions. The floor of that House was littered with the promises and good intentions of Conservative Governments towards Ireland, and he supposed they were as far away from a Catholic University in Ireland, so far as the Government were concerned, as they were seven years ago. The hon. Member opposite asked if they would be able to find the funds, but he would remind the hon. Gentleman that if they took into their hands the whole system of Irish education, primary, secondary, and higher, and if they gave them no voice in its management and administration, then they could not turn round and ask them to find the money to carry out a scheme which they were bound to carry out. If

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    they believed that University education was a
    good thing, then the Government were bound to turn an attentive ear to the advice of those who were competent to give advice from their knowledge of the feelings and wants of Ireland. They were all heartily glad to hear of the great success of Queen's College, Belfast. They thoroughly shared the pride of hon. Members opposite in that fact. The Queen's College in Cork, with which he was acquainted, had not been a failure, far from it, but it had developed into a huge medical school. There was a little art, and there was a little bit of engineering, but for all practical purposes that beautiful edifice, kept up at an enormous expense, was practically nothing' but a huge medical school, and as a University it was a ghastly failure. If at Oxford, an institution of so many years standing, it was possible to have a comparatively modernised system like Unitarianism or Free Church, it ought not to be difficult for the Government of the day, if they were sympathetic or studied the wants and feelings of the people of Ireland, to deal with a question of this kind.
    MR. THOMPSON SHARPEdesired to associate himself with the appeals which had been made from the Benches opposite on behalf of their Roman Catholic friends in Ireland with reference to University education. He did so with the more freedom as an Irish Churchman representing a Metropolitan constituency. The University of Dublin, where he was educated, was the one institution of Ireland of which all Irishmen, without distinction of race, creed, or class, were proud. Holding such a unique position in that country, and governed by men of the highest intellectual calibre, it had been for generations open to all religious denominations. When he was an undergraduate in Trinity College, Roman Catholics and Dissenters were admitted to degrees. Since then the foundation had been thrown open to all, and many Roman Catholics had been elected to scholarships, fellowships, and professorships. There was not, he believed, a Roman Catholic Judge on the Bench who had not taken his degree at Trinity, Dublin. Then there was the other University—Queen's, now called the
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    Royal University—founded by Sir Robert Peel, on the non-sectarian or undenominational basis, which was so popular 50 years ago. The colleges of Belfast, Cork and Galway had each had a sphere of great usefulness. But the fact remained as the Chief Secretary had admitted, the fact faced them at every turn—that the Irish Roman Catholics had not taken advantage of the existing Universities. This might be in part owing to social reasons, the Roman Catholics not being as able to bear the expense of giving their sons a college education as Churchmen and Presbyterians. But there was this admitted grievance—call it sentimental if they would—that the Roman Catholics did not approve, and would not largely avail themselves of, undenominational education. This great country could afford to be generous. The great Party now in power—this strong Government—could, if they set themselves to work, settle this question during their term of office, and give the Irish people a share of University education on lines which they could approve—[cheers]—and he should rejoice to see the Government take some steps to satisfy the legitimate wishes of their Catholic brethren, and give them such share in University education as would be satisfactory to them. [Loud cheers.]
    MR. DILLONsaid that, on behalf of the Roman Catholics of Ireland he thanked the hon. Member for the speech he had just made. [Cheers.] He had listened to the speech of the Chief Secretary that night with feelings of the greatest disappointment. They had retrograded in this matter. The tone of the Chief Secretary and First Lord of the Treasury on the occasion when this Vote was last before the House was much more hopeful than the speech they had heard that night. ["Hear, hear!"] What did the Chief Secretary say? He practically admitted the grievance, that an immense evil existed, and he said that his short residence in Ireland had brought keenly home to him the disabilities under which Irish Catholics laboured. The right hon. Gentleman added that he would feel it to be a great source of pride if, during his tenure of office, he could solve the problem, but that he despaired of doing so. That was the impression conveyed

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    by his speech to Irish Members. He gave them no intimation that the Government had it seriously in their minds to face the problem. He did not know whether the Chief Secretary recollected the interesting and remarkable Debate that took place on the question of denominational education some years ago, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Trinity College rose from the Treasury Bench, and, to the great surprise of the House, declared that he himself had always been in favour of granting full satisfaction to the wishes of the Irish Catholics in this regard, and that he would support any reasonable or just Measure for giving them University education. On that occasion it was made manifest that, if the governor of Ireland—whether he was a Liberal or a Conservative—would deal with the question, and would meet the representatives of the Irish people, the matter could be settled without difficulty.
    MR. JOHNSTON: It would break up the Conservative Party.
    MR. DILLONsaid that might be, but, if the hon. Member for South Belfast led the Opposition, how many did he think he would get out of the 102 Irish Members to support him? He did not think the hon. Member would get half a-dozen Members of the Irish Conservative Party to oppose any reasonable settlement of the question. The difficulty of settling the question arose from the same root from which had sprung all the difficulties with regard to Ireland, namely, that the Irish Government could not deal with Ireland in accordance with Irish sentiment, but must deal with it according to English prejudice. If the Chief Secretary could deal with the matter without fear of breaking up his Party—if he had a free hand in the matter, and could confer with Irish Catholics—he would be able to bring about a satisfactory settlement in a very short time. He would go as far as to say that he was perfectly confident that if the Chief Secretary could meet the representatives of the Irish Catholics in a room—if the right hon. Gentleman had plenipotentiary powers from the English people to deal with Irish notions and his own sense of justice—the whole difficulty could be settled in a few months. He repeated that the Chief Secretary admitted that the matter
    660
    involved a great grievance; he had realised the fact that it was a grievance which had blasted the, lives of generations of Irish Catholics and young men growing up in Ireland, because they were debarred by conscientious scruples from entering the Protestant Universities of the country, and he would like to extend, and would be willing to extend, to them the privileges of University education in accordance with their religious convictions. The hon. Member for South Belfast invited the Irish Catholics to enter the Queen's College of Belfast, and other colleges, and he said that those colleges were as open to Catholics as they were to Protestants of the Church of Ireland. If they had all turned Protestants they could have all gone on the Church establishment before the Church was Disestablished, but in these matters the ultimate judge must be the conscience of the people—["Hear, hear!"]—and if for years and generations the Irish people had proved by their action and by their sacrifices that they had been labouring under the coercion of their conscientious convictions, no one had any right now to deny them their just demands in regard to religious education. The Irish people could not enjoy the privileges of University education as those privileges were now offered to them, with a quiet conscience, because Catholic parents believed that if they sent their children there they would place their faith in peril. They might he right or wrong in that, but one thing was certain—that you could not wean them from their conscientious convictions by placing them under disabilities. If Protestants thought them wrong, the only way to induce them to change their convictions was to let them have their way, and trust to the spread of education. ["Hear, hear!"] But to this end coercion was powerless. As to the remarks of the hon. Member for South Belfast, he would merely say that he believed that if the Queen's College of Belfast was stuffed by a set of Catholic professors the only result would be that the Presbyterian young men of the country would boycott the college. Would the hon. Member for South Belfast send any young man under his control to a college the professors of which were Roman Catholics? He

    661
    would do nothing of the sort. What right, then, had he to suggest that the Catholics of Ireland should do what he would not do himself? It was idle to ask Catholics to go into the present colleges; they were Protestant colleges, there was a Protestant atmosphere there, and Catholics did not get fair play. Catholics did not, as the hon. Member asserted, demand colleges which should be under the control of the Catholic clergy, but they wanted colleges Catholic in the sense that the professors and managers should be Catholic, and that the whole atmosphere of the establishment should be in sympathy with the Catholic and Nationalist sentiment of the country.
    MR. HORACE PLUNKETTsaid the difficulty which confronted them was that on the opposite Benches there was a Catholic atmosphere and on the Government side there was a Protestant atmosphere, and if they sat up until 10 o'clock tomorrow hon. Gentlemen opposite would never get Gentlemen on the Government side to understand the Catholic atmosphere. [Mr. DILLON: "We did get one man;" and Mr. MACNEILL: "We shall never get you."] They had got him. He had lived among Catholics all his life and part of his family were Catholics, and therefore he thought he might claim to understand the Catholic position. He was as anxious as anyone could be that the question of the establishment of a Catholic University should be settled in a way that would satisfy the Catholics of Ireland, and he understood that the Leader of the House abided completely by his previous declarations on the subject—[THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY: "Hear, hear!"]—but he was not certain that the Catholics of Ireland were agreed as to the scheme which would be, in their view, a satisfactory solution of the question. It was a matter of common notoriety that no scheme so far had met with
    662
    general acceptance in Ireland, and any Chief Secretary who should attempt to solve the question would have an extremely difficult task in deciding between the various views held by hon. Members representing Nationalist constituencies and by the Catholic clergy and laity. It was even within the bounds of possibility that a scheme might be adopted by the Chief Secretary and might receive a large amount of support in Ireland, and yet that in the end a Catholic University might be established to which Catholic students would refuse to go. He sympathised with hon. Members opposite in this matter, but did not think that any good would be done by prolonging a desultory discussion on the subject.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURYappealed to the Committee to agree to the Vote. They had now had an interesting and, he thought, adequate discussion on this Vote, and he was sure hon. Members had no wish to sit up again until a very late hour. ["Hear, hear!"]
    Vote agreed to.

    CLASS I.
    5. £137,341, to complete the sum for Public Works and Buildings, Ireland,—
    MR. TULLYdrew attention to the drainage works at Drumheriff on the Shannon, and conplained that the overseers only gave employment to workmen who were recommended by gentlemen belonging to one local political Party. He did not think that that ought to be done in the case of works carried on under the supervision of the Board of Works. Workmen ought to be eligible for employment, where there was competition, as in this case, if they were recommended by clergymen of any denomination or by the local Magistrates. He hoped that in future the Chief Secretary would take care that no petty local political considerations were permitted to prevent men either of one Party or the other from getting employment.
    MR. HANBURYsaid that the point raised by the hon. Member was new to him. He quite agreed that political considerations ought not to influence the question of employment of men and he undertook to make inquiries.
    MR. DILLONsaid that he should raise the whole question of model schools on the Report stage. He wished to know why the item £2,500 which appeared under this Vote for the Queen's College, Belfast, was so much larger than the item £385, for Galway College. He did not; however, begrudge Belfast College any expenditure in buildings that were required to render the college more efficient; but if the Nationalist Members did not object to this item he hoped that the hon. Members for Belfast would imitate their liberality and not object to expenditure on the other colleges.
    MR. HANBURYsaid the sum might appear at first sight to be large, but this was the last instalment of a sum promised by the late Government, part of which was voted last year, to complete the sum for the endowment of a charity school.
    SIR JAMES HASLETTsaid there were a number of Catholic professors in the college, and that a Presbyterian president did not make a Presbyterian college. He thought it would be only fair that there should be a similar treatment in regard to colleges in other cities.
    MR. DILLONprotested against a comparison being drawn between a city like Belfast and cities like Galway or even Cork. The people of Belfast were better able to subscribe to the college than the people of Galway and Cork. Moreover, the people of Belfast were in entire sympathy with their college and were proud of it, which was not the case with the other cities.
    Vote agreed to.
    £19,503, to complete the sum for railways, Ireland,——
    MR. TULLYwas understood to refer to the case of the Cavan and Leitrim Light Railway Company. An Act was passed last year by which the Treasury contribution of 2 per cent. could be capitalised so as to extinguish a certain proportion of the share capital of the
    664
    company, thus making the contribution which the cess payers were liable to considerably lighter. Previously to that Act being passed the shares of the company were run up by stock speculators from £5 to £7 17s. 6d. The Government had held as a lien on this line a block of shares which were worth £65,000, and by selling these the Treasury had, he believed, made a profit of something like £13,000. That sum had been applied to reducing the share capital of the company, which was a considerable advantage to the people in Leitrim. The right hon. Gentleman had in answer to a question the other day told him the particulars of this transaction. It appeared to be a very extraordinary thing that the Government should have sold a large portion of these shares at a lower price than they obtained for others shortly afterwards. The difference in the price so realised would have amounted to a very large sum. He did not know all the details of these transactions at the time they took place, or else he should have called attention to them before.
    MR. HANBURYsaid that the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down admitted that the Government had made a very good bargain in reference to this matter, and his only cause of complaint appeared to be that the bargain was not a better one. The Government had taken these shares as security, and when they rose in value they had sold a portion of them at a considerable profit, the amount of which they handed over to the locality. The hon. Gentleman appeared to think that if the Government had held over for some time longer they would have made a much larger profit. It was, of course, easy to be wise after the event, but the Government in his opinion were amply justified in realising the value of the shares when they could secure a handsome profit. As regarded the precise dates at which the different transactions had taken place, he was-sorry that he had not the figures before him at that moment; but he would make inquiries into the matter, and would give the hon. Gentleman such information with regard to them as he could. ["Hear, hear!"]
    Vote agreed to.

    CLASS II.
    7. £24,597 to complete the sum for Public Works Office, Ireland—Agreed to.

    CLASS III.
    8. £41,825 to complete the sum for Law Charges and Criminal Prosecutions, Ireland,—
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid that he wished to ask how it was that the County Court Judge of Belfast held three other offices, while his Registrar held four other offices. Between them these two officials held nine separate offices.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND, in reply, said he was not aware that any serious inconvenience had been experienced. The County Court Judgeship in Down would be vacant before long, and a redistribution of those offices would then take place, which would obviate any inconvenience.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERasked that Belfast should be placed on the same footing as English towns of the same size. The combination of Registrar in Bankruptcy, County Court Judge and Recorder in one person was unknown anywhere else.
    Vote agreed to.
    9. £75,656, to complete the sum for Supreme Court of Judicature and other Legal Departments in Ireland—
    MR. HORACE PLUNKETTcomplained that the salaries of the clerks in the Registry of Deeds were lower than those in other public offices, and that the work was as important and difficult. The clerks also complained of the slowness of promotion. The work of the office was very important, and was growing more important as the policy of land purchase in Ireland was developed. All he asked was that a thorough inquiry into the question should be instituted by the Treasury, with the representative of which should be associated some independent authority or some representative of the staff.
    MR. CLANCYsaid that the work of those clerks was very important, requiring high intelligence, great training, and considerable education. He trusted that the moderate request for an inquiry into their position would be granted.
    MR. HARRINGTONwished to point out that when those clerks joined the service, it was open to them to be promoted to the position of first-class clerks. In 1885 a Committee was appointed to inquire into the working of the office. It made various recommendations, but the only recommendation acted upon was one to the effect that the duties discharged in the office were duties that properly belonged to second division clerks, with the result that though the head of the Department—who had himself been a member of the Committee—recommended several of the clerks fur promotion to the higher division, the promotions could not he granted. The third-class clerks of the office also complained of their position. There was also the case of the third class clerks who were promoted to the second division, and who, as an initial salary after promotion received less than they had done before.
    MR. HANBURYsaid that dissatisfaction did undoubtedly prevail in this office. It was quite distinct from any other; it required some technical knowledge; its whole organisation was at present in a transition stage; and the work was rapidly increasing. The clerks desired that instead of a yearly increment, an increase of salary should rather be the consequence of selection. He was not sure that that would not be a better system; and if the quality as well as the quantity of the work was increasing there were other questions to be considered. He promised to give the matter his personal attention. As to the abstractors mentioned by the hon. Member for South Dublin, they could not be promoted to the second division unless they started at the minimum salary of that division. They were originally copyists, and the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments recommended that that class should be swept away; but the Treasury for once was more tenderhearted than the Commission, and gave the men permanent employment as abstractors. They could not pass the qualifying examination for the second division; but in some cases men who had done good work had been promoted to the second division. They were comparatively young men, and it was well worth their while to enter at the lowest salary, considering the better prospect which was opened to them.

    667
    There was a good reason why they should not carry the higher salaries with them in promotion from the position of abstractors. If they did, they would be doing the same work as the junior second division clerks, side by side with them, and receiving salaries 50 per cent. higher.
    MR. HORACE PLUNKETTdesired to point out that the abstractors who had been promoted had 12 years' service to their credit, and that their age would be 30, while that of the junior or second class clerks would be about 17.
    Vote agreed to.
    10. £42,258, to complete the sum for Irish Land Commission,—
    MR. DILLONasked whether the Treasury had decided that the Assistant Land Commissioners came under the 65th Rule? The effect of its application would be that the Land Commission would be deprived of the services of some of the most experienced and efficient men on its staff. It was, moreover, a hardship to retire men who were perfectly well able to discharge their duties; and the expense to the State was greatly increased. There was an admitted difficulty in finding capable and impartial men to administer the Land Laws.
    MR. HANBURYsaid that as yet only one case had arisen—that of Mr. Rice. That gentleman was already 65, and there was some particular reason for retaining his services a month or six weeks longer. An application on that ground had been made to the Treasury, and had been granted. But the question whether the Assistant Commissioners came under the 65th Rule had not been submitted to the Treasury; and the Treasury had expressed no opinion on it.
    MR. J. P. FARRELLasked the Chief Secretary to impress on the Land Commission the desirability of completing sales as speedily as possible. The longer the sale was being considered, the more the tenant had to pay.
    Vote agreed to.
    The following Votes were agreed to without discussion:—
    11. £77,700 to complete the sum for County Court Officers, etc., Ireland.
    12. £66,298 to complete the sum for Dublin Metropolitan Police.
    13. £70,642 to complete the sum for Prisons, Ireland.
    14. £57,479 to complete the sum for Reformatory and Industrial Schools, Ireland.
    15. £3,841 to complete the sum for Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Ireland.

    CLASS VI.
    16. £11,372 to complete the sum for Pauper Lunatics, Ireland.
    17. £8,774 to complete the sum for Hospitals and Charities, Ireland.
    Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next; Committee to sit again upon Monday next.

WAYS AND MEANS.
Committee deferred till Monday next.
WAYS AND MEANS.
  OFFICIAL SECRETS BILL.
  Adjourned Debate on Second Reading (26th June), further adjourned till Monday next.
  LARCENY BILL [H.L.]
  Second Reading deferred till Monday next.

  BURGLARY BILL [H.L.]
  Second Reading deferred till Monday next.
  Whereupon, in pursuance of the Order of the House of the 20th day of this instant July, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without question put.
  House adjourned at Five minutes after Twelve o'clock till Monday next

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS.
  LORD HARRIS LORD HARRIS moved; "That the Order made on the 16th of March last,—
  'That no Bill brought from the House of Commons confirming any Provisional Order or Provisional Certificate shall be read a Second time after Tuesday the 23rd day of June next,'
  be dispensed with, and that the

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (NO. 21) BILL,
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (NO. 22) BILL,
  be read a Second time."
  THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (The EARL OF MORLEY)observed that he did not intend to make any objection to the order being dispensed with, but this year there were more late Bills than he ever remembered.
  LORD HARRISsaid he had already called the attention of the Local Government Board to this matter. He was much obliged to the noble Earl for not opposing the Motion to-day.
  Motion agreed to; Bills read a Second time accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.

  POLLUTION OF RIVERS.
  LORD NORTONsaid he had given notice to Her Majesty's Government of a question which he thought their Lordships would agree dealt with a
  582
  very serious and urgent subject. The increasing pollution of all the rivers throughout the kingdom by the sewage of the towns was now reported in every district by medical officers as a sanitary matter of the most grave importance to the life of man and beast, to the health of the community, and it was largely destructive to property. He himself was the first to try the powers of the law to abate this nuisance by bringing an action for damages against the Corporation of Birmingham. He knew what the difficulty and expense were of a private individual obtaining an injunction, but he did obtain it, and it was a precedent for all subsequent proceedings on the subject. Statutory facilities had since been offered. The Rivers Pollution Prevention Act of 1876 was very complete for its purposes, apparently. It defined what pollution of rivers meant under the Act; it made it obligatory upon all sanitary authorities throughout the kingdom to facilitate in every way the drainage of their towns through sewers clear of all running streams. It also imposed upon County Courts to enforce the abatement of this nuisance by summary order with an appeal to the High Court. But the Act had turned out to be somewhat of a dead letter, for want of provisions to carry it out. No sooner was the sanitary authority called upon to fulfil its obligations under the Act than innumerable delays immediately occurred. Every sort of difficulty was found in the way of execution of works, and if they were begun they did not proceed. In the first place there were no definite powers enabling their execution; and in the second place the County Council had too small an area to deal with the whole basin of a river, and in many cases would have no command of an outfall for their works. The Local Government Board, by general acknowledgment, had a good deal too freely used its power of suspending the order of the County Court, and in that way they hung up numerous cases without any operation taking effect. Years passed away before an offender was finally brought in contact with the County Court Judge, and then a new crop of delays began to occur. That was the state of things in which the law had become; inoperative. The 14th Section

  583
  of the Local Government Act of 1888 gave powers generally to County Councils to enforce the Act of 1876, but there were no provisions for carrying out the powers given, and, of all things, there was no power given to County Councils to combine so as to deal with the whole area of the river. Under these circumstances, the County Councils Association drafted a Bill which would empower the County Councils to effectually abate this nuisance. Lord Cross passed that Bill through their Lordships' House in 1893, but it dropped in the other House, simply for want of attention or time. Every year since then a private Member, Sir Francis Powell, had introduced this same Bill into the House of Commons, and it was now before that House again, with as little prospect of passing as at first. He thought he might press upon the Government that what had happened showed that private Members could not deal with this subject. The remarkable thing was that the failing enactment had been carried out by local Acts, and had worked in the most successful manner in two districts of the country. All the powers that were required were embodied in the Mersey and Irwell Act, and the West Riding of Yorkshire Act. He was told by Lord Egerton of Tatton that the Mersey and Irwell Act was in full operation and most successful. They had nothing whatever to do but to make the powers of these Acts general to gain the object they bad in view. The Government could do it; clearly private Members could not do it. He only asked the Government to take the matter up, and in a very short Act they might extend the powers given under these two local Acts to all districts throughout the kingdom. He believed such a Bill would be received with the greatest acclamation by most of the County Councils in England. He could hardly hope that the Government would introduce such a Bill now, but he hoped they would give him some encouragement to believe that they would deal with the subject if possible early next Session. He begged to ask Her Majesty's Government if they will undertake the legislation which, in a few clauses, has been prepared by the County Councils Association, in the terms of existing local Acts, but which in private hands has failed for several
  584
  Sessions to obtain time for discussion. It is simply to make general the powers of procedure, already successfully given in those local Acts, for facilitating the prevention of pollution of rivers.
  LORD THRINGsaid the evil of which the noble Lord had spoken could not be exaggerated. It was perfectly true, as the noble Lord said, that both in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire private Acts had been passed, at very great expense and after very great difficulty, which were perfectly effectual. The real truth was that the difficulty of dealing with the evil was to be found in the Act of 1876 rather than in the other Acts. The Act of 1876 declared that, in a manufacturing town or district, the effluents of the manufactories could not be removed and the pollution dealt with unless it could be done at a reasonable cost and without injuring the manufacturing interests of the place. But it was almost impossible, where a large number of manufactories existed, to attempt to deal with the evil without in some way injuring, or interfering with, the manufacturing interests. ["Hear, hear!"] The Act, most unfortunately, contrary to the common law, and in opposition to the remonstrances made on the point when the Act was passed, declared that the certificate of the Local Government Board should be conclusive, he thought, as to the reasonableness of the cost and the practicability of the needs. But the Act of 1876 was practically unworkable. Time after time another Bill had been introduced into Parliament, and efforts repeatedly made to pass it into law; but those efforts had never succeeded, because the Government would not take the trouble of undertaking to pass it. ["Hear, hear!"] The fact that such a Bill could be passed if the Government took it up, and ought to be passed, could not be denied. In Lancashire, where, perhaps, the evil existed to a greater extent than in any other part of the country, and where, unless some remedy was applied, even the Manchester Ship Canal would be seriously injured, the authorities had done much, even under the existing law and their local Acts, though at great expense to mitigate the nuisance; and the action which had been taken in Lancashire and Yorkshire should be enforced throughout the country.
  VISCOUNT CLIFDENsaid he agreed with all the noble Lord had said as to the seriousness of the evil, and the necessity for an effective remedy being applied. But he differed from him on one point. The noble Lord seemed to desire an Act framed on the lines of the two local Acts in the West Riding and Lancashire; yet the noble Lord who had just spoken had said that, notwithstanding those Acts, the contamination of the rivers in Lancashire was very great.
  LORD THRING: No. I said that, as far as I know, the Acts had worked completely in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
  VISCOUNT CLIFDENsaid he thought the condition of the Manchester Ship Canal showed a state of things that was not at all satisfactory. On the Committee last year, a member of the West Riding County Council—he thought the chairman—stated in evidence, in answer to a question from him, that every river in the West Riding was nothing but an open sewer. If that was the case in spite of the local Acts, he hoped the Rill brought in next year would be far more stringent than those Acts appeared to be.
  LORD HABRISsaid it was from no lack of recognition of the importance of the subject—for obviously there could be no subject of greater importance than the public health—that he was unable to promise that the Government would undertake what the noble Lord had asked them to do. It might be taken, he imagined, that the Act of 1876 had not been successful from the fact that it had been to a great extent inoperative. But under that Act, and also under the Act of 1888, considerable powers could be conferred upon urban and rural district councils to deal with the evils referred to. The authorities concerned had only to apply to the Local Government Board for those powers, and the Board could make a Provisional Order for the constitution of a Joint Committee representing the counties or county boroughs, or one or other of them, through which the polluted river ran. It was therefore possible under the existing Acts for the local authorities to come to the Local Government Board for powers to combine, and thus to work over a larger area of the river-bed than a single authority could do. The noble Lord had suggested that legislation upon
  586
  the lines they would like to see adopted was a very simple matter for the Government to undertake. But what were the facts? The Rivers Pollution Prevention Bill had been introduced several years in succession in the House of Commons. It had been again introduced this year, and as a matter of fact it was at that moment blocked by no fewer than five Members, and those Members were not confined to one Party. It was, therefore, scarcely possible to describe the Measure as a non-contentious one, or one that could be passed easily through Parliament. There was a number of people, he thought, who did not through their representatives look at this matter from the same point of view that the authorities representing the counties did, and he imagined that the Measure was blocked by the representatives of very large cities. It was therefore extremely probable that whoever undertook to legislate on the matter would be met with strong opposition of that character, and consequently he could not admit that such legislation would be a simple matter or that it could be easily passed through Parliament because the Government took it up. As had been stated, three Joint Committees had been constituted for Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire under the Acts referred to. In two of those cases the authorities had, by means of local Acts, obtained additional powers. He wished he could make a more satisfactory reply to the noble Lord than he was able to give, but the noble Lord would recognise that it was impossible for the Government at this moment to pledge themselves as to the legislative Measures they would introduce and undertake to carry through next Session. All that he could assure him of was that the suggestions he had made would not be lightly passed over by the Local Government Board, as, indeed, from the importance of the matter, they ought not to be. ["Hear, hear!"]
  LORD NORTONbelieved that those who blocked the Bill in the House of Commons were the representatives of the boroughs which were the nuisance-makers in this matter. The question was whether the boroughs should be allowed to use the country as their wash-pot? [Laughter.] If they had to wait

  587
  until the boroughs abated their own nuisances they would have to wait a long time.

  PUBLIC HEALTH BILL.
  Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
  SPECIAL JURIES BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend the law respecting special juries—Was presented by the Lord Chancellor; read 1a; and to be printed.—[No. 213.]

  JUDICIAL TRUSTEES BILL.
  Considered in Committee (according to order).
  [The ERAL of MORLEY, CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES, in the Chair.]
  Clause 1,—

  JUDICIAL TRUSTEES BILL.

    POWER OF COURT ON APPLICATION TO APPOINT JUDICIAL TRUSTEE.
    (1.) Where application is made to the court for the appointment of a judicial trustee as respects the trust or any property by or on behalf of the person creating or intending to create the trust, or by or on behalf of a trustee, or beneficiary, the Court may, in its discretion, appoint a judicial trustee of such trust, either jointly with any other judicial trustee or any other persons or as solo trustee, and, if sufficient cause is shown, in place of any existing trustee.
    (2.) The administration of the property of a deceased person, whether a testator or intestate, shall be a trust, and the executor or administrator a trustee, within the meaning of this section
    (3.) Where a judicial trustee is appointed, the Court may on or after such appointment vest in the judicial trustee if he be sole trustee, and in the judicial trustee jointly with any other person or persons, if he be appointed to act jointly with any other person or persons, all or any part of the trust property.
    (4.) A judicial trustee may be either an official of the Court or any other person, and in either case shall be subject to the control and supervision of the Court as an officer thereof.
    (5.) The Court may, either on request or without request, give to a judicial trustee any general or special directions in regard to the trust or the administration thereof.
    (6.) There may be paid to a judicial trustees out of the trust property such remuneration, not exceeding the prescribed limits, as the Court may assign in each case, subject to any rules under this Act respecting the application of such remuneration where the judicial trustee is an official of the Court, and the remuneration so assigned to any judicial trustee shall, save as the Court may for special reasons otherwise order, cover all his work and personal outlay.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 2,—

    COURT TO EXERCISE JURISDICTION.
    The jurisdiction of the Court under this Act may be exercised by the High Court, the Court of Chancery of the county palatine of Lancaster, and (subject to the prescribed definition of the jurisdiction) by any county court judge to whom such jurisdiction may be assigned under this Act.
    LORD ASHBOURNE LORD ASHBOURNE moved an Amendment the object of which was to extend the Bill to Ireland. From every point of view the Bill appeared to be a sensible and valuable one to assist the administration of justice in trust matters, and he should be exceedingly sorry if it could not be extended to Ireland. He was, however, very anxious that the Bill should pass, and if it should be found hereafter that his Amendment would be likely to lead to any complication, he certainly would not persist in it at the risk of endangering the passing of the Measure. ["Hear, hear!"]
    Amendment agreed to; clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 3,—

    EXCUSING AND AUTHORISING BREACH OF TRUST.
    (1.) If it appears to the Court that a trustee, whether appointed under this Act or not, is or may be personally liable for any breach of trust, but has acted honestly and reasonably, and ought fairly to be excused for the broach of trust and for omitting to obtain the directions of the Court in the manner in which he committed such breach, then the Court may relieve the trustee either wholly or partly from personal liability for the same.
    (2) The court may authorise a departure from the terms of a trust, where satisfied that since the creation thereof there has been a change of circumstances, and that such departure will not prejudice any of the persons beneficially

    589
    interested in the trust, and is for the benefit of those persons or some of them, and generally
    that it in expedient to authorise the same.
    THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HALSBURY)said he did not see Lord Derby, who had an Amendment on the Paper, present, and he supposed the noble Lord intended to postpone moving his Amendment until the Bill was considered by the Standing Committee. He, however, wished to say a word upon a matter on which he could not move an Amendment. He was not responsible nor were their Lordships responsible for a margined note on this clause. Perhaps he was in the habit, as a lawyer, of not looking at the marginal notes, and therefore he did not see the note to this clause when he presented the Bill. It appeared to him that somebody had been playfully engaged in trying to throw some ridicule on the Bill, for the marginal note was "excusing and authorising the act of trust." [Laughter.] Of course a marginal note was not a part of a Bill, and he had only mentioned the circumstance to show he did not at all acquiesce in that description of legislation.["Hear, hear!" and laughter.]
    LORD ASHBOURNEsaid that Clause 3 was of the highest value to all trustees who acted honestly and fairly, but who inadvertently committed some breach of trust, and brought themselves within the complications of the law. Lord Herschell had, on a previous occasion, stated that this clause, of all others in the Bill, was the one which most commended itself to his appreciation.
    Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
    Clause 4,—

    RULES.
    (1.) Rules may be made for carrying into effect this Act, and especially—

    (1) for requiring judicial trustees, who are not officials of the Court, to give security for the due application of any trust property under their control:

    (2) respecting the safety of the trust property and the custody thereof:

    (3) respecting the remuneration of judicial trustees and for fixing and regulating the fees to be taken under this Act so as to cover the expenses of the administration of this Act, and respecting the payment of such remuneration and fees out of the trust property:

    590

    (4) for dispensing with formal proof of facts in proper cases:

    (5) for facilitating the discharge by the Court of administrative duties under this Act without judicial proceedings, and otherwise regulating procedure under this Act and making it simple and inexpensive:

    (6) for assigning jurisdiction under this Act to County Court Judges and defining such jurisdiction:

    (7) respecting the suspension or removal of any judicial trustee, and the succession of another person to the office of any-judicial trustee who may cease to hold office, and the vesting in such person of any trust property or executorship:

    (8) respecting the classes of trusts in which officials of the Court are not to be judicial trustees, or are to be so temporarily or conditionally:

    (9) respecting the grant of probate or letters of administration to judicial trustees:

    (10) for preventing the employment by judicial trustees of ether poisons at the expense of the trust, except in cases of strict necessity:

    (11) for the filing of accounts by judicial trustees.

    (2.) The rules under this Act may he made by the authority having for the time being power to make rules regulating the practice and procedure of the Supreme Court of Judicature, and shall be laid before Parliament and have the same force as if enacted in this Act, provided that if within thirty days after such rules have been laid before either House of Parliament, during which that House has sat, the House presents to tier Majesty an address against such rules or any of them, such rules or the rule specified in the address shall thenceforward be of no effect.
    LORD ASHBOURNE LORD ASHBOURNE moved, in Subsection (2), to omit the word "authority," and to insert the words "respective authorities."
    Amendment agreed to.
    THE LORD CHANCELLORthought the persons who framed the Bill were under some misapprehension as to what the Rule Committee did. There were one or two matters provided for which were not properly within the function of the Rule Committee, and in the Standing Committee he would propose Amendments in respect of them.
    LORD ASHBOURNEtrusted that, when his noble Friend introduced Amendments on the subject of the

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    drafting of Rules, he would see that similar changes were made with reference to the Rule-making authority in Ireland.
    Amendment proposed, after the word "Judicature," to insert the words "in England and Ireland "—(Lord Ashbourne)—put and agreed to.
    Bill re-committed to the Standing Committee; and to be printed as amended.—[No. 214.]

    COLLECTING SOCIETIES BILL.
    Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Monday next.—(The Lord Chancellor.)—[No. 215.]
    FRIENDLY SOCIETIES BILL.
    To be read 2a on Monday next.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
    CABS (LONDON) BILL.
    Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.
    PUBLIC OFFICES (SITE) BILL.
    Read 3a (according to Order) and passed.

    PUBLIC HEALTH (PORTS) BILL.
    Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
    House adjourned at Five minutes past Five o'clock, to Monday next, Eleven o'clock.