Sitting of 1 April 1898

Preamble
MR. SPEAKER took the Chair at Three of the Clock.

ROYAL ASSENT.
The Royal assent was given by Commission to the following Bills:—
Greek Loan Act, 1898.
Public Buildings Expenses Act, 1898.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
  BIRMINGHAM, NORTH WARWICKSHIRE, AND STRATFORD-UPON-AVON RAILWAY (EXTENSION OF TIME) BILL.
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
  DROGHEDA GAS BILL.
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
  LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY (STEAM VESSELS) BILL. [H.L.]
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
  AGRICULTURAL COMPANY OF MAURITIUS BILL. [H.L.]
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
  EDINBURGH MERCHANT COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.

  EDINBURGH AND LEITH CORPORATIONS GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed a Bill, intituled—
  "An Act to authorise the Edinburgh and Leith Corporations Gas Commissioners to construct new gasworks and other works and to acquire lands; and to confer further powers on the Commissioners in relation to their gas undertaking; and for other purposes."
  Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  TYNE IMPROVEMENT BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed a Bill intituled—
  "An Act for enlarging the constitution of the Tyne Improvement Commission; for conferring further powers upon the Tyne Improvement Commissioners; and for amending certain of the provisions of the Tyne Improvement Acts, 1850 to 1897; and for other purposes."
  Read first time; Referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  CHARING CROSS, EUSTON, AND HAMPSTEAD RAILWAY BILL.
  As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
  As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  THANET GAS BILL.
  As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  HART'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
  Read a second time, and committed.
  LONDON BUILDING ACT (1894) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  LEITH BURGH PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  To confirm a Provisional Order made by the Secretary for Scotland relating to an increase in the number of councillors in the burgh of Leith: Ordered to be brought in by the Lord Advocate and Mr. Anstruther; Presented accordingly, and read the first time; Referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 168.]
PETITIONS.
  ADULTERATION (FOOD PRODUCTS) BILL.
  From Lincolnshire, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  ARMY PENSIONS.
  For weekly payment: From Cerne, Canterbury, and Cardiff; to lie upon the Table.
  CORN SALES BILL.
  In favour: From Lincolnshire and Kendal; to lie upon the Table.
  COUNTY COURTS JURISDICTION BILL.
  From Glasgow, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  EAST INDIA (CONTAGIOUS DISEASES).
  Against State Regulation: From Newcastle, Waterloo, and Cambridge; to lie upon the Table.
  HABITUAL DRUNKARDS.
  From Rochdale, for Alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  MINES (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  In favour: From Blackheath, White-heath, Rowley Regis, Camerton (2), Lye and Wollescote, Wombwell Main, Hill, Lye, Bridgewater, Halesowen, Tong, St. Helen's, Ashton Field, Old Oaks, Nether-ton, Old Hill, and Tividale Collieries; to lie upon the Table.
  NONCONFORMIST MARRIAGES (ATTENDANCE OF REGISTRARS) BILL.
  From Brentford, for reference to a Select Committee; to lie upon the Table.
  PRIVATE BILL PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Of the Association of Burgh Officials of Scotland, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS (IRELAND) BILL.
  From Heckmondwike, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS (IRELAND) BILL AND SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  In favour: From Kentish Town, Nottingham, Chertsey, Bolton, Luton, Halifax, Weardale, Leighton Buzzard, Dudley, Cinderford, Wellington, Edinburgh, Frome, and Stonehouse; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  In favour: From Measham, Blackburn (2), Romsey, Lymington, Ducklington, Hillesley, Lee, Nursling, West Dulwich, Heckmondwike, Bolton, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Buryan, St. Leven, Mansfield, Whitecroft, Barbon, Lamberhead Green, Horton, Crumpsall, Bream, Coventry, and Stocksfield-upon-Tyne; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, ETC.
  ALKALI, ETC., WORKS REGULATION ACTS, 1881 AND 1892.
  Copy presented, of Thirty-fourth Annual Report on Alkali, etc., Works by the Chief Inspector, being for 1897 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 141.]
  EAST INDIA (LOANS RAISED IN ENGLAND).
  Copy presented, of Return of all Loans raised in England chargeable on the Revenues of India outstanding at the commencement of the half-year ended 31st March, 1898, etc. [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed [No. 142.]
  GREECE (No. 1, 1898).
  Copy presented, of Dispatch from Her Majesty's Minister at Athens, enclosing the Greek Law of Control [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  RUSSIA (No. 1, 1898).
  Copy presented, of Dispatch from Her Majesty's Ambassador at St. Petersburg, enclosing an Agreement concluded between the Chinese Government and the Russo-Chinese Bank for the construction of the Manchurian Railway [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) BILL (DRAFT ORDER IN COUNCIL UNDER CLAUSE 63).
  Copy ordered, "of Draft of an Order in Council under Clause 63 of the Local Government (Ireland) Bill."—(Mr. Gerald Balfour.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed [No. 143.]

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) BILL (DRAFT ORDER IN COUNCIL UNDER CLAUSE 64) (1).
  Copy ordered, "of Draft of an Order in Council, under Clause 61 (1) of the Local Government (Ireland) Bill."—(Mr. Gerald Balfour.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 144.]

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) BILL (DRAFT ORDER IN COUNCIL UNDER CLAUSE 64) (3).
  Copy ordered, "of Draft of an Order in Council, under Clause 61 (3) of the Local Government (Ireland) Bill."—(Mr. Gerald Balfour.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 145.]

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) BILL (PROPOSED SCHEDULE VI.).
  Copy ordered, "of Draft of the Sixth Schedule proposed to be inserted in the Local Government (Ireland) Bill."—(Mr. Gerald Balfour.)
  Copy presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 146.]

  TELEGRAPHS (GRANT).
  Committee to consider the authorising a Grant out of the Consolidated Fund for the purpose of the Telegraph Acts, 1863 to 1897 (Queen's Recommendation signified), upon Monday next.—(Mr. Hanbury.)

  BENEFICES BILL AND BENEFICES (No. 2) BILL.
  Leave given to Standing Committee on Law, etc., to make Special Report;
  Special Report brought up and read;
  Benefices Bill reported, without Amendment;
  Benefices (No. 2) Bill, reported; as amended by the Standing Committee, to be taken into consideration upon Monday, 18th April, and to be printed. [Bill 169.]
  Special Report and other Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 147.]
  Minutes of Proceedings to be printed. [No. 147.]

  MIDDLESBROUGH CORPORATION (GAS) BILL.
  Reported; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  COMMONS (REGULATION OF WOLSTANTON MARSH, STAFFORDSHIRE).
  Report from Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence relative thereto, brought up, and read; To lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 148.]
  LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAILWAY BILL.
  Reported; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  RAILWAY BILLS (GROUP 1).
  SIR MARK STEWARTreported from the Committee on Group 1 of Railway Bills; That, for the convenience of parties, the Committee had adjourned till Tuesday, 3rd May, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

  METROPOLITAN RAILWAY BILL.
  Reported; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES)
  MR. T. F. HALSEYreported from the Committee of Selection: That they had discharged the following Members from the Standing Committee on Law, and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure: Sir John Kennaway and Colonel Williams; and had appointed in substitution Mr. Knowles and Sir Howard Vincent.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

  STANDING ORDERS.
  Resolutions reported:—

  1. That, in the case of the London United Tramways Petition, the Standing Orders ought, to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to proceed with their Bill, provided that the powers to construct Tramways, Nos. 1. 1A, 1B, 1C, 2, 3, 3A, 3B, 4, and so much of 5 as is proposed to be doubled, are struck out of the Bill:—That the Committee on the Bill do report how far such Order has been complied with."

  2. "That, in the case of the Middlesex County Council Bill. Petition of the 'Padding-ton Burial Board' for dispensing with Standing Order CXXIX. in the case of their Petition against the Bill, the said Standing Order ought to be dispensed with.

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  3. "That, in the case of the Blackpool and Fleetwood Tramroad (Tramway Extensions) Bill [H.L.], the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with: That the parties be permitted to proceed with their Bill, provided that all powers to construct new Tramways be struck out of the Bill:—That the Committee on the Bill do report how far such Order has been complied with."

  Resolutions agreed to.

  MORLEY CORPORATION GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act to empower the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the borough of Morley to purchase the undertakings of the Morley Gas Company and the Churwell Gaslight Company, to make further provision in regard to the finance of the said borough; and for other purposes."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners, of Petitions for Private Bills.

  SAINT MATTHEW, BETHNAL GREEN, BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act to abolish the composition rate now leviable for certain Church purposes in the parish of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green, in the county of London, and to make other provisions for securing the stipend of the Rector of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green, and the maintenance of the fabrics of the churches of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green, and St. John, Bethnal Green; and for other purposes."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BOARD (NEW WORKS) BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act to authorise the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board to alter, extend, and improve their docks, basins, and works on the Liverpool side of the River Mersey; and for other purposes."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  YEOVIL CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act to enable the Corporation of Yeovil to construct additional waterworks, to purchase the undertaking of the Yeovil Gas and Coke Company, Limited, to supply gas, to establish a station for generating electric power, and to raise money by borrowing on mortgage or otherwise."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  FOLKESTONE GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act for granting further powers to the Folkestone Gas and Coke Company."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  SOUTH EASTERN RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act for conferring further powers on the South Eastern Railway Company; and for other purposes."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  MARIANAO AND HAVANA RAILWAY COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
  Message from the Lords that they have passed—
  "An Act to confirm the issue as fully paid of certain shares."
  Read first time; Referred to Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

QUESTIONS.

  LIMERICK CLOTHING FACTORY.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether the
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  Limerick Clothing Factory is now in receipt of Government contracts; whether a contract for clothing for the Naval Reserve, granted to a Galway firm, has been sub-let by that firm to the Limerick factory; and whether, in connection with any complaint the Admiralty may receive, he will inquire into the circumstances under which the Clothing Factory has recently lost the municipal contract for Limerick in consequence of the adoption by the Corporation of the Fair Wage Clause, although the Factory tender was the lowest?
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. W. G. E. MACARTNEY,): The Limerick Clothing Factory holds no Admiralty contracts at present, and no application has been received from the contractor at Galway to sub-let his contract to the Limerick Factory.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: The hon. Gentleman is not then aware of the fact that this has actually been done?
  MR. MACARTNEY: Certainly not, Sir.

  IRISH HEAD POSTMASTERS.
  MR. J. DALY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he can state when head postmasters in Ireland will receive the 10 per cent. increase of salary recommended by the Report of Lord Tweedmouth's Commission to postmasters of ten years' experience; and whether head postmasters in England of ten years' service have already received the benefit of the 10 per cent. increase of their salaries recommended by the Commission?
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. R. W. HANBURY,): A considerable number of head postmasters in Ireland have already received the increases of salaries accruing under the recommendations of Lord Tweedmouth's Committee, and other revisions will be carried out as they fall due. The same remarks apply to head postmasters in England.
  MR. DALY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware there are many postmasters

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  in Ireland with over ten years' service who have not yet got the increase in their salaries?
  MR. HANBURY: It is quite possible, because the increase is to be given after a certain time.

  UNION BOUNDARIES IN IRELAND.
  MR. DALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that there are 13 unions in Ireland whose boundaries extend into two counties; and whether, as the population of Ireland has reduced millions since these workhouses were built, he will advise the Government to compulsorily close some of these workhouses when arranging boundaries under the Local Government Bill?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. GERALD W. BALFOUR,): There are 46 unions in two counties, and 13 which extend into three counties. The unions which might possibly be amalgamated without inconvenience to the sick and destitute are, in very few cases, only those which are intersected by county boundaries. Amalgamation of a certain number of unions is, no doubt, feasible, and Clause 50 (2) of the Bill empowers the Local Government Board, on the application of a county council, and sifter communication with the guardians concerned, to amalgamate unions for the purpose of placing the workhouses at the disposal of the council to serve as auxiliary lunatic asylums.
  MR. DALY: The right hon. Gentleman has perhaps not noticed I mentioned the word "compulsorily." Have the Government power to compulsorily close the workhouses, or will he advise that it be given them?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: They already have the power.

  CONSTITUTION HILL.
  COLONEL A. C. EARLE-WELBY: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether his attention has been drawn to the sharp turn vehicles have to make to enter
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  Constitution Hill from Piccadilly; and whether he can see his way, by setting back the railings to the north of the Arch, so to curve the roadway as to abolish this sharp turn and save horses a, trying danger in slippery weather?
  THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. A. AKERS-DOUGLAS,): The width of the roadway is so great at the point mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend that a driver is enabled to make a turn much less sharp than an ordinary rectangular turn from one street into another. I do not consider it necessary to alter the line of railings which was settled after much consideration, and to move which would entail very great expense.
  In answer to a further Question, Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS said the suggested alteration would entirely spoil the line of the street.

  CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER AND THE TEXTILE WORKERS.
  MR. W. C. STEADMAN: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he would explain why, after he had appointed a time to meet a deputation of the textile workers on the Currency question, he refused to receive such deputation, and allowed them to arrive at his office before informing them of his refusal?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,): This was a deputation from trades unions in Yorkshire and Lancashire on the subject of bimetallism. A few minutes before the hour named for the interview I received a copy of a document which had been circulated by the members of the deputation, in which it was stated that with regard to the subject they desired to bring before me the Government had—
  "broken their solemn pledges to the country, treated with contempt the interests and demands of industry, and disgraced this country in the eyes of the world by showing that no Foreign Powers can depend upon the pledged words of a British Ministry."

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  In my opinion, this statement is absolutely baseless. But it is certainly expressed in distinctly offensive language; and though, of course, anyone is free to believe it, and to express it in any language he likes, he is not free to do so in my room as a member of a deputation, and, as I assumed that the deputation would say to me what they had said elsewhere, I declined to receive them. I should readily have spared them the trouble of coming to the Treasury, only I did not receive the document until just before the hour named for the deputation.

  CULLIOVILLE TRAIN SERVICE.
  MR. DALY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the people of Crossmaghan and Cullioville have repeatedly petitioned the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland) regarding the great inconvenience they are put to by having no passenger train leaving Dundalk for Enniskillen stop at Cullioville Station from 9.25 a.m. to 7.40 p.m. each day; and whether he will make representations to the Great Northern Railway Company (Ireland) with the view of having this grievance of the inhabitants of Crossmaghan and Cullioville redressed?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. C. T. RITCHIE,): The Board of Trade communicated with the company upon this subject, and have received a reply, a copy of which shall be sent to the hon. Member. It seems that the company find a difficulty in consenting to stop the train at Cullioville every day, but they will do so on Mondays for the convenience of those attending Dundalk market.

  FORE RUINS, COUNTY WESTMEATH.
  MR. J. TUITE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, having regard to the interesting character of the ruins at Fore, county Westmeath, any steps will be taken by the Irish Board of Works, at the coming meeting
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  of the Ancient Monuments Committee, to have the gateways of the old town, the monastery, and the chapel of St. Fechin, the cyclopean doorway of which has been described by the eminent traveller, Edward Dodwell, as equal to any he had seen in Greece, at Tyros, Argos, or elsewhere, scheduled as ancient monuments under the Ancient Monuments Acts; and whether, as the Royal Society of Antiquaries requested the Board of Works in July, 1892, to bring the ruins at Fore under the protection of the Acts mentioned, and the Board of Works was unable to do so owing to want of money, preference will now be given to the claims of Fore in the event of funds being available?
  MR. HANBURY: In 1880 the Commissioners of Public Works approached the late Lord Greville, who owned the estate on which the ruins at Fore, county Westmeath, are situated, with a view to have them vested in the Board, but as Lord Greville declined to do so at that time no further action could be taken. The Royal Society of Antiquaries requested the Commissioners in July, 1892, to bring the ruins under the protection of the Ancient Monuments Acts, and the Board were anxious to have them vested in them for preservation. But the estate on which the ruins are situate forms the subject of a petition for sale in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice, and though the Board's solicitor has since July, 1893, been in communication with the solicitors having charge of the sale, it has not been possible to obtain the consent of all the parties interested, which is necessary to the vesting of the ruins in the Board.

  CANDIDATES FOR THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.
  MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what were the precise conditions of service and pay offered through the Irish Government to the 995 Royal Irish Constabulary candidates in December, 1896, to induce them to join the Army; were the proposals conveyed to the candidates, and how many of them were found willing to

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  accept service in the Army; and, if they were not conveyed to the candidates, upon what grounds did the Irish Government disapprove of the Military authorities' efforts to induce the men to join the Army?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The nature of the proposal made by the War Office in the Irish Government was explained by my right hon. Friend the Under Secretary for War when replying to the hon. Member's Question of Tuesday last. The Irish Government are not aware what conditions (if any) as to service and pay were conveyed to the constabulary candidates, or whether any of the men were found willing to enter the Army. It has already been stated that the proposal of the War Office was not accepted by the Irish Government, and I do not feel myself called upon to supplement that statement.

  PATENT TEST CASE.
  MR. F. CAWLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, if the decision is in favour of the petitioners in the test case tried before the referee appointed by the Board of Trade, Levinstein v. Meister, Lucius, and Bruning, it will be possible for the German firm to take the case to two higher courts before the Board of Trade can compel them to grant a licence for an English firm to work in England an English patent which has been refused in Germany, and which anyone can work in that country?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE: The case referred to by the hon. Member is one of several applications now being heard. I am not aware hat any procedure could be adopted by a patentee against whom an order for a compulsory licence has been made to appeal against that order.

  WRECK OFF RATTRAY HEAD.
  MR. J. W. CROMBIE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been directed to the wreck of the trawler
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  Nellie, off Rattray Head, Aberdeenshire, in the recent gale; whether he is aware that from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., when the last man disappeared from the rigging, the only attempt at rescue was a futile one by the rocket apparatus; and that three lifeboats were within reach of the scene of the disaster; and whether he will institute an inquiry into the case?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE: Yes, Sir; my attention has been directed to the wreck of this vessel. The vessel was seen by the Coastguard at Rattray Head flying signals of distress, some three miles off, at 5.30 a.m. on the 24th. The vessel drifted towards the land, the rocket company watching to render assistance. At 10 o'clock the vessel stranded. A rocket was at once fired and communication effected in about ten minutes. Unfortunately the crew were either unable to haul off the rope, or else were ignorant of its use. A heavy sea struck the vessel; she was thrown on her beam ends, and the crew unfortunately washed away. There are three lifeboats within about seven miles of Rattray Head. I propose to institute an inquiry into the casualty, when till the facts of the case will be ascertained.
  MR. CROMBIE: Will the result of the inquiry be made known to the House?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE: Oh, certainly!
  MR. T. R. BUCHANAN: Will the inquiry include an investigation with regard to the efficiency of the rocket apparatus?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE: Certainly; and also into the circumstances connected with the non-arrival of the lifeboats.

  CIVILIAN CLERKS AT THE WAR OFFICE.
  MR. A. M. BROOKFIELD: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he will consider the expediency of arranging for it better classification, on page 93 of the Army Estimates, of the civilian clerks employed at the War Office, so as to

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  distinguish between those who are engaged in purely financial duties and those who are otherwise employed?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. W. ST. JOHN BRODRICK,): The hon. Member will find what he requires on page 236 of the Army Estimates.

  PNEUMATIC CARDS.
  MR. H. H. MARKS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he will consider the expediency of introducing in London the carte telegramme, or pneumatic card, in common use in Paris and other continental cities, and of utilising the existing pneumatic tubes of the Post Office Department for the transmission of such cartes telegrammes, or pneumatic cards, and other written messages in the London district?
  MR. HANBURY: The question of the expediency of introducing in London a carte telegramme or pneumatic card system has received careful consideration both by the Postmaster General and his predecessors, but they have not seen their way to recommend the very large expenditure which would be necessary for the construction of an efficient network of tubes. The existing pneumatic tubes of the Post Office could not be utilised for the purpose without detriment to the Telegraph Service.

  MILITARY STORES FOR BRITISH EAST AFRICA.
  COLONEL J. M. DENNY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the military stores required by the East African Protectorate are despatched by British or German steamers?
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. G. N. CURZON,): None of the stores, military or otherwise, required for the Uganda Railway, Uganda Protectorate, or East Africa
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  Protectorate, have been shipped in German or in foreign steamers. The whole have been conveyed in British vessels.

  ROYAL COMMISSION ON SEWAGE DISPOSAL.
  MR. JOHN WILSON: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if it is now proposed, that Scotland as well as England should, be included in the scope of the inquiry of the Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal, and if there will be in consequence a fair representation of Scottish Members, of Parliament appointed?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. H. CHAPLIN,): Yes, Sir: both Scotland and Ireland as well as England will, I hope, he represented on the Commission.

  TRAWLERS IN BALLINSKELLIGS BAY.
  MR. T. J. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he is aware that injury is being done by trawlers in Ballinskelligs Bay, county Kerry, by fish being prevented from entering the bay and the spawning grounds disturbed; whether local fishermen are greatly injured by trawlers in, the bay; and whether an inquiry has taken place in Ballinskelligs in October, 1897, in connection with, fishing; if so, why has not the decision come to by the Fishery Board been announced, as it is a matter of great importance to the fishermen?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I believe the facts are substantially as stated in the question. The Inspectors of Fisheries have proposed a bye-law prohibiting steam trawling in an area, which includes Ballinskelligs Bay, arm hiss bye-law is now under consideration by the Privy Council.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that the Inspectors of Fisheries wish to prohibit trawling by bye-law?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Yes, sir.
  MR. M. J. FLAVIN: When will a copy of the bye-law be issued, so that the fishermen of the district will know what it is proposed to do?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: It is now before the Privy Council. I cannot say when it will be issued.

  FERMANAGH ESTATE OF THE IRISH COMMISSIONERS OF EDUCATION.
  MR. P. C. DOOGAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1) if he is in a position to state how many holdings for which separate receipts are given there are on the Fermanagh estate of the Commissioners of Education in Ireland, and of these how many holdings are judicial tenancies of first term fixings; how many holdings are judicial tenancies of second term fixings; how many holdings are non-judicial tenancies; now many first term judicial tenants have entered court for second term fixings; how many non-judicial tenants have served originating notices; what is the aggregate amount of arrears due by judicial tenants up to 1st November, 1897; what is the aggregate amount of arrears due by non-judicial tenants up to 1st November, 1897; (2) have the Commissioners agreed to sell the estate to the tenants; and, if so, at how many years' purchase respectively to each of the three classes of tenants; and what course the Commissioners intend to pursue with reference to the arrears which the tenants in this bad season are utterly unable to pay?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I have forwarded to the hon. Member the detailed information desired in the first paragraph of the Question. As regards the second paragraph, an offer, purporting to come from 212 of the tenants, to purchase their holdings at 18 years' purchase of their present rents was made to the Commissioners in December last. This offer was accepted in January on the understanding that the expression present rents" meant the rents then actually
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  payable by judicial and non-judicial tenants alike, without any deduction either on account of any abatement made voluntarily by the Commissioners, or on account of any judicial rents that might be fixed after their acceptance of the tenants' offer. The resolution of the Commissioners does not contain any provision dealing with the manner in which the arrears of rent are to be settled previous to the signing of the agreements to purchase. Number of holdings for which separate receipts are given, 332; number of holdings which are judicial tenancies of first term fixings, 164; number of holdings which are judicial tenancies of second term fixings, 1; number of holdings which are non-judicial tenancies, 167; number of first term judicial tenants who, except as above, have entered court for second term fixings, nil; number of non-judicial tenants who have served originating notices, 18; aggregate amount of arrears due by judicial tenants up to November 1st, 1897, £428 19s. 8d.; aggregate amount of arrears due by non-judicial tenants up to November 1st, 1897, £507 7s. 4d.

  NORTH CHARTERLAND EXPLORATION COMPANY.
  MR. THOMAS BAYLEY: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that in 1890 and 1891 concessions, which have since been acquired by the North Charterland Exploration Company, under the British South Africa Company, were obtained from the chief Mpeseni and ten subordinate chiefs in Angoniland, in return for which they were to receive annual payments amounting to £860 for 99 years; whether it is correctly stated that the payments have not been made, and that the recent disturbances in Angoniland are partly consequent thereon; and whether he will inquire into these statements, and take them into consideration in deciding the treatment to be accorded to Mpeseni and others for their alleged rebellion?
  MR. CURZON: The validity of the alleged concessions has never been acknowledged by Her Majesty's Government, Mpeseni not being the hereditary

  1655
  or paramount chief of the territory in question, and there being other claims upon it of superior weight. The South Africa Company have expressed their readiness for the present to make a payment of £200 a year to Mpeseni. The recent disturbances are attributed by our officers, not to the withholding of the larger sum, but to other causes. Every consideration consistent with the public safety will be shown to Mpeseni, who has now surrendered, and to others engaged in the recent rebellion.

  AGE OF RECRUITS.
  MR. BROOKFIELD: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether the War Office have recently had under consideration a proposal to make all recruits for the Army verify the ages they give on enlistment; and whether, in coming to a decision upon such proposal, the authorities will duly consider the probable cost which it would involve, and the difficulties that may arise in connection with names that have been assumed?
  MR. BRODRICK: Recruits will not be called on to prove their ages. There will be no change in respect of them. But in order to become entitled to the new messing allowance the soldier must have completed his 19th year. His claim to have attained that age will be verified by reference to certificates, and where proof of age cannot be furnished the medical officer and commanding officer will be required to certify that he has the physical equivalents of 19 and is fit to do a man's work.

  QUEEN'S FOREIGN SERVICE MESSENGERS.
  SIR JOHN WILLIAM MACLURE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) if it is the case that it was intended, on the reduction of the pay of the Queen's Foreign Service Messengers,
  1656
  that officers of the Army on half-pay should be appointed Queen's Foreign Service Messengers, and that their half-pay and the pay granted by the Foreign Office for the appointment should together amount to £400 a year; (2) why half-pay officers have not been appointed; and (3) if it is intended to keep Queen's Foreign Service Messengers on the lower scale of £250 a year permanently at that salary with no prospect of its being raised, although their work and duties are identical with those performed by those Queen's Foreign Service Messengers receiving £400 a year?
  MR. CURZON: The recommendation of the Royal Commission was that no fresh appointments should be made on the old scale of £400, but that in the future £150 to £200 should be the salary, and that the service should be mainly recruited from officers of the Army and Navy on half-pay, or in receipt of pension. It was consequently decided to reduce the salary of a Queen's Messenger from £400 to £250 a year, but a deduction of £50 is made in the case of any person, already in the enjoyment of a pension for other services. With reference to the second Question, the Secretary of State does not consider himself bound in every case to carry out the recommendation of the Commission, which is qualified by the use of the word "mainly," and, as a matter of fact, only one appointment has been made under the new system by the present Secretary of State. The answer to the third Question is in the affirmative.

  JOHN DUFFY, 5TH ROYAL IRISH FUSILIERS.
  MR. DALY: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether he is aware that John Duffy, Corkeeran, Ballybay, county Monaghan, who served in the 5th Royal Irish Fusiliers, and was disabled while in that regiment, is at present in a very destitute condition; and whether he will bring the case of Duffy under the notice of the War Office with a view of getting him some small allowance to prevent him to have to enter the workhouse?
  MR. BRODRICK: The service of John Duffy was in the Militia, and the injury he received was not caused by the service, although it occurred during the training. His case was carefully considered on several occasions by the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital, and they decided that his claims on the service have been fully met by the two years' pension which has been paid to him.

  RELIGIOUS CLASSIFICATION IN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.
  MR. E. FLOWER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has decided to abandon the principle of religious classification of children in industrial schools laid down in the circular letter of the Secretary of State to the Clerks of Justices of the Peace, dated the 14th of February, 1888, and confirmed by a subsequent letter of the 30th of January, 1892, to the senior Metropolitan Police magistrate; if so, will he state the reasons for such change; and whether he has directed the London School Board to amend the rules of the Brentwood Industrial School accordingly?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir. M. W. RIDLEY,): The letters referred to did not lay down or profess to lay down any principle of religious classification. They merely contained a request to justices, based on reasons of administrative convenience, that in sending children to these schools they should state in the order the particular denomination to which the child belongs, the word Protestant not being distinctive enough for the purpose. This has nothing to do with the Question in the case of the Brentwood School rules—which was that, as the school was not intended for the reception of Roman Catholics or Jews, it would be desirable that the rule specifying the class of children to be received should state this, and for this purpose Protestant is the usual and most convenient word.

  MURDER OF ARMENIAN RELIEF AGENT.
  MR. T. C. H. HEDDERWICK: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any demand has been made by the Government upon the Porte for restitution of the sum of £500 belonging to the British Armenian Relief Fund, of which the murdered man Yussuf Yunnan was robbed at Sairt more than a year ago?
  MR. CURZON: Her Majesty's Government are not yet in possession of any evidence which would justify them in presenting a claim to the Porte for the restitution of the sum mentioned.
  MR. HEDDERWICK: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can now name an approximate date upon which the further correspondence relative to the murder of Yussuf Yunnan and the prosecution of his murderers will be laid upon the Table of the House?
  MR. CURZON: Correspondence on the subject will be laid in the next Blue Book on Asiatic Turkey; but in consequence of the great pressure that has been put upon the Foreign Office for the immediate production of other Papers, I cannot give any promise as to the date on which it will appear.

  PROCURATORS-FISCAL AND PRIVATE PRACTICE.
  MR. HEDDERWICK: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether some procurators - fiscal upon appointment are debarred from undertaking private practice, while others are not; and, if so, upon what principle, if any, such a distinction is made?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY,): The facts are as stated by the hon. Member. The principle of the recent policy has been to restrict procurators-fiscal from private practice, and it has only been departed from in some of the smaller posts when it appeared impossible, at the salary sanctioned by the Treasury, to secure the services of a sufficiently competent man without allowing him to continue in private practice.

  GLYCERINATED CALF VACCINE.
  CAPTAIN GREVILLE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that Dr. Reece, a medical inspector under the Local Government Board, while making an official inspection in Middlesbrough, and Darlington during March, recommended local authorities and others to use the glycerinated calf vaccine prepared by a particular private firm; whether Dr. Reece and all other inspectors are officially authorised to advocate by name the interests of a private firm; whether it is consistent with the regulations of the Local Government Board that officials should use their position as a means of pushing the sale of the goods of any particular firm; whether the matter has already been previously brought to the knowledge of the Local Government Board; and whether prompt steps will be taken to check the practice complained of?
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD: I am informed by Dr. Reece that he has not, either in Middlesbrough or Darlington, recommended local authorities and others to use the glycerinated calf lymph prepared by any particular firm, but on one occasion, when conferring with a board of guardians who required immediately a large supply of lymph, he was pressed to state the name of some firm to whom a telegram could at once be sent, and he mentioned the only firm whose telegraphic address he happened to know. The Inspectors of the Department are not officially authorised to advocate by name the interests of private firms, and so far as I am aware there has been no instance where an official of the Department has used his position as a means of pushing the sale of the goods of any particular firm. I had received a communication on the subject previously to the notice of this Question being given, but as there has been no such practice as that suggested no steps on my part are necessary.

  FRENCH MAIL SERVICE.
  CAPTAIN C. W. NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that last
  1660
  week (it being the second time this winter) the mails for the Continent, viâ Dover and Calais, were delayed at Dover over twenty-four hours owing to the difficulty and risk of entering Calais Harbour in rough weather, whereas the mail packets might either have been sent from Dover to Boulogne, or the mails been forwarded by the Folkestone-Boulogne route; and that on Friday last the Indian mail was put on board two mail steamers which remained at Dover till next day, when, in order not to incur further delay, it was decided to send them with an accumulation of mails to Boulogne, where they entered the port without difficulty; and whether, in view of similar delays, which may occur from time to time in the Channel mail service, and the general inconvenience these delays give rise to, affecting correspondents both in Great Britain and abroad, the English post office will arrange with the French postal authorities to forward the mails, without loss of time, either viâ Dover and Boulogne, or viâ Folkestone and Boulogne, or vice versâ, instead of detaining them even five or six hours at Dover or Calais?
  MR. HANBURY: The facts as to the delay which occurred last week are substantially as stated by the hon. and gallant Member, but in the case of the previous interruption to which he refers, it is right to remark that, not only Calais but Boulogne Harbour was impracticable through the state of the weather. The Postmaster General has already made an arrangement with the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company for the diversion of the mails under the control of the British post office to Boulogne when deemed necessary, and, in accordance with this arrangement, the Indian mail was sent last Saturday from Dover to Boulogne. But the hon. Member must recollect that the day mail service is not under the control of the British, but of the French, post office, and though the Postmaster General has invited the French Postal Authorities to co-operate with him in the same direction, no definite understanding on the subject has yet been arrived at. He hopes, however, that an arrangement will be concerted before long between the two post offices and the companies concerned.

  CUSTOMS "WATCHERS."
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will consider the advisability of altering the Treasury Minute 6215 (1896), which compels a "Watcher" to give an attendance of 300 days in one year to entitle him to a year's service, which will count towards his claim for sick pay allowance and gratuity, as set out in Customs G. O. 21 (1896); and whether he will cause inquiry to be made into the cases of Watchers who have been deprived of a gratuity through this Treasury Minute, it being impossible, under the old conditions of employment, for an extra C. D. officer, now a Watcher, to make 300 days in one year?
  MR. HANBURY: I have this matter under consideration, and will communicate with the Board of Customs on the subject.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he can state if the men employed in the Customs Department as watchers at a wage of 21s. per week for a 54 hours' week are now performing efficiently the duties formerly allotted to the established outdoor officers, whose maximum salary was £101 per annum, with two-thirds of their salary as a retiring pension, their regular number of hours per day being eight in summer and seven in winter; and whether he will consider the advisability of carrying out the Fair Wages Resolution of 1891, by having these officers' wages raised to the minimum of 24s. per week for a 48-hour week?
  MR. HANBURY: It is the fact that the Customs Watchers, whose wages are 21s. a week, perform efficiently some of the duties which formerly fell to established outdoor officers. The Customs Watchers are liable to a full attendance of 54 hours a week, but I understand that it is only in rare instances that they are required to work that number of hours. One of the objects of the establishment of the body of Customs Watchers was to put an end to a system under which certain duties were being discharged by officers on an unnecessarily high scale of pay. Only the inferior duties of the former outdoor officers have been transferred
  1662
  to the Watchers, and their pay and conditions of service were fixed with special reference to the character of the work to be performed by them.

  EDUCATION GRANTS FOR INSTRUCTION IN HOUSEWIFERY.
  MR. C. E. SCHWANN: I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education for what reasons the Department has not, in the new Code for 1898, made any grant, as was generally expected, for the teaching of housewifery to girls, a subject which comprises general house work and home nursing, both admittedly costly classes to establish, whilst a grant of 6s. to 7s., according to excellence, is allowed for the manual training of boys; and whether, as at present, one half-day per week throughout the school year is devoted to manual training in woodwork by boys, he would consider the advisability of a similar amount of time per week throughout the school year being given to the training of girls in housewifery?
  THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL ON EDUCATION (Sir J. GORST,): The Committee of Council carefully considered this Question when preparing the new Code; but it was found that, for financial reasons, a grant for housewifery could not be made at present.

  SOUTH AFRICAN CHARTERED COMPANY.
  SIR R. T. REID: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the fact that the shareholders of the South African Chartered Company can fill up existing vacancies in the directorship as they please, he proposes to take any steps for preventing the election of persons whose complicity in the Jameson raid, and in the hostile preparations that preceded it, has been established by a Committee of this House?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN,): Under the new scheme the powers of the directors will be greatly limited, and they will be exercised under strict Imperial control. I do not, therefore, propose that the ordinary privilege of shareholders who invest their money in this and all similar companies to choose their own Directors shall be restricted.
  MR. H. LABOUCHERE: Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to state whether new arrangements will be presented to the House before the final decision is made?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES: The new arrangements have already been brought before the House.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Will there be an opportunity of discussing them?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES: Certainly, Sir; on the Estimates.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: The scheme has not been finally adopted, then, and will not be until the House has had an opportunity of discussing it?
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES: I think that no final action will be taken until the House has had the opportunity of expressing its opinion, and that will be on the Estimates.

  COMMERCIAL TREATIES WITH GERMANY AND BELGIUM.
  MR. J. G. A. BAIRD: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in negotiating the new Commercial Treaties with Germany and Belgium, it is intended to safeguard the interests of the British Home and Colonial sugar industry by introducing clauses to effectually prevent export bounties on sugar imported into the United Kingdom?
  MR. CURZON: The subject which has been raised by my hon. Friend has not been lost sight of; but while the new Treaties are still in course of negotiation, it would, I think, be unadvisable to make any statement as to what may, or may not, be their ultimate contents.

  BRIDGE ACCOMMODATION OVER THE RIVER FEALE.
  MR. FLAVIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1) if he is aware that the grand jury of Kerry erected a bridge at a cost of £3,496 10s. over the River Feale, between Duagh and Islandanny, and that three-fourths of the total cost is now repaid out of the public rates to the Commissioners of Public Works (Ireland), but that the general public are not allowed to use the bridge, although it has been completed and maintained for the past seven years; and (2), what steps will be now taken to obtain access for the public to pass over the bridge?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I am informed that the facts are correctly stated in the first paragraph. The line of railway from Tralee to Limerick crosses the road or approach, at one side of the bridge, and no proper crossing has been provided by the railway company at this point. The grand jury, moreover, state they have no power to employ a person to look after the gates at what appears to be a farm crossing. I am advised there is no legal provision under which the railway company or the grand jury can be required to provide a crossing, and the Board of Trade inform me they have no power to intervene.
  MR. FLAVIN: I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman why the grand jury constructed this bridge—[Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order!] But, Sir, arising out of the question, I should like to know if the right hon. Gentleman is aware that a large number of people in the district are prevented from using this bridge.
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member is continuing to argue a question which has already been fully answered.
  MR. FLAVIN: I wanted to point out, Mr. Speaker—
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!

  SORTER EGBERT PETHURST, G.P.O.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether it

  1665
  has been brought to his notice that Egbert Pethurst, late first-class sorter, Inland Section, G.P.O., who, after 26 years and eight months' service with exemplary conduct, was obliged to retire through ill-health, has been awarded only £50 per annum, whereas he is entitled to £72 6s. 8d.; and, whether he will see that this officer's case is favourably re-considered?
  MR. HANBURY: It is a fact that Pethurst has been pensioned, and that the pension awarded to him was much less than it might have been, having regard to his service; Pethurst's attendance during his service was very irregular, and in the opinion of the Medical Officer of the Department the ill-health which led to his retirement was due to causes within his own control. In such a case it is the practice to make a deduction from the amount of the pension, and in the circumstances the Postmaster General sees no reason to ask the Treasury to reconsider their decision.

  VOLUNTEER MEDICAL OFFICERS' EQUIPMENT ALLOWANCE.
  SIR HOWARD VINCENT: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War if the Secretary of State for War sees his way to grant the initial equipment allowances to medical officers of the Volunteer Force, having regard to their increased duties under new regulations; and if its extension to quarter-masters will be considered?
  MR. BRODRICK: I am glad to say that an Army Order is about to be issued giving the allowance to medical officers of the Volunteers on the Establishment. The question of extending it to quarter-masters has been considered, but no decision has been arrived at.

  SHIRLEY AND TENNISON ESTATES, COUNTY MONAGHAN.
  MR DALY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can now say when farms on the Shirley and Tennison estates
  1666
  county Monaghan, will be viewed by the Sub-Commissioners who sat lately at Carrickmacross to fix fair rents?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The Land Commissioners inform me that it is not at present possible to fix a date for the inspection of holdings in cases recently heard from these estates. As soon as a date has been fixed for inspection all the parties interested will be notified. The date will, however, depend upon the completion of other cases previously heard by the same Sub-Commission.

  EXPULSION OF BRITISH WAR CORRESPONDENT FROM BUENOS AYRES.
  MR. J. O'KELLY: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether Her Majesty's Government has received information of the arrest by the Spanish authorities in Havana of Mr. Musgrave, the special correspondent of the Daily Chronicle in Cuba, and a British subject, and of his deportation on the steamer Buenos Ayres; whether Mr. Musgrave was permitted an appeal to the British Consul, and for what offence he was arrested; and whether Her Majesty's Government will press for his release?
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I beg at the same time to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if it be true that Mr. George Clark Musgrave, correspondent in Cuba of an American and of an English journal, has been arrested; whether he was arrested without a warrant, and whether he has been deported from Cuba; and whether the British Consul at Porto Rico, where Mr. Musgrave will touch on his way to Spain, can be instructed to demand the release of Mr. Musgrave on the ground of the illegality of his arrest, and because his arrival in Spain at a moment of excitement may be attended with serious danger to his personal safety?
  MR. CURZON: A telegram has been received from Her Majesty's Consul General at Havana stating that Mr. Musgrave has been expelled from Cuba by the order of the Governor General,

  1667
  and that he left for Spain on the 30th of March. There is nothing in the telegram to show that Mr. Musgrave is still under arrest or even under detention, and accordingly the steps suggested by the hon. Members do not seem to be called for. The Consul General is reporting fully on the matter by post, and I shall be happy to give the hon. Members what information I can at a later date.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: Is it not a fact that Mr. Musgrave has been sent away, and is in custody?
  MR. CURZON: That is not the conclusion I draw from the words of the telegram. The Consul General reported that Mr. Musgrave had been arrested and expelled, and had left for Spain; but I do not gather from the words of the telegram that he left under arrest.

  ENLARGEMENT OF IRISH HOLDINGS.
  DR. ROBERT AMBROSE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will grant the Motion for a Return of all communications entered into by the Congested Districts Board with Irish landlords or graziers with a view of obtaining land for the purposes of migration or enlargement of holdings?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The correspondence referred to is of a private character, and it would be altogether improper to lay it on the Table of the House. Moreover, such a proceeding would, in all probability, seriously prejudice any negotiations of a similar kind into which the Congested Districts Board might wish to enter hereafter.

  COLONEL FOSTER.
  MAJOR F. C. RASCH: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that Colonel Foster has been passed over for the rank of General, although he is the senior Colonel eligible under the terms of Royal Warrant, 1897 (par. 44); if he could explain on what grounds his claims to
  1668
  promotion were rejected in favour of the officer immediately below him; if he was incompetent to command as a General Officer under the terms of the warrant why was he retained in command of a district for five years and not informed of the fact; and whether the Reports having reference to him were satisfactory or otherwise during this period?
  MR. BRODRICK: Colonel Foster was not promoted to the rank of Major-General because the Commander-in-Chief and the Army Board did not recommend his promotion. It would not be desirable that I should enter upon the subject of confidential Reports on officers in this House.

  TRAINING OF MILITIA OFFICERS.
  MR. C. J. MONK: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether facilities will be given to Militia officers, whose battalion is ordered for the annual training between the 8th August and the 10th of September, and who are candidates for admission into the Army, to join some other battalion for the training at an earlier date, in consequence of the Army examination being fixed for the 12th of September?
  MR. BRODRICK: The examination has been postponed until the 25th October to enable officers to train in their own battalions.

  UGANDA PROTECTORATE.
  MR. H. J. TENNANT: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he would obtain, and lay upon the Table, a Report from Her Majesty's Commissioner of the Uganda Protectorate on the condition and progress of that Protectorate from its establishment to the present time, similar to the Report on the British African Protectorate (Africa, No. 7, 1897) recently presented?
  MR. CURZON: All the material information which Her Majesty's Government have received on the subject of Uganda for many years past has been already presented to Parliament, and many of the British officers who have served there have also written valuable works on the subject. A Report on the trade and commerce of Uganda was also presented last year. There is, therefore, no lack of available information on the subject, and for the present I think that the services of Her Majesty's Administrator will be more usefully employed in coping with existing difficulties than in writing a long historical Report, such as that suggested by my hon. Friend.

  YUNNAN AND SZECHUEN.
  MR. J. L. WALTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the French Government, under Article IV. of the Declaration between Great Britain and France, signed at London on 15th January, 1896, agreed that all railway concessions and all commercial and other privileges and advantages conceded, or which may in the future be conceded, in the two Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Szechuen shall be extended and rendered common to Great Britain and to their nationals and dependents; and whether by the same article the French Government engaged to use its influence and good offices with the Chinese Government for this purpose?
  MR. CURZON: The hon. Member has correctly cited the terms of Article IV. of the Anglo-French Declaration about Siam, with, one exception—namely, that the words "as far as rests with, them" should have appeared in the eleventh line between the words "shall" and "be."

  CORK TELEGRAPH STAFF.
  MR. W. H. K. REDMOND: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether any members of the Cork telegraph staff refused to select
  1670
  their periods of annual leave for 1897; and, if so, how many, and at what time did they get the same; and if it is the intention of the telegraph authorities at Cork to carry out the telegraphists annual leave scheme as already arranged—namely, by seniority?
  MR. HANBURY: Four telegraphists declined to select any period for annual leave when the lists were being made out. They were allowed leave later on as circumstances admitted, two of them in September, one partly in May and partly in September, and one in November. It is intended to carry out the arrangement of annual leave at Cork this year by seniority. The arrangements for future years are now under consideration.

  IRISH COLLEGE OF SCIENCE.
  MR. DALY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can state when the establishment of a college of science will be established in Ireland; and whether he will place it under a board of management in Dublin?
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: At the request of my right hon. Friend I will reply to this Question. I have already, on the 22nd and 25th March, answered two Questions identical with the present one, and I must refer the hon. Member to the answers then given.

  SECONDARY EDUCATION.
  SIR JAMES WOODHOUSE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can state when it is intended to introduce the proposals mentioned in the Queen's Speech relating to secondary education?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: My right hon. Friend has asked me to say that he is unable, in the present state of public business, to make any statement on the subject.

  COURSE OF PUBLIC BUSINESS.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: In the absence of the First Lord of the Treasury, perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer will tell us what will be the order of the business it is proposed to take on Monday?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: The Prisons Bill will be the First Order on Monday, the Private Bill Procedure (Scotland) Bill the Second.

  POOR LAW OFFICERS' SUPERANNUATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  To enable Parish Councils in Scotland to grant Superannuation Allowances to Poor Law Officers and Servants, and to Officers and Servants of Committees of Management of Poorhouses formed under a combination for poorhouse purposes: Ordered to be brought in by Mr. Renshaw, Colonel Denny, Mr. Ure, Dr. Farquharson, Mr. Nicol, Captain Pirie, and Mr. Alexander Cross; Presented and read a first time; to be read a second time upon Wednesday, 27th April, and to be printed. [Bill 170.]
  EXECUTORS (SCOTLAND) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Bill to amend the Law relating to Executors in Scotland: Ordered to be brought in by Mr. J. B. Balfour, Mr. Thomas Shaw, Mr. Ure, and Mr. Caldwell; Presented, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Thursday, 26th May, and to be printed. [Bill 171.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  SUPPLY.

    CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES.
    TELEPHONE SERVICE.
    On Motion, That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair,
    MR. JAMES CALDWELL: I beg to move—
    "That the continued refusal of the Post Office to grant licences to and allow municipal corporations and other responsible bodies to compete with the National Telephone Company is contrary to the Treasury Minute of 23rd May, 1892; is inconsistent with the letter and
    1672
    spirit of the agreement entered into with the telephone companies when the Post Office took over the trunk lines; and is calculated to prevent the establishment of a cheap, adequate, and efficient telephone service in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and to increase the difficulties and costliness of any arrangement for the assumption by the State of the whole telephone systems should that step ultimately be considered desirable."
    Having been successful in obtaining the first place for the Motion on going into Committee of Supply, I have given the benefit in a subject of pressing national and local interest and importance, and a subject which is altogether outside of Party politics. I may also mention that I move this Motion purely from the standpoint of public interest; that I am not a director, and have no intention of being a director of any company telephone, or otherwise, nor, I might add, even a shareholder. The telephone was brought to this country by Lord Kelvin in 1876, but only in a very crude form. The first practical telephone came from America in 1878, in which year two companies were formed in London, the one to work Ball's patents, and the other to work Edison's patents. These two companies having announced their intention of establishing telephone exchanges, the Post Office, in November and December, 1879, filed an injunction in the High Court of Justice in England. In June, 1880, the two companies amalgamated under the title of the United Telephone Company, Limited, and on 20th December of the same year the High Court decided that telephones were included under telegraphs, and were a monopoly of the Post Office under the Telegraph Act, 1869. The State having thus the sole right to telephones, the Postmaster General, in virtue of the powers, under Section 4, of the Telegraph Act, 1869, offered licences to the public upon payment of a royalty. The telephone was then in its infancy, and the Post Office, apparently, did not see their way, in the first instance, at all events, themselves to establish and work all the telephone exchanges of the country, although they all along have had some. Bell's patents expired on 9th December, 1890, and Edison's on 30th July, 1891; and now there are no telephone patents interfering with the service. In April, 1881—that is, four

    1673
    months after the judgment of the High Court—the Post Office granted a licence to the United Telephone Company, authorising them to establish and work telephone exchanges in London, within a radius of five miles from a central point to be fixed by the company. The royalty charged was, in all cases, 10 per cent. of the gross earnings. The United Telephone Company confined its own exchange operations to London, but if allowed its patent apparatus to be used in other parts of the country by subsidiary companies. These subsidiary companies were left to negotiate with the Post Office for a licence. The licences granted were all made to expire on 31st December, 1911; so that on 31st December, 1911, all telephone licences in this country will lapse, and the State will then be free to assume the sole right of working the telephone. In 1882 a new company was formed to carry on exchange business in London, called the London and Globe Telephone Company, and it was granted a licence, notwithstanding that the United Telephone Company urged reasons why there should be no competition. In the same year the Post Office granted licences to establish exchanges even in towns where the Post Office were themselves carrying on exchange business, as, for example, in New-castle-on-Tyne, the policy of the Post Office being to increase licences and to encourage competition. In 1884 the London and Globe Company was absorbed by the United Telephone Company. Up till this time telephone licences were restricted to towns and to areas within a certain distance of a town. The Post Office offered to supply trunk wires connecting towns, on condition that the parties using the same should pay the Department direct. This offer was not accepted; but in a few cases, as, for example, between London and Brighton, trunk wires were provided by the Department for the use of telephone companies at a fixed annual rent. In all, about 23 licences had been granted for telephone use in restricted areas. In 1884—when Mr. Fawcett was Postmaster General—a new departure was made. Licences, instead of being limited to a restricted area, were made to apply to every part of the United Kingdom, and included the right to erect and work trunk lines.
    1674
    The new licences were granted to the original holders, and a Mr. Taskar—a private individual—who held a licence for Sheffield and also for Rotherham, was given a licence for the United Kingdom; and all the new licences were granted in similar terms. Whilst the policy of the Post Office was to increase the number of licences and to encourage competition, the policy of the larger telephone companies was to buy up the competing companies at almost any price, with the view of establishing a private monopoly. The amalgamations of telephone companies, which were then taking place, and their probable effect, had not escaped the attention of the Postmaster General. Mr. Fawcett stated, 22nd May, 1884—
    "He was pressed on all sides not to allow a private monopoly to grow up and be vested in a private company."
    And again—
    "If there is to be a monopoly in telephone communication, or any other communication, it had better be in the hands of the Government, which can be controlled, and which is directly amenable to public opinion, rather than that a monopoly should be vested in a private company."
    The policy of Mr. Fawcett continued to be the policy of his successors, and Mr. Raikes—who was then Postmaster-General—on 4th June, 1889, wrote to the telephone company on the occasion of an amalgamation of the United Telephone Company, the National Telephone Company, and another—
    "That the amalgamation of the companies was net contemplated when the licences were issued, and that any assurances outside the licences which the companies may conceive themselves to have received from the then Postmaster General cannot be regarded as applicable to the state of things likely to result from the proposed amalgamation."
    Every one of the Postmasters General seems to have experienced this difficulty, that, whilst they might give new licences in order to encourage competition, these licences simply came, in course of time, to be bought up by the larger telephone companies, who were aiming at establishing a private monopoly. Accordingly, and without meaning any limitation on the granting of licences in the future, the Treasury Minute of 23rd May, 1892, restricted the granting of licences to

    1675
    responsible companies, who had the consent of the municipal authority, and who were not so likely to be applying for a licence merely in order to sell it to the National or other telephone company. The Treasury Minute of 1892 was not a reversal or retraction of the policy of giving an increased number of licences, and of encouraging competition, but was intended rather to meet the difficulty of licencees trading in licences without any bonâ fide intention of serving the wants of the public. The interposition of the consent of the municipal authority to an application for a licence is, however, only a very limited safeguard, and will not, unless the licence is carefully restricted, prevent the National Telephone Company from afterwards buying up shares. The only effectual safeguard seems to be to give licences to such municipal authorities as are willing, with Parliamentary sanction if need be, to establish and work telephone exchanges in the public interest. In the same year, 1892, the Post Office found it necessary to revert to the original policy of restricting licences to the limited area to which the licence applied, and of keeping in the hands of the Post Office all the trunk lines connecting the towns. The Post Office appear to have had a twofold object in this: in the first place, to protect, in some measure, the telegraph revenue, which was being in seriously affected where telephoning was in use; and in the next place to make it easier for the State assuming the whole telephone system on the expiry of the licences on 31st December, 1911. The telephone companies were amply compensated for this change of policy, some of the Post Office charges being largely reduced. The limitation of licences to particular towns and local areas necessarily increases the interest of the inhabitants in the particular licence, and makes the licence a matter of purely local concern. It is not a matter which the Post Office can look at from an Imperial point of view, apart from the locality which is to be served by the licence. The sole interest centres in the locality and in the locality alone. In asking that municipal authorities ought to be granted the licence in the public interest, it has to be borne in mind that the licence asked for, is a licence to use that which
    1676
    is the property of the State, and which all parties seem to be agreed ought not to be in private hands, but ought to be worked in the public interest. I notice an Amendment on the Paper in the name of the hon. Member for St. Rollox to the effect that the State ought now to purchase the telephone system. I cannot, of course, anticipate the discussion on an Amendment which has not been readied, but I claim the appearance of that Amendment on the Paper as an admission that the telephone ought to be worked in the interest of the public, and not for private profit—whether immediately or in 1911 being a matter of detail. If the telephone ought to be worked for the public behalf, and if the Post Office is not prepared immediately to work the local telephone as part of an Imperial system, then my contention is that municipal authorities are the natural representatives of the inhabitants, to whom the licence ought to be granted. I do not know that it is necessary for me to anticipate an objection which may be made, that telephoning is not a proper business for a, municipal authority to undertake; that it only concerns the users of the telephone, and not the citizens as a whole. I will only say generally that the present British policy in the Far East and in Western Africa is based on the assumption that the foreign trade of the country (although immediately affecting the shippers of goods) is, nevertheless, considered a matter of concern to the nation as a whole. In like manner telephoning has become, and is daily more and more becoming, a matter of necessity for business men and manufacturers, in order to enable them to communicate rapidly with each other, with other cities, and with London as the leading centre of all. Everyone who has any knowledge of the relationship of a business in London with the provinces knows the value of dispatch in securing orders, and that the orders so obtained (although, no doubt, immediately benefiting a particular business or trade in a locality), nevertheless tend to the general advantage. Parliament has been gradually extending the variety of schemes which municipal authorities might undertake, and wisely undertake, in the public interest. Their powers have been extended to gas, to

    1677
    water, to electricity, and to tramways—to purposes all of which, although for the general good, are, nevertheless, more or less of a commercial nature, and compete more or less with private enterprise. But in this matter of telephones, we are dealing with what is the property of the State and a State monopoly; with what all parties are agreed ought not to be the subject of private profit, and which ought to be dealt with with the ultimate object in view, that if in 1911 it is resolved that the State should take over the whole telephone system there will be no vested private interest, in so far, at least, as municipal telephones are concerned. Seeing that telephone licences are now limited to local exchanges, it is obvious that the municipal authorities ought to know best the wants of the locality, and are the best fitted to undertake the necessary work; and that, if there be any loss in the construction or working, it ought to fall on the locality, and not on the Imperial taxpayer. In laying the wires underground the streets are under the charge of the municipal authorities, and it would be their duty, and interest, in opening them up, to inconvenience the public as little as possible. In all municipal undertakings there is usually the bogey cry of a charge upon the rates. It was raised in the case of the Glasgow Corporation Tramways. All experience, however, shows that such enterprises become self-supporting, whilst the ratepayer may well be trusted to see that no charge falls upon the rates. If telephone licences were to be granted now for the first time, it is hardly possible to conceive what municipal authorities should not have the first offer. But it may be asked, and not unfairly, what is the position of those cities where the National Telephone Company already have exchanges? As has been pointed out, the Post Office has always reserved to itself the right to grant additional and competing licences to any person in any area; and in point of fact the Post Office did grant licences to different companies in the same area. Not only in the agreement with the telephone companies and in the Treasury Minute of 1892 is this right clearly reserved, but the reservation is set out in every licence which was granted. The Post Office officials who were examined by the Select Committee
    1678
    on telephones which sat in 1895 were not only absolutely clear and strong that there was, and could be, no breach, of faith or honour in granting competing licences in the same area, but we have even Mr. Forbes, the General Manager of the National Telephone Company, stating, in answer to Question 4,644, that—
    "The Post Office are absolutely free. I will go a little further and say that in all the negotiations, which were prolonged, there never was the slightest suggestion, directly or indirectly, of any such cession on the part of the Post Office of a promise or pledge to lock up their own discretion. On the contrary, from the very beginning to the end it was strictly reserved. Therefore they are quite free."
    This reserved power to grant competitive licences is all-important, as it is the only weapon which the Postmaster General, or the State, has to prevent the wholesale plunder of the public who are compelled by business exigencies to use the telephone. Unlike any other company which receives a State privilege, the telephone company is under no restriction whatever. It is unlimited as regards the profit which it may earn and divide; it may buy out any competitive licence at; whatever price it can arrange; and it may charge whatever tariff it can exact. It is even under no restriction or control regarding the efficiency of the service which it may render. In every other case where Parliament gives statutory permission, be it for gas, for water, for electric light, for a railway or harbour, or for anything else, there is always some limitation, control, or reservation in the matter of dividend which may be earned, or in the maximum rates that may be charged. But, in this matter of telephone licences the telephone company may water its capital to any extent it pleases, it may charge what, rates it pleases, and it may turn up the market value of its shares as much as it can, in the prospect and hope that, enjoying a monopoly in 1911, it will be able to compel the Government to purchase their undertaking at as ruinous a cost to the taxpayers as was the case of the purchase of the telegraph. The only protection which those using, or desirous of using, the telephone have of obtaining an efficient service at a moderate tariff, or which the State may have if it comes to assume telephones in 1911, lies in

    1679
    the use which is made of this power to grant competitive licences. The universal effect of competitive licences being granted in the past has been, in the first instance, at all events, to reduce the telephone tariff, and, if the tariff has been raised when the competing company has been bought up, the new tariff has generally been much less than the original. A striking case is that of Dundee, the evidence concerning which was given to the Committee of 1895 by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee. A telephone company (which was subsequently absorbed by the National Telephone Company) charged £20. A local company was started, which charged only £10. The original telephone, company reduced the charge to £5, and the local company followed, not quite to £5, but to £5 10s. The competition went on for some years. The local company, which paid throughout a dividend of nine per cent., was eventually bought up by the original telephone company at a premium of 40 per cent. The subscribers to the telephone, when the tariff was £20, were only 30, but when the tariff was reduced the number, taking the two companies together, rose to over 1,000. After the local company was bought up the tariff was raised to £10. The subscribers thereupon fell off by some hundreds. In 1895 they had again risen to close on 1,000, a striking corroboration of a statement made by Mr. Forbes, and which seems to enter into the policy of the company, that when the benefits of the telephone company have been felly experienced, a business man will pay almost any price for the privilege. It was brought out before the Committee in 1895, on the part of the telephone companies, that beyond a certain limit—say 5,000 subscribers, the cost of maintenance becomes increasingly great; and that it might not be profitable to encourage telephoning in any area beyond that extent, at least without a high tariff. The benefit of telephonic communication, so far as the community is concerned, necessarily depends upon the number of subscribers; and the lower the tariff the larger the members who will use the telephone, and the consequent greater benefit to the public. In the hands of a municipal authority the service would be certain to be extended
    1680
    to its fullest capacity; and, whilst self-supporting, the smaller tradesmen and business men would, no doubt, see that they got the full benefit at a reasonable charge. On the other hand, a private telephone company is mainly interested in earning dividend and in raising the market value of the stock. The Glasgow Corporation has been asking for a licence since 1893, and it has only just received its answer—a refusal. Glasgow is a city especially suitable for making a beginning. We were told only last night that, in the present inquiry before the Treasury Commissioner, Glasgow, following its usual habit of economy, employed only one counsel as against four leading Queen's counsel employed by the telephone company. In the past, as we have seen, competitive licences have been granted to private companies who have sold them for private profit. Is it unreasonable to ask that, at this time of the day, at least one competitive licence should be granted as a trial to a municipality which undertakes to use the same solely in the public interest? It is not for me at this stage to go into the question of cost or probable efficiency. That is a matter which concerns the locality, and the locality alone will have to bear the whole responsibility. In the case of Glasgow the telephone company has reached its maximum of remunerative subscribers—5,000, and the pecuniary interest of the company seems to be in keeping up the present high tariff of £10, and not encouraging additional subscribers by making a reduction. Their pecuniary interests seem to be not in placing their tariff at £10, and thus not encouraging additional subscribers by making a reduction: the interest of the citizens of Glasgow lies in having an efficient service, as adequate as possible, and a tariff as moderate as possible The Corporation of Glasgow, who are all business men, possessing the entire confidence of the community and citizens, think that an efficient telephone service can be supplied at £5 a year and that the present number of subscribers would be doubled if the price were so reduced. The Corporation undertook to perform the service—they have the citizens at their back. Why should the Post Office refuse to such a Corporation a competitive licence which they granted so

    1681
    freely formerly to private companies, and who merely use them for the purpose of making profits? In what interests of the State can the Post Office refuse these licences? Surely, if the municipal authorities and the local ratepayers are to be trusted at all, they ought to be trusted in this matter in utilising the telephones, which are the property of the. State, and the community should not be left to be entirely in the hands of a private monopoly, if the licences were granted, and turned out to be a failure, the loss would be local and not Imperial, whilst the expediency of granting such licences will be put to the test. It is not difficult to see why Post Office officials should be opposed to granting competitive licences to a, municipal authority. At present, and for many years back, the Pest Office has had telephone exchanges in several towns in England. What has been the result? Notwithstanding all the advantages which the Post Office possess over private enterprise in a mailer of this kind, the Post Office telephone system has been a complete failure. How is it possible for them to view with, anything like satisfaction the possibility of the success of others in that enterprise? But more than that, the Post Office officials stated before the Committee of 1895 that competition was impracticable. If that be so, and if no competitive licences are to be granted, as mine at the present moment are being granted, then I ask what weapon has the Post Office or the State to enable them to protect the present users of telephones against the insufficient service and extortionate tariff; and what weapon has the State against the growing nil of a huge monopoly which may have to be reckoned with in 1911? Are we, in 1898, with 12 years of the licences to run, to leave the entire telephone interests of this country in the hands of a private monopoly? I have mentioned the case of Glasgow as being a Corporation which is willing to make the experiment and lead the way, but my Motion applies to all municipal authorities who may be willing to undertake the obligations, either themselves or through the medium of a private company. If Parliamentary powers be required in order to give practical effect to a licence,
    1682
    then by all means let Parliamentary powers be obtained. What we are dealing with in the meantime is these licences, which it is in the power of the Post Office to grant without Parliamentary authority. Let it be given, if necessary, conditional upon Parliamentary powers being obtained to work the same; but what we do want is an expression of opinion of this House upon this Motion, that, subject to any Parliamentary sanction, licences ought to be granted to municipal authorities, or to private companies, which have the assent of the authorities. Mr. Speaker, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name.
    *MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN: I rise to second this Motion, and in doing so I wish to make it clear at once that I am animated by no hostile feelings to the National Telephone Company. I fully admit that that great corporation has, in some instances, given satisfaction; in other instances it has not given satisfaction. But my quarrel is not so much with the National Telephone Company—which has a monopoly, and which would scarcely be human if it did not make use of that monopoly—as it is with the Post Office, which has allowed the monopoly to grow up. The Post Office, which has always had perfectly full powers to stop this monopoly, under the Treasury Minute of 1892, has, notwithstanding that Minute, allowed this monopoly to grow, and has allowed no competition whatever, excepting those few telephone exchanges of its own, as to which I can only say that anybody who knows anything at all about their working knows that they are useless, and the result has been that the Post Office has allowed to grow up throughout England what is regarded with the greatest disapproval—namely, the great monopoly which is very much to the detriment of the country. The result of that monopoly has been this: that this country, which has always prided itself on being in the van in all matters of physical science, has, in the matter of the telephone, fallen behind the greater part of the world. The result is a very serious one. We hear a great deal about foreign competition in

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    our markets, and we are told that it is due to a variety of causes. I do not doubt, of course, that such things as technical education, have much to do with it, but I say that the fact that our telephone system lags behind that of foreign countries, has something to do with it also; and I think that this monopoly, which has been the cause of that, has been a very unfortunate thing for the trading community as a whole, and the Post Office must bear the blame for it. Now, Sir, I have travelled a great deal in foreign countries. I have also studied the statistics upon this question. If you go to America, you will find that the telephone is almost of universal application. Then, in the third principal town of Norway one person in every 37 is connected with the telephone. What is the case in London? Only one in every 1,000, and that is the case with the greater number of towns in this country; and you have only got to look as far as Douglas, in the Isle of Man, where they are not under the control of the National Telephone Company, and there you will find one man in 60 is connected with the telephone which I think is fairly clear proof that the telephone has been so little used in England, is due to the monopoly of the National Telephone Company. What have been the causes on the part of the National Telephone Company which have led to this result? These causes are these: in the first place, the system had often been inefficient. In Glasgow, it has just been declared to have been inefficient. I am quite prepared to give the National Telephone Company full credit for anything on their side. I am quite willing to say that, the Glasgow Corporation did not give the National Telephone Company the necessary facilities to enable them to make it thoroughly efficient. But I will take other towns. I will take one of the towns I have the honour of representing in this House—Tunbridge Wells. At Tunbridge Wells, two years ago, the service was absolutely inefficient; so inefficient as to be absolutely ridiculous, and, one by one, all the subscriptions were dropping off, and the effect of that state of things has been a great agitation, in consequence of which the service has been rendered more
    1684
    efficient than it used to be, though still it is not so efficient as it ought to be. There is a still more important cause than inefficiency, which has resulted in people not using the telephone in England so much as they might do, and that is the cost of the system. The rates imposed by the National Telephone Company, acting under the protection of their monopoly, have been such as to make the telephone prohibitive for the great bulk of the English people. Let us look at what these charges are. In London the charge for subscribers for a year is £20. In most towns in England it varies from £8 to £12. Now compare that with Norway.
    *SIR JAMES FERGUSSON: It is not correct to say it is £20 a year for London, it is only £10.
    *MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN: I understood that the figure given in the evidence the other day was that it was £20, but I am quite prepared to accept the right hon. Baronet's figure.
    MR. ALEXANDER CROSS: I think we ought to know, Sir, whether the rate is £10 or not in London.
    *MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN: I can put the matter perfectly straight. The charge for a public firm is £20, and in other towns it varies from £8 to £10 per year. I will make a comparison. In Norway for a public firm the charge varies from £1 7s. to £3 10s.; in Switzerland the charge is £3 10s., and in New Zealand to a public firm the charge is £5. I venture to say, Sir, that it is my firm conviction, that in England the telephone service can be worked at a good profit with a charge of £5 a year to a public firm. In support of that statement I have only to allude to the fact that other, companies have existed in England which did the work at a much lower figure than the National Telephone Company. For instance, take the case of the Dundee and District Telephone Company. There the fee was £5 10s. for any distance, and it

    1685
    paid on an average nine per cent. interest during the four years of its existence. I will take Sheffield, In the case of Sheffield they paid good dividends for many years on a charge of £7 per annum. I think it is quite clear that if we had the charges of the National Telephone Company reduced to those I have quoted the result would be that the telephones would be much more made use of in England than they are at the present moment. But, Sir, we have a great difficulty in this matter. I do not entirely blame the National Telephone Company for making these high charges. They have had the chance of imposing them, and from the point of view of their shareholders they were quite right to impose them. But there is this further difficulty, that owing to the enormous size of their capital, I do not see how they could reduce these subscription charges. I do not want to say anything unpleasant, but I will merely quote the words of Mr. Forbes, the Chairman of the National Telephone Company, in giving evidence before the Committee of Inquiry in 1895. With reference to a question put to him by one of the Members with regard to what is called "watering the capital," he used these words: "What some people are pleased to call the watered value is £1,292,000." Now, I do not pretend to understand what "watered value" is; but I imagine that it does not actually go into the construction of the works, and I am told that the "watered value" of the National Telephone Company has been put by other people at a very much higher figure than £1,292,000. And yet, Sir, on this enormous capital they pay a dividend of six per cent., and I think, therefore, it follows that the general public are called upon to pay a great deal more for their telephone service in order that a high interest may be paid upon capital that never went into the construction of the telephone at all. I will prove it, I think, in this way. Taking Mr. Forbes' figures, the "watered capital" is £1,292,000. Now, the number of the telephone lines in the country belonging to the National Telephone Company is 73,338; therefore to each line there is a sum of £17 11s. in "water." Now, the Dundee and District lines only cost £15 each, and
    1686
    the Mutual Telephone Company's lines, with a double system, cost £16 16s. each; therefore the actual capital of the National Telephone Company is about double the construction of the lines; so that, were it not for the presence of this most obnoxious liquid in the capital at the present moment, the National Telephone Company might reduce their rates to one-half, and confer a very great benefit upon all users, or would-be users, of the telephone. One more point, Sir, has tended to make the National Telephone Company in this country unsuccessful. They seem to insist upon the system that what is required is that everybody should be able to communicate with everybody else all over England. In London, they do the same. I understand their plan is to have one telephonic exchange for the whole of London. What I want to impress upon the House is this, that, what the people most desire is local service, and I think it would be a very much better plan if they were to differentiate the rates, so that if I wanted to speak, say, to Glasgow or Tunbridge Wells I could do so by paying a higher rate, but that within a certain area you should have, what they have in many inland towns abroad, a very low rental on a purely local service, which I think would be very much made use of. That is a very important point, because we are told, if you establish local companies, or corporations, they would not have the right to enable people to converse with other people at a distance. But the local service is the most important, and therefore, you would meet a very largely felt want if you establish local exchanges at a low rate of rental. These are simply the facts that I wanted to bring before the House. I do not want to detain the House, and I do not want to anticipate what my right hon. Friend will say; but, taking these facts into consideration, I hope that steps will be taken at once to put an end to the monopoly of the National Telephone Company. So far they have done absolutely nothing, and the monopoly has been growing stronger every day. That is not a matter merely of local interest, it is a matter of national concern, because I would ask my right hon. Friend what he thinks is going to happen in the year 1911, when the

    1687
    monopoly will have grown still more strong and the licence of the National Telephone Company expires. I know this matter has been brought before the attention of the Government on a previous occasion, because I have the words which my right hon. Friend used in this House in April last year, when he said this—
    "At the same time they"—[the Government]—"must be prepared for the expiry of the present licence to the Telephone Company in 1911, for they would be in a very considerable dilemma and be bound to buy the National Telephone Company at any price, unless they had established a considerable alternative system. That was an evil and danger they did not mean to incur."
    I ask, therefore, that the Government should take steps to avert that considerable danger which they do not wish to incur. I do not care how it is done. I do not care whether it is by Post Office competition—though I think probably that is the worst kind of competition—I do not care whether it is by companies, or whether it is by corporations, though probably corporations are the best, because companies are always under the temptation of being bought up by the National Telephone Company, and, as that would add to the "watering" of capital, it might do more harm than good. I do, however, ask that something should be done to enable corporations to work their own telephonic schemes. That was distinctly contemplated in the Treasury Minute, because Clause 21 of that Minute said this—
    "In conclusion, it may be stated that the intention is to meet, as far as possible, the views of municipal authorities."
    You have municipal authorities all over the country asking that they may be allowed to establish telephonic exchanges. I believe there is some legal difficulty in their doing so, that they cannot do so now without coming to the House of Commons, and without obtaining powers by a Parliamentary Bill. That is a difficulty which, of course, must be got over; but I do not see why that difficulty should prevent the Post Office from granting licences and allowing these municipalities to come here afterwards. If there is any possible means of getting over that difficulty, I think that would be a very good and reasonable way of proceeding. I only desire to say that I wish to see
    1688
    some competition established, and I think the Government would be doing what would be acceptable to the great bulk of the inhabitants of this country if they allowed competition to spring up in some form or other.
    *MR. FAITHFULL BEGG: I think we must all of us have been very much interested by the speeches made already in connection with this Motion. I do not entirely agree—in fact, I almost entirely disagree—with my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, not with regard to many of the things which he has said on the subject of telephones, but with regard to the line of policy which he proposes to urge upon the Government at the present juncture. He has pointed out a very important matter in connection with the telephone question—namely, the anomalous position which the Telephone Company occupies in respect to the nature of the tenure which it holds—that is to say, it is not under those statutory obligations with regard to tariff and prohibitions which other undertakings, similar in many respects, have been put under by this House. But the reason for that is not difficult to find, because those who go back in this telephonic controversy as long as I do know that at the time the licences were granted there was practically no knowledge in this country, and very little expectation, of the developments which would take place within a very short period in telephonic enterprise. Therefore it was not considered necessary to safeguard the licences in the directions pointed out by my hon. Friend, but there is no doubt we are faced with the fact that there is this state of affairs. It amounts to this, that having granted, in the earlier stages, licences to these—I can hardly call them enterprising persons (I was one of them myself)—but having granted these licences to those more or less enterprising persons, it is now necessary to find some means out of a very great and growing difficulty, which is manifest and which cannot be ignored. I observed with some satisfaction, that my hon. Friend had restricted his Motion to the question of granting licences to municipal corporations and other responsible bodies, because that narrows the issue very much.

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    But I observed that the seconder of the Motion went a good deal farther than my hon. Friend, because he advocated that licences should be granted to private companies also.
    *MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN: I said I preferred competition by corporations, but I like to see competition in any form.
    *MR. FAITHFULL BEGG: Then I correctly understood my Friend's position, and what I would advocate is that no such licences should be granted at all, but that the Government should face the difficulty, the true solution of which is once and for all to acquire the telephonic system, and combine it with the Post Office Department for the benefit of the community at large. Sir, it was in 1879 that I first began to study the telephone question, and here I should like to make a personal explanation. I am supposed, I believe at least by some, to be largely interested in telephonic enterprise, and to be nothing more nor less than the mouthpiece of the National Telephone Company. I was for a good many years, in the earlier stages of the telephone, connected with that company I was instrumental in selling to that company a business which had come into existence before the company itself was formed; but for a great many years I have had no pecuniary interest in it, and I hope I am taking an unbiassed view of the situation and giving the information which I possess upon this matter from an impartial standpoint. The latest information we have with regard to the telephone enterprise is contained in the report of the Glasgow inquiry which was held in connection with the matter. I regret that it has not been possible to put into our possession the full minutes of the evidence which was given during that inquiry until this morning. But the report of Mr. Sheriff Jameson is sufficiently exhaustive to put before us the main facts of that inquiry; and everything that I have read, and the study I have given to that report, only leads me to feel more strongly that the opinion I have enunciated this afternoon is the right view. Now there is one remark I wish to make. I have said I am not the advocate of the National Telephone Company, but there is one point in the speech of
    1690
    the hon. Member for Tonbridge Division which bears upon the position of that company which I should like to allude to. He pointed out that a large portion of the capital of the company consisted of what is called "water." Now, there is a great deal more than water in that compound. There are "brains" in that compound. There are "patent rights" in that compound, the whole of which, is put down as "water," but for which a certain amount of credit should be given to the company.
    *MR. A. D. PROVAND: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us when the Bell and other patents expired? They were the only patents worth anything.
    *MR. FAITHFULL BEGG: My hon. Friend is perfectly rigid, but the lifetime of a patent in connection with the efficacy of it does not expire with the death of the patent itself, and we have the best illustration of that fact in the position which the company now holds. Hon. Gentlemen may call this compound what they please, but I say it is not altogether "water," a fact which cannot be neglected in the calculation of the value of the property. There was an extraordinary deduction made by my hon. Friend when, asserting that one-half of the capital in the company was water, he said that the capital could be reduced by one-half, and then the stone dividend could be paid. But he had forgotten that the standing charges would remain the same. That argument is manifestly fallacious. However, I pass from that. It is impossible, it seems to me, to judge what the result will be if corporation licences are granted. I think you will probably find that the result will be that one or two experiments will be made—to which I myself, personally, would not object—based on the faith of certain calculations with regard to cost of construction and cost of carrying on the system. These, in my judgment, are absolutely fallacious, and the consequence will be that the ratepayers' money will be wasted, and in the end the Corporation Telephone Exchanges be starved out. Or we shall find that the company will bring its resources to bear to carry on opposition at a loss, and a fight will arise which will

    1691
    waste a considerable amount of money, which must come out of the pockets of the public, who in the end will be the sufferers. The case, however, with regard to municipalities may be open, but I should like to dismiss the question, once and for all, of granting licences to private companies with the object of reducing the tariff by ordinary competition. What has been the result since the beginning? The result has been in every case that the competing companies have been absorbed. You cannot prevent future licences being absorbed also. You may make restrictions in various ways, and endeavour to prevent combination, but in the end the last state will be worse than the first. We had a most striking illustration of that in the case of what was called the New Telephone Company. No company was ever formed with such a clear determination to compete, and what happened to that company? By purchasing shares and nominations on the board that business was what the Americans call "corralled" by the National Telephone Company. Depend upon it, competition by private companies must prove futile so far as benefit to the public is concerned. You only produce fresh gambling in telephone shares, and spend and waste more money in extravagance. You will have to pay heavily for it. It is a curious feature in the telephone business that a company, trading on the basis of a licence, having only a limited period to run, has not only to provide dividends on its capital, but also a redemption fund, whereby the capital may be handed back to the shareholders of the company at the end of the period; therefore the amount put away each year must be very much larger than the amount required to be put away by any other company. Competition only ends in one result. I need not further emphasise that point, but I should like to quote Mr. Lamb's evidence, as given in 1895—
    "I believe"—[he said]—"there is absolutely no difference among experts but that a competitive system within any area must result in inconvenience to the public and the want of efficiency."
    As a matter of fact, there was never any doubt about that. I remember, in the early days of telephone enterprise, meeting a man largely connected with that industry. He stated the same opinion as a fundamental
    1692
    fact, and his prophecy has proved absolutely true. He also made another statement, which bears upon the position of affairs in Glasgow at the present moment. The exchange has risen to a point when the subscribers are 5,000, and it appears that the company do not encourage any extension or reduce the rental. He said that it was a curious fact that in the working of telephones it cost more to carry on an exchange business in a wholesale manner than it did, so to speak, retail. That is to say, in proportion to the subscribers the cost per head must be larger, there being more people to talk to, and the system being more generally active the complication in the central office becomes much greater. The instruments in the central station, which are of a very costly nature, have over and over again to be replaced at enormous expense, and in that, way the telephone, as a business, costs more to carry on wholesale than retail. As regards municipalities, I have said that I should not object to an experiment. I will go farther. I will say this: if my right hon. Friend, who represents the Post Office, is not prepared to act or to move in the direction which I think is the right one, I do not believe that he or the Government will be able to resist the pressure which will come from the municipalities. However wrong they may be, they are undoubtedly making up their minds to demand these licences, and the Government will not be able to resist them; and I shall support their demands unless the Government adopt the plan which I suggest of buying up the telephones and settling the question once and for all. Last year there was a very great opportunity for the purchase of the telephones, but that opportunity was allowed to pass away.
    *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member must not discuss the desirability of the Government having the power to purchase the telephones. He is not in order in discussing questions which can only be dealt with by legislation.
    *MR. FAITHFULL BEGG: I am much obliged to you, Sir, for pointing out the limits of the discussion, and I will pass from that point, except with regard to the question of cost. I have made a

    1693
    calculation, and assuming a purchase the system at the full existing market value, if the interest on the cost is worked out on the basis of the rate at which the Treasury could borrow the money, I think it will be found that long before the licences had expired the operation would show a profit. I will not pursue that line of argument, because I should fear to be again, out of order. Let me now refer to a point which has not been dealt with by either of the speakers who have preceded me—namely, that there is in the minds of many, a belief that on the expiry of the licences the country can say to the company, "You have had your number of years, and now you can go." By 1911 the telephone system of this country will have developed to a very large extent indeed; there will be a system too vast to duplicate in advance. I am very anxious in regard to the policy of the Government in this matter, because I am one of those who think, that every departure which the Government has taken in the past has been wrong. I am not referring to individuals. No doubt they have all acted according to their best lights and I am particularly not referring to my right hon. Friend on the Front Bench. I know the difficulties of the telephone problem, but, speaking generally, the policy of the Post Office in the past has tended, not to develop, but to crush and to hamper the industry to the sacrifice of the interests of the public. The first great blunder was committed when the verdict in the telephone case was obtained, and it was authoritatively decided that a telephone was a telegraph. It was clear that the purchase of the whole telephone interest there and then was the best plan. It was recognised then by experts that rival exchanges could not exist, and that the public interest could never be served satisfactorily by rival exchanges, though the public believed that competition would reduce the rates. All people of importance must subscribe to both, and experience has shown that this view was sound. The Government granted numerous licences to promote competition, and announced a system of their own which was a miserable failure from the first, and continues so to be. The Government exchanges
    1694
    to-day are practically non-existent, in spite of an organised staff, the use of the pre-existing Post Office facilities, and a ten per cent. royalty, all of which were in their favour. The second blunder was the giving up of trunk wire rights to the companies. Mr. Fawcett's policy was so far liberal and progressive. The result was, however, that the companies at once covered the country with trunk wires, which the Government has now had to buy back, giving full value accompanied with concessions as regards working facilities. In fact the National Telephone Company has now become practically an adjunct of the Post Office, without being amenable to public opinion or Parliamentary control. And it is bound, in view of the public attitude, to make till the money it can in order to provide for the worst in 1911. The more it is attacked the more it will so act. A third great blunder will be committed if this new departure is entered into of granting fresh licences, especially to private companies. The very Corporations which demand licences say that they only do so because the Government does not or cannot do the work itself. Allusion has been made to the question of the Government's position in this matter. The Government is perfectly free to grant those licences if it chouses. Nothing can be clearer than that the Government has pledged itself to grant licences to properly qualified applicants, and the demand for such licences cannot be much longer resisted if persisted in. In regard to the Government pledges. Sir James Fergusson, who was then Postmaster General, said in the House of Commons on the 22nd March, 1898—
    "When the local authorities are satisfied that a telephone exchange is desirable in their area, and the Government is satisfied that the licensees are in a position to carry out the undertaking, and that It is in the public interest desirable that they should have a licence, then it will be granted a licence for that area."
    The only thing I am endeavouring to show is that the policy of granting them would be entirely wrong. Nothing is simpler than to theorise about telephone working, but it is very difficult in practice. It is a science. I have some very curious evidence in connection with that.

    1695
    There are two matters in the Report I have referred to, to which I will call the attention of the House, showing the reason wiry you have exceptional difficulties in Glasgow with regard to the telephone. It is clear that the Glasgow Corporation are very much to blame for the evils that exist at the present moment. At the Glasgow Telephone Inquiry evidence was given to this effect; that the continued inefficiency of the present telephone exchange service in Glasgow is in a great measure due to the refusal of facilities to the National Telephone Company by the Corporation of Glasgow for constructing an underground metallic circuit system. Again, Bailie Chisholm, a member of a deputation to the Postmaster General on the 11th February, 1895, said, with regard to the conduct of subscribers—
    "I know of another case in which the man was so irritated by this persistent and insufferable nuisance that he smashed the whole instrument down with a hammer and threw it into the street."
    We all sympathise with that man. It is also staled in the Glasgow Telephone Inquiry that subscribers frequently make it impossible for the operator properly to attend to her business by bawling along the call-wire at the same time with other subscribers, and using the call-wire for abusing the operators, and frequently using very violent and brutal language to them; so much so that, at times, they have driven them into hysterics. The calculations circulated regarding the cost, etc., are quite fallacious. Sheriff Jameson, in his Report, quotes the rates current in Glasgow and district and says the rates are not unreasonable. And further on, speaking of Stockholm, which is the pet illustration of reformers, he says—
    "I can hardly imagine two places more dissimilar in almost every conceivable respect than Stockholm and Glasgow."
    Still, comparing the actual rates in the two places, he shows that in Stockholm the rate of £10 4s. 2d. actually comes up against £10 in Glasgow. So much for the rental. On the point of construction Sheriff Jameson is equally emphatic. The cases relied upon are those of the
    1696
    Mutual Telephone Company of Manchester, and the Telephone Company of Dundee. I know all about the Telephone Company of Dundee, because I was a Director of a company in active competition with the Dundee Company. It is true that ultimately we bought them up, not because they were working at a profit, but to get them out of the way. Here is the evidence of the Chairman of that company, ex-Provost Moncur—
    "If they had gone on at the £5 10s. rate, they would not have been able to pay anything at all."
    I would like to say a word in regard to economy of construction; and, here again, I quote the evidence of the Glasgow Commission. Sheriff Jameson says—
    "The evidence before him shows that that company was being financed in such a way as to have inevitably led to bankruptcy upon the £5 rate, and was never really in a position to pay a dividend. The plant was of the cheapest and most flimsy description."
    This point might be almost indefinitely enlarged. Corporations, therefore, if licences are granted to them, acting upon the faith of such estimates, or such examples as have been given, will inevitably waste the ratepayers' money. Private companies' profits may be a matter of no concern, but the confusion resulting from numerous systems is a serious point. I hope that under no circumstances will any licences be granted to private companies, because that will be a very pernicious experiment. Moreover, the local service is only a small portion of the problem. There must be trunk wire communication, and communication outside the municipal boundary. For trunk wire communication, the National Telephone Company has the right to make terminal charges, but it need not make such a charge to its own subscribers. It will certainly do so to subscribers to other exchanges. Thus it will have a great advantage over its rivals. There is no power to compel intercommunication within local areas. In the end there will be duplication of systems everywhere, double rental to pay, and huge waste of the ratepayers' money. Everybody agrees that State purchase is the only ultimate result. It ought to come now. All discussion and pressure for new licences would cease, and the present

    1697
    system could be consolidated and developed on definite lines. It has been asked, how can you expect that the Government will carry on the work satisfactorily in the future when it has been so weak in the past? The answer is, that experience has been pained, that there is a trained staff ready to take over with the work, and I am certain that it would be cheaper, and more efficient, and more to the public advantage, if this were done.
    *MR. T. LOUGH: I think it would be proper that before any such course as the hon. Member has recommended is adopted, the position of the National Telephone Company should be more carefully and accurately defined than at present. Now, Sir, in that remarkable speech to which we have listened, there was scarcely a single argument given in support of the main proposal that the Government should buy up the telephones. In fact, the arguments of the hon. Member led in quite an opposite direction. I think great benefits will arise from the experiments of those municipalities that are gaining experience at the present time. I think that granting licences to municipalities would be a most excellent plan for the Government to adopt. I cannot help saying that the position of the right hon. Gentleman, as one who helped to make the arrangements with the National Telephone Company, is an exceedingly delicate one. Both of the hon. Members who have spoken represent constituencies outside of London; and I believe London suffers more from the hands of the Telephone Company than any other place in the world. The charges are extremely high. I think it has been made clear that the general charge is £20 for a machine. By making a contract for five years you can get a machine for £20. Therefore I think the point is good that we pay a higher price in London titan is paid anywhere else. I believe the highest price paid in any place in Great Britain is £10. Not only is the price extremely high in London, but I think the service we get is extremely bad. We have here an actual illustration of this. The Telephone Company try to do as well for the Houses of Parliament as it
    1698
    is possible to do; yet Members sometimes go down to the four or six machines on the floor of this House and find it quite impossible to get on at any hour of the day. I think no one who has had experience of this will deny that the service is extremely bad. It is sometimes said that the expenses that the Telephone Company have to deal with in London, are greater than in any other place. I think, however, there is another side to that argument, for the great population of London gives such a very ample space to work upon. It is a very serious question whether this service in London might not be rendered as cheap as in any other place. Perhaps we are the most important unit in any part of the United Kingdom, and we have a great deal to complain of in the Telephone service. One other point I wish to make is this: there is no sanction for this monopoly that has grown up. I daresay the right hon. Gentleman trusts to his knowledge and ingenuity to get him out of the difficulty in which he is placed. What the people of London are looking for is that somebody should extricate them from the difficulties in which they find themselves at present. The thing is gelling worse and we want somebody on the Treasury Bench to extricate us from this position.
    *SIR JAMES FERGUSSON: It was not my intention to take any part in this Debate. But because I demurred to a statement of fact by the Member for Ton-bridge, which was misleading, the hon. Member who has just sat down took upon himself to tell me that my position in regard to this matter was delicate. It is not for the hon. Member to instruct me as to my position. It is true I am interested in the National Telephone Company, but I do not in the least admit that I stand in a delicate position. It is quite true that I was Postmaster General, and am also a Director of the National Telephone Company, but I may remind the House that I was the principal author of the agreement of 1892, whereby it has been said that the Post Office have the power of opening exchanges and granting new licences wherever they thought fit. My hon. Friend stated that the subscription in London is £20. Now, the fact is that while it is £20 for places of business for

    1699
    a single year, it is £17 if taken for five years; for a private house it is £12, if for only one year, and £10 if for five years. My hon. Friend said, that there were 75,000 subscribers in the United Kingdom. There are 110,000 as a matter of fact. It is only material because he based an argument upon it. The question lies between the Post Office and Parliament and I have no desire whatever to interfere.
    *MR. LOUGH: I understood this was a point of order; I had not finished my remarks.
    *MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member sat down, as I understood, and thereupon the right hon. Gentleman rose. He did not make any suggestion that he was speaking to a point of order.
    *MR. LOUGH: I can assure you I turned to get a book to prove my statements that no monopoly exists for this company, and the right hon. Gentleman did not say a single word in answer to the very simple remarks I made.
    *MR. SPEAKER: I regret the misunderstanding, but I do not see how I can allow you to speak again.
    *SIR JAMES FERGUSSON: I beg to explain that I thought the hon. Gentleman had finished his speech, and had sat down.
    *MR. E. H. PICKERSGILL: The speech of the hon. Gentleman was a very able speech, but I venture to think that it was unduly coloured by his former connection with the Telephone Company. I think the hon. Member for St. Rollox himself thought that he was really leading a forlorn hope. There was one part of the speech I heard with great interest. As I understood the hon. Member, although he is strongly opposed to the Government granting licences to any private companies, he has no objection to licences being given to municipalities. I welcome with peculiar pleasure this new convert to the principle of municipalisation from that quarter of the House. The hon. Member referred to the cost of the telephone service, and the estimates that have been made. I
    1700
    should like, in connection with that part of the case, to draw attention to the evidence given by Mr. Bennett before the inquiry held in Glasgow. Mr. Bennett, who has had almost unrivalled experience in these matters, said, when he submitted this estimate, that he would be able to supply the same number of subscribers as the National Telephone Company now supplies in Glasgow, and give an efficient underground circuit with all the most modern appliances at the cost of £5 5s. per subscriber. The Company know exactly what it costs to construct. The Company have in their own books full information as to the cost of making such an installation in Manchester, and various cities throughout the country, where they have constructed an underground system; and if Mr. Bennett's estimate was wrong, by far the strongest criticism they could possibly have brought to bear upon his estimates would simply have been to produce their own books and show what the cost had been of the systems they had carried out. Why don't they do it? I submit that the reason is that the actual cost in their own experience has been less than the estimate which Mr. Bennett gave. If that is not the reason, why don't they produce their books? Now, Sir, the fact that this Amendment has been moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, and seconded by the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells, shows very clearly that this is not a Party question. It is a sufficient indication that great interest has been aroused in the present position of the telephone question; and also, I think I may add, that considerable indignation has been directed, not against the Telephone Company, because the Telephone Company is only acting in this matter after its kind. The indignation of the public is directed against the Post Office, which is at the bottom of all this, and which is rapidly incurring considerable public odium for the extraordinary manner in which it has conspired with these monopolies. Why, Sir, only a few months ago the Post Office played off a gross deception upon the City of London Corporation. The Corporation declined to give the Company the use of its streets without receiving some quid pro quo. What happened then? The Company sent in

    1701
    its application through the Post Office unknown to the Corporation. The Corporation thought that they were dealing with the Post Office, whereas it was really the Post Office allowing itself to be used as a catspaw by the National Telephone Company. Subsequently, the Corporation learned how they had been treated, and they resented these peculiar transactions on the part of the Post Office. Now, Sir, I know that technically it has been decided that the law is on the side of the Post Office in this matter. I think, however, that public opinion will certainly support the Corporation. Now, my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark shire naturally looked at this question not as a national question, but from the point of view of Glasgow. Although fully recognising its wide national character, I regard it from the point of view of London, and, as the Member for St. Rollox admitted, London has been worse treated by the Telephone Company than Glasgow itself. When London has asked for an inquiry that inquiry has been refused, but there has been an inquiry in Glasgow, and I ask the House to infer from what has been proved, in the case of Glasgow, what is the case in London. With regard to this Glasgow inquiry, let me say that application was made to the Post Office for the inquiry, and the Post Office has always declined an inquiry. Then Glasgow went to the Treasury, the Treasury granted an inquiry, and the results of that inquiry are now before us. Now, Sir, there is one remark I should like to make at the outset with regard to that inquiry. In looking through the first page of this report and reading the names of the counsel I myself was astounded to find among the counsel briefed for the National Telephone Company the name of the Solicitor General for Scotland—a law officer taking sides in a Government inquiry; and, so far as I know, there is no precedent for that being done, that a law officer should accept a brief in the case of a Government inquiry. I do not know how—
    *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! That question might be in order on the main question, but it is out of order at this moment.
    *MR. PICKERSGILL: Very well, Sir, I will not pursue that point. So far as I know, it is quite contrary to precedent for a law officer of the Crown to accept a brief in an inquiry of this kind. ["Order, order!"] Then I will go on to state that the Company, so far as Glasgow is concerned, stands absolutely condemned, even out of the mouths of its own witnesses. Lord Overtoun was a most influential witness who appeared before the Commission in support of the case for the Company. I think that will be admitted. And, Sir, I have seldom seen a more complete, and I may say a more amusing effect, produced than the cross-examination by Mr. Ure of Lord Overtoun. The learned counsel actually held in his hand whole sheets of letters of complaints which had been addressed by Lord Overtoun's own firm to the Telephone Company, and, therefore, Lord Overtoun—a witness, be it remembered for the Company—was obliged to admit that the charges were unreasonable, that the service was unsatisfactory, and that his firm had made almost daily complaints about the service, and the learned Commissioner himself admits that the case against the Company was fairly established. His opinion is as follows—
    "The company did not attempt to meet the written complaints specifically, or to defend them with a view to showing to what causes they could attribute them."
    It does seem to me, having read this Report and the greater part of the evidence, that there were some observations made by the Commissioner which were not altogether judicial, and perhaps a little overdrawn. I refer especially to the comments with which the Commissioner interrupted the speech of Mr. Silverston, the counsel for the Corporation. The counsel for the Corporation pointing out, and I think it is a very appropriate argument, that where you find a high rate exacted you have a very limited use of the telephone. I should think that was a very strong reason why the rate, if possible, should be reduced so as to extend this boon to a larger circle of subscribers. How did the commissioner meet it? He said—
    "Is not that an advantage, to have a limited number? Except for people who require it, is it worth having at all?"

    1703
    Well, that is a truism which I confess I do not quite appreciate. And then he says—
    "I would consider it a perfect curse to have a telephone in one's private house. One would be rung up for consultation at all hours of the day and night."
    And then he says—
    "Is it not a species of communication exceedingly useful to a business man in a large way of business, but to the general public it is not a thing which they require?"
    But the learned counsel's reply was: "I say, give the public a chance." And that is the reply in substance which this House of Commons will be disposed to give: "Give the public a chance." I object altogether, if I may respectfully say so, to the line of argument which this learned Commissioner was adopting, as if it was sufficient to supply a telephone service at high rates which could be used only by people in a large way of business. We ought to have regard to small as well as wholesale dealers, the latter of whom have already far too many advantages on their side. We ought to have regard to small traders and small shopkeepers, who could send their orders to wholesale dealers and to the markets if the rates were reduced to a reasonable sum. I say that these small people would be in a great deal better position, and better able to hold their own, probably, in competition with the larger dealers, if they could obtain an efficient telephone service at a reasonable rate. Well, Sir, just to return for a moment to the London case. What has London been doing? The other day there was a conference of local authorities held at the Guildhall, at the invitation of the Lord Mayor. At that conference three resolutions were passed. The first was that the telephone service in London is both inefficient and costly. Well, anybody who knows anything about the facts knows that that is perfectly true. The second resolution was that an inquiry be held by the Treasury. London was then pressing for an inquiry similar, I suppose, to that which has just been held in Glasgow. Whether, after the Glasgow inquiry, it would be worth while to hold another similar inquiry on the same lines in London,
    1704
    I confess I am in doubt, because it may be fairly claimed that all those points which have been proved against the Glasgow Company might be proved in the case of London. The third resolution was this, that permission to use the streets should not be given until the interests of the public were duly secured. Now, Sir, I take it that what London really wants is what Glasgow wants—namely, that the municipality should have the opportunity, at all events, of obtaining the licence to instal a telephone system. And, Sir, I alluded a moment ago to what the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury said last year. I think that what he said last year was eminently satisfactory, and if he adheres—and I have no doubt he will adhere—to what he said, then he must, without any hesitation, give Glasgow what they are asking for, because what did the right hon. Gentleman say last year? He said this—
    "In case of an alleged grievance, the Post Office instituted a public inquiry."
    Well, that is not true. The Post Office did not do it. But in this case the Treasury did what the Post Office declined under strong pressure. [Mr. HANBURY: The Post Office did not decline.] If I am not mistaken, there is clear evidence in the Blue Book in connection with the inquiry at Glasgow that the Post Office did decline, and when after that the Glasgow authorities still pressed their desire the Treasury eventually granted the request. Besides, I think my view is reasonably established, because it was not the Post Office which instructed the Commissioner, but it was a letter from Sir R. Mouat. The Post Office declined the inquiry, and the Treasury, under pressure, granted it. But to continue what the right hon. Gentleman said—
    "If the result was unsatisfactory and the service was either too costly or inefficient, they would feel called upon to exercise their right and introduce a rival service, either by another licence to the local authority, or by the Post Office."
    So that I think, as the result of the inquiry in Glasgow, the right hon. Gentleman is bound, by the statement which he made last year, to provide a rival service in Glasgow. The last words of what I have read would suggest an alternative scheme,

    1705
    either by the Post Office itself providing such a service, or by giving to the Glasgow Corporation a licence to provide that service. I do hope, in conclusion, that the right hon. Gentleman will speak as strongly and as decisively as he spoke last year, that there may be no longer delay in giving to Glasgow this licence which Glasgow desires, and which, in my judgment, Glasgow is amply entitled to have.
    MR. A. CROSS: In attempting to make a few observations on this important commercial question, I will not follow the lines which have been adopted by previous speakers. After all, the question which this House is called upon to consider is a very serious one. It affects our communication by telephone; the telephone is essentially a necessity of outage. If I put the Post Office first and the telegraph second, the telephone has now come to be a legitimate and necessary thing to carry on our business communications. It may be said that this House ought not to interfere with telephones, because they are a luxury, but I think the analogy of the action of this House in regard to telegraphs quite justifies what I have said in placing telephones in the third position. At all events, the point alluded to might be made that these telephones are used only by a certain class. I make my first position thus. The telephones are now as essential as the Post Office, or as the telegraph, to the carrying out of the business of this country. Now, Mr. Speaker, the position in which the management of these telephones has fallen is only to be described in very strong language; it is an awful muddle. I give the right hon. Member for Manchester the credit to which he is entitled for his agreement of 1892. But if I give him that credit for the conditions made under that agreement, I must pass by the treatment which took place, not only under his control, but under the control of the late Postmaster General. I am not going into detail. The broad point is this, that our Postmaster General has led us into a serious bargain, by which we are bound to a national telephone monopoly till the year 1911. [Mr. HANBURY: Not at all.] Then
    1706
    I have totally misread this arrangement made by the Home Office. I maintain, as I read this arrangement, that as things are now we practically are in the clutches of the telephone monopoly, and that will last till the year 1911. I do not think that was intended, but that comes from placing men who are capital speakers in such high positions, but who have no business capacity. We have been out-generalled and out-witted by the officials of the National Telephone Company, and if any official in any private business had acted in this way he would have been dealt very-severely with. We have got now into the position of being in the hands of this monopoly, though I do not think it was intended. Other licences were given, but there was no such bargain. The National Telephone Company bought up the other licences almost before the ink was dry on the signature. The Post Office should have seen all this, and not have lent themselves to a process by which they were effectually led on to make concessions to this monopoly, which are now in the hands of the National Telephone Company. I will not labour the point any longer. The question is, What is to be done? There is one proposition I will venture to lay down, and I think the House will agree that in the matter of telephones, we cannot do things by halves. We must either have the whole system or have none of the system. Now, inasmuch as there are two complete descriptions of telephones, and two separate systems—I mean the local telephones and the trunk system—and inasmuch as the Government have prevented us up to the present from purchasing these telephones, I need not go any farther, beyond saying that we are committed by that action. This bargain is almost too absurd to be characterised in ordinary language; utter incapacity, utter stupidity, utter want of forethought are the terms to be applied to it. I want to speak plainly, and I am here to speak plainly, and unless this House awakens to-night to the real situation we shall require to pay not merely thousands of pounds, but millions, to the National Telephone Company. We are committed to the purchase of the Telephone Company. I am now arguing that we are bound to buy them, because we

    1707
    have bought the trunk lines already. We have got the trunk lines, but we do not possess the line at the termini, which are still in the hands of this company. We are bound to buy these telephones, and I want us to consider how it is best to do it. Are we to buy the telephones in the open market? If we are to do that where shall we be? Now, Sir, I see the Stock Exchange list occasionally, and there I see the price of the National Telephone Company stock. Now, if this House were to resolve to-night to buy up those telephones, the price of those stocks would go up by leaps and bounds, and before we could place our hands on them they would go up in price some millions, sums which would not represent any real asset, but which would go in payment to buy out somebody else. It would require an enormous sum of money. But, Sir, we should buy up not only these shares, but we should have to take all their own plant. Now, Sir, the plant which the Telephone Company are now operating with has been in use for a great many years. Even in the city of Glasgow it is of the most inferior description, and it is almost impossible to value it accurately, because they have a stock of old instruments, and they are determined to have them worn out thoroughly before they get new ones. It would not do for the nation to buy old and worn-out stock, and pay a sum not represented by the assets, but the sum which the Telephone Company paid in order to acquire the various licences that were issued from time to time by the Post Office, and which were brought up by this Telephone Company. There is another point. No one can tell what the development of the telephone may be. Why are we to charge ourselves with the present plant when it is probable that in a short time we will have a more complete and less expensive means of communication by telephone? And, therefore, I argue, it is not wise and proper to consider purchase, inasmuch as purchase would be the purchase of old plant which might be obsolete, but would nevertheless cost a very large sum. If we do not contemplate purchase of the telephone company now, what will be our position in 1911? If we do not purchase now, we have two alternatives. What
    1708
    position shall we be in if we do not purchase until 1911? This great monopoly has a big service already, and the House may take it from me that the revenue of this company is going on by leaps and bounds, and the figures are so large—my hon. Friend on the other side has them at his finger ends—that they would startle the House. If they be large in 1898, what may they be expected to be in 1911? The monopoly which is great now will be even in a stronger position then. My right hon. Friend on the Front Bench says that then we will have the company in our hands. I do not think so. He must consult business men, like myself, engaged in trade. Are we to lose the advantages of the telephone until he sets up a new service of his own? Will not the monopolist company be in command of the situation? The demands of business men are so strong that at whatever cost it would be cheaper to buy up the monopoly. Then, again, the monopoly which has us by the throat now will have us doubly in its grasp in 1911. I therefore cannot contemplate either purchase now, or leaving the company alone until 1911. If we dismiss the idea of not purchasing now, and if we dismiss the idea of not going on to 1911, as at present, the only possible course is that which has been mentioned in the proposal before the House. The hon. Member mentioned that there were certain rights reserved under the agreement of 1892. They are most valuable rights; they are the only rights this House possesses in this matter. Let the House use them. These rights empower the Post Office either to erect exchanges of its own or to grant concessions to municipalities to erect them. The question is whether that is desirable. In my opinion, if we shut this door we are driven into the hands of the telephone company either by purchase now or in 1911. Why not go on now? If the Post Office concedes the right to municipalities of great commercial centres to erect their own exchanges, they will at last have a decent service. It is notorious that we have the most wretched service, putting money out of the question. Nothing can be worse than the system in this country. I will not speak of Sweden or Norway, but I do not understand why we should not be able to speak with Copenhagen with as much facility as with Glasgow. Any man who

    1709
    has had experience of the system which exists in foreign countries in telephoning will maintain that our system is wretched in the beginning, wretched in the middle, and abominable in the end. Mr. Speaker, I speak strongly; but I am not one of those who would smash the instrument. I have resisted that temptation. We see in the proposal before the House to-day a way out of our difficulties. Am I to go back to my bad telephone in Glasgow, and, when business is stopped and people are enraged, am I to say that the House of Commons is responsible? If I do, I shall be compelled to say that when the case was pleaded in the House of Commons, it was said that the National Telephone Company was the company to be protected, that the Postmaster General did it, and that the House of Commons, yielding to its officials, paid no attention to the claims of the public. I feel strongly in the matter. If you give us this right we shall now secure a new service on the best lines. I will make this strong point to the House. In the place of having to deal with this octopus company in 1911, I undertake—I am entitled to undertake on behalf of Glasgow—that we will transfer to the Government the plant we shall erect at cost price. We only wish to protect ourselves, and to break up the present system in the interests of the nation. We have no other wish. When our licence expires we shall hand over our plant to the nation at cost price, or, at all events, at a figure about which there shall be no difficulty. We are accused of not allowing proper facilities to this company, but the House will perceive that if we permitted this company to lay their mains in our streets we should be destroying all chance of further competition. The essence of a fine service is that the trunk wires should be laid beneath our public streets. Should we part with that right, we would effectually prevent the establishment of any opposition. I do not wish to trouble the House. The points I make are simply these: telephones are essential for the conduct of modern business; to-night there is an opportunity of considering whether we should buy the telephone now or in 1911. I have tried to show that buying them now is not to be recommended; and, certainly, if we wait until 1911, we shall only have placed ourselves more in the hands of this monopolist
    1710
    company. I have come to the conclusion that our only issue, and the proper course, is to grant facilities now asked for by Glasgow and by other enterprising commercial centres in the country, to erect exchanges of their own, and so build up a proper competition which will have the effect of giving a good service—competition with the Telephone Company, and an improvement in the service, which they have hitherto given.
    *MR. PROVAND: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member who has just spoken has described the telephone system in Glasgow as being very bad. That is not accurate. It is the very worst telephone service in any city of any considerable size in the world. The hon. Member, before he sat down, alluded to the demand the company had made for the use of the streets in Glasgow. The right hon. Member for North-east Manchester took credit for having secured to the Government conditions which will, at any time, permit the Post Office either to establish exchanges of its own or to grant licences to others to establish exchanges. He took the credit to himself for something which was in existence before. The Government never gave away that right. The right was preserved by Mr. Fawcett, and it has always been retained. There is another thing the right hon. Gentleman did for us. He did not, in this case, preserve any right, but he gave the company a right which they did not possess before. Under Clause 10 of the Minute to which reference has been made he gave the right to the Post Office to open up the streets, and to connect the company's exchanges in the same telephone area, or with the Post Office exchanges, in order to use the trunk wires. That was handing over to a private company the right to use our streets in our cities—the right which, in the case of Glasgow, was bought up at an enormous sacrifice years ago. This House was not aware what was intended when this was done, or it would not have permitted any such extension of the law. When the Telegraph Bill of 1878 was before this House, the Post Office inserted in it a clause to give them greater powers in connection with telegraphs.

    1711
    That was the word made use of, which, of course, included telephones. They asked for greater powers than they had in the previous Act, but the House rejected that clause. However, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Manchester has enlarged the powers of this monopolist company by putting in a clause in the Treasury Minute of 1892 which enabled the Post Office to open up the streets and hand the use of them to the National Company. Now, Sir, I think we have heard already—the hon. Member for the St. Rollox Division has said it—that it is necessary to go under the streets in order to have an efficient service. Something to that effect may be gathered from various remarks in the report which resulted from the recent inquiry in Glasgow. There is no necessity whatever to go under the streets. As a matter of fact, less efficiency is gained under the streets than if the wires were overhead. That is common knowledge. It is not only true in this country, it is true in every country. I have only to quote the general manager of the National Telephone Company himself to show that the statement that they required to go under our streets in order to obtain efficiency was only a pretence in order to get possession of the streets. There was a Committee of this House in 1893; it was in connection with electric lighting powers and arranging some necessary clauses. The managing director of the company was asked whether greater efficiency was obtained' by wires overhead or underneath, and this was his reply—
    "As a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, I should prefer to go underground, but I am bound to say that, it does not give such an efficient service as overhead wires. There is nothing so perfect telephonically as wires insulated in the open air."
    They want to put their wires underground in London because it would save them money and give them a monopoly of certain districts. If the wires are put underground, any other company is less likely to raise the streets to put down other wires. That is the principal reason why they want to go underground. There have been letters and statements repeatedly made on behalf of the National Telephone Company that efficiency was obtained by going underground. I feel satisfied that the House will see
    1712
    that there is no foundation for that statement. There are some other matters mentioned by the hon. Member for the St. Rollox Division, to which I should like to refer. He has deliberately recommended the right hon. Gentlemen the Secretary to the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to expend the ratepayers' money in buying up this monopoly. There was talk of buying up this monopoly in 1884, in Mr. Fawcett's time, and again and again since. I think I say what is correct when I tell the House that this question has been repeatedly gone into by the Treasury officials, perhaps by Chancellors of the Exchequer themselves, from that time down to last year; and the moment they saw how the facts were, the moment they grasped the situation before them, they have again and again said that it was impossible to purchase this monopoly. Now the National Telephone Company has issued about four millions sterling in shares—very nearly that amount—and debentures to the amount of one million three hundred thousand odd. Allusion has been made to what would happen to that capital, and one Gentleman quoted a statement of the chairman of the company given in evidence before the Committee. The hon. Member for the St. Rollox Division has also alluded to it. I state distinctly that out of that four millions of ordinary capital issued by the National Telephone Company there are between two and three millions water capital, not a penny of which went into the purchase of a yard of wire or of an instrument, or paid for one day's labour of any man. Does the right hon. Member for the St. Rollox Division challenge that? It has been set out in the companies' prospectuses, and the public know it. It is necessary we should know what the country would get for their money if they accept the prices the hon. Member has given to the House. The market value of these shares is about seven and a half millions to-day.
    *MR. FAITHFULL BEGG: May I correct my hon. Friend? I made the calculation yesterday, and it comes out less than six and a half millions.
    *MR. PROVAND: I think there is a mistake in my Friend's figures. I took them myself while the inquiry was being

    1713
    held, and they came out, I think, £7,600,000. But recent war scares have depressed everything on the Stock Exchange, and they may have become somewhat lower lately, but I do not think they are so low as that. [Mr. FAITHFULL BEGG: They have not been affected materially.] Well, whatever they may have come down to under recent circumstances which have depressed and influenced everything, they would very soon jump up that, and a good deal more, if it was believed that the Government had the remotest intention to buy. Now, these seven millions, if the Government is going to buy, would very probably become ten millions, because the Government can only buy in a certain way. They must either negotiate with the company and pay the price they ask, or they must, under two clauses in the licence, go to arbitration; and under those two clauses the Government would know nothing whatever of how much they would have to pay until the arbitration was over, and I venture to say no Chancellor of the Exchequer would come into this House and ask for the money he would have to pay to buy up that monopoly under these two clauses. The market price of shares would be taken into account when the arbitration came to decide. The hon. Gentleman says the Government could borrow money very cheaply to do it, and he thought they would make a profit. I think I know that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer bought the National Telephone monopoly it would cost him at least ten millions, more than eight millions of which would be absolutely wasted money. The hon. Gentleman spoke of patents. The National Telephone Company have not any patents that are worth anything whatever. I asked him to name a single one, and my hon. Friend could not give it to me. Every valuable patent expired years ago, in 1890 and 1891. Any patent used now has no value whatever to speak of, and does not affect the question in the slightest. The monopoly is upheld entirely by the fact that the Post Office will grant no licences. There is no other reason whatever for it. How long would they have a monopoly in Glasgow if you gave the Municipality a licence? Not one moment longer than the time in which that Municipality could erect a
    1714
    telephone system. The monopoly would cease from that very moment. Their patents have nothing to do with it; it is simply that the Department, which is controlling and managing the telephone service, has since 1892 been nothing but an annex of the National Telephone Company—that is all it has been. Those in charge have kept up the language, and taken credit for saying, "Oh, we have the right to do this, and the right to do that." Have they ever done it? How have they treated every application which has been made to them for a licence? Glasgow's reply did not come for nearly four years after the letter was written to the Post Office. Deputation after deputation came to the Post Office. How were they treated? Shamefully, I say. Why do you have a monopoly? It is because the Post Office has granted no licences whatever. We hope that that state of things will shortly come to an end. Now, Sir, the hon. Member opposite alluded to the Report of the recent inquiry held in Glasgow, and one of the findings he quoted was that the service was not efficient. I differ entirely from nearly every finding in this Report. I have not yet had time to read the evidence, but I have glanced over the Report, and there is hardly a finding in it with which I agree, except two. It says that the service in Glasgow is not efficient, and, in order to emphasise this, the Sheriff in his Report puts it in large type. And in the very last paragraph of the Report he says in substance—
    "If you don't like to do what I recommend, then by all means grant the Glasgow Municipality a licence, and let them complete their exchange and enter into competition with all comers."
    Those two recommendations are the only parts of that Report which I believe any person will accept as being reasonable. Then, my hon. Friend the Member for the St. Rollox Division alluded to a matter which is personal to myself. He spoke of the evidence given at the inquiry in reference to the Mutual Telephone Company of Manchester. Now, I obtained the licence to establish that Mutual Company from Mr. Raikes, the late Postmaster General, and I found friends in Manchester, where my business is situated, to join in obtaining capital

    1715
    to establish a competing exchange with that of the National Telephone Company. I had been agitating the telephone question since 1882. I obtained the licence in 1889. I had, therefore, been struggling for some time to do what I could to enable the community of that city to enjoy what every second and third rate town on the Continent enjoys—a good service at reasonable prices. We established our exchange, and as soon as the National Company knew that we had received a licence they reduced their rates one half—or, first, from £20 to £15, and then, when they saw our exchange beginning to be erected, they reduced their rates another £5. That is to say, they reduced rates all over that district from £20 to £10, and then they found they had to reduce them all over the country. The effect of the establishment of the Mutual Telephone Company in Manchester in that year was to compel the National Company to reduce its rates by half, which took away £55,000 from their revenue. The Chairman slated that fact, at meetings of the company. That is a lesson in the value of competition. The hon. Gentleman alluded to materials which had been used at the Manchester Exchange, and he said the Sheriff had found they were cheap and bad—I think that is what he said Well, Sir, the materials were bought from the very best makers in this country; we paid the highest prices for them, and nothing better could be procured in their way, because we were not restricted from buying anything we required by any patents. Patents only applied to the transmitter at the time we commenced our exchange, and they only lasted a little while, so that we had Bell receivers and materials of every kind of the best description. More than that, we had a double wire exchange, a metallic circuit exchange. Now, Sir, the evidence about this Mutual Company of Manchester was given on the very list day of the hearing of the inquiry, and the Sheriff refused to allow any rebutting testimony to be given. To the statement made at the Glasgow inquiry about the quality of the material used by the Mutual Company being bad, I give the most absolute denial. The invoices for the goods can be referred to; the manufacturers are well-known, and the statement that we
    1716
    bought cheap materials is untrue. There were also statements made on the evidence of the liquidator, in reference to what it has cost to erect our exchange. Now, who was the liquidator? We sold our exchange to the New Telephone Company, and the New Telephone Company amalgamated with the National Telephone Company, and consequently the Mutual Company fell under the control and the possession of the National Company. They appointed their own secretary to be liquidator. I am going to allude to his calculations. That was tainted evidence from the very beginning. He said it cost £30 to erect our wires. It cost actually £16 16s. That account can still be referred to. Then he said this: he counted up that if we had allowed a sufficient sum to meet renewals we could not possibly have paid any dividends at all; in fact, we should have been bankrupt. To arrive a that calculation he took for a sinking fund 3 per cent. and renewals 15 per cent; this is 18 per cent. Now, supposing we apply these figures to the National Telephone Company itself, how will they work out? The National Telephone Company's total income is about £1,000,000. Their capital is £5,350,000, and 18 per cent. on that capital would come to more than £950,000. Their whole income would be nearly swallowed up at the rate taken by this liquidator, their Secretary. These are the figures that my hon. Friend asked me to deal with. I have dealt with them. In regard to the statements respecting materials, I give them the most categorical denial. Our accounts have been audited by one of the leading firms of auditors in the country, and every fact and figure is cheeked. I hope we shall have this promised inquiry in London, when it will be conducted in a very different way indeed to what it was in Glasgow. My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green alluded to the Company have engaged three or four counsels against the one junior, I think, engaged by the Corporation of Glasgow. Well, the Company had all the leaders of the Scotch Bar, and, notwithstanding that, while I was present, it seemed to me the Commissioner frequently thought they had one counsel too few—that was the impression left on my mind, and on the minds of everyone

    1717
    I spoke to. We hope to have an inquiry in London, and then get to the truth of this question. There was a remark made also by the hon. Member for the St. Rollox Division about Stockholm. He said the Commissioner could see no connection between Stockholm and Glasgow. I think it is right that the House should know something as to what the rates of Stockholm are as compared with London, and I think the Member for St. Rollox said that those rates were reasonable. In Stockholm—
    *MR. FAITHFULL BEGG: I did not make the statement that the prices were reasonable there. I said the Sheriff had stated that they were not unreasonable.
    *MR. PROVAND: In quoting the Sheriff's statement I understood my hon. Friend to support it. Does he say they are not reasonable? [Mr. FAITHFULL BEGG: I agree with the Sheriff, but that is not what my hon. Friend said.] Well, I will tell the House how Stockholm stands as compared with Glasgow and London. The figures are taken from a recent return made to the Foreign Office, prepared by our own Consul there, and they came ever here only a few weeks ago. There are two companies in Stockholm, and in competition with them there is a State telephone service. The State charge is £2 15s. 6d. a year, but they charge an entrance fee of £2 15s. 6d. also. If you divide that over live years, you only get a rate of a little over £3. Then, again, one of the companies charge only £2 10s., and they charge an entrance fee of 11s. 1d. The other company, which is a very large one indeed—the two companies work in harmony—charges £4 8s. 10d. for a full service, night and day, at all times, with entrance fee, £2 15s. 6d. Now, this £2 15s. 6d. is estimated by Mr. Hultmann, the engineer to the State telephone service in Stockholm, as being the approximate cost of a wire within the municipal area. That is what it cost to send out a wire from the office, from the exchange in Stockholm, to any person within their municipal area. But they have lower rates than that. They have a £2 10s. rate, with a limited number of calls, and they have another
    1718
    service with a still more limited number of calls per annum. But what is the radius of Stockholm? It is 41½ miles from the centre of the city. Stockholm is 83 miles in diameter, with a telephone area of 6,000 square miles, and the Glasgow telephone area is only one thirty-seventh that of the Stockholm area. I am taking the figures from the Report. I was in Stockholm myself last September, and in the British Consul's Office I spoke through various instruments, and I found a great, difference as compared with anything in this country. There are difficulties no doubt in London to be overcome, but my chief objection to the London service is its uncertainty. This is what the Consul at Stockholm writes—
    "Foreigners who have come to Stockholm and used the telephone system have been greatly pleased with the excellent quality of the service, and the rapidity with which answers are returned from the exchange."
    Would any man visiting this country say that he was pleased with the London or the Glasgow services? Is there the smallest chance of his saying anything of the kind? Stockholm has 22,000 users of the telephone, although the city has a small population of 260,000, I think. Glasgow, with a population of 960,000 within the telephone area, has about 6,000 users. Well, Sir, the Stockholm people, I have seen it said, do not make money. Why, they pay 8 per cent. per annum, and, more than that, they have reconstructed their exchange twice over. It was first a single wire exchange, then it was a, double wire exchange overhead. They have recently reconstructed it into a double wire underground exchange, and it is now in final form. Notwithstanding all these numerous reconstructions of the system, they pay now 8 per cent. per annum dividend. The State will not allow them to pay more than 8 per cent., hence they have to carry their profits to a reserve fund, which amounts to more than £100,000. The hon. Member has also said something about the cost of erecting the exchanges, as if the cost was heavy. It has been so in the case of the Post Office. I understand it has cost them £128 for every wire; but that is considerably

    1719
    more than was necessary. I will give the capital outlay per user which I have taken from the official Reports. In Bergen the outlay per user was £14; in Christiania and Stockholm it is about the same. Indeed, all the exchanges in these countries cost about the same sum. Some of them only cost £12. The German Government own all the telephones, and the capital outlay in Berlin is £22 per user, and in Hamburg £19 12s.; in Frankfort it is £22 18s., and in Leipzic £19 2s. Now it will be noticed how closely these sums agree. No doubt there are more difficulties in some cities than in others, but that is the capital outlay, so far as the German Government is concerned. The corporation estimates for Glasgow, which have been prepared from advice obtained from the best experts in this country, show that to construct the best system of double-wire telephone exchange will cost about £20 per user. Contractors have agreed to undertake the work at this price, and are under penalties to do it within a certain time. I will give the cost of works done in our own country quite recently. We all know that Huddersfield has attempted to obtain a licence from the Post Office, and some of us know that they have received a letter in the usual way, stating that the matter will be considered. I suppose it is still being considered by the Post Office. The Huddersfield municipality erected a small exchange for their own use at a total cost of under £700. The cost works out at £21 12s., so you see how closely these figures approximate to those which I have already read out for the Continent. The aggregate length of all the lines is more than 25 miles, and one extends seven miles from the town hall. Well, the total cost of maintenance per annum—and this covers the heavy charges for wages, interest on capital, etc.—is £3 4s. 6d. Before the municipality erected this exchange the National Telephone Company was asked to supply the service, and they offered to contract at £10 per annum for the first wire, and £8 10s. for the others. Therefore you have to compare this figure with the £3 4s. 6d. which it actually costs the municipality. The Post Office, in dealing with this matter, have always used language in this House as if they
    1720
    were anxious to promote the telephone service. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North-east Manchester, when he made the arrangements in 1892, and the Minute was issued, said that all his predecessors counselled commercial freedom. There was no doubt they did; Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Raikes, and other Postmasters General who preceded the right hon. Gentleman, have certainly expressed the opinion that commercial freedom was what we required in the telephone service. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell us to-night that he intends we shall have it. Mr. Arnold Morley, when Postmaster General, said he was as strongly opposed as any Member of the House to the granting of a monopoly to the National Telephone Company or to any other company, and he would resist any attempt which might be made to secure that end; but he maintained the monopoly. Having this monopoly, let us glance at the result. Excessive charges and also inadequate service belong to every monopoly. Monopolies would not gain all the profit they do if that were not so. In the case of this company, the charges are not understood by the public generally. The charge is £17 in London, but you have to buy it wholesale to get it at that price. The cost is £20 for one year only. In Glasgow they pay up to £25. I rented two small table instruments from the National Telephone Company, the cost of which was £6 per annum. These instruments are manufactured at Stockholm, and can be bought by anybody in this country. They only cost £6, and I was charged £6 per annum for the use of them. We sometimes hear statements in this House about the extortion of landlords, but I challenge any Member to tell this House of a greater extortion than charging for the annual rent of these instruments the whole of their cost. They last for years, and will be as good at the end as at the beginning. I do not blame the company for that; I blame the Post Office. The company have only the interests of its shareholders to consider, and not the public. If the directors did not make these exorbitant charges to keep their dividends the shareholders would get other directors who would.

    1721
    the chairman of the company has asked for statutory powers—he is always deploring the fact that the company exists on sufferance; but they exercise powers more than any company which has statutory powers. No gas or water company can do what this National Telephone Company does. It refuses service except on its own conditions. It is a pity that statutory powers were not insisted upon at the beginning, and that statutory limitations, the same as apply to other companies, should also have been imposed. I will give another instance of the present extortionate charges. For some reason, which I cannot explain, the Channel Islands are not within the United Kingdom for certain purposes. Guernsey refused to take the service of the National Telephone Company or of the Post Office, and got a licence to supply its own. The correspondence which took place is well worth reading, if hon. Members desire to know what the Post Office wishes to do. Now that the Guernsey people have got their licence and have commenced work, the rate in Jersey was reduced from £10 to £8, and when they are in possession of a working exchange the price is to be reduced to £6 10s. The hon. Member for St. Rollox said that if you granted licences they would be bought up. Who has bought them up? The National Telephone Company. No licences have been bought by anybody else. There is another thing to be noted in that respect, and it is that, although many of these competitors were poor struggling concerns, with very little capital, and living from hand to mouth, yet the National Telephone Company never defeated one of them, it did not force one of them out of the field, but bought up every one. I ask hon. Members to read the Returns laid upon the Table of the House, and they will then see the history of the Post Office telephone exchange. They started before the National Telephone Company—they had every advantage in their favour, and what has been the result? Their exchange is either dead or dying; wherever they meet the National Telephone Company the National Telephone Company goes ahead and gets lots of subscribers, and the Post Office exchange loses its subscribers. Five of their exchanges in business towns
    1722
    are shut up already, and there are others in business towns which will soon shut up. The Returns contain a sorry account indeed of what the Post Office will do for us, and it is the Post Office which the hon. Member for St. Rollox says ought to buy up this service and supply the country. If the Post Office had the supplying of it, I am sure we should indeed be in Darkest Africa in regard to telephonic communication. The Treasury have taken this matter, I believe, under their own care; they are responsible for questions of this kind; they have now an opportunity of freeing this country from the position in which it is at the present moment. We cannot look abroad, not even to second or third rate towns on the Continent, without finding a much better telephone service than we have got. In Germany the rate is still £7 10s. per annum, but the State accounts show, I believe, and I am speaking on good authority, that they make 14 per cent. profit, and they have been considering the advisability of reducing the rate in consequence. It will, therefore, soon have a rate far below anything which exists at present. I therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman to step in and free us from the terrible state of things that we are enduring in this country, where business men are handicapped in every way, so far as telephonic communication is concerned, when compared with those of other countries.
    SIR H. BULLARD: Mr. Speaker, I should not have intervened in this Debate on this subject had it not great interest for the city which I have the honour to represent. I have been in conference on several occasions with the hon. Member who has just spoken, and he has left me very little to say; but I wish, on behalf of my own city, to inform the House that we have had large meetings to consider this matter, and have unanimously passed resolutions in favour of having municipal telephones. I may say, the corporation, after discussing the subject very freely, came to the same conclusion by a large majority. Unlike other cathedral cities, we have been increasing year by year, until we are now a city of some magnitude, claiming to be the

    1723
    metropolis of the eastern counties. We hold that the telephone should be applicable to, and be able to be used by, those who are in humbler spheres of life. We have not the number of call offices necessary for the transaction of our business. The fact is, we are under the rule of this National Telephone Company, which, wise in their generation, elected certain members to their board, and in Norwich they elected the two leaders of the County Council, Conservative and Liberal—a very discreet action on their part. In Norwich we are seeking for an interview with the Postmaster General in order to obtain a licence, and I hope this Debate may lead to some result, and that we may have better fortune than Glasgow.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. R. W. HANBURY,): The Amendment before the House asks us to allow certain municipalities to enter into competition with the existing licences of the Government in the same area. At first sight that may seem undoubtedly a rather strong suggestion, especially when it is borne in mind that, with regard to the telephone business generally, there are great difficulties with reference to competing companies in the same area. I think, therefore, the first question this House should ask itself is, "Is it fair that we should allow this competition to take place?" and, in the next place, if it is fair, whether municipalities are the best form of competition. The present position has grown so entirely out of what happened some 17 or 18 years ago that the House will, perhaps, allow me to carry them back to the time of Mr. Fawcett. In the very early days of telephone enterprise, when very little was known about them—that was. I think, in the year 1880, when the telephone had only been in use four years—the Postmaster General had to arrive at a decision as to what course the Government should take with regard to the new system. In those days Mr. Fawcett was anxious that the telephone service should be carried on entirely by the Government, and I am not quite sure whether, if that could have been done, it might not have been the best solution of the difficulty. But the Treasury,
    1724
    rightly or wrongly, ruled otherwise, and imposed upon the working of the telephone by the Post Office certain conditions which I admit at once did make competition possible and the working of the telephones by the Post Office very difficult. The result was that Mr. Fawcett, finding he could not work the telephones efficiently through the Post Office as a Government monopoly, instead of granting local licences—as he had done for about three years up to 1884, and limiting those companies to definite areas—instituted a system of entirely free competition. In August,1884, he announced in this House that he would grant licences freely to every company that applied, and licences which would extend over the whole country, so that any company wits at liberty to set up exchanges in different parts of the country. His idea was that, if the monopoly could not be in the hands of the Government, he would take such steps as seemed to him best to prevent the monopoly falling into the hands of any private company. The results have shown that Mr. Fawcett undoubtedly made a grave miscalculation. In the first place he omitted to recollect the fact that, even in those days, one company—the United Telephone Company—had a great advantage, because it owned patents, and therefore it was not possible for companies generally to get patents except under the rules and regulations of the United Telephone Company. There were a few other patents, independent of this patent, and the smaller companies which were started to work these other patents, were soon bought up, so that there was a series of companies entirely under the control of the United Telephone Company. Some of these companies did become more strong and more formidable to the mother company, and in 1889 the United Telephone Company bought up the two last survivors—the Lancashire and Cheshire Company, and the National Company—and all three amalgamated; the amalgamated Company becoming the National Telephone Company. In 1891 the patents expired, and it was then possible for other companies to come into competition, totally independent of the company which owned the patents. Two companies were started—the Mutual and the New Company; but the New

    1725
    Company very soon bought up the Mutual, and then we had the National Telephone Company and the New Company face to face. That was the position in 1892, when the Treasury Minute was drawn up, and it is undoubtedly the fact that that Treasury Minute of 1892 was drawn up with the distinct recognition of competition as against monopoly. That Treasury Minute and the Agreement upon which it was based recognised that there would be competition and that there would be no monopoly. Unfortunately, very soon after the Treasury Minute was drawn up, a very vigorous flirtation took place between these two companies, and they were all but amalgamated, even at the time the agreement was initialled in August, 1892: at any rate, there is this fact, that one company had bought up the other, and it was practically an amalgamation before the agreement was formally signed. We have, therefore, this result: that Mr. Faweett's anticipations were falsified, and the very means he tool to produce free trade and free competition resulted in an actual monopoly. It is also beyond doubt that this monopoly had defects. It would have been, and was, a very reasonable arrangement for Mr. Fawcett when there were a large number of those small companies in competition with one another confined to local areas. There was no necessity for imposing stringent conditions, but now that this company has swallowed up all the other companies, undoubtedly you have a very remarkable state of things. You have a monopoly, the only one so far as I know of this extent, which is not put under strict control and very stringent regulations. Our railway companies, water companies, gas companies, electric lighting companies, are all placed by Parliament under strict limitations with regard to their capital, their dividend, their rates, and especially with regard to preferences, and in all of these points this telephone company is absolutely unfettered. I think this is a very exceptional state of affairs. Another result which has also followed from the way in which this company has grown up is that its rates must depend upon its capital. Without entering into minute calculations as to the actual value of the plant of this company, I am able to say that, while
    1726
    I believe its capital stands at the present moment at a value of something like £6,000,000, the Post Office calculation is that that could entirely be replaced with a metallic circuit in every exchange at a cost of very little over £2,500,000 of capital. Then we have the further point which has resulted from this want of competition. When I look at the little competition there has been I cannot blame the company for its defects. I am rather astonished that it is as good as it is, because, undoubtedly, the tendency of this want of competition must be towards an inefficient service. But in a good many parts of the country there is a service about which, so far as I know, there is no great complaint. At the same time we have to recognise the fact that in several large and important towns in this country, even in the metropolis itself, and in Glasgow and other Scotch towns, there have been complaints made of inefficient service. In the case of Glasgow that complaint has been proved to be true by our own Commissioner, and in London Mr. Forbes has admitted very grave defects in the service. Without going into minute details with regard to the number of subscribers to the population, or the number of exchanges, and without comparing the service with that of foreign countries, I know that it is most important that this country should not be behind other countries in the telephone service. There is, however, the undoubted fact that, at the present moment, the number of subscribers in London, for instance, does not compare with the number of subscribers to telephones in Berlin or Paris, and, of course, there is no comparison with the smaller exchanges in Scandinavia. We have also to recollect that the service at the present moment is only confined to the more populous portions of this country and to the large towns. Very little has been done by the country districts, and even in populous towns the service is rather for the rich and the commercial classes than for the poorer classes. I think also that there are not the number of call offices or exchanges which there ought to be for the benefit of the smaller tradesmen who cannot subscribe to the service. I do not blame the National Telephone Company for this. They have done everything with perfect

    1727
    fairness; they have simply taken advantage of what I think was a grave error committed about 1883 by the Post Office and the Treasury. Therefore what we have to do is to accept the facts as they are, and do what we can to make the best of a bad bargain. My hon. Friend the Member for the St. Rollox Division of Glasgow suggested that we should purchase this company. I think I have already given figures to show that we should make a very bad bargain if we purchased at anything like the market value of this company at the present moment. There is one thing that has been decided by two Governments in succession; that is, that, although it was possible in 1897 to give notice to the company of purchase by arbitration, in both of those years the option has not been acted upon, and for intelligible reasons. Is it likely we are going to put our case into the hands of arbitrators who are generally not too favourable either to Governments or municipalities, and run the risk of paying this enormous price to the company, and probably 10 per cent. interest besides? A further consideration is the fact that these licences will not be extended beyond the year 1911; I think that is a fact which it will be well for the country and the companies to consider, because that is a matter upon which the Government has already given a decision. In 1892 a Select Committee of this House sat, of which the present First Lord of the Admiralty was Chairman, and the Postmaster General and the hon. Member for Manchester and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre were Members. That Committee drew up a Report which was accepted by all parties on the Committee. A remarkable feature of that Report was that, although the Committee was appointed to deal with the whole question as to how the Treasury Minute should be acted upon, they said they were willing to leave everything else to the Government, but they must make this one recommendation, that the licences should not go beyond 1911. I admit the important fact that these licences are not to run beyond 1911. It is impossible to bind our successors; but, assuming they are men of ordinary common sense, they will not allow the licence to go beyond that year. That being so, we have to face this difficulty. The
    1728
    National Telephone Company is in possession of the field at the present moment. It is a company that is extending very rapidly, and I do not hesitate to say it is becoming more formidable every year. How are we to meet this difficulty? If it is known that the licences will expire in 1911, and if the Government of that day does not agree to purchase by notice or by arbitration the plant of the company and its assets generally, and, it may be, its goodwill, and those many wayleaves which the Government has conceded to it, and which the Government, having conceded, will have to buy up again—it is possible that, if that notice is not given, and the company sees there is only another seven years to run, it may, and not unfairly, take the opportunity of trying to put the Post Office and the Treasury in a difficulty. The company probably would, and I do not think we could blame them. What is the danger we have to guard against? It is this: I cannot suppose that anybody would buy by arbitration in 1911. I will not say it may not be wise to make a bargain with the company and give them the actual value of the plant. Even if we could come to a bargain in 1903 or 1904 to buy, the plant would not be delivered seven years in advance, and the company would have control of it during those years. But it is possible that the company would not sell their plant to us by any bargain of that kind. What would happen then would be that, unless we have started ourselves very early, about 1903 or 1904, with entirely new plant of our own, the company would be unwilling to sell to us. They have a Parliamentary power to raise their rates; they would probably raise their rates, and might run down the service, and the result would be that the country would get so disheartened with the telephone service, which is a service of great importance to the commercial world, that there would be a great outery throughout the country, and we might have to buy this company up at its own price. I am, of course, aware that this is a possible contingency; but I think it is a contingency which the Post Office and the Treasury should keep in view, and, if possible, endeavour to take every precaution to guard against its occurrence. There is one remedy

    1729
    which we are able to take at once—one means by which we may avoid this evil to a limited extent, and that is by competition. Then the question arises, how far are we free to deal with our own licencees? It will be grossly unfair to do anything whatever which in one single degree trenches upon our agreements with the company. We are bound to stand loyally and faithfully by every agreement to the word and letter that we have ever made with the company. But in these agreements it has been distinctly re served over and over again—and it has been admitted, I think, most distinctly by the chairman of the company, Mr. Forbes, in the evidence that he gave before a Select Committee in 1895—that not only legally are we entirely free to start any competition that we like, as against the company within its own areas, but that neither in honour nor in faith are we bound to take any other course. We are, therefore, absolutely free to enter upon competition. Now comes the question as to what is the best form that that competition may take. I do not believe that the competition by companies would be by any means a proper course to adopt. The whole history of the competition hitherto has shown that the companies can be bought up at a premium, and the result is that the public are charged higher rates for the service in order to recover that high price paid, and I cannot conceive that any company would be able, during the short period which these licences would run—for, of course, we should never permit licences to go beyond 1911—to make a sufficient profit. I do not suppose it is possible that any company would start with the knowledge that during these 14 years it would have a sufficient surplus of income to pay both interest and redemption fund during that period. If, as I think, companies are practically impossible, then I come to the competition by the Post Office itself. I am perfectly willing to admit that some of the criticisms that have been passed upon the work of the Post Office exchanges have been to a certain extent justified. I perfectly admit that the Post Office exchanges have not been worked hitherto as vigorously as I certainly think they ought to be. It does seem to me perfectly absurd that, having granted licences to the National Telephone Company,
    1730
    when we had exchanges of our own already in existence, we should have been so utterly foolish as to allow the National Telephone Company to invade our own areas and to compete against us. But we have done so, and we are committed to that arrangement, and all that we have got to do is to make the best use of it. Still, I think partly the reason that the Post Office has not competed within its own exchanges as vigorously as it might have done is because of the idea that it was to work harmoniously with the National Telephone Company, and I perfectly admit that with regard to the greater portion of the area of this company, especially at the time when the negotiations were going on with regard to the trunk wares, it was necessary to work in amicable relations with this company; but I do not think amicable relations need be carried on when we find that the National Telephone Company has invaded our own exchanges and tried to drive us out of them. I think, therefore, we are entitled to do our best to see that these exchanges are worked in active competition with those of the National Telephone Company. But things have hitherto militated against our doing so. The Treasury regulations, which were confirmed in 1882, and which caused Mr. Fawcett to throw the whole of this valuable service open to competition, I am sorry to say, are still in existence, but we propose to abolish them. We propose to abolish these regulations and restrictions, and we further propose to enable the Post Office to try and compete, to canvass for work, just in the same way as would be open to be done by its rivals. But I am afraid that even when we have done that there is a difficulty which faces us, and which has militated against the success of the Post. Office exchanges in the past even more than the Treasury restrictions, and it is this: I have said already that the Telephone Company has got certain privileges unrestricted which, so far as I know, are enjoyed by no other body. It has got the privilege of granting preferences to particular subscribers, and it is by means of giving either free wires or reduced rates to large firms, who would, bring it a large amount of business—by doing this which the Post Office exchanges could not do, because they cannot give preferences to anybody—that it has been able to drive the Post Office

    1731
    either altogether out of its exchanges or to make it not so profitable a working concern as it might have been. That is a privilege that we cannot take from them; they must go on exercising that, and probably they may exercise it in competition with us or with anybody else. But if that is the case—although I do not think it is public policy that it should be done—I think it is quite clear that the Post Office, if it is to be done at all, should, on its side, use its privilege, and if the company is to compete in its ex changes with the Post Office it must not in future expect from the Post Office a great number of privileges which the Post Office, outside its bargains and agreements, has hitherto given. We must insist upon having fair competition in these matters. I ought to say, too, that with regard to Post Office competition the promise has been given by Post masters General in this House, and I think I gave it on behalf of the Government, and I repeated it last Session, that in any case where there was an unreason able service and no competition it would be the duty of the Post Office itself to enter into the field. There is the less objection to doing so because, although the Post Office may be blamed for not having worked its exchanges as vigorously as it might do, yet it is entitled to this merit, that in spite of the difficulties in its way, in spite of the competition of the National Telephone Company, especially with regard to these preferences, the Post Office exchanges have paid the Post Office a very large interest on the money spent. Therefore, from a financial point of view, there is very little reason, so far as I can see, why the Post Office should not, where necessary, extend its exchanges, and if this is so, of course it will gradually and slowly prepare for the day when the whole of the telephone service will fall into its hands. Then we come to another class of competition which has hitherto not been dealt with. Hitherto, till the year 1892, the municipalities were about the only bodies that could not well enter into competition with the National Telephone Company, because there were general licences granted to that company all over the country to include the right to work trunk lines in the municipalities whose action must necessarily be con fined within their own boundaries. They were, therefore, by that fact, and by the
    1732
    fact of the preferences, shut out from competition. Now, it has been submitted today that the municipalities should be allowed to enter into competition, and from some points of view I admit that there is a great deal to be said for the municipalities being allowed to do so. In the first place, I have said I do not think that any companies would be willing to start with the additional knowledge that these licences would come to an end in 1911. The municipalities—or, rather, I should say, the local authorities—are perfectly willing, as I understand, to undertake the licences, to work them on condition that in the year 1911 they absolutely surrender them. That is undoubtedly one argument in favour of the local authority. Another argument, I think, is that they certainly would not be bought out as a public company would be. Another argument is the fact that they have way-leaves, and they would be able, therefore, to lay a most efficient underground service, and I confess there is a great deal to be said on behalf of the municipalities, who say that while they are perfectly willing to allow the streets to be taken up for their own exchanges they do not wish them to be at the mercy of anybody who chooses to come there, and I think there is a great deal of justice in that contention of the municipalities. But, then, we come to the further fact that under the Treasury Minute of 1892 the municipalities have an absolute control over any new company. No new company can work within the area of any local authority unless it gets the permission of that local authority. Therefore, if we are not going to allow municipalities or local authorities to compete, undoubtedly I do not quite see what chance of competition there is from other sources. But, on the other hand, we are met by the serious difficulty—and it is a difficulty which has arisen out of the inquiry in Glasgow—a difficulty which has got to be faced, a difficulty which a Department cannot properly deal with, and a difficulty involving questions of policy which Parliament itself ought to decide. Now, what is this difficulty? It is this: take the case of Glasgow. Even if we were to grant the licence to the Corporation of Glasgow, which it asks us to give it to-morrow, although altogether within its own area, and notwithstanding that Glasgow has got a Common

    1733
    Fund, differing in that respect from English Corporations, Glasgow would not be able to exercise that licence, and, therefore, there is no use in giving a licence when there is no power to use it. And there are certain questions of policy which, undoubtedly, do arise when the question of granting licences to municipalities is under consideration, and those questions of policy are these: hitherto, undoubtedly, as I said before, the telephones in England, at all events, are regarded as more or less a luxury of the rich. I look at other countries, and I find there that the telephones are not confined to the rich people. At any rate, one question which the Select Committee we propose to appoint on this question will have to decide will be this: whether the telephone service is a matter of sufficient general convenience to the community living within the area of the corporation or local authority to justify the local authority in using public funds for the purpose of starting telephones within that area. That, I think, is a question which a Department ought not to decide, but which ought to be left to this House of Parliament to decide. Then there is this further peculiarity with regard to the telephone service, that then must be, even with regard to the larger municipalities, areas outside those municipalities which it would be for the public convenience, and which are so closely allied to the municipalities themselves, that if you are going to have a municipal exchange at all it would be desirable that the exchange should also include a certain proportion of the area around that local authority. I am afraid that by some means or other certain areas have already been assigned to the National Telephone Company which even the larger municipalities could not possibly embrace within their boundaries. The area of the exchange of London alone, I am told, is 750 square miles, a great deal larger than anything the London County Council could possibly claim to work, and I should have thought that certainly, even with a large body like the National Telephone Company, with the licences granted to it, it ought to be contented with its own area. Take the case of Glasgow. There are outside its own boundaries certain suburbs where gentlemen in trade in the city may reside, and which, at any rate, are so bound up with
    1734
    Glasgow that they ought not to be separated from it so far as telephonic communication is concerned. What we propose, therefore, to do is to appoint a Select Committee of this House which shall confine its attention to these legal points, and see whether any change in the law would be expedient or desirable which would, by the removal of restrictions, make it possible for a municipality to engage in such an undertaking. Then, of course, there is the further question which ought to be considered, and which was considered in 1892, and that is: how far the extension of the telephone system in the hands of persons other than the Post Office is likely to damage our revenue. That, again, is a subject into which the Treasury has gone very carefully with the Post Office, and, undoubtedly, a great deal of the danger in regard to our telegraph revenue diminishing was removed when the Government bought the trunk wires, and there is a feeling now at the Post Office, which I myself think there is some amount of justification for that, after all, if the telephone service is properly worked, especially as it is now, so closely in communication with the Post Office, and generally with our postal telegram system—considering that you can send a telephone message which can be sent on by the Post Office by express messenger or even sent on by telegram—the connection between the telephone service and the Post Office may be so closely allied that the telephone, so far from damaging the telegram system, may actually assist it. I am bound to say there is another consideration. We must treat the companies with fairness, and we must consider the telegraphic revenue. I do not think either of these will suffer under the suggestion which I have made. We have also to consider this important fact, that this is a new agency of communication Which other countries have availed themselves of to a much greater extent than this country has done; that it is a means of communication which need not necessarily be limited, as it is in England, to the richer classes, but which may become of very great service to much smaller trades people and other classes than use it now. Although we are at the present, moment somewhat behind other nations in this respect, I think it is incumbent upon us, in the face of the keen

    1735
    commercial competition existing, to see that this country does not fall behind any other countries in the use of an agency so important to everyone as this is.
    *SIR CHARLES CAMERON: The House has listened with very great pleasure to the announcement of the night hon. Gentleman. It proves, at all events, that there is one great advantage in having upon the Treasury Bench a gentleman who represents both the Treasury and Post Office. The right hon. Gentleman has always, for many years past, announced that he is in favour of a forward policy in this matter. In fact, I am rather surprised that he did not go further even than he has done to-night. So far as the position of Glasgow is concerned, it is a great advantage, although, at the same time, I think it is rather hard that the city should have been subjected to such lengthy delays and such a long period of uncertainty before this decision was taken by the Treasury. I have no doubt Whatever that, if Glasgow were to come to this House for a private Bill, as has been indicated, a licence would be granted to her; but it certainly would be a much better plan, a much sounder policy, to allow the whole matter on general lines to be threshed out by a Committee upstairs—I presume that legislation would follow—than to compel each municipality to come before this House to seek powers by private Bill. I am rather disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman took such a strong opposition to the granting of licences to companies. It may be quite true that many companies would not agree to come forward, at this late period of the era of telephone monopoly, for a licence which they would lose in 1911; but, on the other hand, there are other companies, and at the present moment there is before the public a company which proposes to start in Manchester which has secured the sanction of the municipal authorities of Manchester and the surrounding districts. Under these circumstances, I think it is rather hard that, after the distinct announcement of the continuous and consistent policy on the part of the Post Office and the Treasury, at this late period they should be told that
    1736
    they must remain out in the cold. The right hon. Gentleman alluded to another fact. He alluded to the fact that in the country districts there has been no development whatever of telephonic communication. Now, I trust, after what he has said, that he will remedy that defect, that the Post Office will see to the remedy itself, or else that it will, in the case of thickly-populated districts, give every encouragement by the granting of licences to any parties who are willing to occupy a field which is at present totally unoccupied. There is another point to which. I would direct the right hon. Gentleman's attention also for a moment. In the City of London, as he is aware, an action has just been decided against the Commissioners of Sewers, and the municipal authorities and representatives of London generally are complaining bitterly that the Post Office is stepping out of its way to hand over the way leaves to which it has a right to the National Telephone Company.
    MR. HANBURY: So far as I understand, what happened was this: the Post Office undoubtedly was under an agreement to lay the wires between the two exchanges of the company within any one area, but in this case the Post Office undertook, I think, to lay a wire between the exchange and its own post office, which is distinctly in the interests of the Post Office.
    *SIR C. CAMERON: I do not suggest for one moment that the Post Office should resile from its engagements, but I know it has been strongly contended on the part of the municipal authorities in London that the Post Office has gone out of its way to make use of its privileges in order to make a present to the Telephone Company. I ask him, at all events, to see that nothing will be done to extend the privileges of the National Telephone Company, as against municipal authorities, while this subject is under consideration. I am certain that the announcement which has been made by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the new policy that has been adopted will be received with great satisfaction in the country, and in

    1737
    no place more than in Glasgow, where the right hon. Gentleman knows the service has been officially declared to be defective, and where he is aware that for many years a struggle has been made for the boon of which the appointment of this Committee promises to be the inauguration.
    MR. CALDWELL: After the satisfactory answer from the Secretary to the Treasury I think we might agree to withdraw the Motion. [Cries of "Negative it!"]
    *MR. SPEAKER: Does the House allow the Motion to be withdrawn? ["No!"] The question is, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the question."
    Amendment negatived.
    On the return of MR. SPEAKER, after the usual interval,

  DOG MUZZLING ORDER.
  *MR. R. MCKENNA: Mr. Speaker, in calling attention to the Orders issued by the Board of Agriculture, I do not think there is any need to challenge the finding of the Committee of 1896, on which the policy of the Board of Agriculture has been based. That Committee came to this among other conclusions, that the amount of rabies fluctuated according to whether the Muzzling Order is or is not enforced all over the country. I cannot help observing that this particular conclusion of the Committee goes somewhat beyond the facts. The Committee found that rabies always increased when there is no muzzling and decreased when there is muzzling, but that conclusion is open to the obvious objection that rabies is a very old disease, and muzzling is a very new remedy; but, in spite of the antiquity of the complaint, its extent has always been very limited. What I would suggest as one reason why rabies has diminished under the practice of muzzling is that the police are able at once to detect stray and homeless dogs. I believe it is the fact that 5,000 stray dogs have been killed since the Muzzling
  1738
  Order has been enforced. It is an undoubted fact that amongst these curs of the street there have been numerous cases of rabies, and consequently it is quite reasonable to assume that the protection afforded by muzzling is not only a direct protection against rabies, but the provision of an easy method to the police to discover which are the stray and ownerless dogs. Now, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture has laid it down as his policy that he is determined to stamp out rabies. Before such a policy as that can be carried out it is necessary to examine the characteristics of the disease. Taking them quite shortly, I find that they are fourfold. First, the period of incubation of rabies extends ever a time limited between one week and six months, although there have been cases—supposed cases—of a longer period of incubation than six months. Secondly, during incubation no symptom of rabies appears, and consequently the afflicted dog gives no sign that he is a victim of the disease while it is maturing. Thirdly, the disease, when it is finally matured, displays itself quite suddenly; and, fourthly, almost the very first symptom of rabies is an uncontrollable desire of the dog to go upon what is known as the "rabies tramp," which necessarily removes him from the control of his own owner. The usual extent of the rabies tramp is, I believe, 16 miles. I have seen a case of a dog having wandered as far as 80 miles on the first appearance of the symptoms of rabies. Now, Sir, such being the symptoms of the disease, it is obvious that if muzzling is to be efficacious at all there must be universal muzzling. I will not say that you will not get a diminution of disease under a partial system of muzzling, but if we are to stamp it out—and the right hon. Gentleman has laid it down as his policy that he wishes to stamp out all rabies—universal muzzling is absolutely essential. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman would disagree with that as a conclusion. [Mr. LONG: I do.] He does disagree. The right hon. Gentleman thinks partial muzzling is quite sufficient to stamp out rabies. Well, Sir, the evidence of the veterinary experts, and the general knowledge of the House, as to the symptoms

  1739
  of rabies, would probably lead the House to come to the conclusion, if we had the opportunity to vote on this question, that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. But there may be, and no doubt there are, certain considerations which determine the Board of Agriculture not to inflict a universal Muzzling Order. So far as we can judge from the terms of the Orders themselves, those considerations appear to take rank in the following order: the first claims to consideration in the mind of the Board of Agriculture are the interests of the sporting community. Whatever the Board of Agriculture does to stamp out rabies, it must not touch the sporting interests of the community. The next, Sir, is a consideration, which I myself do not put forward, because I do not believe that the Board of Agriculture have been guilty of the charges which have been levelled against them. But it is an undoubted fact that throughout the country there has arisen an impression—I conclude it is a fact from the amount of correspondence I have received—that electoral considerations induce the Board of Agriculture from time to time to take off the Muzzling Order when a contest is about to take place. I do not put that forward myself as a reason, as I do not believe the right hon. Gentleman would be influenced by any electoral consideration; but I only warn him that the policy of the Board of Agriculture has given rise to those views very largely. The third consideration which has influenced the action of the Board of Agriculture is the interest of the health of the community, and on that ground partial muzzling is enforced. That is a consideration which naturally appeals to everyone, but it is a consideration which I venture to say this House thinks ought to be put first. It certainly ought not to be subordinated either to the interests of sportsmen or, as has been alleged, to the interests of electoral contests. Last of all, the right hon. Gentleman takes into account the interests of farmers. We find that sheep dogs, which ought to be absolutely unmuzzled in order to carry on their work, are muzzled, and that the interests of the farming community are seriously sacrificed. Now, no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us the reasons why he
  1740
  has not exempted the sheep dog and has freed the sporting dog from muzzling; but before we accept the views of the Board of Agriculture I think we have a right to complain of the recklessness and ignorance of the Board in regard to muzzling. The House must remember that these Orders are issued solely on the responsibility of the Board of Agriculture. It may have been thought that any Department of the Government which issued Orders of that kind would first have inquired what the scope and purport of those Orders were likely to be. I addressed a question to the right hon. Gentleman, asking him whether, under the exemption allowed to sporting dogs, terriers engaged in rabbit coursing would be included. The right hon. Gentleman did not know. He said whether they were or were not included was a matter for the determination of the lawyers. But, surely, before they issue those exemptions to all sporting dogs, the Board of Agriculture ought to have made up their mind as to the classes of dogs to be included as sporting dogs. An hon. Friend of mine addressed another question to the right hon. Gentleman. He asked whether dogs are to be compelled, under these Orders, to be muzzled in hotels or public-houses, and whether an hotel or a public-house was a public place for the purpose of these Orders. The right hon. Gentleman again did not know. Surely before the Board issue these Orders they ought to be satisfied as to their real meaning; and it is an instance of great recklessness and ignorance on their part not to inquire as to the scope of those measures before they foist them upon a very unwilling public. I will only make one comment upon the disingenuousness of a certain reply made by the Board of Agriculture. I ventured to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman as to the number of cases of rabies that had occurred in the last 10 years amongst sporting dogs. What was the right hon. Gentleman's answer? He answered that no cases had occurred.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. W. H. LONG,): I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. The hon. Gentleman's question had reference to the

  1741
  exemptions which applied to sporting dogs.
  *MR. MCKENNA: I will give the right hon. Gentleman full credit for the ingenuity of his reply. I asked the right hon. Gentleman the number of cases of rabies which had occurred amongst sporting dogs, and the right hon. Gentleman answered, with great accuracy, that no cases of rabies had occurred amongst sporting dogs while they were engaged in sport. Of course, I knew that, and I suppose every person in the kingdom knew it before the question was put. No doubt, if rabies broke out among a pack of hounds, that pack of hounds would not have been engaged in sport. But the right hon. Gentleman's answer, if strictly true, was somewhat disingenuous if the Board of Agriculture are willing—as I submit they ought to be willing—to give to hon. Members in this House the information which they have reasonable ground for asking for. Now, Sir, as to the question whether rabies does occur among sporting dogs or not, I do not think that on the evidence there can be a shadow of doubt. It has over and over again occurred, one notable case as recently as last August, in which a whole pack of foxhounds had to be destroyed because rabies had broken out amongst them. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman will reply, "Yes, but when rabies breaks out amongst foxhounds it is always when they are in the kennels, and they are immediately destroyed." If that were the universal effect, no doubt it would be a complete answer; but, unfortunately, there have been recorded cases beyond dispute of foxhounds affected with rabies breaking away from the kennels, or breaking away whilst they were out engaged in sporting, biting other dogs, and spreading rabies far and wide. I would not bring forward such a charge as that unless I had evidence, and that evidence—which I have no doubt the right hon. Gentleman has himself—is based upon a statement made by Mr. Sewell, the well-known veterinary surgeon—probably the best-known dog doctor in London—whose authority on such a point as this cannot be denied. As to sporting dogs always being under complete control,
  1742
  which can be the only excuse for the limited scope of the Orders, it appears in a case which I have seen reported as recently as last March that a foxhound worried a sheep and damages of £5 were recovered against the owner of the dog in the county court. This was a case as recently as the 11th of last March, at Etling Green, Dereham. Over and over again advertisements appear in the papers advertising for foxhounds that have been lost, and it cannot be disputed that these foxhounds—although I admit they are excellently controlled—do from time to time break away, and the risk of spreading rabies by unmuzzled foxhounds is absolutely as great as in the case of any other class of dogs, and much more so than in the case of sheep dogs. Now, I have here the opinion of Mr. G. S. Lowe, who was formerly secretary to the Kennel Club. He states—
  "I have seen absurd replies to letters sent to those in high authority stating that hounds and sporting dogs can well be exempted, because they are under control and less liable to be affected by rabies than others. This is all nonsense, as there has been more rabies in foxhound kennels than elsewhere. I have heard of five authentic cases of hydrophobia in the village or parish in which I have resided, and the animals afflicted by this terrible malady included one foxhound and four black retrievers, and they all did more or less fatal mischief."
  This evidence cannot be ignored, and the result of it is, to my mind at any rate, to show conclusively that if the right hon. Gentleman is serious in his alleged policy of stamping out rabies by muzzling, then muzzling must be universal. He makes these distinctions in favour of the foxhounds, but he does not make any distinction in favour of sheep dogs. Now what is the claim that the sheep dog should be unmuzzled compared with the claim that the foxhounds should be unmuzzled. The sheep dog is absolutely essential to the carrying on of a very important industry. I know it will be said that sheep dogs will work with the muzzle on. The right hon. Gentleman will, no doubt, state certain facts upon the authority of the inspectors sent out on behalf of the Board of Agriculture. He will, no doubt, say that those dogs can work even when muzzled. But certainly the experience of farmers is altogether against that view. But

  1743
  even if sheep dogs can be got to work when muzzled, it is impossible to train the young sheep dogs to do their work properly with a muzzle on. I know the muzzling order will not apply to private farms, but in many parts of the country the sheep are almost always fed not upon private pastures, but upon common land. If you take the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for the Forest of Dean, the land is mostly common land, and the dogs have to be always muzzled there. Again, on the Downs the dogs have to be muzzled, and if there ever was a case in which exemption ought to be allowed in the interests of the business and the welfare of the farming community surely it is in the case of these sheep dogs. But that is not the view of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture. He exempts the foxhound, which I have shown is every bit as liable to rabies as the sheep dog is. He exempts the foxhounds for what reason? I submit that if he did not exempt the foxhounds he would not get the support of a great many hon. Members on his side for this Muzzling Order. [The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE: Cannot you find a better reason than that?] No, I cannot. I shall, therefore, leave the right hon. Gentleman to find a better reason. It is the only satisfactory reason that occurs to my mind, but in the case of sheep dogs he is not able to find any grounds for exempting them, and we find in consequence the greatest irritation and annoyance and actual loss occurring to farmers in all parts of the country. While we find that their industry is interfered with and very much affected, they see their better-to-do neighbours daily hunting or coursing with their dogs absolutely unfettered. Sir, I have heard an observation from an authority upon dogs, a very considerable authority with which I shall conclude what I have to say. He puts his case very strongly, and I would ask the House to listen to it.
  "There are certain classes of dogs—farm dogs and the dogs of drovers—for whose exemption from the muzzle a strong plea might be urged. For these dogs are necessary for the carrying on of the most important industries of the country, and the muzzle interferes with their doing so. But strong as this plea is, it has not been allowed. What then, may we ask, is
  1744
  the still stronger plea that has procured the exemption of the hounds and other sporting dogs? These dogs do not in any way add to the well-being of the country by assisting in its industries as do the sheep and the cattle dogs. They do not, like the dogs of the blind, answer any purpose of benevolence. They are maintained only for the purpose of amusement."
  That is the true statement, to my mind, of the case, and I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether his policy is a wise one, for this policy of partial exemption is creating irritation and ill-feeling all over the country, for which, I venture to say, the right hon. Gentleman cannot show any results which are in the least either adequate or satisfactory.
  *MR. LAURENCE HARDY: I wish to say a few words on this subject, and I shall approach the question from an entirely different point of view from the speaker who has just addressed the House. It seems to me that the arguments just addressed to us are not very applicable to this question. I wish to point out that the arguments of the speech to which I alluded referred chiefly to the dogs exempted, rather than to a further extension of the exemption. I would plead on the same ground—undoubtedly I do get to the same point—for the exemption to be extended to the sheep dogs. In the southern part of England, as I know the right hon. Gentleman is well aware, at this time of the year we are in an extremely difficult position. The sheep in that part of the country wander in the hills very great distances from the marshes, and at this very moment, during this next few weeks, they are being brought along the roads, and by railways, very long distances. Very often they are driven between 30 and 40 miles along the public highways, and it is often almost impossible for the farmers to carry on their trade in a manner convenient to themselves, or even to the public, in consequence of these restrictions put upon them by the muzzling order. We have to deal with the ordinary sheep dog of the ordinary shepherd, and it is found as a fact that the older dogs, after a certain amount of use with the muzzle on, get sulky, and will not do the work which is necessary; while the younger dogs do not go on learning their trade in order that they

  1745
  may take the part they are expected to do. At this moment, when hundreds and thousands of sheep are returning from the hills and marshes, the farmers in our district are in very great difficulty to know how to conduct their flocks along the highways. I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman if he can see his way to discover some means by which we could get over this difficulty. This is a restriction which, naturally, the people feel very annoying. They look round and they see a large number of sporting dogs unmuzzled which are exempt from the order, for this happens to be a district where sporting prevails very largely. There are foxhounds and hunters; there are staghounds, and others, which, perhaps, there is not so very much to be said for; there are also greyhounds, and all these must be unmuzzled when actually coursing. Naturally, the people who own sheep dogs think it very wrong to make a distinction between a greyhound and a sheep dog in the exercise of his duty. There are these distinctions, and I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman must draw the line somewhere, but it does seem to me to be drawing the line very finely between a greyhound which is unmuzzled at exercise along the road while sheep dogs at work are compelled to be muzzled; and the people whose views I am acquainted with would be quite satisfied if this distinction was done away with. They do not desire to see any restriction put upon the gallant efforts made by the right hon. Gentleman to put an end to rabies, but they do ask him to try and find some means by which they can use their sheep dogs in a satisfactory manner. They would not mind some system of registration, or some certificate being given by a magistrate, or anybody else, provided that while a sheep dog is at work it may be used without a muzzle, so that they may be able to carry out their calling. I do not in any way attack the muzzling order, or attack the very persistent attitude which has been adopted by the right hon. Gentleman, but I will urge upon him most strongly that if he can see his way to devise any means in his department to attain the object which I plead for I am sure that he will not really be doing any injury to
  1746
  the cause which he is serving, and at the same time he will give satisfaction to a large body of farmers in this country. I hope he will consider this suggestion.
  MR. R. B. ROBINSON: I desire to say a few words upon this question. I speak upon this subject with perfect impartiality, because, wisely or unwisely. I keep dogs myself, which, being for sporting purposes, are not required to be muzzled by this order. The poor man living close by me naturally feels aggrieved, and cannot understand why his diminutive Yorkshire terrier should be compelled to wear a muzzle for the safety of the public, while at the same time he sees a pack of hounds walking past his door free altogether from any such restriction. I think that my friends in the Midlands take a wider view of this matter than the view entertained by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture. They believe—and I quite agree with them—that the object which the right hon. Gentleman has in view can be better achieved by the collar order, which is universally popular, than by the muzzling order, which is universally unpopular. The very greatest decrease ever known in the Metropolis took place six years ago, when every dog was wearing a collar and none were wearing muzzles, but that fact was not brought before the Departmental Committee. Now, what are the facts? In 1890 the Board of Agriculture muzzled the Metropolis, and at the end of that year they exempted from the muzzle any dog wearing a collar, with the result that in 1891 not a single dog was wearing a muzzle. Now, that went on, and what was the result for this period when the order was entirely withdrawn? Here are the figures:—In 1890, when the Metropolis was muzzled, there were 32 cases of rabies in London; during the year 1891, when every dog was wearing a collar, there were only eight cases of rabies; and during the next year, when the collar regulation was still in force, there were only three cases. I only hope that the muzzling order will shortly be withdrawn, because I am sure that its withdrawal would give very great

  1747
  satisfaction. I say this because if there is one thing more than another which may be repeated it is that the muzzling order is no use whatever unless it is in conformity with public opinion. I do not profess to have any experience of any particular locality beyond my own, and what I do know is that the feeling of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire is utterly opposed to this muzzling order. Throughout the whole of the three counties resolutions have been passed asking for the withdrawal of the order. It has been condemned by magistrates, including the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for Worcester. In conclusion, I only hope that at the end of this Debate we shall hear from the President of the Board of Agriculture that in a very short time the muzzling order will be withdrawn.
  DR. R. FARQUHARSON: Unlike other speakers, I do not believe in the failure of the muzzling order to stamp out rabies. This disease does not spring up spontaneously, and it can only be stamped out by wise, firm, and judicious legislation, such as he has proposed. I think, however, the right hon. Gentleman would be more consistent if he made absolutely no exemption at all, but if we are to have any exemptions I think it would be necessary that exemptions should be made in the case of sheep dogs. If we have exemptions for hunting dogs, which are practically useless, I do think the same amount of favour ought to be extended to those dogs which are necessary to a great industry, seeing that under this muzzling order great inconvenience has been caused among the agricultural community. I think it is very important in the interests of my hon. Friend, and in the interest of the muzzling order, that it should be as popular as possible, and I cannot conceive anything less calculated to make this order popular than to cause this amount of irritation, which my right hon. Friend has described, among the agricultural population, on account of the muzzling of an animal which is so useful for the agricultural interest. My right hon. Friend will be able to tell us whether
  1748
  there has been many cases of rabies amongst sheep dogs, and if they are in the habit of meeting animals from whom they are liable to get the infection. My right hon. Friend will no doubt be able to give us some satisfactory assurance. Really, I am inclined to join with my hon. Friend who introduced this subject in appealing to the right hon. Gentleman in the interest of the popularity of the Measure, for which I am bound to say he is working so well, so skilfully, and so resolutely, to make this exemption, which I do not think will eventually do any harm to the great interest which he has so much at heart.
  MR. J. W. CROMBIE: While I cannot agree with all that the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire has said, I do think that in one point he is right, and that is that there is a great deal of public feeling against any general Muzzling Order. I think, Sir, that we are entitled to congratulate most heartily the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture in having, pursued the Order with so much firmness. The Government, although it has not been successful in ruling Europe, has certainly been successful in muzzling dogs. It certainly has shown a strength that might hardly have been expected from them on other grounds. I was one of the Members of the Committee which was appointed to examine into this question of muzzling. I do not want to go into the question at present—it may be in order or it may not—but I will only say this, that when I entered into that Committee I believed that muzzling was perfectly superfluous, and that some Collar Order would do all that was required. After hearing the evidence, I came to the exactly opposite conclusion, and I agree with the Committee that this evil of rabies, which is, perhaps, not a very great one, but still is a serious one, can be effectually stamped out in this country in some four or six months if that Muzzling Order were applied universally. To a very great extent that is what we recommended to the Board of Agriculture. They have carried out the recommendation fairly well, although they might have carried it out better. At the same time, I give them every credit for

  1749
  what they have done. Now, the present complaint seems to me to be this: that the Board of Agriculture has exempted from muzzling sporting dogs and not shepherds' dogs. As to sporting dogs, I confess that I am not myself a sportsman or particularly in favour of sport; therefore, personally, I have no feeling whatever in the matter of the exemption of sporting dogs; but I do think this, that, as has been admitted by Members who have spoken on this subject, the enforcing of the Muzzling Order is exceedingly difficult, and that concessions have to be made. I have no doubt that had I been in the place of the right hon. Gentleman I might have found myself, perhaps against my inclination, compelled to exempt sporting dogs. I do, however, think that it is rather unfortunate that a parallel exemption has not been made in the case of shepherds' dogs. At the same time, I cannot help thinking, although I speak without the knowledge of the right hon. Gentleman, that the feeling is not quite so great as the hon. Member who introduced the Motion has made out. I should think that in almost all the districts where sheep dogs are universal the Muzzling Order is not enforced. I believe that is largely so in Scotland, and I have heard of no complaint whatever in this matter in the North. I daresay that there may be some cases down in the South of England such as have been described, and, if there are, I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us some sort of assurance that he may be able to deal with these cases to the satisfaction of those who have brought up this question. However this may be, I do think it is fair, as a Member of the Committee, to state that the hon. Gentleman has dealt in an exceedingly fair and plucky manner with the recommendations of that Committee, and, however right or wrong he may be in general matters, I think that his conduct in this particular case deserves very great commendation.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: The hon. and learned Member who has introduced this Motion has referred to the fact that he would be unable to take the opinion of the House upon it by a Division. I must say that I congratulate the hon. and
  1750
  learned Gentleman upon his misfortunes, because I cannot conceive a Motion better worded for an academic and inconclusive discussion than the one he has introduced into the House to-night. Although his Motion is as "milk-and-water" as it is possible to have a Motion, he has contrived to introduce into his speech a totally different element. I must say that having regard to this question of muzzling, with which, by this time, I am probably as familiar as the hon. and learned Member, or any of those who support him—familiar with it in all its aspects, from the aspect in which he he has approached it to-night, to the aspect of the lady who has special interest in a dog from which she cannot be separated without fear that the separation would cost her her existence. I must say that, failing altogether to possess either the capacity or the ability of the hon. and learned Gentleman who introduced this Motion, I think that I could nevertheless have made, at least, as good a case, if not a better one than he has done, without descending to the form of attack which he has thought necessary to adopt with regard to myself and my Department, and in support of which he did not advance one single argument or statement of fact. The hon. and learned Member said, in making some comments upon muzzling generally, that he and his friends thought that electoral considerations had governed me. [Mr. MCKENNA: I repudiated it altogether.] Oh, yes! We are all familiar with the old advice, "Don't nail his ears to the pump!" and, of course, although other people said it, he did not. We are all familiar with that sort of gossip. You know what so-and-so has said about somebody else. Of course, I don't believe it. That is the position which the hon. Gentleman assumes to-night. He does not believe these base insinuations, but although he desires to dissociate himself altogether from them—and I am glad to hear that statement—yet he will admit that, as he has made them, I am entitled to repudiate them altogether, and to say that he has not advanced one single argument in support of that contention. Whatever the faults of the Department may be, and I daresay we have plenty of faults, I should like to dispose of one minor point. The hon. Gentleman suggested that I had

  1751
  made an answer to a question which was not altogether an exposition of the exact facts, and, in order again to save himself, suggested that the answer emanated from the officials of the Department. I think the hon. Gentleman must know perfectly well that that is a position which no Minister could take up; it is an utterly impossible position, and it is an altogether unworthy attack to say that the answer to a question is the work of an official, and that, therefore, the Minister is not responsible for its inaccuracies. Whatever the answer to a question is—whether it is a written one which the Minister reads, and as to which he has not exercised any discretion himself, or whether it is not—everybody in this House knows that no man is fit to stand up on the floor here as the representative of a Department, and say one word or write any communication in the name of that Department, and everything and anything connected with that Department, for which he himself is not responsible, or in respect to which he is entitled to say that he is not bound to accept, and cheerfully accept, the full responsibility. Therefore I say it is an unworthy argument to say that a Minister makes a reply which is not his own, but is merely a written one, for which he is not responsible, because it emanated from the officials. The hon. Gentleman has got a very good case. I could have made a very good case, and so far as I am concerned, if it were not the practice of Parliament to reply, I should have been contented to have listened, and, had it not been for these unworthy insinuations, to have said "agreed," and to have passed on to the next business. What does the Motion say—
  "That this House regrets that the President of the Board of Agriculture has not found it desirable to extend to sheep dogs the exemption from muzzling under the Rabies Orders which has been allowed in the case of sporting dogs."
  I quite agree; we all agree, I imagine. I do not suppose that there is anybody in this House who would dissent from the views expressed by my hon. Friends behind me that the Muzzling Order is extremely unpopular. Of course, it is unpopular. If the hon. Gentleman had as much experience as I have of the administration
  1752
  of an Act of Parliament in the extermination of diseases of animals, he would know perfectly well that it is impossible, however careful the Department might be, to stamp out these diseases without interfering with the trade and comfort of the people, and with what they believe to be their rights and privileges. That, of course, makes any Order of that sort unpopular. But is that a reason why a Minister should not try to do what has been done on this occasion? The position of this country with regard to diseases of animals was at one time absolutely deplorable, and the annual loss amounted to millions of money. The position of many foreign countries at this moment is one we should regard as deplorable, and which even they regard with great concern, because they have not made up their minds to face the position and go in for a restrictive policy. We are now dealing with a disease which is not only serious with regard to animals, but also more serious still with regard to human beings, who suffer from the effects of it; and the hon. Gentleman says, and my hon. Friend behind me suggests, that the policy of muzzling is unpopular, because people do not like to have their dogs muzzled, or because they think their dogs are muzzled and that other people's dogs are not muzzled, then the policy is unwise and unfair, and that, therefore, the Government of the day should give up its attempts to stamp out a disease which is unquestionably one of the most deplorable from which the human race has ever suffered. I altogether repudiate that suggestion, and, so far as the general, policy of muzzling goes, I maintain that however unpopular that may be—and I am as good a judge of its unpopularity as anybody else—if we believe that we are pursuing a policy which is likely to succeed in exterminating this dreadful disease, we are bound to go on with it, even although the effects of our policy may cause inconvenience and discomfort to our friends in the country; and permit me to say, in regard to a matter of this kind, that when I use the word "friends" I do not mean friends who support us in polities, but people generally who are attached to dogs, and who, naturally, resent a policy which interferes with the comfort of their pets. If we believe it to be a wise policy, and a successful policy, we are bound to pursue it.

  1753
  Now the hon. Gentleman dealt with two fallacies which have been often used as arguments against the muzzling order by the opponents of muzzling. One is that the muzzling of dogs is not a direct, but only an indirect cure for rabies. That is to say, it is not the imposition of the muzzle upon the dog itself that has the effect of stamping out the disease. Now I venture to say that no one who has taken the trouble to study the course of this terrible malady has ever come deliberately to that conclusion. So far as I know, it is admitted by all scientific persons, whether they be medical men or others, that rabies cannot be acquired in any other manner than by subcutaneous injection. By the constant spread of disease from dog to dog, you get the condition of things you had in this country a short time ago, under which rabies became not only general, but almost universal. What becomes of the contention against muzzling, if that be the fact, and I believe it is admitted, and so far as I know it is the fact, that it can only be communicated in that particular way. If that is the case, how can any sensible person get up and say that you can cure rabies by a collar and badge. You can only prevent contagion from a diseased dog being spread to a healthy one by muzzling all dogs, and that is where the policy of my hon. Friend behind me comes into force. The hon. Gentleman put the period of the incubation of the disease at six months, and, although there have been some extreme cases where the infection of the disease has lasted for a longer period than that, I believe, on the whole, that six months should be the minimum, and when we have destroyed all possible means of communicating the infection, and have done all we can, we shall follow with the collar and badge order, with the object of detecting the stray and wandering dogs, and carry out their necessary destruction, although they may not be diseased. When the hon. Gentleman stated that universal muzzling was necessary, I understood him to mean over the whole of the country, but I gather that he means the universal muzzling of all dogs, and that he was not dealing with the muzzling area. I can only say, with regard to universal muzzling, that in our opinion, when it is necessary to muzzle,
  1754
  Parliament must trust to the discretion of the Department called upon to administer the Act in connection with this disease. The Privy Council are well aware that the Board of Agriculture have had considerable experience and success under the Act, and are of opinion that universal muzzling would not improve the position we are now in in any way. The policy of the Board of Agriculture is to take the spot where disease is indicated by the outbreak of rabies, and then draw around the radius a circle, varying in size from 15 to 20 miles, and it may be larger, in radius. That is how we commenced, and we varied it a little for this reason, that, after a time, the inspectors brought to a state of high perfection the tracing of mad dogs and their history, and thus we have been able to follow the course taken by the dog, and in some cases it has not been necessary to draw the circle at all. We found that the trend of the disease has been in a certain direction. I do not know whether any hon. Gentlemen have seen a copy of the maps which the Board of Agriculture have published with regard to this matter, but if they have studied them they will observe that, in the various districts where the disease has been most prevalent, it has almost universally followed a recognised course. These unfortunate animals have invariably taken one direction, and no doubt scientific reasons can be found for that trend. We found that by drawing these cordons round the diseased areas, and by imposing the muzzling order, we have been able to clear those districts altogether, and having cleared them we shall be able to keep out the disease. But by suggesting that you can do so by substituting the collar and badge for the muzzle is, to my mind, absurd. The whole point is that the disorder can only be communicated from one dog to another by subcutaneous injection, and if you are going to stop that you can only do it by stopping the diseased dog for a certain period of time sufficient to kill the disease. The main part of the hon. Gentleman's speech was not so much an attack on the muzzling policy as an argument in favour of increased exemption. The hon. Member for South Kent based his speech on the policy of increased exemption, but if that is accepted by the Government at all, it must be taken as

  1755
  leading to increased muzzling. He did not show that muzzling sheep-dogs caused a serious loss to their owners, but he showed that rabies was as common in sporting dogs as in others. No one denies that the disease is common in foxhounds or beagles. One hon. Gentleman, who was a member of the Committee upon this question, and who, one would suppose, was a believer in the policy, was good enough to express approval for the courage of the Board of Agriculture in dealing with this matter in this way; but, although he was a member of the Committee, and was himself responsible to a large extent for our policy, be could not help saying something in the form of an attack upon the Department. He said the Government was strong enough to muzzle England, but was not strong enough to muzzle Europe. I am one of the strongest admirers of the great national sports of this country. I think they have a great deal to do with the moulding of the English character, and I also think put a large amount of money into the pockets of the working men; but, apart from that, hon. Gentlemen opposite think that they are in a great minority, and they are in a great difficulty in finding something upon which to attack the Government, and so they set themselves up to attack us. It is the old story of the rich man and the poor. My hon. Friend told us in touching accents about the poor man by the roadside who, having had to muzzle his dog, feels a spirit of discontent rise within his breast when he sees the unmuzzled foxhounds go by. It is a very simple way of heckling the Government of the day, but it is not on the whole, in my opinion, a respectable one, and I am not quite sure that it is quite so effective a method as hon. Gentlemen are inclined to think it is, nor that it has the effect which they believe it has. There is an association called, I understand, the National Canine Defence League, and I believe it to be an absolute fact that they hold that, wherever a bye-election has been
  1756
  lost by the Government during the last two years, or wherever the majority has been diminished, it has been entirely due to the Muzzling Order, though in some districts where this has been the case there was no Muzzling Order. [An HON MEMBER: York.] The hon. Gentleman spoke about the correspondence he had received. If the correspondence I have received is at all to be believed, the opinion is not confined to York. There is not an election that has taken place in this country within the last year, where we have either lost the seat or had our majority reduced, which has not been traced to the effect of the Muzzling Order. They say here are the rich man's foxhounds or greyhounds on the one side, and on the other there is the poor man's sheep dog. The hon. and learned Gentleman opposite was very severe upon me because he said I was not prepared to say what the exemption was going to be, or because I am not prepared to say what is a public place, [Mr. MCKENNA: Only for the purposes of this Order.] The hon. Gentleman is a high authority upon legal questions, and I am not sure about it. So far as I remember, however, he asked me whether a man was to have his dog muzzled in a public-house during open hours, and whether a public-house was a public place, and he attacked me because I was not prepared to say whether a public-house was a public place.
  *MR. MCKENNA: That was a supplementary question which I put, as to whether, in the opinion of the Board of Agriculture, when they considered the question before they issued the Order, a public-house was a public place or not, and the right hon. Gentleman said "No."
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: I am quite prepared to allow the hon. Gentleman to frame his own attacks, but I am not prepared to let him frame my answers. I said I had not considered the matter at all. What I said was that it was not the business of the Board of Agriculture to define the legal question as to what was a public

  1757
  place, and the minor question which was put to me, as to when dogs were at exercise or when they were not at exercise, or when a dog was a sporting dog, or when it was not a sporting dog. It is not my business to give answers to those questions, and if I were to do so it would deprive hon. Gentlemen opposite of half the amusement they derive from asking them. Now, occasionally, hon. Gentlemen get a good attack against the Government, and if I were to accept the suggestions of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and remove the Muzzling Order, what would become of them at the next bye-election? Their occupation would be gone, and the elections would once again revert to their proper direction. The real answer to the objection of the hon. and learned Gentleman is not that we desire to give exemption to British sport—although I am not afraid to defend that if necessary. The policy of the Department is based on the conditions under which sporting dogs are kept, whether the dog forms part of the best pack of hunters in the country or whether it is the terrier of the rat-catcher; everybody knows that a sporting dog is taken great care of, and if he is not well in the morning, he is not taken to work. Why? Because everybody who has anything to do with hounds knows that any dog who is suffering from any form of indisposition is not up to his work, and so it is in the case of the terrier, which is kept for the sole object of his master's business, and the rat-catcher knows that, without his dog, he cannot carry on his trade. What we contend is that there is over those dogs a supervision, a constant survey, which ensures, if the dog displays any symptoms of ill-health, especially of rabies, that the symptoms will be discovered, and the dogs kept under control until the cause of their malady is ascertained, and, if possible, has been removed altogether. The hon. Gentleman asks. What about sheep-dogs? I will tell him something about sheep-dogs. The right hon.
  1758
  Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean is a great, authority on statistics and details, and, as a rule, looks into a question very closely. I would like to know if he has looked into the question of sheep-dogs. [Sir C. DILKE: Only in my own constituency.] Then we shall have the pleasure of hearing what is a sheep-dog in the Forest of Dean. But I shall not be surprised at all if, when he looks a little closer into the question, he finds that sheep-dogs there are very much the same as all over the rest of the country. I quite agree that the muzzle might mean a difficulty in the way of a dog doing his work. I am not going to say that they can work as well with a muzzle as they can without. Now, I sent my inspectors about the country to see the sheep-dogs in different parts. I sent them to farms and other places all over England, and I have done my best to obtain reliable information. I have actually visited the country myself. I happened once to be in Devonshire, and somebody put a paper into my hands, saying that the worst hated man in the country was Mr. Long, and that, if he showed his nose in Devonshire, it would be very much the worse for him, and I was actually in the middle of the county at the time. Well, I saw them driving sheep and cattle in many cases, and I observed no great difficulty or inconvenience from the use of the muzzle, and the reports of my inspectors point in the same direction. Of course, one knows perfectly well a dog docs not wear a muzzle for choice; nobody believes that a dog driving sheep or cattle is as useful with a muzzle on as without. I know it is a great inconvenience, and in many cases inflicts considerable loss on the man driving sheep and cattle; but the hon. Gentleman asked me just now whether sheep-dogs were not its carefully watched as sporting dogs. I appeal to the hon. Gentlemen who are familiar with owners of sheep and sheep-dogs of this country. We know that every dog which is used for the purpose of

  1759
  driving sheep and cattle, not continuously or regularly, but at one time or another, is a sheep-dog, and it mast be remembered, too, that sheep-dogs were the dogs that were granted exemptions from the ordinary licence. Now, when this matter was first brought before me I carefully examined it, and I will give the House a few of the figures which I have had taken out, and which show the proportion of sheep-dogs to the dogs of the entire district. In the district of Inverness there are 2,804 dogs for which licences have been taken out, and 10,704 for which exemptions were claimed; in Aberdeen, 2,685 for which licences were taken, and 11,520 exemptions. In another county, in Wales, there are 1,854 licences, as against 5,963 exemptions. On one occasion I instructed an inspector to make a careful local inquiry into the various breeds of dogs for which exemptions were claimed as sheep-dogs. This is a point, which I respectfully commend to the right hon. Baronet the Member for the Forest of Dean. In one county, I will not mention the name, with regard to the exempted dogs under the head of sheep-dogs, and from the Returns made to me, I find that there were 122 lurchers, six setters, 12 pug dogs, six mastiffs, and, worst of all for the hon. Gentleman, 35 retrievers. Now, according to that, the hon. Gentelman appealed for the sheepdogs as against the sporting dog, and he says if the retriever cannot be exempted as a sporting dog, he will be as a sheep-dog. If we do that, we shall have to give up muzzling altogether. This is the case with the hon. Gentleman opposite, that it is better to put up with this disease than to put up with the unpopularity at the moment. I will not trouble the House for more than another minute. The hon. Gentleman said there was another method. We cannot do more than point to the facts as they stand. At all events, the figures are very remarkable. If any hon. Gentleman will look at the figures published he will see that for the quarter ending
  1760
  March, 1896, there were 200 cases of rabies in the country; for the quarter ending June, 123; for the quarter ending September, 67; for the quarter ending December, 48; and so on—every quarter the number decreasing until we get to the quarter ending March last, when the total number of actual cases had fallen to six, as against 200 in the quarter ending March, 1896. There are some suspected cases, with regard to which I am not in a position to say whether they are rabies or not; but there are only three, and if they are certified to be rabies the figures will stand as follows; 200 cases in the quarter ending March, 1896, against nine in quarter ending March, 1898. I do not want to excite the passions of the House by referring to morbid cases, but there is no disease from which man suffers which brings with it more real horror than this disease of hydrophobia. Not only is there the physical suffering, but there is also the mental suffering which goes on for months, while the unfortunate victim is waiting to see whether he is afflicted with the disease or not. Only the other day the wife of a prominent tradesman in Stockton died in great agony from the bite of a dog inflicted in the previous September. The symptoms only developed before her death.
  *MR. MCKENNA: With reference to the right hon. Gentleman's statistics of exemptions in Aberdeenshire and Inverness-shire, is it not a fact that there is no Muzzling Order in force, and no rabies in these counties?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: What on earth has that to do with it? Docs the hon. Member ask that exemptions are to be made in certain places where the figures suit him, and not in other places where the figures do not suit him? His argument is that sheep-dogs are to be exempted all over the country. I have endeavoured to give the House the reasons which have governed us in

  1761
  refusing to adopt that policy. I think I have shown that if the hon. Gentleman's suggestion was accepted it would involve the total destruction of the Muzzling Order. Hon. Gentlemen opposite might make use of this question for Party purposes. Of course it is perfectly fair to say, "Here is the brutal Tory Government muzzling the poor man's doe-s and leaving the rich man's hounds to go free." ["No, no!"] Well, that is a very good argument, and although hon. Members opposite say "No," I have a shrewd impression that this is an argument they are very likely to use. I appeal to hon. Gentlemen opposite, apart altogether from the idea that muzzling is carried out in order to please a particular Department, or an individual, to ask themselves whether rabies is not one of those diseases which it is the absolute duty on the part of the Government to exterminate, if they are able to do so, by a certain policy. It is a policy founded on vast experience; and holding that view they are compelled to adhere to that policy, believing that, if able to carry it out, it will result in eradicating altogether this appalling disease.
  *MR. M. VAUGHAN DAVIES: I know that there are a number of Members of the House not present who are particularly anxious to take part in this Debate, who have been looking forward to such a Debate; but unfortunately the Debate is not going to take place, from what I hear. The right hon. Gentleman says we wish to make Party capital out of this. I, for one, wish to dissociate myself from anything of the kind; it never occurred to me to make political capital out of it. I join issue with the right hon. Gentleman on that question. If we wish to make Party capital, we have only to look to the north, to the south, to the east, and to the west, to find ample material in that direction. I have some little knowledge of dogs, having been brought, up, more
  1762
  or less, in the kennel for the last 50 years of my life. I should cordially congratulate the right hon. Gentleman if he can eradicate from among man's best friends the most hateful of all diseases—hydrophobia. The question is, Is this the best way of dealing with hydrophobia? I cannot agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he says that rabies is a disease that must be given by one dog to another. I join issue with hint there; I do not believe it. I believe that rallies with a dog is just the same as small-pox, or scarlet fever, with a human being. You might as well muzzle all of us for influenza. I believe that 90 per cent. of the dogs destroyed as mad are not actually mad. I have had instances brought under my personal notice. When I was in Russia I brought home a very large retriever. A man told me he was mad, for the dog was foaming at the mouth, and was anything but a pleasant object to look at. I carried him up to my own room, and kept him there for about eight or nine hours, and he got over that attack. Everybody said he was mad, but in a week's time that dog was as well as ever he was. I had another instance of a foxhound. I went into the kennel and took hold of him and had him shut up. That dog, in three weeks time, was perfectly well again. There is no child in any family who is so carefully watched over as a hound; morning, noon, and night, they are watched over. Ninety persons out of 100 would have said that hound was mad, and yet he got quite well.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: I am not going to challenge the high authority of the hon. Gentleman; but our facts are absolutely ascertained. We do not deal with doubtful cases; we only deal with cases that are ascertained on the spot and confirmed by evidence.
  *MR. VAUGHAN DAVIES: Do I understand that till these cases have been dealt with by one veterinary surgeon?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: No, no. The cases are discovered in the locality, and they are generally examined by the local veterinary surgeon. Some cases of rabies are forwarded to an institute the hon. Gentleman knows well, and there the investigations are made and the decisions announced. The statistics I have given refer only to cases which are verified.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: How long have you struck them off?
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: I struck them off—I may say, to be accurate with the House—up to the 31st of March, when the number of cases was six, and, in order that I might not misrepresent these cases, I said there were three doubtful cases.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: The right hon. Gentleman does not see my point.
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!
  *MR. VAUGHAN DAVIES: What I was trying to bring before the right hon. Gentleman was the question of the number of cases of hydrophobia. That is a matter of great consequence, and it is the crux of the whole business. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many cases of hydrophobia have been laid before the authorities? The question is, what is the best way of dealing with hydrophobia? I quite disagree with the right hon. Gentleman that rabies is a disease that may be given by one dog to another. I do not think anyone takes the opinion of a veterinary as to whether a case is hydrophobia or not, because you have only got to find two veterinary surgeons, and they are sure to differ. Take them a horse, and one of them will pass it as sound, and the other will condemn it; take them a dog, and one will say it is mad, and the other will say it is not. Certainly, anyone who has had to do with the buying and selling of horses as I have had, will know the value of the advice of a veterinary
  1764
  surgeon. [Laughter.] I do not see why hon. Gentlemen should laugh, because if they had sold horses as I have done they would find it out, and very quickly too. But the matter before the House is the question of exempting sheep-dogs. Now, I can speak with some authority on sheep-dogs, because I have had a long experience of them. Sheep-dogs are the right-hand of the shepherd, and when they are muzzled they cannot possibly do their work. We have thousands of acres of land devoted to sheep farming, and these shepherds cannot possibly look after their sheep without these dogs, and it is of the greatest importance to the shepherd that sheep-dogs should be exempted from the muzzling order. No dog living could look after a large number of sheep with a muzzle on, because everyone knows that a dog breathes and sweats through his mouth, and no dog can breathe freely with a muzzle on. The placing of a sheepdog and a foxhound in the same category is all nonsense. A foxhound is looked well after, while a sheep-dog is whistled for when he is wanted, and kicked out of doors when he is not wanted. With regard to the putting down of rallies, I am just as anxious to do that as the right hon. Gentleman is, but the question with me is whether the keeping of this Muzzling Order in force in the country is the best way to do it. I do not believe it is, for I believe the only way to put down rabies and do away with these sheep-killing dogs, which prevail so terribly in the sheep-growing countries, is by making the owner of the dog answerable for all that his dog does. [Laughter.] I really see nothing to laugh at in this matter. To make the owner of the dog answerable will, if I may use the expression, "pin the dog to the owner," and you can only do that by having a collar on the dog with the man's name on it. We know that in Wales, where almost everybody keeps dogs, they are turned cut at night, and they have committed all kinds of havoc

  1765
  among the sheep, but you cannot find the owner of the dog which has done the damage. You cannot trace him, and if you do find him, he will say the dog is not his, although you may know very well that if is. He will swear that it is not, and you cannot prove it. We want to be able to prove the ownership of dogs to certain individuals, and I am perfectly certain that if you were to put a collar on every dog with the owner's name on it, and make the owner answerable for all the dog's acts, the people would look after their dogs very much better than they do now. There are people who do not care a straw for dogs or what they do, and they simply whistle for them when they want them. But, if you make the owner responsible, and if you are able to trace him and make him answerable for everything that dog look after it. [Laughter.] laugh if you like, but you will never put down rabies if you go on muzzling every year. It has been tried in other countries, and the right hon. Gentleman is not the first who has adopted muzzling. If has been tried in foreign countries, and they have had to give it up because it did not succeed. [The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE: They have not tried it on the principles tried here.] But the muzzle in Germany is the same as in England. I will take another point, and I will challenge him on this. If a dog be mad in one of these muzzles, he will get it off like a shot. A dog coming down the street with a little bit of thin wire on his mouth can instantly break it if the dog be mad, and I will undertake to say that a mad dog will break any of the muzzles I have yet seen. It is nonsense to talk to any practical person and say that these muzzles, will keep down rabies, and stop dogs biting. I believe that half the people who are said to die from madness really die more from fright than mad ness. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but I believe if. If a person gets bitten by a dog now, all the rest of the
  1766
  family at once begin to wonder why he is not taken ill. I have been bitten myself by foxhounds and dogs of all kinds. I am certain of it. You may laugh as much as you like, but the idea has got abroad in this country that the moment a man is bitten by a dog he must be sent off immediately to Paris, and if he does not go mad, then people are disappointed, and wonder why he did not go mad. But the question is, Is this Muzzling Order dealing with the matter in a really practical way? I do not suppose for a moment that there is a man in this House who would not look with the greatest pleasure on any practical scheme which would put down this horrible disease; but if you are going to attempt to do it in a way which a great many of us think is not the best way, why, naturally, we shall get up and tell you so. Well, why not? Perhaps hon. Members opposite do not own dogs If they did they would not laugh. These ore matters which want to be driven right home, and move particularly in Wales where we have all got dogs. I understand you are going to muzzle all the dogs. [The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE: Certainly not.] Well they are either to be muzzled or branded. [The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE: The hon. Gentleman is entirely inaccurate.] Well, if the right hon. Gentleman is going to drop the Bill, I suppose he will drop the muzzle, and that is the best thing he can possibly do. I believe people would sooner run the risk of rabies than have their dogs muzzled.
  MR. GEORGE LAMBERT: As the representative of a constituency where the Muzzling Order has been in force six months, I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman upon his courage in having put this intensely disagreeable Order in force. I do not wish to deal with it from a political point of view, as the right hon. Gentleman seems to imagine we have done. He has slated that the Muzzling Order has been a great success. I hope it has,

  1767
  but if it has been a great success, with the exemptions that have hitherto escaped the Muzzling Order, how much greater would that success have been if all dogs had been muzzled. What I object to is that a sporting dog, which a man uses for his enjoyment, is not muzzled, but a sheep-dog, which is used for business is muzzled. If the Order has been a success with a portion of the dogs, how much more would it have been if all dogs had been muzzled. I do object most strongly to this invidious distinction between dogs which are kept for pleasure and those which are kept for the purposes of business. The right hon. Gentleman opposite seems to treat this matter purely or almost as a joke, and he ridicules us on this side of the House—in fact I almost thought that he had put on the Muzzling Order in order to give us something to talk about or something with which to abuse the "brutal Tory Government." I do not intend to do much in the way of attacking this Order. I will leave that to the Tory Party, of which the right hon. Member is so distinguished a supporter, for his Party is criticising the Government on this matter more than we are. If the hon. Gentleman will only allow me, I am merely answering the right hon. Gentleman's argument about the "brutal Tory Government." He said distinctly that that was the only stick we had got to beat the "brutal Tory Government" with. [Mr. LONG: NO. Not the only one.] Well, I do not intend to attack the Government, but I will let their supporters do that themselves. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to imagine that this Muzzling Order had no effect upon the bye-elections. Well, I remember a bye-election in Devonshire which this-Muzzling Order seems to have had a great effect upon. When the Plymouth election took place the Muzzling Order had been in force for six months, and two days before the election was decided the Muzzling Order was withdrawn.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OE AGRICULTURE: Now, the hon. Gentleman has made a distinct and definite accusation against my Department, and I will state the facts. He has stated in so many words that the Muzzling Order had been in force six months when the election was pending; that that Muzzling Order was withdrawn two days before. Now, as the hon. Gentleman has made this charge I wish to answer it. The charge is so ridiculous that I think it only fair to myself to state what actually happened. The Papers from my Department came forward to me in the ordinary course, informing me that the Muzzling Order had run its full course in Devonshire, that the disease had been exterminated, and that the time had come when the Order must be rescinded. It was suggested to me at the time that a charge like the one which has now been made—and which I call a most unworthy charge—would possibly be made. I said, that if such a charge be made, it will not be necessary for a man in my position to condescend to answer it.
  MR. LAMBERT: Well, it was a very curious coincidence that when the election was going on in Plymouth a letter came down from the right hon. Gentleman, to a Unionist Member in Devonshire, to state that the Order would be withdrawn. He defied the right hon. Gentleman to contradict that.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: Was it while the election was going on?
  MR. LAMBERT: Yes.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: An hon. Friend—I think it was one of the Members for Devonport—wrote to me asking when the Muzzling Order was to be withdrawn. I wrote to him as soon as the Order was out, and with no more regard to the Plymouth election than I had to the elections in Maidstone and Berks, in

  1769
  both of which districts the Order was in force.
  MR. LAMBERTsaid the right hon. Gentleman had risen twice to interrupt him on a question of fact, and he maintained that he had not contradicted in one single particular any statement he had made. He said, and repeated distinctly, that while the Plymouth election was going on a letter came from the right hon. Gentleman, addressed to a Unionist Member in Devonshire, telling that Unionist Member that the Muzzling Order would be withdrawn.
  *THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: I have not charged my memory with the facts, but, was it not the case that this rescinding of the Order was made on the last day of the Plymouth election? If my serves me, the election took place on the next day.
  MR. S. F. MENDL: To the best of my recollection it was two days before the election.
  MR. LAMBERTsaid he did not wish to pursue the subject, because the right hon. Gentleman was in a fog, and did not know when the Order was withdrawn. He would say this, that the rigid, hon. Gentleman began the controversy himself by saying this question was used in many bye-elections. It was used, undoubtedly, to make bye-elect ions go for the Liberal Party. The right hon. Gentleman also said he had had statistics of dogs that were exempted from having to pay licences under the name of sheep-dogs. He said there were sheepdog exemptions granted to mastiffs, retrievers, pugs, and setters. He could not help thinking some inspector might be playing a joke upon the right hon. Gentleman. No man in his senses would have imagined that retrievers or setters, or pugs or mastiffs, could have been used for any such purpose as driving sheep. [The PRESIDENT of the BOARD
  1770
  of AGRICULTURE: I never said so.] All he could say was that if they were not used for driving sheep they were not entitled to the exemption. Some one had not done his duty. Either the inspector had been playing a practical joke, or the Excise officers in the country had not done their duty. He did not believe the Excise officers were such fools as to take a mastiff or a retriever for a sheep-dog. It was one of the most ridiculous things he ever heard in his life. The right hon. Gentleman had been asked other questions. Many of them wanted to know what was a public place, but the right hon. Gentleman said, "I am not here to answer conundrums of that description." But he was the legislator in this matter. He made laws, and they had to obey them. They wanted to know what was in his mind when he defined a public Place. They wanted to know whether a public-house was a public place. The right hon. Gentleman put those conundrums for them to answer in the country. They had to answer them or be hauled up before a magistrate, and he thought it would be better if a definition of a public place were given. He most strongly protested against the system of muzzling which had been enforced, and which had allowed the rich man's sporting dogs to escape, but not the working farmer's sheep-dogs, and it was to raise his voice in this protest that he had addressed the House.
  MR. W. LUCAS-SHADWELLsaid he wanted to say a few words on the question of the Muzzling Order. He was disposed to think that if it had been made universal throughout the country it would have done much more good than it had done at the present time. At any rate, there was a strong feeling in the constituency which he represented upon this question. The Town Council of Hastings had, he believed, petitioned the Board of Agriculture to withdraw the Order in Hastings. It had been enforced there for a considerable period, and, in the opinion of the local authorities, the time

  1771
  had come for it to be withdrawn. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would consider the recommendations of local authorities in this matter.
  The Motion, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," was then put and agreed to.

  SUPPLY.
  Considered in Committee.
  Mr. J. W. LOWTHER, CHAIRMAN of WAYS AND MEANS in the Chair.
  (In the Committee.)
  CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES.

  SUPPLY.

    CLASS I.
    Motion made, and Question proposed—
    "That a sum, not exceeding £46,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come
    1772
    in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1899, for Expenditure in respect of Royal Palaces and Marlborough House."
    Whereupon Motion made, and Question put, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
    Motion agreed to; Committee report Progress; To sit again on Monday.

  SHERIFFS DEPUTE TENURE OF OFFICE (SCOTLAND) (ANNUITY).
  Resolution reported—
  "That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of the Consolidated Fund, of an annuity to any Sheriff who may be removed from office under the provisions of any Act of the present Session to amend the Law in regard to the Tenure of Office of Sheriffs in Scotland, such annuity not to exceed three-tenths of the salary payable to such Sheriff."
  Resolution agreed to.
  House adjourned at 10.45.

ROYAL ASSENT.
THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS [The LORD CHANCELLOR (the Earl of Halsbury), the Earl of HOPETOUN, and the LORD PRIVY SEAL (Viscount Cross)] assembled at Three of the Clock, when the Royal Assent was given to the following Bills—

1. Greek Loan.

2. Public Buildings (Expenses).

THE LORD CHANCELLOR took his Seat on the Woolsack at a Quarter-past Four of the clock.

PRIVATE BILLS.
  WIRRALL RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
  A Petition of John Kennedy, of 25, Abingdon Street, Westminster, Parliamentary Agent, praying for leave to present a Petition of the Mersey Railway Company praying to be heard by counsel against the Bill, although the time limited by Standing Order No. XCII. for presenting such Petition has expired; Read, and ordered to lie on the Table; and Standing Order No. XCII. to be considered on Tuesday next in order to its being dispensed with in respect to the said Petition.
  BAKEWELL GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Reported with Amendments.
  MORLEY CORPORATION GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Amendments made; Passed, and sent to Commons.
  SAINT MATTHEW, BETHNAL GREEN, BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Passed, and sent to Commons.
  MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BOARD (NEW WORKS) BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Passed, and sent to Commons.
  YEOVIL CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Passed, and sent to Commons.
  FOLKESTONE GAS BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Passed, and sent to Commons.
  SOUTH EASTERN RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Passed, and sent to Company.
  MARIANAO AND HAVANA RAILWAY COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
  Read third time; Passed, and sent to Commons.
  LANCASHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL.
  Read third time, and passed.
  WRITERS TO THE SIGNET WIDOWS FUND BILL.
  Read third time, and passed.
  CITY AND SOUTH LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
  Brought from Commons; Read first time, and referred to Examiners.
  NORTHAM URBAN DISTRICT WATER BILL.
  Brought from Commons; Read first time, and referred to Examiners.
  NORTH WARWICKSHIRE WATER BILL.
  Brought from Commons; Read first time, and referred to Examiners.
  ST. DAVID'S RAILWAY BILL.
  Brought from Commons; Read first time, and referred to Examiners.
  SPECIAL JURIES BILL.
  Returned from Commons with Amendments agreed to.
RETURNS, ETC.
  INDIA (FAMINE).
  Further Papers regarding the famine relief operations in India in 1896–97; Presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table.
  AGRARIAN OFFENCES (PROVINCES) (IRELAND).
  Return for the year ended 31st December, 1897; Presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  INDIA (LOANS RAISED IN ENGLAND).
  Return of all loans raised in England under the provisions of any Acts of Parliament chargeable on the revenues of India outstanding at the commencement of the half-year ended on the 31st March, 1898, with the rates of interest and total amount payable thereon, etc.
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  ALKALI, ETC., WORKS REGULATION ACTS, 1881 AND 1882.
  Thirty-fourth Annual Report on alkali, etc., works, by the Chief Inspector, during the year 1897.
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  STATUTE LAW REVISION BILL. [H.L.]
  House in Committee according to order; Amendments proposed by Joint Committee made; Then Standing Orders Nos. XXXIX. and XLV. considered (according to order), and dispensed with; Amendments reported; Bill read third time; Passed, and sent to Commons.

  IRISH CHURCH ESTATE.
  THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: My Lords, I beg to move for a Return, in tabular form, showing the financial position of the Irish Church Estate at 31st March 1897, in the following respects—
  (a) INCOME OR REVENUE.
  1. Nature or description of each source of income (classifying the several sources as permanent, terminable, or miscellaneous revenue);
  2. Annual income receivable therefrom (as distinguished from actual receipts);
  3. Statutory price at which same may be sold or redeemed;
  4. Estimated capital value of each source of income at 31st March, 1897, at the statutory price thereof.
  (b) LIABILITIES AND CHARGES.
  5. Nature or decription of each liability or charge created by Irish Church Act of 1869, and subsequent Statutes (specifying the Statute which created same);
  6. Original capital value of each such liability, where same consisted of a loan or advances made on the security of the estate;
  7. Rate of interest charged for same;
  8. Sinking fund for repayment of each such capital charge;
  9. Normal annuity (including interest and sinking fund) payable for same;
  10. Date when each capital charge was (or under normal conditions will be) extinguished;
  11. Amount of each capital charge outstanding at 31st March, 1897;
  12. Estimated annual amount of other or miscellaneous expenditure.
  I do not intend to trespass at any length on your Lordships' time. I hope I shall be able to prove, in the very few words which I propose to address to you, that my Motion is really of a very simple character. It is a sequel to a very

  1621
  important Debate which took place in your Lordships' House in July last, and which, I have no doubt, is still green in the memories of those of your Lordships who take an interest in Irish affairs. The Debate to which I allude was inaugurated by Lord Belmore, who has always been identified with questions of tithe rent-charge in Ireland, and I regret that such an expert as he should not, on the present occasion, be occupying my place. But, as he is prevented from being present today, and as we consider the question of importance as being a sequel to that Debate, he has asked me to move for the Returns which I have set forth on the Paper. The Debate to which I allude was one in which Lord Belmore moved that an Address be presented to Her Majesty to appoint a Royal Commission to report to what extent the payers of the Irish tithe rent-charge were entitled to a reduction. I am sure your Lordships, from the course that Debate took, fully realised the hardships under which the land-owning class in Ireland have suffered for many years past, and which are due not to any fault of their own, but to the various Acts of Parliament which the Legislature have considered themselves justified in passing. Consequently, it was with no surprise that we who listened to that Debate heard the various notes of sympathy which were rung by the various Members of Her Majesty's Government who took part in the Debate. On that occasion the Government were represented, in the first instance, by my noble Friend, Lord Denbigh, and he, on behalf of the Government, sympathised very sincerely with the wants and requirements of those who were represented by Lord Belmore. My noble and learned Friend below me, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, speaking with all the authority due to his great position in Ireland, and also as a leading Member of Her Majesty's Government, went so far as to say that Her Majesty's Government would, during the Recess, give every consideration to the views which had been put forward; and he held out every hope that, in the coming Session, the Government would introduce a Bill dealing with this question. I think that was, more or less, the effect of the remarks he made in the course of that Debate. Well, my Lords, we therefore consider, after his remarks, that the Government are now
  1622
  probably anxious to alleviate the hardships under which the land-owners and tithe rent-charge payers are at present suffering by introducing a Bill during the Session, but we think it is advisable that, when such a Bill is introduced, those who are interested in the question, and those who will have to carefully consider the details of such a Measure, should be in full possession of all the information in connection with the subject, and this information I have, in the absence of my noble Friend, moved for. My Lords, we think it is but fair that not only the Members of your Lordships' House who are connected with Ireland—not only the tithe rent-charge payers—but the British public should be in possession of these statistics. It may be said that a certain amount of information can be derived from the annual reports of the Irish Land Commission, but we maintain that the information is not sufficient at the present time. There has been no Parliamentary Return that has enabled the public to find out, and to judge for themselves, on three points—firstly, to what extent the Irish Church Estate is charged; secondly, how long those charges are likely to be outstanding; and, thirdly, how far the tithe rent-charge can be remitted without prejudicing the security of loans charged on that estate. We think, my Lords, that we have a right to ask for this information, and I cannot for a moment imagine that Her Majesty's Government will be reluctant to grant it. Another Member of Her Majesty's Government—no less a person than the Prime Minister himself, whom I trust we shall soon see restored to health and in his place again—speaking on a Debate which took place on the same subject, made a speech of an extremely symparthetic and friendly character. I do not wish to weary your Lordships by quoting that speech, but I think I am justified in saying that the Prime Minister sympathised very materially with the request that was put forward, and assured us that Her Majesty's Government would be very glad indeed to alleviate the sufferings of the land-owning classes, if such alleviation could be obtained without any call or any drain on the Imperial Exchequer. He added that Her Majesty's Government would be very glad to receive proposals from those who were interested in this question, and that they would

  1623
  carefully consider those proposals, so long as they did not involve any drain on the Imperial Exchequer. We should be very glad either to consider the Measure which we trust will be put forward, or to ourselves put forward proposals at the suggestion of the Prime Minister; but we maintain that we cannot put forward those proposals in a complete form unless we are furnished with the statistics and the Returns for which I am now moving. I will not trespass further on your time, my Lords, for it is with absolute confidence that I move the Motion which stands in my name.
  EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, in the absence of the noble Lord who generally answers for the Irish Office, I have been requested to inform the noble Marquess that the Government do not think it necessary to grant the Return, on the ground that almost all the information which he asks for will be found on page 103 of the last Annual Report of the Land Commission.
  THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: My Lords, may I be allowed to again trespass on your time for a few moments? I specially laid stress, in the remarks I made, upon the fact that a certain amount of information was given in the Report of the Irish Land Commission to which my noble Friend alludes, but no Parliamentary Return was given, and therefore the information given by the Land Commission was absolutely inadequate. I confess I am rather surprised and somewhat disappointed at the reply given by my noble Friend. It seems difficult to reconcile the statement of my noble and learned Friend below me (the Lord Chancellor of Ireland), and the advice given by the Prime Minister to consider our own proposals, and then submit them to Parliament, with the action of the Government through my noble Friend who has replied on their behalf. Perhaps the fact that this is the 1st of April has something to do with it. I cannot for a moment consider that they wish to change their views, but I am bound to say that I think the reply which my noble Friend has given to-day will not give satisfaction to those who had looked upon the statements in July with gratification. Owing
  1624
  to the adjournment of the House I shall not be in a position to raise this question again, but when the House resumes after Easter, when I hope the Prime Minister will be in his place, we shall ask him how he could imagine that we can initiate proposals on a very complicated question when the Returns, which we consider we are entitled to, and which are absolutely necessary for the formation of those proposals, are refused to us.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRELAND (Lord ASHBOURNE): My Lords, I do not think my noble Friend who has just spoken has done justice to the reply which my noble Friend has given on behalf of the Government. My noble Friend has asked for information showing the financial position of the Irish Church Estate at 31st March, 1897, and my noble Friend who has replied on behalf of the Treasury refers him to a certain page of the last Report of the Irish Land Commission, which is accessible to the world, and which must have been laid upon the Table of both Houses of Parliament. The Government are most anxious to give all the information asked for, and if my noble Friend refers to the page to which his attention has been directed, and then is able to point out any further information for which he can legitimately ask, the matter will be fairly considered.
  THE EARL OF MAYO: My Lords, I assure your Lordships that the passage in the Report has been referred to, and that it does not contain sufficient information to enable us to frame a Bill or a demand. You must remember the former history of this matter. First of all, Lord Belmore moved for a Royal Commission, and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor of Ireland informed us that the Government would very likely bring in a Bill. The noble Lord behind me (Lord Morris) said we ought to be perfectly satisfied with the answer of the Government when we were going to get a Bill. We cannot possibly frame a Bill without knowing the state of the accounts. Surely we are moving for a very simple thing. The Church Estate has been taken away from us, and, now that it is administered by the Government, we ask for a Return of the accounts

  1625
  of that estate. That is not very much to ask, but yet it is absolutely refused by Her Majesty's Government. We have referred to the Return of the Irish Land Commission and have gone most carefully into it, but we find in Dublin that it does not give the required information. That is why we move for this Return. As Her Majesty's Government have refused the Return, I quite agree with the noble Marquess behind me [the Marquess of Londonderry] that we shall raise the question again after Easter, and I hope the Prime Minister will then be in his place, and that he will afford us that sympathy which we evidently do not find on the Front Bench to-day.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRELAND: There is no desire to withhold sympathy or information. It is all a question of figures. It has not been suggested that the information in the Report of the Land Commission, to which my noble Friends have been referred, is in the slightest degree defective. If my noble Friend who has just spoken will point out any particulars in which the information is defective I will see if the proper information can be supplied to him.
  LORD MORRIS: My Lords, my noble Friend [the Marquess of Londonderry] has moved for certain Returns. As a general rule Returns are given upon the Motion of a noble Lord who, on his own responsibility, applies for them, unless there is some good reason to the contrary either that they are very expensive, or very difficult to obtain. As I understand it, the answer of my noble Friend who represents the Government is that the information can be got from a page of the Return of the Irish Land Commission. Well, my noble Friend below me [the Earl of Mayo] says the page referred to does not contain the information. I fail to see that there would be any difficulty in affording the information sought, because it appears substantially in the Report of the Land Commission. To refuse this Return leads one to think there must be an
  1626
  object in refusing it. Some of the Treasury authorities think the information is contained in another Report, but other people seem to hold a different opinion. That being so, why not grant the Return?
  *THE EARL OF ERNE: My Lords, it is very difficult for a layman to extract from the Report of the Land Commission the information required. I am informed that a man accustomed to collate these Returns could get the information in a short space of time. I am sure it would give satisfaction to many who are interested in this question, if the Government will reconsider their decision and grant the return asked for.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (The Earl of HALSBURY): Does the noble Marquess persist in his Motion?
  THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: I certainly do not propose to go to a Division, but I think I am justified in saying that when the Prime Minister returns we shall take another opportunity of calling attention to the matter. And then, if the Return be refused, much as we shall be sorry to vote against the Government, we shall certainly take the opinion of the House on the question.
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (The DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): It will be easy to inquire from the Treasury and the Irish Office whether there really is any necessity for an additional Return. I do not think the noble Earl [the Earl of Erne] improved the case for the granting of this Return. He said that anybody accustomed to collate these Returns could easily obtain from the Return referred to the information asked for. I suppose such assistance is within the reach of the noble Earl, and therefore there is no great necessity for incurring the expense of granting a Parliamentary Return.
  Motion withdrawn.

  PUPIL TEACHER SYSTEM.
  *LORD NORTON: My Lords, I beg most earnestly to call your Lordships' attention to the Departmental Report just published on the pupil teacher system. On the eve of Legislation promised by the noble Duke (the Lord President of the Council) after Easter on the subject of secondary education we find a Departmental Report issued from the Education Department, which clearly tends to promote the very thing which we all understand, and hope the noble Duke's Measure will counteract. The proposal of the Report to which I call attention is, in effect, to load elementary education more and more with secondary subjects. The proposal is to make secondary subjects, a part of elementary education, and to raise elementary to the standard of secondary instruction. There is a clear distinction between elementary education and secondary instruction, and the confusion which now exists is disastrous to both. It is very desirable that the one should be more distinguished from the other. Elementary education is the training, morally and intellectually, of children for all positions in life. Secondary instruction is required as apprenticeship by that portion of the working class who are going into higher kinds of employment. For instance, Manchester and a Wiltshire village do not require the same educational curriculum. They both require elementary education, but they do not both require the same kind of scientific and technical instruction; yet the recommendations of the Departmental Committee tend to make all education adopt a secondary nature. It is proposed by the Committee that the standard of age, qualification, and pay of all pupil teachers shall be raised to the secondary standard, and that they shall only be taken from secondary schools. As a matter of fact the best pupil teachers we have had have been trained in primary schools. This proposal actually puts pupil teachers out of the reach of the greater number of schools throughout the kingdom. If the age, qualification, and pay of pupil teachers are raised, as this Report proposes, the majority of schools will be unable to use them. The second proposal of the Committee is that no school is to have any pupil teacher which
  1628
  has less than two adult teachers in it. Well, that at once excludes from the employment of pupil teachers almost all the rural schools in the kingdom, and, lest those rural schools deprived of pupil teachers should make use of the cheaper kind of assistance provided for poor schools by Article LXVIII of the Code, the Report proposes to abolish Article LXVIII, so as to deprive them altogether of any kind of primary teaching. Most of our pupil teachers come from the artisan class, but under this Report poor parents will not be able to bring their children up as pupil teachers. If they are not to commence teaching until they are 18 years of age, few parents will be able to wait until then before their children become remunerative. Therefore pupil teachers will have to come from a higher class. That may be very desirable, but you must bear in mind that if the Report is carried out it will prevent poor parents bringing up their children as pupil teachers. The Report is most inconsistent on this subject. The Committee say that early training has made the best pupil teachers, and that early training is of great value in cultivating teaching power. The exact words of the Report are—
  "Some of the best materials for the teaching profession have been drawn from rural schools. It is of the highest importance to keep up the number of pupil teachers whose associations and interests attach them to rural life."
  That is a statement with which I entirely agree, but it is most inconsistent with the recommendations of the Committee. They say they want teachers of elementary schools to have a broader literary and a higher technical training. That is all very well for the higher schools, but not for the majority of primary schools. They say elsewhere—
  "The time has come when the original idea of training pupil teachers must give way to a higher standard."
  It was only the other day that Mr. Lyulph Stanley made a similar remark. He said that pupil teachers are an unworthy supply for the higher education now wanted. In fact the pupil teachers are intended to be thrown over altogether, and the teaching proposed is only applicable to the higher schools. Foreign countries are often held up for

  1629
  our imitation. I believe there is no argument so persuasive in either House as "see how much better foreign countries are doing than we are." It is an argument by which I am never attracted. I say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I would much prefer an English lad turned out on our system, bad as it is, than a German or a French lad. But I am sure we shall not be able to compete better with the schools of foreign countries by introducing confusion between elementary and technical instruction. There was a very valuable Yellow Book issued not long ago from the Education Department, called "A Special Report on Subjects of Education," in which the various systems in different countries are more or less described, and I observe that, in France the principle is laid down much more clearly than we have ever laid it down in this country with regard to elementary training. The object of elementary training is said to be to cultivate the heart, the intelligence, and the conscience; and I do not think that that has been borne in mind in the Report. I wish to call attention to another point in the Report with regard to training colleges. It is said that the training colleges are deficient in accommodation. By way of increasing the accommodation it was proposed that there should be a special set of training colleges for rural districts. I think that was a very sensible suggestion, but it was dropped in deference to certain witnesses, who said that these special training colleges would produce an inferior class of teachers. Contempt of manual labour is at the bottom of many of the suggestions in the Report. The object of the Report is to turn labourers into clerks, as if the main purpose for which we were sent into the world were to get into a higher social position. It is suggested by the Commissioners that the training colleges should be part of the University colleges. One would have thought that that was a very great step in advance, and the Commissioners themselves seem to be a little staggered in coming to that conclusion, but they state that at least they think the curriculum of the University colleges is not too high for the training of these teachers. They prefer day training colleges, but they allow that the want of supervision
  1630
  and discipline is a real objection, and they make a half-way-proposal that hostels should be attached to the University colleges, where the discipline of residential colleges might be united with the superior scientific lectures of day colleges. I would implore your Lordships to consider whether this is the line in which we hope the noble Duke (the Lord President of the Council) is going to carry out the proposals which we expect from him after Easter. I cannot help thinking myself, from the remarks he made the other day in the House, that this is not his view; on the contrary, that he would rather simplify, and make more adapted to its special purpose, the elementary education of the country, which would continue to be at the public expense; and that the secondary instruction which his Measure is intended to promote would not, as I understood him to say, be a national system undertaken by the State, but be in the nature of better organisation and aid to secondary and technical institutions, established all over the country by municipalities, private munificence, and in other ways, to meet the wants of different localities. In this the noble Duke showed the good sense which he always shows on every matter with which he deals. I trust that that will be the line, the noble Duke's Measure will take. I do not think I need trouble your Lordships further than to express the hope that before the Government scheme is brought on after Easter your Lordships will look carefully at this Report, which, though it appears to be connected only with the subject of the pupil teachers' system, involves a very great principle in the conduct of the whole system of national education in this country.
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL: My Lords, I am afraid it is quite impossible for me to undertake to follow my noble Friend in the criticisms which he has made on the Report of the Departmental Committee on the pupil teacher system, for the reason that it has not been in my power to give, up to the present, the full attention and consideration to that Report which evidently my noble Friend has given to it. I may say that it

  1631
  has not been necessary, up to the present time, that I should have given it that consideration. It was thought desirable that the Report of the Committee should be published without any delay, in order that it might be considered by the managers of schools, Board and Voluntary; by the teachers, and by the public generally, but there was no intention whatever of taking any action upon that Report until it had had that consideration. It would, I may point out to my noble Friend, be impossible to take any action upon it until the Code of 1899 is in course of preparation, and certainly no steps will be taken to carry out the recommendations in this Report until the opinions which may be expressed upon it by managers and others have been fully obtained and fully considered. Under these circumstances, and, as I have stated, having up to the present had no opportunity of making myself fully acquainted with the contents of the Report or the views upon it of the Vice-President of the Council, or any other advisers in the Education Department, I think I should be very unwilling either to express my assent or dissent to the criticisms which have fallen from my noble Friend, and to anticipate the decision which may be come to upon it by the Department, and ultimately by the Government. I must, however, say that I should be very sorry indeed to be supposed to accept, in whole or in part, the criticisms of my noble Friend. But, however much he may desire—and I have no doubt many of your Lordships desire—that an extremely hard and fast line should be drawn between elementary and secondary education, and that the line should be drawn at a somewhat low level, nevertheless, the fact remains that the training of the teachers is at the present time, and always must be, to a considerable extent, of a secondary character. It is essential to any efficient system of education that the teachers should possess a somewhat more advanced knowledge, even in the elementary subjects which they teach, than that which they are expected to impart. Therefore, I cannot admit that the recommendations of the Committee for enabling pupil teachers and the candidates for teacherships to obtain something in the nature of secondary education would necessarily tend to raise the standard of elementary teaching in
  1632
  general beyond that level which it ought to attain. With this protest and this explanation, and for the reason that I do not propose, on the present occasion, to follow my noble Friend in his criticism of the Report, I must add that I do not think that this would be a convenient opportunity for anticipating any statement which I may have to make at a later period of the Session in regard to the subject of secondary education.
  *EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I hope the deep interest which, for more than 50 years I have taken in elementary, and for more than 40 years in secondary, education, and the time and labour I have bestowed upon them, may plead my excuse in detaining your Lordships with a very few words on the present occasion. The noble Duke, the Lord President of the Council, said he contemplated that the publication of the Departmental Committee's Report would be the means of eliciting the opinions of managers of Board and Voluntary schools on the subject. The Committee seems to me to have been of a rather one-sided character. There were plenty of inspectors and headmasters and mistresses of training colleges upon it, but there was not a single manager to represent either the interests of Board or Voluntary schools and to give the benefit of practical experience of the working of these schools. One thing this Committee's Report has done—namely, to confirm and corroborate the evidence previously abundantly existing as to the chaotic state into which the question of education has been drifting. We find that algebra, physiology, botany, chemistry—not astronomy, though that may be taught with the sanction of the Department—French and German, Latin, and even Hebrew in various cases, are taught in what are called elementary schools. The line drawn is not between elementary and secondary schools, but between the latter and the great Universities of the country. It is that utter absence of any division between elementary and secondary education which has been stigmatised over and over again by those who are most conversant with, and are the best authorities on, education as most disastrous to both. It truly seems a mystery,

  1633
  now that education is State und rate-paid, that well-to-do parents should, at the expense of the ratepayers and taxpayers, get instruction in these really advanced subjects imparted to their children gratuitously, instead of access being given freely to secondary schools by scholarships to those poor children who are capable of turning the instruction to good account. I am glad the noble Duke has not committed himself to introduce all the recommendations contained in the Report of the Departmental Committee, and that he wishes to collect the opinions of those best qualified to give opinions on the subject. More than 30 years ago I referred to the great advantage of those wishing to become pupil teachers and schoolmasters mixing, up to a certain degree, with other students destined for different callings, and I am glad to see that this Report takes a similar view. It seems to me that this recommendation is one which may be very advantageously adapted. The Report says—
  "The intellectual horizon of the pupil teachers now in the training colleges is contracted by associating in their studies exclusively with those who are preparing for the same calling."
  That is very much what I advocated 30 years ago. Then I cannot see why pupil teachers, the great majority of whom are drawn from the wage-earning class, should cost, in the training colleges, £10 to £20 a year more than is paid by independent persons of the middle-classes for their children, in schools where they get, as tested by the local examinations of the Universities, a first-class education. I have again and again protested against the needless expensiveness of the training colleges, and their exclusive devotion to those who are destined for one particular calling. I apologise for troubling your Lordships, and I conclude by expressing my satisfaction that the Government is not committed to the recommendations of the Departmental Committee.
  The subject then dropped.

  RUSSIA AND THE FAR EAST.
  THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (Viscount CROSS): My Lords, I rise to move that this House, at its rising, do adjourn till Tuesday, at Three o'clock. I understand
  1634
  that it is the desire of both Houses that some statement should be made as to affairs in the Far East by the Government about the same time. In the other House there are some preliminary matters to be gone through before the statement can be made, and it is thought that Three o'clock will be a better hour for your Lordships to meet than Two o'clock, as previously arranged.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: I do not think there can be any objection to the time being altered to Three o'clock.
  Motion agreed to.
  House adjourned at 5.30.