Sitting of 29 June 1899

PRIVATE BILLS [Lords].
(Standing Orders not previously inquired into complied with.)
MR. SPEAKER MR. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.:—

GLASGOW AND SOUTH-WESTERN RAILWAY BILL [Lords].
Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.

PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS [Lords.]
(Standing Orders applicable thereto complied with.)
MR. SPEAKER MR. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—

ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 10) BILL [Lords].
Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time To-morrow.
EDINBURGH CORPORATION BILL.
  WETHERBY DISTRICT WATER BILL.
  Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
AIRDRIE AND COATBRIDGE WATER BILL [Lords].
  BRISTOL GAS BILL [Lords].

    DUNDEE GAS, STREET IMPROVEMENTS, AND TRAMWAYS BILL. [Lords].
    GAINSBOROUGH URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL (GAS) BILL [Lords].
    Read the third time and passed, with Amendments.

WICK AND PULTENEY HARBOURS BILL [Lords].
Queen's consent signified,—read the third time and passed, with Amendments.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.
As amended, considered; read the third time, and passed.

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE TRAMWAYS AND IMPROVEMENT BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee on Police and Sanitary Regulations Bills, with Amendments.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

PRIVATE BILLS (GROUP K).
COLONEL GUNTERreported from the Committee on Group K of Private Bills, That, in order to meet the convenience of parties, they had adjourned till Monday next, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
Report to lie upon the Table.

STANDING ORDERS.
Resolution reported from the Committee: "That, in the case of the Birmingham, North Warwickshire, and Stratford-upon-Avon Railway Bill [Lords], the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to proceed with their Bill, provided that Clause 24 be struck out of the Bill, unless it be proved to the satisfaction of the Committee on the Bill that the said clause has been submitted to a meeting of the proprietors of the Great Western Railway Company, held in accordance with the requirements of Standing Order 64:—That the Committee on the Bill do report how far such Order has, been complied with."
Resolution agreed to.

PETITIONS.

  GROUND RENTS (TAXATION BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES).
  Petitions in favour:—From Orrell, Croydon, Llandanwg, Stretford, Whitby,

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  Swinton and Pendlebury, Rawtenstall, and Haslingden; to lie upon the Table.

  MINES (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  Petitions in favour:—From Dowlais (nine), Gorllwyn Level, Dyllas (two), British Rhondda, Lower Duffryn, Aberdare, Nantmelyn, Llethyshinkin and Nantwen Collieries; to lie upon the Table.
  ROMAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY IN IRELAND.
  Petition from Dublin against establishment; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  Petition from Rochester, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, &c
  RAILWAY ABANDONMENT.
  Copy presented, of Report by the Board of Trade respecting Clyde Navigation Bill and the objects thereof [pursuant to Standing Order 158A]; referred to the Committee on the Bill.
  EAST INDIA (RAILWAYS).
  Copy presented, of Administration Report on the Railways in India for 1898–9, by A. Brereton, esquire, Director of Railway Traffic and Statistics [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EAST INDIA (FINANCIAL STATEMENT, 1899–1900).
  Return presented relative thereto [Address 19th May; Sir Henry Fowler]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 254.]
  Copy presented of Correspondence relating to Recent Land Legislation in Ceylon [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  Copy presented of Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Deputy Master of the Mint, 1898 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  PAPERS LAID UPON THE TABLE BY THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE.
  1. Lunacy.—Copy of Fifty-third Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor, with Appendix [by Act]; to be printed. [No. 255.]
  2. Public Records (War Department).—Copy of Fifth Schedule of Documents (War Department) which are not considered of sufficient public value to justify their preservation in the Public Record Office [by Act].
  3. Charitable Endowments (London).—Further Return relative thereto [ordered 2nd August, 1894; Mr. Francis Stevenson]; to be printed. [No. 256.]

  STANDING COMMITTEES (CHAIRMEN'S PANEL).
  Mr. Arthur O'Connor reported from the Chairmen's Panel: That they had appointed Sir James Fergusson to act as Chairman of the Standing Committee for the consideration of Bills relating to Law, and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, in the place of Mr. Stuart-Wortley.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

  SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).
  Mr. Halsey reported from the Committee of Selection: That they had discharged the following Member from the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, Mr. Mount; and had appointed in substitution, Mr. Talbot.
  Mr. Halsey further reported from the Committee: That they had added to the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure, the following fifteen Members in respect of the Board of Education Bill [Lords]: Sir William Anson, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Bryce, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Channing, Sir Joint Gorst, Mr. Gray, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Brynmor Jones, Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth, Mr. Grant Lawson, Mr. Herbert Lewis, Colonel Lockwood, Colonel Williams, and Mr. Yoxall.
  Mr. Halsey further reported from the Committee: That they had appointed the following Member to the Standing Committee on Trade (including Agriculture and Fishing), Shipping, and Manufactures: Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Mr. Halsey further reported from the Committee: That they had added to the Standing Committee on Trade (includ

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  ing Agriculture and Fishing), Shipping, and Manufactures, the following fifteen Members in respect of the Telegraphs (Telephonic Communication, etc.) Bill: Mr. Bartley, Mr. Faithfull Begg, Mr. Griffith-Boscawen, Sir Charles Cameron, Mr. Cawley, Mr. Thomas Curran, Mr. Lewis Fry, Mr. Hanbury, Mr. Lough, Mr. Charles M'Arthur, Mr. Nichol, Mr. John Redmond, Mr. Strutt, Mr. Alfred Thomas, and Sir James Woodhouse.
  Reports to lie upon the Table.

  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have agreed to—
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 8) BILL.
    BELFAST AND NORTHERN COUNTIES RAILWAY BILL.
    Without Amendment.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL.
    SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE STIPENDIARY JUSTICE BILL.

      FISHGUARD WATER AND GAS BILL.
      With Amendments.
      Amendments to—

  COLONIAL AND FOREIGN BANKS GUARANTEE FUND BILL [Lords].
  Without Amendment.
  That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm a Provisional Order made by the Education Department under the Elementary Education Acts, 1870 to 1893, to enable the School Board for London to put in force the Lands Clauses Acts." [Education Department Provisional Order Confirmation (London) Bill [Lords].
  And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the Corporation of Wolverhampton to construct tramways and street improvements, and to make further provision in regard to tramways in and in the neighbourhood of Wolverhampton, and in regard to the electric lighting and water undertakings of the Corporation and the finance of the borough, and for other purposes." [Wolverhampton Corporation Bill [Lords].

  EDUCATION DEPARTMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (LONDON) BILL [Lords].
  Read 1a; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 253.]
  WOLVERHAMPTON CORPORATION BILL [Lords].
  Read the first line; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  QUESTIONS.

    MILITIA OFFICERS' COMMISSIONS.
    GENERAL LAURIE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether the two officers of Militia Infantry and the officer of Militia Engineers appointed to commissions in the Royal Garrison Artillery, as published in the London Gazette of 13th inst., have passed educational tests and have gone through a course of professional training equal in all respects to the tests and the course of training required from cadets who attend a two years' course of instruction at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich; whether an open competitive examination was held; whether these candidates passed highest on the list; whether, if they have not passed such educational tests, seeing that such qualifications have been considered absolutely necessary in order that the Royal Artillery may retain its high state of efficiency, he will explain on what grounds these officers have been appointed; and whether these three gentlemen thus appointed to commissions on the 13th instant will be retained as senior on the list of officers to the forty-one cadets who have gone through the course of training at the Royal Military Academy and form the graduating class who after due examination were recommended for commissions on the 24th instant.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. WYNDHAM,): The officers referred to had not passed an open competitive examination; but they had been through a course of professional training sufficient to qualify them for the posts to which they have been appointed. As the Royal Military Academy cannot at present supply suit-

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    cient officers to meet the recent enlargement of the Royal Artillery, it was necessary to look elsewhere; and these officers were carefully selected, with reference to the training they had gone through and the schools they had passed.

    CHANNEL ISLANDS MILITIA.
    MAJOR RASCH: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether the attention of the War Office has been called to the repeated acts of insubordination in the Guernsey Militia during May and June; if, on parade, on 22nd May, they hooted their Adjutant (Captain Pym), and refused to obey orders; whether, on 19th May, a triumphal procession was organised to receive the men imprisoned for insubordination on their release from gaol by the battalion; if, on 19th June, a resolution to return to duty was proposed and negatived by an enormous majority of the North Regiment; whether the Sark Artillery consists of two officers, including the surgeon, and no non-commissioned officers or men; if their guns are dismounted and the gun-carriages were sold at a bazaar; whether the cost of the Channel Islands Militia amounts to £6,900 per annum; and what is the object of retaining them on the Army List.
    MR. WYNDHAM: We have received the following telegram from the general officer commanding:
    "22nd May.—Hooting untrue, all drilled well under C.O., but Adjutant's order to dismiss disobeyed.
    "19th May.—Believe some friends with instruments met released prisoners when approaching homes.
    "20th June.—At a meeting of men's employers some votes for, large majority against resolution to continue drills, but parish constables have since reported that many in favour withheld hands and that large majority wish to finish drills."
    There are two officers belonging to the Sark Artillery, but neither men nor armament; nothing is known of the sale referred to. The total cost of the Channel Islands Militia is shown at page 232 of the Army Estimates as £27,300, of which, however, £5,530 is for non-effective charges. The best mode of dealing with the Channel Islands Militia is under the consideration of the Secretary of State.

    WEI HAI-WEI GARRISON.
    SIR J. COLOMB: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War to explain the apparent discrepancies between his statement and the figures on page 22 of the Army Estimates as to the constitution of the garrison at Wei-hai-wei; whether there is to be at that place one company of Chinese artillery and six companies of Chinese infantry, as stated by him, or five companies of Chinese infantry and no local garrison artillery, as stated in the Estimates; and if the proposed constitution of the garrison at Wei-hai-wei has been changed and. augmented since the Army Estimates were ordered to be printed on 22nd February last, what is now proposed to be the numerical strength of the garrison, and when and why was such alteration made; and whether he can give any assurance that there will be no further increase in number or cost of military forces to be locked up at Wei-hai-wei.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The figures given in my statement correctly give the approved garrison of Wei-hai-wei. Those shown at page 22 of the Estimates represent, as stated in the footnote, that portion of the garrison which we expected to raise during the current year. There is no present intention of augmenting the approved garrison.
    SIR J. COLOMB: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether the Army Estimates of last year provided for an excess of garrison artillery and infantry over the War Office scale of requirements of garrisons at home and abroad; if not, how is it proposed to provide the one company of garrison artillery and 2/8 battalion of infantry for Wei-hai-wei without creating a corresponding deficiency elsewhere, having regard to the fact that this year's Army Estimates show that no increase has been made to the infantry, and that only seventeen (all ranks) have been added to the garrison artillery since last year.
    MR. WYNDHAM: The two companies of British infantry required for Wei-hai-wei will be provided by the battalion at Hong Kong, their place being taken by native troops. As some time must elapse before the defences of Wei-hai-wei can be completed, there is no immediate necessity for deciding the source from which the garrison company

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    will be drawn, but the alterations about to be made in the armament of our foreign stations will, it is hoped, release a certain number of garrison artillerymen.

    DINGWALL AND THE SEAFORTH HIGHLANDERS.
    MR. HEDDERWICK: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether the War Office have received a petition from the magistrates and Town Council of Dingwall praying for the establishment of a depot for the 3rd battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders at Dingwall; and, whether any sum out of the moneys to be appropriated under the Military Loans Bill will be allocated for this object; if not, whether the War Office will at least consider the propriety of enlarging the building in Dingwall now occupied by the staff of the battalion mentioned, so as to accommodate the whole of the staff instead of one-third only, as at present.
    MR. WYNDHAM: A resolution of the Town Council of Dingwall, of the 23rd March last, was duly received, and replied to on the 5th of April. The Secretary of State sees no reason for altering the decision already expressed to the House on more than one occasion during this session, and no sum has been appropriated towards the barracks at Dingwall under the Military Works Loans Bill.

    THE ARMY TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION.
    MR. HEDDERWICK: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War whether it is intended to provide, in the new barracks which the Government purpose to erect, properly equipped rooms for the members of the Army Temperance Association.
    MR. WYNDHAM: I will make a statement upon this point when the Military Works Bill is before the House.

    COMMANDS AT NAVAL BASES.
    SIR J. COLOMB: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War to state the names of the Naval bases and coaling stations at which officers of other arms of the service, previously in command, have been superseded in that command by conferring upon the officers of Royal Engineers, junior to them, local rank, on the ground that important building works necessitating heavy expenditure of public
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    money are under consideration, and that the senior officer should therefore belong to the Royal Engineers; and, further, state to what arms of the service the officers thus superseded in command at each place respectively belonged.
    MR. WYNDHAM: There is no case other than that at Esquimalt. The reasons for the action then taken were explained in my answer of the 12th May to the hon. Member for Kincardineshire.

    CANTEEN AND MESS CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY, LIMITED.
    MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office, is he aware that the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society, Limited, is under the management of a number of officers on the active list, and that the Society enters into competition with the regular traders seeking business amongst the canteens in Great Britain and Ireland; and is it in accordance with the Queen's Regulations that these officers should hold the positions which they do in this society; and, if not, will they be called upon to retire from the society.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Mr. J. POWELLWILLIAMS,): The Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society is a provident society formed for the purpose of obtaining and distributing the supplies sold to the troops in the regimental canteens. It has been decided that it is not a "company" within the terms of the Queen's Regulations to which the hon. Member refers, and it is not held that officers on the full-pay list are prohibited from serving on the Committee.
    MR. FLYNN: Is it the fact that this provident society pays a dividend of 4 or 5 per cent.? Is it fair, under these circumstances, that it should compete with ordinary tradesmen of the country?
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: The dividend is limited to 5 per cent., and the society is not carried on, therefore, for profit. Those who found the capital for it cannot receive more than 5 per cent., and anything earned beyond that goes to the benefit of others.
    MR. FLYNN: I shall call attention to the position held by these officers.
    CAPTAIN DONELAN: Are not the headquarters of this society located in London?
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: Yes.
    CAPTAIN DONELAN: Has it any business establishment in Ireland?
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: I do not think it has any separate establishment in Ireland. Its agencies are to be found throughout the kingdom.
    Mr. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office if he can state how many Officers of the Army Service Corps, interested directly, or as shareholders indirectly, in the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society (Limited), are employed as inspectors of rations, and in this capacity have the passing or the rejection of supplies from this Society in which they are so interested.
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: Only two officers of the Army Service Corps are employed in the inspection of canteen supplies, and neither of them has any interest, either direct or indirect, in the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society.
    MR. FLYNN: Did not one of these two gentlemen go to Cork to inspect the tenders for the last contract?
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: The hon. Member is under a misapprehension; I suppose he refers to an officer named King. It is not the same man.
    MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office in reference to the contract for the supply of all groceries, provisions, and household sundries to the Cork Military District recently given to the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society, whether one at least of the officers on the board which decided the contract was formerly a member of the committee of management of the society; whether the board was advised in regard to the contract by an officer who came specially from London to advocate the claim of the Canteen and Mess Society; and has this officer any pecuniary interest in taking this action.
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: Of the seven officers who composed the board which adjudicated upon the tenders for canteen supplies in the Cork district one had, in 1896, served, as
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    representative of Aldershot, on the Committee of Management of the Canteen and Mess Co-operative Society, but he never had any pecuniary interest in the society. Captain King, who as inspector of canteen supplies attends, when available, all boards on district contracts for the supply of canteens, attended the board on the occasion referred to, but he has no interest, either direct or indirect, in the Canteen and Mess Co-operative. Society, and is in no way connected with its management.
    MR. FLYNN: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this Co-operative Society were given the contract in the Cork district at prices in excess of those quoted by a local firm, a list of which I can supply privately?
    MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: I should be glad to see the list to which the hon. Member refers, as my information absolutely contradicts that statement.

    POONA DISTURBANCES—THE NATU BROTHERS.
    MR. DAVITT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if the Natu brothers are still imprisoned as a consequence of the late disturbances at Poona; if he can state where they are confined and how they are treated; whether in the trials of the men who have been executed for the murder of a British officer any evidence of any kind implicating the Natus was given; and whether if the Government of India does not see its way to release men who are imprisoned without trial, an opportunity will be given to them to prove their innocence before some tribunal.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord G. HAMILTON,): The Natus are not imprisoned, but restraints upon their liberty of movement continue to be imposed for the reason stated by me in this House on the 21st of April, 1898, and on other occasions—namely, that the Government of Bombay is not yet satisfied that public tranquillity and order will not be endangered by their withdrawal. The Sardars are living in the district of Belgaum, subject to no restrictions except the disability to leave that district. The Natus are not charged with abetment of the murder referred to, and the answer to the third clause of the question is in the

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    negative. As regards the continuance of their detention under Regulation 25, 1827, which is only applicable in cases where judicial proceedings are not deemed advisable, I have already stated in this House that I do not propose to interfere with the discretion of the Government of Bombay, who are primarily responsible for the maintenance of order and tranquillity in their province.
    MR. DAVITT: May I ask the noble Lord whether, as these two gentlemen are British subjects, they ought not to have a fair trial?
    (No answer was given.)

    MECCA PILGRIMAGES.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will communicate to the House copies of the Notes which have been addressed to the Porte by Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople, demanding pecuniary compensation on behalf of Mohammedan British subjects who have been outraged between Jeddah and the cities of Mecca and Medina when performing religious duties in the Hedjaz; and whether, as seven years have elapsed since the attention of the Porte was called to the inability of the Governor-General of Turkish Arabia to protect pilgrims from murder, outrage, and plunder, Her Majesty's Government will now join the Government of the Netherlands in making renewed representations to his Imperial Majesty the Sultan on the subject of the safe conduct of British and Dutch subjects whilst travelling on the highways and turnpike roads in Arabia on a visit to the Mohammedan shrines.
    THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. BRODRICK,): It is true that in 1892 Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople represented strongly to the Porte the need of measures to prevent attacks by Bedouins on British Indian pilgrims, and orders were then issued for their adoption. But further representations have been made since then on the insecurity of the Mecca and Medina roads. In October, 1896, Sir P. Currie sent a Note to the Porte on the subject again. In February of this year Sir N. O'Conor called their attention to robberies committed in the Hedjez
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    between 1892 and 1898, and presented a note verbal on the claims of British Indian subjects for compensation. I shall be happy to show these notes, if desired, to the hon. Member, but do not propose to lay them on the Table of the House.

    THE TRANSVAAL -THE KILLING OF MR. EDGAR.
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on what grounds the demand for compensation for the widow of Edgar was based.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN,): On the ground that Edgar was killed without justification by an officer of the Government of the South African Republic.
    MR. DAVITT: Did not the jury acquit the officer of the charge of murder, and find that Edgar made an attack upon him with a loaded stick?
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think that is quite accurate. The jury acquitted him, but I do not think they made any finding to the effect stated by the hon. Member.

    NEGOTIATIONS WITH PRESIDENT KRUGER.
    MR. J. M. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether Sir Alfred Milner has been instructed to accept, as a basis for further negotiations, any proposals made by President Kruger for the enfranchisement of the Uitlanders which are in advance of the terms offered by the President at Bloemfontein.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I have already stated that Her Majesty's Government are awaiting the receipt of despatches reporting the proceedings of the Conference before further instructions are given to the High Commissioner. No proposals other than those made at the Conference have up to the present time been communicated to the High Commissioner.

    MR. HOFMEYR.
    MR. J. M. MACLEAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether he has received any information concerning the statement, telegraphed yesterday from Cape Town, that Mr.

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    Hofmeyr has publicly protested against the policy pursued by the Colonial Office in its correspondence with the Government of the South African Republic. Before putting this question I wish to point out that an alteration has been made in the question as handed in at the Table. This alteration has enlarged the scope of my inquiry very much and has made it inapplicable to Mr. Hofmeyr's position. It has never been suggested that Mr. Hofmeyr is hostile to the enfranchisement of the Uitlanders, which commands everyone's approval, but merely that he has criticised very freely the tone of the right hon. Gentleman's despatches on matters of detail.
    MR. SPEAKER: The question was submitted at the Table with a qualifying adjective in front of the word "policy," which was struck out with my consent and approbation as being contrary to the rules of the House.
    MR. J. M. MACLEAN: My only desire, Sir, is to point out that the alteration has so enlarged the scope of the question that as it stands on the Paper it is not fair to Mr. Hofmeyr.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: In whatever form the question is put, the answer is in the negative.

    TRANSVAAL FRANCHISE.
    MR. C. P. SCOTT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can state approximately what number of electors qualified to vote for the First Raad would be added to the Transvaal electorate if ill the Outlanders who could obtain the franchise under the amended franchise law proposed by Mr. Kruger were to be enrolled; and whether he is aware that Mr. Kruger, in his speech at Rustenburg on 25th March, estimated that 30,000 new burghers would be added to the existing 40,000 by an even smaller change than that now proposed by him.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I am unable to give information, but I am making inquiries. President Kruger in the speech referred to is reported to have said that if the period for Uitlanders obtaining the franchise were reduced from fourteen years to nine years there would be—presumably, at the end of that period—70,000burghers, and to have said that now there are 30,000 or 40,000 burghers. This calcula-
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    tion, in any case, can only be a hypothetical estimate, and it must be observed that whatever might be the number of new burghers the representation allotted to them under Sir A. Milner's proposal would not exceed one-fifth of the members of the First Raad.

    SIERRA LEONE.
    SIR BENJAMIN STONE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies when the Report on the subject of the rebellion in Sierra Leone will be presented to the House.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I hope to be in a position to present the Report next week. I very much regret that the Report has been so long delayed. It is in no way the fault of the Colonial Office. It had to be submitted to the Governor for his observations. Both the Report and his reply were extremely voluminous, and I have had to consider them carefully in order to come to a decision on a great number of contested and complicated questions.

    WEST AFRICAN SPIRIT DUTIES.
    SIR MARK STEWART: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the minimum tariff on spirits imported into West Africa has been raised to 80 francs per hectolitre; and, if not, what is the exact amount in francs decided upon by the Brussels Conference as the minimum duty, and also what is the exact duty to be levied in Togoland and Dahomey, also in francs; and if he can state whether any steps have been taken to protect the hinterland of the West African possessions from the introduction of spirits, and whether the prohibition clause of the Brussels General Act of 1890 has been reaffirmed.
    MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: The minimum has been fixed at 70 francs per hectolitre at 50 deg. C., with an exception of 60 francs per hectolitre at 50 deg. C. for Togoland and Dahomey. The duty will increase proportionally for each degree above 50 deg. C. It was unnecessary to reaffirm the prohibition clause of the Brussels General Act of 1890, but a protocol was annexed to the present Convention stating that the signatory powers reserve to themselves the right to take each with its full liberty of action the necessary steps to prevent the introduc-

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    tion of spirits into the zones of prohibition contemplated by Art. XCI. of the General Act of 1890.

    THE AUSTRAL CYCLE AGENCY.
    MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the proceedings in connection with the Austral Cycle Agency, Limited, which was formed in December, 1896; whether any meetings save the statutory meetings have ever been held; and have any returns as required by the Act of Parliament been lodged with the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies; is he aware that the Company is now in liquidation; and what steps will be taken in regard to this company by the Board of Trade?
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. RITCHIE,): My attention has not been specially called to the matter in question. The annual returns required by the Companies Acts have been filed with the Registrar in respect of the years 1897 and 1899, but the return for 1898 has not been filed. A resolution for the voluntary winding-up of the company was also filed on May 31st last. Voluntary liquidations are not subject to the supervision of the Board of Trade.

    RAILWAY BYE-LAWS.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the new code of railway bye-laws which was submitted to the Board upwards of a year and a-half ago, and remitted to the railway companies with certain modifications and suggestions, has again been submitted to the Board for confirmation; and, if not, will he state what steps he proposes to take with a view to the early adoption of a new and satisfactory code of railway bye-laws.
    MR. RITCHIE: The Board of Trade have no power to make bye-laws. Their function is to approve or disapprove bye-laws proposed by the railway companies. If the companies are not prepared to submit a code of bye-laws on behalf of railway companies generally the Department can only continue to urge them to take some common action. This has been and will continue to be, the policy of the Board.

    OVERCROWDING ON RAILWAYS.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade, haying regard to
    980
    the fact that the overcrowding of railway carriages is in great measure due to passengers being unaware that when there is no room in the class of carriage for which they have taken their tickets they are entitled to travel in a carriage of a superior class, will he consider the expediency of suggesting to railway companies that a notice to this effect should be posted up in the carriages.
    MR. RITCHIE: No, Sir; I cannot admit that the hon. Member's question accurately states the position, and I am unable therefore to take the action he suggests.
    MR. WEIR: Is the right hon. Gentleman unaware that the carriages of trains on the lines running into London are always overcrowded?
    MR. RITCHIE: The hon. Gentleman and others have drawn my attention to this matter repeatedly. I have said all I have to say on the subject, and I can add nothing more.

    MERSEY FISHERIES.
    MR. HARWOOD: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if the Lancashire Sea Fisheries Joint Committee has asked for the approval of the Board of Trade in putting further limitations upon fishing on the Burbo Bank, in the Mersey estuary; and whether that approval has been or will be given.
    MR. RITCHIE: The Lancashire Sea Fisheries Joint Committee has asked for the approval of the Board of Trade to a bye-law limiting the kind of nets or instruments to be used in fishing for shrimps or prawns in a certain part of the Mersey estuary, including, I believe, part of the Burbo Bank. The proposed byelaw is now being considered by the Board of Trade, but I am not yet able to say what the decision will be.

    YORK CHARITIES.
    MR. ALFRED PEASE: I beg to ask the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton, as representing the Charity Commissioners, whether he is aware that in the year 1837 and 1838 the municipal charities of the City of York were placed under the control of a body of thirteen trustees, and that the number of trustees through various circumstances became reduced in 1896; whether, in I accordance with former procedure, certain

    981
    names were approved in conference between the surviving trustees and the City Corporation, and these names submitted to the Charity Commissioners for confirmation; whether after long delay the Charity Commissioners have intimated their intention to add five other names in addition to the eight agreed upon by the trustees and the Corporation; and whether he is able to state what reason there is to depart from what has been the invariable practice for over sixty years with respect to the number of the trustees?
    THE PARLIAMENTARY CHARITY COMMISSIONER (Mr. GRANT LAWSON,): The facts are generally as stated in the question of my hon. friend. There is no particular reason for the limitation of the number of trustees to thirteen. That limitation and the fact that municipal trustees are often elderly gentlemen has resulted in the past in the speedy reduction of the number of acting trustees to a figure unduly small. To confine the new body to thirteen would compel the Commissioners to reject some of the names submitted to them by resolution and memorial. The responsibility for the appointment of trustees rests with the Commissioners and not with the Corporation or the surviving trustees, but the Commissioners propose to appoint all the gentlemen whose names have been suggested, thus raising the number of trutees to 18. Before doing so they will publish all the names in the locality so as to elicit objections, if there are any, to the personal fitness of the gentlemen whom it is proposed to appoint.
    MR. J. E. ELLIS: On what ground did the Charity Commissioners arrive at the decision to increase the number of trustees from 13 to 18. Under what power did they act?
    MR. GRANT LAWSON: There is no limit by law or under the scheme. They may appoint as many as they like.

    EDINBURGH TELEGRAPH CLERKS.
    MR. STEADMAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster-General, whether certain telegraph clerks at Edinburgh, having arrived at the efficiency barrier, are being asked by
    982
    the Controller to furnish particulars with reference to their technical knowledge, and their further progress been threatened; and whether, in view of Paragraph 6 of the Postal Circular, dated Tuesday, 10th August, 1897, containing the decision of the Norfolk-Hanbury Conference, the Postmaster-General will cause an inquiry to be made into the circumstances.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. HANBURY,): The case of several telegraphists in Edinburgh whose salaries had approached the efficiency bar came under consideration, and, in regard to two of these telegraphists, the Controller thought it only right to satisfy himself, before reporting them as not qualified to pass the bar, by personal inquiry respecting their efficiency. Beyond this there was no intention to examine them in regard to their technical knowledge. The Tweed-mouth Committee, on whose recommendation the efficiency bar was introduced, stated in their Report that no officer should be allowed to pass this bar without a satisfactory certificate of the excellence of his conduct and of his ability to perform the highest duties of his class. The two officers in question in Edinburgh could not, unfortunately, be certified to be fully qualified for these duties.

    DUNDALK POSTMASTER.
    MR. MACALEESE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster-General, when the new Postmaster at Dundalk will take up his duties; what is the date of the gentleman's appointment; and is he an Irishman.
    MR. HANBURY: The new Postmaster will take up his duties on the 1st July, the appointment having been conferred upon him by the Postmaster-General on the 13th June. He has served in Ireland for upwards of 34 years.
    MR. MACALEESE: What about his nationality?
    MR. HANBURY: I do not think inquiry was made into that.

    LONDONDERRY HISTORY AND ORDNANCE SURVEY.
    MR. TUITE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury can he state the amount paid by the Government for the publication of the History

    983
    and Ordnance Survey of the County of Londonderry in the year 1837, and on what grounds was the continuation of the work for the remaining thirty-one counties abandoned; and is he aware that the manuscripts of the other counties at present in the Museum, Dublin, are becoming obliterated, and will be lost to the nation if not re-written or published very soon.
    MR. HANBURY: "The Memoir on Londonderry" dealt only with a single parish—the City and North Western Liberties of Londonderry, Parish of Templemore—and not with the whole county. Its cost amounted to £1,705, but, in addition, considerable labour was expended on its preparation by the officers and men of the Ordnance Survey. The work was not continued partly on the ground of expense, and partly because it dealt with many subjects unconnected with the Ordnance Survey—such as geology, botany, zoology, antiquities, history, education and commerce. There is no foundation for the statement in the last paragraph of the question. On the contrary, the manuscripts (which are kept by the Royal Irish Academy and not in the Museum) are reported to be in excellent preservation and order.

    DOG TAX IN THE HIGHLANDS.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury when the new regulalations for the guidance of Inland Revenue officers in regard to granting of certificates of exemption from dog tax in the Highlands of Scotland will be issued.
    MR. HANBURY: It is not proposed to issue any new regulations. I undertook to see if the same principles could not be applied everywhere, and I have no reason to doubt that that is being done.

    CARRICKROE POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS.
    MR. MACALEESE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster-General, whether he is aware that dissatisfaction exists in the districts around Carrickroe sub post-office, owing to the way the deliveries of letters and parcels have been regulated by the postal authorities, some townlands being served four times a week while others are served only twice; is he aware that letters for one portion of the townland of Bragan reach-
    984
    ing Carrickroe on Friday must remain there till the following Monday before being sent out for delivery, while letters for other parts of the same townland are delivered on Saturday; and, will an effort be made to devise measures which will ensure a uniform delivery and allay the discontent prevailing on this subject.
    MR. HANBURY: It is the case that some of the townlands near Carrickroe are served four times a week, while others are served twice a week only. Letters for one portion of the townland of Bragan are delivered on Mondays and Thursdays; consequently, letters arriving on Friday would not be delivered in that district till Monday, although they would be delivered on Saturdays at the places served four times a week. The frequency of the deliveries is regulated by the amount of correspondence and the relative cost. The correspondence for the districts in question is very small, and additional expense for an improved service is not at present warranted.

    OFFICES OF PARLIAMENT COMMITTEE.
    MR. DILLON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury how often the Joint Committee on the Offices of the Houses of Lords and Commons has met, and when it may be expected to report.
    MR. HANBURY: The Committee has met twice and has examined six witnesses. It is expected to meet again very shortly to consider its Report.

    UPKEEP OF SCOTTISH CASTLES.
    MR. PIRIE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he can state what is the sum collected annually as feu blench and teind duties in Scotland, and which used formerly to be paid to the Governors of Edinburgh and Stirling Castles and to the offices of Keeper of the Palace of Linlithgow and Castle of Blackness, specifying the amount for each of the places named; also since what date have these moneys been paid into the Imperial Exchequer; and what has been the average annual amount spent on the maintenance and upkeep of the buildings of the Palace of Linlithgow during the ten years 1889–98.
    MR. HANBURY: The sums collected by the Commissioners of Woods as feu blench and teind duties in Scotland, which used formerly to be paid to the

    985
    Governors of Edinburgh and Stirling Castles and to the Keepers of the Palace of Linlithgow and Castle of Blackness, are approximately as follows:—Edinburgh Castle, £525; Stirling Castle, £157; Linlithgow Palace and Blackness Castle, £190. The Edinburgh Castle duties were first paid to the Commissioners of Woods for the year 1860, the Stirling Castle duties for the year 1847, and the Linlithgow and Blackness duties for the year 1853. Since those dates they have been paid over to the Imperial Exchequer. It is believed that prior to those dates they were received by the governors and keepers of the castles, etc. No figures can be given regarding the ordinary maintenance of the buildings of Linlithgow Palace as distinguished from that of the park. But in 1892–3 and the two subsequent years £761 17s. 8d. was expended on special repairs at the Palace.

    TAX DISTRICTS.
    MR. J. H. JOHNSTONE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state how many of the new tax districts sanctioned by the Treasury in November last have been created, and whether any delay in creating the full number has been caused by the want of experienced assistant surveyors to be placed in charge of them; if, having regard to the increase in the work of the surveyors of taxes, he will consider the desirability of making provision for an adequate and regular supply of trained assistants and of clerks on the permanent establishment of the Civil Service: and, as many surveyors are unable or unwilling to take the full amount of the leave to which they are entitled on account of the accumulation of work in their absence, if he will consider the advisability of providing for an adequate relief staff; and if the Board of Inland Revenue are taking any steps (by the sanction of increased assistance or otherwise) to remove the increased pressure in the ordinary work of the surveyors caused by the revised form of the Abstracts of the Assessments for 1898–9.
    MR. HANBURY: Nine of the new districts are in process of formation and will soon be constituted. Difficulties have arisen from the want of experienced assistant surveyors. I fully recognise that arrangements should be made which
    986
    will enable surveyors under ordinary circumstances to take the full amount of leave to which they are entitled. At the present moment the question of making a permanent addition to the number of assistant surveyors, and thereby increasing for the future both the strength of the relief staff and the supply of assistants qualified for the post of surveyor, as well as the question of affording better clerical assistance, is under consideration, and in this connection the work involved in making the Abstracts of Assessments will not be overlooked. In the meantime all necessary temporary assistance is being given for this work.

    NEWBLISS POSTMAN.
    MR. MACALEESE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster-General, whether the entire amount of 3s. a week, allocated for the salary of the recently appointed postman at Newbliss, County Monaghan, goes to that official exclusively, or is a portion of it, and how much, devoted to another purpose; can he now say what are the precise duties this postman is expected to perform for the allocated sum of 3s. a week; and on what basis of living is the salary calculated.
    MR. HANBURY: The entire amount of 3s. a week is paid to the postman at Newbliss referred to in the hon. Member's question. This postman works for sixty-five minutes a day.

    SECONDARY EDUCATION IN BANFFSHIRE.
    SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURN: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Secretary for Scotland has received a memorial, dated 13th instant, from the Banffshire County Committee on Secondary Education, complaining that, under the Minute of 27th April last, no portion of the grant of £35,000 for secondary education will come to the County of Banff; whether he is aware that Professor Laurie, examiner for the Dick Bequest, stated publicly that no area, even in Germany and America, of the same size furnished higher education to a larger number of pupils than did the County of Banff; whether, seeing that the only secondary education in Banffshire is provided by secondary departments in State-aided elementary schools, the Department

    987
    will so modify the Minute of 27th April as to give to these secondary departments a reasonable share of the £35,000 grant; and whether the Department can see its way to suspend the 17s. 6d. limit as regards grants to the schools having secondary departments.
    THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY,): The memorial to which the hon. Member refers has been received and is under consideration. I have every reason to believe that much good educational work of a higher kind is accomplished in the County of Banffshire. For the reasons already given the Department is not prepared to alter the provisions of the Minute of 27th April, and as the 17s. 6d. limit is statutory the Department cannot suspend its operations.

    FISHERMEN'S DWELLINGS IN SCOTLAND.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Congested Districts Board have yet been able to make arrangements for the erection and formation of fishermen's dwellings and holdings, as provided for under Section 4, Subsection (e), of the Congested Districts (Scotland) Act, 1897; and if so, in what districts.
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: I am informed by the Congested Districts Board that negotiations are still pending in connection with the formation of such holdings as are referred to in the hon. Member's question.
    MR. WEIR: What about the last part of the question?
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: I have not that information, but I will communicate with the hon. Member privately.

    VALTOS PIER.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Congested Districts Board have yet arrived at a decision in regard to an application made to the Board in February last by the County Council of Ross and Cromarty, urging that the grant in aid of the construction of a pier at Valtos (Lewis) should be increased to £1,900.
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: I am informed by the Congested Districts Board that on the 13th of May last a grant of £1,800, or 92 per cent. of the
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    total estimated cost of the Valtos Pier was intimated to the local authority, but to this there has as yet been no reply.

    SCOTTISH PRISON RULES.
    SIR JOHN LENG: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Prison Commissioners for Scotland have adopted, or propose to adopt, such of the new rules for local and convict prisons in England as are improvements on those in Scotland; and, if so, what changes will be made.
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: A fair comparison cannot be drawn between the rules for prisons in Scotland and those for prisons in England, as the former have been revised and brought up to date so recently as 1896. But some changes in the Scottish prison rules and dietaries are at present under the consideration of the Prison Commissioners.

    SCOTTISH CONSTABULARY.
    SIR JOHN LENG: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether the Government have had under consideration the Report of Captain Monro, dated 31st December last, recommending legislation with regard to several matters having vital importance and bearing on the efficiency, general usefulness, and cost of the Scottish constabulary and police; and whether it is intended to give effect to Captain Monro's recommendations.
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: The annual report of Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary for 1898 has been considered by the Secretary for Scotland, who cannot promise at present to attempt legislation on the subjects of the recommendations therein made.

    DRUNKENNESS IN SCOTLAND.
    MR. PIRIE: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate, as representing the Secretary for Scotland, whether, in the interests of Scotland, and with a view of urging the Government to introduce legislation to meet the requirements of the case, he will call the attention of the Government to the following facts brought out by the Report of the Prison Commissioners for Scotland:—1. That the committals to prison in that country during 1898 have exceeded the average of the previous five years by more than 5,000, and that the Commissioners clearly attribute this fact to the habit of drinking to excess, which

    989
    has increased among the wage-earning classes to the point that it is designated in the Report as an epidemic of drunkenness; 2. That an examination was recently made at Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow, into the cases of 245 prisoners with longest sentences; that it was ascertained that 171 of these prisoners were under the influence of drink when their crime was committed, whilst only 74 were sober; and that 101 out of these 245 crimes were committed on Saturdays, compared to an average of 28 for the other six days of the week, thereby proving, as this is a typical case, that Saturdays are not only the days on which offences under the head of drunkenness reach their maximum, but that is also the day on winch the maximum number of serious crimes are committed; and, if steps could be taken to comply with the strong recommendation contained in the Report of Captain David Munro, Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland, that The Public Houses, Hours of Closing (Scotland) Act, 1887, should be made compulsory throughout Scotland, so as to lessen the evils disclosed by the above state of affairs.
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: The paragraph in the Report of the Prison Commissioners for Scotland, to which the hon. Member refers, has, along with the rest of the Report, been the subject of consideration by the Secretary for Scotland, but he cannot at present add anything to the answer I have just given to the bon. Member for Dundee.

    POLICE GAZEITE FOR SCOTLAND.
    MR. PIRIE: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate if he can explain why no steps have hitherto been taken to comply with the recommendation of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Scottish Police System, made in 1868, that a Police Gazette for Scotland should be established; and whether, seeing that the establishment of such a gazette was strongly recommended by the Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland in 1872, and has again been urged in the Report for 1898 by the present inspector, action will be taken.
    MR. A. GRAHAM MURRAY: As the recommendation referred to in the first paragraph of the question was made thirty-one years ago, since which many changes in the police system have occurred,
    990
    the hon. Member has imposed rather a heavy task on me in asking me to consider the matter on its merits in response to a question which only appeared on the Paper this morning. As regards the second paragraph of the question, I shall be happy to reply if the hon. Member will put the question on the Paper with adequate notice.

    LEAD POISONING AT HANLEY.
    SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the report of an inquest on a lead-poisoning ease held a Hanley on the 21st June, and to the remarks of the Coroner stating that an application from the Manufacturers' Association had reached him through the Home Secretary, who suggested that he should allow the Manufacturers' Association to be represented at every inquest where lead poisoning was alleged, and to the Coroner's dissent from the recognition of any such association as being in any way a party interested in individual cases; whether the Coroner has declared his intention of himself calling in a medical man in every such case to make a post-mortem examination and give evidence, without necessarily requiring the attendance of the doctor acquainted with the past history of the case who has given the death certificate; whether the post-mortem in the recent case was a mere naked eye examination; and whether he will use his influence with the Coroner to cause chemical analysis of the organs in any such post-mortem examination.
    THE SECRETARY of STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir M. WHITE RIDLEY,): I have made inquiry regarding the case mentioned, and I learn from the Coroner that, while he objects to recognising the Manufacturers' Association, he is quite willing to allow the Secretary of the Association to appear on behalf of any manufacturer who desires to be so represented. This seems to me a satisfactory arrangement. The Coroner further informs me that he proposes to call in an independent medical man in every case of suspected lead poisoning to make a thorough post-mortem examination, and where necessary to order also a chemical analysis. I understand that in the present

    991
    case he considered such analysis unnecessary. These are points, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, within the Coroner's discretion.

    THE DEAN OF ARCHES.
    MR. CHARLES M'ARTHUR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether Sir Arthur Charles has been appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be Dean of Arches under the provisions of the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, or irrespective thereof; whether the judge about to be appointed under Section 7 of that Act by the Archbishops, with the approval of the Crown, will become ex officio Dean of Arches and Official Principal of the Chancery Court of York; and whether there is any law under which a new Dean of Arches can be appointed while a vacancy in the office of judge, under the aforesaid Act, remains unfilled.
    SIR M. WHITE RIDLEY: I am informed that letters patent have been issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury purporting to appoint Sir Arthur Charles to be Dean of Arches irrespectively of the Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874. The second and third paragraphs of the question raise a point of law, on which I understand that different opinions are entertained and on which I have no authority to pronounce.

    TITHE RENT-CHARGE (RATES) BILL.
    MR. STRACHEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture if he can state what sum will be deducted in each case from the amount payable to each county borough or administrative county out of the Local Taxation Grant to provide the £87,000 taken from the grant under the Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Bill.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. LONG,): I understand the hon. Member to ask what would be the share of each administrative county and county borough in a sum of £87,000 distributed as the estate duty is distributed, that is, in the proportion of what are known as the discontinued grants. To give this information in every case would necessitate a considerable number of somewhat elaborate calculations, but I may perhaps ear that in the case of the hon. Member's
    992
    own county—Somersetshire—the amount would be £1,416, or between one-seventh and one-eighth of a penny in the pound of the rateable value of the county, and the result is not materially different in other cases.
    MR. J. H. ROBERTS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he will state what is the amount of the sums now annually paid in lieu of tithe which will come within the provisions of the Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Bill.
    MR. LONG: No information is available as to the amount of the payments to which the hon. Member refers, but it is not of any magnitude as compared with that of the tithe rent-charges themselves, and it is of course only where the payments are rateable, which is not always the case, that any relief would be afforded under the Bill.
    MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture what is the amount of tithe rent-charge held by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who pay the proceeds to augment the income of benefices, and why the relief granted under the Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Bill is not extended to rates on tithe rent-charge in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
    MR. LONG: The commuted amount of the tithe rent-charge in the possession of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners may be taken at £350,000. It is not proposed to extend the provisions of the Bill to the income thus received by the Commissioners, as it appears to us there is a clear distinction between tithe rent-charge specifically assigned to a particular benefice and tithe rent-charge forming part of a common fund such as that in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
    MR. CHANNING: But is not the tithe rent-charge held by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as a trust, in order to dispose of its proceeds for the benefit of incumbents?
    MR. LONG: That is so, I believe.
    MR. CHANNING: Then why is not the same principle applied to them?
    (No answer was given.)
    MR. J. H. ROBERTS: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when the Committee stage of the Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Bill will be taken.
    THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I propose to put it down for Thursday next.

    SALE OF INTOXICANTS IN THE PRECINCTS OF THE HOUSE.
    SIR WILFRID LAWSON: I beg to ask the noble Lord the Member for Oxford whether the sale of intoxicating liquors to the public is still being carried on in the lobbies and precincts of the House under the sanction of the Kitchen Committee.
    VISCOUNT VALENTIA: The public are only admitted to the precincts of the House on Saturdays, when the bars are closed. Such persons as attend the House on business on other days are not precluded by the Kitchen Committee from availing themselves of such conveniences as are provided for hon. Members.
    SIR W. LAWSON: Is the noble Lord aware that the Attorney-General has stated in this House that this sale of liquor is illegal?
    MR. SPEAKER: order, Order! The question on the paper has been fully answered.

    SMALL-POX AT HULL.
    MR. R. G. WEBSTER: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether the small-pox epidemic is increasing at Hull; and if there are also more cases of that disease notified at Grimsby.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. T. W. RUSSELL,)There has lately been an increase of small-pox in Hull. Between the 2nd March and the 15th June there were sixty-one attacks, and since the 15th June twenty-two more cases have been notified. All the known cases at present existing are in the isolation hospital. A person suffering from small-pox landed at Grimsby on the 21st instant from a ship which had left Hull on the 19th. The patient was at once removed to the hospital, and no other case has since been reported
    MR. R. G. WEBSTER: Had the persons attacked been vaccinated?
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I must ask for notice of that question.

    THE COTTAGE HOMES BILL.
    MR. JOSEPH A. PEASE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to certain paragraphs appearing in The Times newspaper on 28th June, containing information extracted from a strictly confidential draft Special Report to be proposed by the Under Secretary to the Local Government Board for the consideration of the Select Committee on the Cottage Homes Bill; and whether he can state how the information was obtained by a member of the Press; if not, whether an inquiry will be held to ascertain this; and whether steps will be taken to prevent such incidents.
    MR. T. W. RUSSELL: This is a matter for the Select Committee, not for the Local Government Board. Investigations are being made.

    DISPENSARY DISTRICTS IN MONAGHAN COUNTY.
    MR. MACALEESE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the parish of Errigal Truagh, which comprises five units under the Local Government Act, with a population (in 1891) of 3,745 souls, has not a resident doctor within its boundaries; whether he is aware that the area of the Monaghan portion of this parish is 21,171 acres, and that the general bulk of the people are amongst the poorest found even in the congested districts in Ireland, and remain dependent upon the services of a medical officer who resides in Aughnacloy, two miles outside the Monaghan union, from which town many of the poor in Errigal parish are separated by a distance of no less than fourteen miles; and whether he will advise the Local Government Board, in the interests of the poor, to consider favourably the views of the Monaghan Guardians, and have the five units of Truagh constituted a dispensary district with a resident medical officer.
    THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. G. W. BALFOUR,): The area and population of the parish of Errigal are correctly stated.

    995
    Medical officers are not, however, appointed for parishes, but for dispensary districts, which are not conterminous with parishes. I do not think it is correct to say that the general bulk of the people of this district are amongst the poorest to be found in Ireland. As already pointed out, the medical officer has always resided at Aughnacloy, and the distance in a direct line from his residence to the most remote points in the district is not more than nine miles. With reference to the last paragraph, I cannot add anything to my replies to the questions previously addressed to me by the hon. Member on this subject.
    MR. MACALEESE: Will the right hon. Gentleman grant an inquiry into this matter?
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: No; it has already been most carefully considered.

    HEAD CONSTABLE J. O'BRIEN, R.I.C.
    MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, will if he explain why head Constable J. O'Brien, R.I.C., Millstreet, who was ordered to be transferred to Middleton, County Cork, for a breach of discipline, as the result of a charge brought against him by ex-Sergeant M'Keever, is still retained in Millstreet; and has the transfer order been cancelled; and, if so, for what reason and by what authority.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: Ex-Sergeant M'Keever immediately on his retirement from the Constabulary brought forward a series of charges against his District Inspector, Head Constable, and others. These charges were closely inquired into, and the great bulk of them were found to be groundless and vindicative. It appeared, however, that on the occasion of the District Inspector's marriage the police of the district made a presentation to his wife and that the Head Constable co-operated with them. This action on their part constituted a breach of the regulations of the Force, and the Inspector-General ordered the Head Constable to be transferred to another station. The Head Constable represented subsequently that he would retire from the Force in September next, and the Inspector-General in view of this and other special circumstances, as well as having regard to the excellence of his past service, cancelled the order for his transfer.

    THE BUTLER ESTATE, COUNTY CLARE.
    MR. P. O'BRIEN: On behalf of the hon. Member for East Clare I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what is the cause of the delay in carrying out the purchase by the tenants on the Butler Estate, County Clare.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: In the case of the estate of Nicholas Butler, which is pending for sale in the Land Judge's Court, a request for an inspection of the holdings under the 40th section of the Land Act of 1896 was received by the Land Commission at the commencement of the present month. When the inspection has been carried out the Commissioners will make their report under the section referred to.

    IRISH TITHE RENT-CHARGE—METGE v. THE JUSTICES OF MEATH.
    MR. WILLIAM MOORE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the fact that the decision in the case of the Queen (Metge) v. the Justices of Meath applies to prevent a revision of perpetual rents fixed under the Statute 3 and 4 Vic., c. 37, s. 142, equally with tithe rentcharge; whether this difficulty has arisen from the omission to publish in the Dublin, Gazette since 1887 an official record of the average prices of cereals; and whether, as he has introduced a Bill to remedy this grievance in the case of the tithe rent-charge payers arising from the same cause, he can see his way to give relief, by further legislation, to the large body of tenants holding under such grants.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: The reply to the first two paragraphs is in the affirmative. I cannot undertake to introduce legislation dealing with the case of the tenants referred to during the present session.

    VACCINATION IN IRELAND.
    SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland what steps are being taken in accordance with the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Vaccination to supply calf lymph to the public vaccinators in Ireland.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: Steps were taken in the first instance to ascertain

    997
    whether Dr. Blaxhall, the bacteriologist of the English Local Government Board, would be willing to make arrangements for providing a supply of glycerinated calf lymph for Ireland. I understand, however, that Dr. Blaxhall cannot undertake to supply to Ireland the quantity required, and it is now proposed to equip a bacteriological laboratory in Ireland for the purpose.

    DUNGANNON COURT HOUSE.
    MR. DOOGAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Sir Francis Brady, County Court Judge of Tyrone, has issued an order or given instructions that, whilst he is presiding in the Court House at Dungannon, no loaded vehicles are to be allowed to pass along the street at the side of the Court House. Whether he is aware that the only other way for vehicles proceeding up town is through Scotch Street, which is so steep as to be impracticable for horses taking up loads, and that the street which passes the Court House is the only direct way from the goods station and also the only way for farmers of a very large district coming to town with their produce; whether the County Court Judge is within his powers in issuing the order; and whether some other means could be devised, by double windows or otherwise, of protecting the amenity of the Court without interfering with the ordinary traffic.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: I am informed by Sir Francis Brady that he has not issued any order or instruction to the effect suggested in the first paragraph. It appeals, however, that as it was found impossible to carry on the business of the Court in consequence of the great noise caused by heavy vehicles passing, an arrangement was made with the police by which such vehicles that could use another route should do so, other vehicles being allowed to pass the Court House. Similar arrangements have always been made in Dungannon. The County Court Judge had full authority to make this arrangement, which was necessary for the due administration of justice, and it is the duty of the police to give effect to the arrangement.

    NUGENT ESTATE, CO. WESTMEATH.
    MR. TUITE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ire-
    998
    land can he state the cause of the delay in completing the sale of the Nugent Estate (Donore, County Westmeath) to the tenants, the final notices having been issued by the Court of Chancery on 17th January, 1896.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: The question of applying to this estate the provisions of Section 40 of the Land Act, 1896, was before the Land Judge in March last, and on the application of the parties interested the matter was allowed to stand with a view of enabling negotiations to be entered into with the tenants for the sale to them of their holdings by agreement, and apart from the provisions of this section. It appears that, so far, the tenants have not shown any strong desire to become purchasers.

    CHARITABLE LOANS (IRELAND) BILL.
    MR. EDWARD M'HUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can hold out any hope to depositors that the Charitable Loans (Ireland) Bill will be passed through Parliament before the close of the present session.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: If this Bill is opposed I am afraid there is little hope that the Government will be able to pass it through Parliament before the close of the present session.

    CASTLECOMER AND KILLALOE RAILWAY FACILITIES.
    MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Government have considered the necessity of suggesting to the Great Southern and Western Railway Company the providing of transit facilities to Castlecomer coal mines and to Killaloe slate quarries in the event of the amalgamation scheme passing; and whether the Government would be prepared to give a grant in aid of those extensions.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: The answer to the first paragraph is in the negative. With respect to the second paragraph, there are no funds at the disposal of the Irish Government for the purpose.

    KERRY SUB-COMMISSION.
    MR. FLAVIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that great inconvenience has been caused by a large

    999
    number of tenants in the northern portion of the County of Kerry by the fact that the Sub-Commission have not sat at Listowel for two years to hear fair rent lcases, and that tenants in the Listowe district whose applications to fix fair rents were made nearly three years ago are still unheard; what is the number of tenants' applications now awaiting trial before the Sub-Commission at Listowel; and whether some steps will be taken to remedy the congested condition of fair rent applications, by an early sitting of the Sub-Commission at Listowel.
    MR. G. W. BALFOUR: I am unable to add anything to the reply given by me to the similar question put by the hon. Member on the 20th June, except to state that the Commissioners are unable to arrange for a sitting of the Sub-Commissioners at Listowel until the list now in course of disposal at Killarney has been finished, and that it is impossible to state, even approximately, when that list will be finished.

    SCHOOL BOARD RATES.
    MR. R. G. WEBSTER: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the increasing tendency of the precepts issued to the rating authorities by the school boards throughout many parts of the country, and the heavy burden thereby caused to the poorer ratepayers; if he has noticed the fact that it is authoritatively stated that the School Board for London charges for the ensuing year will be increased by 1d. in the pound, and amount to 1s. l½d. in the pound; and if he will take legislative action to limit the expenditure of the school boards to a certain rate in the pound, and that this sum in no case be exceeded without the express sanction of the Local Government Board.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: In answer to my hon. friend I have to say that the facts as stated in the first and second paragraphs of his question are substantially accurate; but I certainly could not suggest to the House the propriety of legislation interfering with the discretion of the ratepayers in the administration of their funds.

    THE ROYAL BUCKHOUNDS.
    SIR WILLIAM WEDDERBURN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury
    1000
    whether his attention has been drawn to a record of the Royal Buckhounds for the past season, prepared by the Rev. J. Stratton, hon. secretary of the Humanitarian League, showing that in twenty-two out of thirty-seven hunts the deer sought refuge in houses or premises attached to them, and that in a number of cases the animal when captured was bleeding and lacerated; and whether he will consider the desirability of withdrawing the grant of public money from an amusement involving suffering to park deer, which are essentially domestic animals.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have no means of verifying the suggestions of fact made in the first paragraph of the question, and I have no statement of policy to announce on the subject.

    POST, OFFICE SAVINGS BANK—TELEGRAPHIC WITHDRAWALS.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, having regard to the fact that depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank, three-fourths of whom are said to consist of the working classes, spent during the year 1898 nearly £10,000 in telegraphing to the head office in order to secure speedy payment of withdrawals rather than await correspondence by post, will he consider the expediency of enabling the Postmaster-General to issue to depositors in the Savings Bank, at a charge of 1s., commission books containing eight withdrawal orders, under which fixed sums of 10s., 15s., £1, or £2 may be withdrawn by the depositor on demand at any savings bank post-office in the kingdom on production of the deposit book and the usual evidence of identity.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I believe that this question has been answered four or five times. I have nothing to add to the answers given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others on the subject. I think if the hon. Member will refer to the replies given on February 21, 1896, April 6, 1897, May 4, 1897, and May 24, 1898, he will find full material.
    MR. WEIR: Yes, but matters have materially changed since that date, and the working classes have to pay a much larger sum now for telegraphic withdrawals.

    MUNICIPAL TRADING.
    MR. KIMBER: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if

    1001
    the Government intend to proceed with the motion on Municipal Trading.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I understand that the motion for the appointment of a Joint Committee with the Lords to consider this subject will involve a considerable amount of discussion. I confess I do not see where the time for that discussion is to be obtained, and I fear also that the time is elapsing in which any useful investigation in the present session can take place. If these conditions remain unaltered, I fear there is little chance of this Committee being appointed in the course of this session.

    AGRICULTURE AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION (IRELAND) BILL.
    MR. ARTHUR J. MOORE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he has received a memorial signed by fifty Irish members of all sections of political opinion expressing their desire to see the Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Bill passed this session, and whether he can now fix a date for the discussion of the Second Reading.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have received more than one memorial, from which it is clear that a very large number, I believe the large majority, of Irish Members in this House are anxious to see this Bill passed into law in the course of the present session. I have, on more than one occasion, explained to the House and to Gentlemen representing Irish constituencies that it was impossible, in the nature of things, that any very long period of time should be given for discussion on this Bill, and that, unless hon. Gentlemen were content to curtail such Debate, it was impossible that it should pass into law. If, however, the expression of the wish on the part of the Irish Members that the Bill should pass carries with it as a corollary their intention that the Debate should be of a limited cha-
    racter, I am prepared to take the Second Reading of the Bill upon Wednesday next, if it be understood that there will be no important opposition made to the reference of the Bill, after the Second Reading has been passed, to a grand Committee.
    CAPTAIN DONELAN: Will the Bill be put down as first Order?
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, on the conditions stated.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Can the First Lord make any further statement as to the business for next week?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The Supply on Friday week will be the Votes in Class 3 of the Home Office. On Monday I propose that the first Order should be the resolution introducing the Niger Company Bill, which, I have already told the House, it is most important we should pass in the course of the present session. The second Order will be the continuation of the Report stage of the Small Houses Bill, and the third Order the Scotch Private Procedure Bill. I shall hope to put the Scotch Private Procedure Bill as the first Order on Tuesday, and the Military Works Bill as the second Order.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
(Exemption from the Standing Order.)
Motion made, and Question put—"That the proceedings on the Tithe Rent-charge (Rates) Bill, if under discussion at Twelve o'clock this night, be not interrupted under Standing Order Sittings of this House."—(Mr. Balfour.)
The House divided:—Ayes, 263; Noes, 86. (Division List, No. 209).

AYES.

Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir A. F.

Baird, John George A.

Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benj.

Aird, John

Balcarres, Lord

Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir M. H. (Bristol

Allhusen, Augustus H. Eden

Baldwin, Alfred

Bethell, Commander

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Man.)

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Arnold, Alfred

Balfour, Rt Hn Gerald W.(Leeds

Biddulph, Michael

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Balfour, Rt. Hon. J. B. (Clackm.

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Ashmead-Bartlett, Sir Ellis

Banbury, Frederick George

Bolitho, Thomas Bedford

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Barnes, Frederic Gorell

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

Barry, Rt Hn A. H. Smith-(Hunt

Bowles, T. Gibson (King's Lynn

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Bartley, George C. T.

Brassey, Albert

Baillie, James E. B. (Inverness)

Barton, Dunbar Plunket

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Bryce, Rt. Hn. James

Gull, Sir Cameron

Morrell, George Herbert

Burt, Thomas

Gunter, Colonel

Morton, A. H. A. (Deptford).

Buxton, Sydney Charles

Gurdon, Sir William Brampton

Mount, William George

Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. A.(Glasg.

Haldane, Richard Burdon

Murray, Rt. Hn. A. G. (Bute)

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Halsey, Thomas Frederick

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath

Carlile, William Walter

Hamilton, Rt. Hon. Lord Geo.

Myers, William Henry

Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lancs.)

Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Robt. Wm.

Nicholson, William Graham

Cavendish, V.C.W. (Derbysh.)

Hanson, Sir Reginald

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Cayzer, Sir Charles William

Hardy, Laurence

Northcote, Hon. Sir H. Stafford.

Cecil, Evelyn (Hertford, East)

Hare, Thomas Leigh

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

Harwood, George

Olroyd, Mark

Chaloner, Captain R. G. W.

Hallett, Sir James Homer

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

Chamberlain, Rt.Hon.J(Birm.)

Hayne, Rt. Hn. Charles Seale-

Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay

Chamberlain, J. A. (Worcr.)

Hazell, Walter

Pease, Joseph A. (Northumb)

Charrington, Spencer

Heath, James

Percy, Earl

Chelsea, Viscount

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

Perks, Robert William

Clarke, Sir E. (Plymouth)

Hill, Sir Edward Stock (Bristol

Pickersgill, Edward Hare

Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.

Hoare, Samuel (Norwich)

Pierpoint, Robert

Coddington, Sir William

Hobhouse, Henry

Pilkington, R. (Lancs. Newton)

Coghill, Douglas Harry

Holland, Hon. Lionel R.(Bow)

Pirie, Duncan V.

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Hornby Sir William Henry

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Collings, Right Hon. Jesse

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Priestley, Sir W. O. (Edinburgh

Colomb, Sir John C. Ready

Howell, William Tudor

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Colston, Chas. Ed. H. Athole

Hozier, Hon. Jas. Henry Cecil

Purvis, Robert

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Hutton, John (Yorks, N.R.)

Rankin, Sir James

Cornwallis, F. Stanley W.

Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

Cotton-Jodrell, Col. E. T. D.

Jenkins, Sir John Jones

Rentoul, James Alexander

Courtney, Rt. Hon. L. H.

Johnson-Ferguson, Jabez Ed.

Ridley, Rt. Hon. Sir M. W.

Cox, Irwin E. Bainbridge

Johnston, William (Belfast)

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chs. Thomson

Cranborne, Viscount

Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex)

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney

Crombie, John William

Jolliffe, Hon. H. George

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel W.

Cruddas, William Donaldson

Kemp, George

Round, James

Curzon, Viscount

Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir J. H.

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Dalbiac, Colonel Philip Hugh

Kenyon, James

Russell, T. W. (Tyrone)

Dalkeith, Earl of

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. William

Ryder, J. H. Dudley

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Kimber, Henry

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Denny, Colonel

Knowles, Lees

Sandys, Lieut.Col. T. Myles

Digby, J. K. D. Wingfield-

Laurie, Lieut.-General

Seely, Charles Hilton

Dorington, Sir John Edward

Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

Seton-Karr, Henry

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Lawson, John Grant (Yorks.)

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Doxford, William Theodore

Lea, Sir Thos. (Londonderry)

Sidebotham, J. W. (Cheshire)

Drage, Geoffrey

Leigli-Bennett, Henry Currie

Sidebottom, T. Harrop (Stalyb.

Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir W. Hart

Leighton, Stanley

Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

Leng, sir John

Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

Llewellyn, E. H. (Somerset)

Smith, Hon. F. W. D. (Strand)

Fardell, Sir T. George

Llewelyn, Sir Dillwyn-(Sw'ns a

Spencer, Ernest

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

Spicer, Albert

Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Stanley, Edward J. (Somerset)

Fergusson, Rt. Hon. Sir J. (Man)

Long, Col. C. W. (Evesham)

Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

Field, Admiral (Eastbourne)

Long, Rt. Hn. Wltr. (Liverpool)

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

Finch, George H.

Lorne, Marquess of

Stock, James Henry

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Lowe, Francis William

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Firbank, Joseph Thomas

Lloyd, Archie Kirkman

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Fisher, William Hayes

Lucas-Shadwell, William

Tennant, Harold John

Fison, Frederick William

Macartney, W. G. Ellison

Thorburn, Walter

FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

Maclean, David (Liverpool)

Thornton, Percy M.

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

Maclean, James Mackenzie

Tomlinson, Wm. Edw. Murray

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Maclure, Sir John William

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Fletcher, Sir Henry

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Usborne, Thomas

Folkestone, Viscount

M'Crae, George

Valentia, Viscount

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

M'Iver, Sir Lewis (Edin.W.)

Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Malcolm, Ian

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Fry, Lewis

Manners, Lord Edward W. J.

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Galloway, Wm. Johnson

Mellor, Colonel (Lancashire)

Webster, R. G. (St. Pancras)

Garfit, William

Melville, Beresford Valentine

Welby, Lieut.-Col. A. C. E.

Gibbons, J. Lloyd

Middlemore, J. Throgmorton

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Giles, Charles Tyrrell

Milbank, Sir Powlett C. John

Williams, Joseph Powell-(Birm,

Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbt. John

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Willox, Sir John Archibald

Goldsworthy, Major-General

Milton, Viscount

Wills, Sir William Henry

Gordon, Hon. John Edward

Milward, Colonel Victor

Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.)

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir JohnEldon

Monckton, Edward Philip

Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R. (Bth.)

Goschen, Rt. Hn. G. J. (St.Geo's

Monk, Charles James

Wolff, Gustay Wilhelm

Goschen, George J. (Sussex)

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Woodall, Wiliam

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Moore, William (Antrim, N.)

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

More, Robert J. (Shropshire)

Wyndham, George

Wyndham-Quin, Major W. H.

Young, Commander (Berks,E.)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

Wyvill, Marmaduke D'Arcy

Younger, William

Sir William Walrond and

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Mr. Anstruther.

NOES.

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Gourley, Sir Edward Temperley

Pease, Sir J. W. (Durham)

Allen, W. (Newc.-under-Lyme)

Hedderwick, Thom. Charles H.

Pilkington, Sir G. A. (Lancs SW

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Holland, Wm. H. (York, W. R.)

Price, Robert John

Austin, M.

Horniman, Frederick John

Priestley, Briggs (Yorks)

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

Randell, David

Billson, Alfred

Jacoby, James Alfred

Roberts, J. H. (Denbighs.)

Birrell, Augustine

Jones, D. Brynmor (Swansea)

Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)

Blake Edward

Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

Scott, C. Prestwich (Leigh)

Caldwell, James

Labouchere, Henry

Shaw, Charles E. (Stafford)

Cameron, Sir Ch. (Glasgow)

Lawson, Sir W. (Comb land)

Sinclair, Capt. J. (Forfarshire)

Cameron, Robert (Durham)

Leese, Sir J. F. (Accrington)

Stanhope, Hon. Philip J.

Carvill, Patrick G. Hamilton

Leuty, Thomas Richmond

Steadman, William Charles

Cawley, Frederick

Lewis, John Herbert

Stevenson, Francis S.

Clark, Dr. G. B. (Caithness-sh.

Logan, John William

Strachey, Edward

Curran, Thomas (Sligo, S.)

Lough, Thomas

Sullivan, Donal (Westmeath)

Davies, M.Vaughan-(Cardigan

Macaleese, Daniel

Sullivan, T. D. (Donegal, W.)

Dewar, Arthur

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Thomas, A. (Carmarthen, E.)

Dilke, Rt. Hon Sir Charles

M.Ewan, William

Thomas, A. (Glamorgan, E.)

Donelan, Captain A.

M'Ghee, Richard

Thomas, D. A. (Merthyr)

Doogan, P. C.

M'Kenna, Reginald

Trevelyan, Charles Phillips

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

M'Leod, John

Wedderburn, Sir William

Dunn, Sir William

Maddison, Fred.

Weir, James Galloway

Edwards, Owen Morgan

Mappin, Sir F. T.

Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R

Ellis, John Edward

Montagu, Sir S. (Whitechapel)

Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan

Murnaghan, George

Wilson, John (Govan)

Evershed, Sydney

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Woods, Samuel

Fenwick, Charles

O'Brien, J. F. X. (Cork)

Flynn, James Christopher

O'Connor, J. (Wicklow, W.)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr. Channing and Mr. Broad-hurst.

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Palmer, Sir C. M. (Durham)

Gold, Charles

Paulton, James Mellor

TITHE RENT-CHARGE (RATES) BILL.
Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [27th June], "That the Bill be now read a second time; and which Amendment was—
"To leave out the wont 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day three months.'"—(Mr. Asquith.)
Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
MR. COURTNEY: I rise to take part in this Debate with unfeigned reluctance. I wish that this Bill had never been introduced, and in that respect I am not peculiar even on these Benches. I also wish, it having been introduced, I could have avoided speaking upon it. But as I have come to the conclusion that I must vote against the Second Reading of the Bill, I think it is convenient, if not necessary, that I should as briefly as possible explain the reasons which have led me to that conclusion. I am fortunate in being able on this occasion to explain why I am voting against it. When the Bill was introduced
1006
to the House, we had no opportunity of expressing any opinion on it. You, Sir, gave us the privilege of voting on the question whether the Debate should be adjourned, and I supported that motion, because I confess it appeared to me that the use of the Ten Minute Rule for the introduction of a Bill of this highly contentious character was altogether foreign to the purpose of the House when it sanctioned the rule. I do not on the present occasion intend to enter into a discussion of the propriety or impropriety of thus using the rule; if I did so you would call me to order for wandering from the point before us. But I am glad to be able to explain that I did vote for the adjournment of the Debate because I thought the rule was being abused, while I did not vote against the introduction of the Bill because I saw no reason why the Bill should not be introduced, although I was not even then disposed to look upon it with any great favour. Now we have come to the question of the Second Reading. It would ill become me to go over again the ground which was trodden by several speakers in the previous night's debate. I desire as far as possible to

1007
avoid the repetition of arguments which have been used, so as not to trespass too long on the indulgence of the House. I think the outcome of the previous night's Debate was this, that the supporters of the Bill based their advocacy of it on the question of justice. I listened with great attention to the speech of my hon. and learned friend the Member for Stroud. He speaks, naturally, with great authority upon this Bill. He has studied the question of rating from a professional as well as a political point of view, and he is one of the members—and not the least authoritative, I believe—of the Royal Commission out of whose interim Report this Bill may in some measure be said to have originated. But whilst I listened with great attention and with great respect to what my hon. and learned friend said, and whilst I admired the zeal and energy with which he put before us the statement that this Bill was to be discussed on the ground of justice, and that its justification was the endeavour to establish equality of burden, I had great difficulty in following the arguments by which he endeavoured to substantiate those propositions. It was probably my own fault, but for some time I could not understand the method on which he was proceeding. When at last I did apprehend it I thought, if I may be permitted to say so, that he had entirely misunderstood the problem which was before us, and which had also been before the Royal Committee on Local Taxation. The root of the error of my hon. friend's argument was an error which underlay many of the arguments of other Members who took part in the Debate—it is the confusion between the rating of property and the levying of contributions from persons who constitute the community, and who are called upon to meet demands that may be evolved from the wants of the community. If it were a question of considering quite de novo how the wants of a parish, or of any larger area, should be met, no one would dream of setting up such a system of local taxation as now exists. It could not be defended, and no one would suggest that it should be initiated. But we are dealing with a system which grew up three centuries ago—a system which brings into contribution towards meeting the wants of the parochial community different kinds of property, and provides the machinery by which the contribution should be levied in respect of that pro-
1008
perty. It is well that this distinction should be always kept in mind—not merely in regard to the smaller purposes of this Bill, but in view of much wider purposes. It is obvious it is a sound argument against the appeals for justice which the supporters of this Bill have so frequently made. Justice lies between individuals, and the organisation of the State frequently, no doubt, presents problems of justice which may have to be considered. But if we are inheritors of a policy under which certain properties have been set aside to meet certain uses by assignments long since past, we may as a nation concede the revision of those uses, we may discuss the purposes to which the money is applied, but the idea of justice in relation to the assignment is quite outside the problem. Let me suggest an illustration, which, I think, many hon. Members will concur in. Let us consider the case of tithe rent-charge itself instead of merely the rates upon it. This tithe rent-charge originated more than three centuries ago, and I think hon. Members would unite in repudiating the suggestion that any personal injustice was involved in the payment by the tithe rent owner of the sum he is required to pay. I have often heard this discussed in the country. I remember on one occasion a landowner saying to me—pointing to a clergyman—"I pay that man £500 a year out of my own pocket and yet he pays no respect to my opinions or wishes." I ventured to suggest that the clergyman would not assent to the proposition that the money did come out of the landowner's pocket, and that he probably rested his claim on a much higher title than that of the rest of the property; that, in fact, he would say, "Your property is subject to the payment of this £500, and I have a prior title." This is a strictly proper Conservative view of the tithe rent-charge, and how is it to be discriminated—except in comparison with its origin three centuries ago—from the question of personal incidence and the personal injustice suffered by the tithe rent owner in respect of the rates which he has to pay? He is not in possession as a freeholder of the tithe rent-charge; his only endowment is, not the whole of that which he may have the administration of, but so much of it as is left after the payment of rates. The examples which were brought forward by the hon. Member for Tunbridge the other

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day, if this view of the matter be correct, will be seen to be altogether wide of the mark. He gave us some illustrations of the incumbents of country parishes where the tithe rent was of small amount and the rates were exceedingly heavy. He said that the professional man pays rates in proportion to the income he receives, and that, given the income, he considers the rates as a personal obligation to himself. Now, if my view is right, the truth is that the incumbent who is endowed is entitled only to what is left after the rates are paid. There is no personal obligation whatever upon him in respect of the payment of rates. The case is exactly the same as if the property had been severed into parts, and one part had been assigned to the use of the poor, and the other part to the use of the incumbent. This is undoubtedly what the law was in respect to tithe prior to the Reformation. The first burden of several burdens was for the use of the poor, and the ecclesiastical burden came subsequent to it. The Statute of Elizabeth in this respect only means what was the law before the Reformation. That is the law in this country and in all Christendom.
AN HON. MEMBER: No; not in this country.
MR. COURTNEY: It is undoubtedly the law in this country, as every one who has studied the subject will admit. If that be the ease, what is the conclusion from the pathetic examples adduced by the hon. Member for Tunbridge—that in the endowment of the English Church as at present organised there are some endowments very small, endowments which after paying the rates are, I admit, often very small and very inadequate, and that the endowments in other cases are very large and more than adequate. Do you wish to remedy the inadequacy of the endowments of some parishes by giving them additional or new endowments? Do you advocate some such action as would cause a reorganisation of the endowments as a whole, so as to secure the removal of the grievance to which the hon. Member for Tunbridge calls attention?
MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN: The instances I gave were where no deduction was allowed in arriving at the rateable value, although money was paid out for a necessary
1010
curate. This was allowed until the case of the Queen v. Sherford. This, therefore, is an entirely new obligation.
MR. COURTNEY: It may be allowed by the sanction of the parishioners, but it is not the law. The illustrations of poor and inadequate endowment which the hon. Member gave—
MR. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWENdissented.
MR. COURTNEY: I am sorry the hon. Member did not follow my arguments, but I may be allowed to state my own view of the position. The situation, to my mind, is precisely that which obtained in respect to the bishoprics of this country. We know very well that up to a comparatively recent time the incomes of the bishops were quite inadequate and insufficient. The Bishopric of Rochester was so badly endowed that for a long time it was annexed to the Deanery of Westminster in order to give the bishop a sufficient income. The Bishopric of Winchester was so poor that the income of the last bishop before the reorganisation had to be supplemented. The Bishopric of Lincoln, at one time the largest, and certainly the richest diocese in England, stretching, as it did, from Lincoln down to the Thames, was so shrunken in its endowments that for two centuries no man ever died Bishop of Lincoln. A man was put into it and assumed the episcopal office, but as soon as ever he could he got out again. The Ecclesiastical Commission removed all these scandals, and until we get a new Ecclesiastical Commission it is impossible to perceive how the obstacles, which are very great (including that of private patronage), which are now complained of, can ever be surmounted. There must be a reorganisation of endowments in order to cure the evils to which the hon. Member very justly called attention. But you must leave to an autonomous Church the power of correcting these inequalities. You must not come to Parliament saying in effect, "The endowments of our poorer parishes are too slight, seeing that they are endowed out of tithe rents, out of which a poor rate has to be paid, and we appeal to you to help to endow these attenuated incomes, and make them better than they are." The Bill as it stands is miserably inadequate for this purpose. The greater

1011
the present endowment the greater the aid it gives. It is the rich endowment that does not want it that gets assistance. This eleemosynary Bill is open to the initial objection that you come to Parliament for public money instead of reorganising the revenues of the Church and providing endowments for the poorer parishes, and you propose to apply the money in such a way that the poor are still left miserably poor and the wealth of the rich is increased. The custom of three centuries has made the existing system one in respect to which the idea of equal burdens and equal justice has no application. I appeal to hon. Members who have at any time mixed much in clerical society, whether, in habits of thought and figures of speech, it is not the universal practice to admit the position I am now taking. You will hear a man say "such a man was offered a certain living; he went to see it, and found that the house and the church and the school were in such and such a condition," and then he always winds up, "and the rates were exceedingly high." The outgoings are carefully calculated in a manner which may be a little unpalatable to some of us who hear them minutely discussed. Every clergyman takes a living with the knowledge that the real endowment is all that is left after the payment of the poor rate. For the rest, it is not his, and he cannot claim to have suffered any injury in connection with it. I have said that this Bill cannot be defended on grounds of justice, nor on the plea that it is clerical assistance given from the point of view of inequality of rating. The hon. Member for Woodbridge, who is always pointed and effective in his arguments, told us the other night that he would strip this project from any connection with the Church, and that it was not clerical. If that is so, how does it come to pass, as we heard to-day in answer to a question, that there are some parishes in which a part of the tithe is held by a lay impropriator, and the other part held by the clergyman of the parish, and that both are subject to the same assessment? Are you going to give relief to one, and not to the other? The tithe rent-charge in the hands of the lay impropriator is to have none of the relief which this Bill offers to that in the hands of the clergy. I think that is wrong, if the rating of the property in both cases is exactly the same. The
1012
alteration which you are going to make in the rating is not to meet a charge of injustice which does not arise in the matter, but in order to confer a new endowment upon the persons who are to receive this money. If you are going to upset an arrangement which has existed for 300 years, if you are going to take away in respect to the tithe rent-charge half the burden which up to this point has been a permanent charge upon it, people might say, "Why not go 60 or 70 years further back?" It seems hard, no doubt, to the incumbent of such a parish as that to which the hon. Member for Tunbridge drew our attention, that he should have the administration of certain property, a quarter of which, before he enjoys the other three-quarters, is to be employed in the relief of the poor. A man with a tithe rent-charge of £120, who sees £20 go out—assuming a strong and a hard case—feels bitterly about it, and is very apt to think he himself pays the £20. For my part, when I have had to deal with incumbents, I have always felt a great hindrance in meeting that complaint. But what must he feel when, perhaps, £300 of the tithe rent-charge goes to the lay impropriator? If £300, why not £360 or £370? I know the argument as to falling back on the usages of the clergy, or tying the hands of the lay impropriators. But the argument is a dangerous one, and as a respecter of property, I argue against the motives of benevolence which are leading you astray in the legislation you propose. You are adopting principles which you will find injurious in the end. Now, in connection with the case of the lay impropriator, I want to call very particularly the attention of two of my right hon. friends on the Front Bench to the questions I should like to submit to them. One of these two I shall put as a point of law, and the other I shall put as a point of reason and argument. The point of law is this. Under the Bill, as it stands at present, you are going to give up one-half of the rates on the tithe rent attached to the benefice, but you are going to make no allowance whatever in respect of the tithe rent in the hands of the lay impropriator. Now, suppose the lay impropriator conveys £120 of his tithe rent, in augmentation of the endowment of the benefice, to the rector or vicar and his successors in perpetuity, would the tithe rent so conveyed enjoy the advantage of the remission of half

1013
of these rates proposed to be conferred by this Bill? That is a legal question to which my hon. and learned friend the Solicitor-General, whose name is on the back of the Bill, ought to give an answer. The question is simplicity itself. A lay impropriator has £120 of tithe rent, tree outgoings from which for rates amount to £20, leaving £100 in his hands. But he wishes to augment the attenuated endowment of a living, and he proposes to hand over the £120 in augmentation of that living. Will the £120 so handed over be no longer subject to the diminution of £20, but only be subject to the diminution of £10? I only wish that my hon. and learned friend the member for Stroud had deferred his speech, when he might have told us incidentally what he thought of that question. As he is silent, I will say for myself that in the event of the transfer of the tithe rent-charge—assigned in perpetuity to the benefice and for the advantage of the rector or vicar—it would become clerical tithe rent, and would carry with it the benefit intended to be conveyed by this Bill. The question is really a nice question. If the answer is "Yes, it does carry a diminution of £10," then the tithe rent owner who assigns the £120 in augmentation of the living gives the £100 which he had kept in his own hands, and the £20 which was the amount of rates he paid; and the rector or vicar would get £110. In such a case there is no doubt that that £10 is a fresh endowment—an absolute endowment of the living. That does not come out of any consideration of past inequality; it is a new transfer, an absolute endowment from public money given in order to add £10 to the endowment of the benefice. But if the deduction of £20 is still made, then you would have this extraordinary position: an incumbent in possession of tithe rent-charge which is absolutely indistinguishable, mixed and fused together, and in respect of one portion he would be entitled to the deduction of one half of the rates upon it, and in respect of another portion he is not entitled to the deduction. That is surely an absurdity. If the answer is right, what becomes of the suggestion that you are bringing in this Bill in order to arrive at a better form of levying local taxation, for from absolutely the same kind of property you are making different contributions. I do not see how these inconsistencies have very much to
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do with justice. Hon. Members laugh, and I do not wonder at it. There is a society for the express purpose of acquiring lay impropriations in order to augment benefices in parishes in respect of which the lay impropriator at present receives the tithe rent. Its operations, I believe, are not on a very big scale. But it may be when attention is drawn to it, and especially with the assistance of this Act, that they may get lay impropriators to assign a certain portion of the tithe rent they enjoy, in order to augment their livings, knowing that the benefices would get also an added sum from the public exchequer. I can see no way out of the dilemma. I am addressing the second question to the Leader of the House, and no man in this House is more quick, more subtle, more prompt in detecting a fallacy, and no man is more ready in dialectic discussion. I do wish he would try and solve the dilemma, and, thanks to the suspension of the Twelve o'clock Rule, it would not be for want of time. If the turning out of the lay impropriator is accompanied with a relief of half the tithe rates, then how can you avoid the conclusion that by that relief you do get, quite apart from past considerations of endowment, and quite apart from considerations of professional stipend, a new endowment added to the benefice? If, on the contrary, there is not this relief, then you set aside altogether the question of professional income on which this Bill bases its claim for support. Now, if the argument on which this Bill is founded is really substantial; if the position taken by the hon. Member for Stroud or the hon. Member for Tunbridge is accurate; if you are right in saving that after the lapse of a long time, justice is offended by the taxation of the clergy on the gross impropriation; if you are right in transferring, as the Bill professes to do, the rates from rateable property to a charge on persons; if all that is right, then the fatal answer is that the Bill does not proceed on that basis, and it does not do what your premisses would require it to do. Yon say there has been a gross injustice in the past; the parson has been taxed too highly.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE: Hear, hear.
MR. COURTNEY: I hear my hon. and learned friend the Member for Ply-

1015
mouth say that is so. Well, injustice means that some person has got something which he ought not to have at the expense of some other person. Very well, the parson has been taxed too highly; then other contributories in the parish have been taxed too low. If that position is right, what you should do is—what a few members of the Royal Commission hinted at—to relieve the parson who has suffered from overtaxation so long, and to throw the burden on the other parishioners who have been for the same period taxed too lightly. But the Bill does not propose to do that; though that is a reasonable ground which might be put forward with confidence as a defence of the Bill, you have not proceeded on that ground. You are relieving one man of an injustice, which you say he has suffered, but not by the way of making those who have enjoyed the benefit of his suffering pay in the future what they have hitherto escaped. You are going to relieve him by making the whole community pay. Where is the justice of that? One injustice is covered by another injustice. It is a solution of a local taxation problem the most extraordinary I ever heard proposed. If you are considering the problem of how you are to raise the money to meet the wants of any particular area, and if you come to the conclusion that some of the inhabitants have paid too much and some too little, you throw the difference upon those who have paid too little. But you do not venture to do that which is honest and courageous and just in this case. You do not throw it upon the ratepayers of the parish, but on the ratepayers of the whole country. Now I come to the question of the peculiar method to which the Government have resorted in their attempt to cure what they allege to be an injustice. They have not adopted the proposal definitely made by the members of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation. They have not proceeded on the method of abatement of the taxation of the clergy. What they have done is to take the money out of the Local Taxation Account. I protest as an economist and a financier against this method of meeting the difficulty in which the Government have found themselves. They provide public money without any of those checks which are so necessary and so habitual in this House in regard to the ordinary appropriation of public money;
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and in order that its transfer should not be felt by any particular district, they impose the burden on the whole ratepayers of the country, in extenuation of an injustice which is differently measured in different parts of the country, and which ought to be met by a consideration of the different circumstances of these different parts. What they are really doing is to make the taxpayers furnish what the ratepayers would otherwise have to do, in order to create this new endowment which is to be added, not merely to the endowment of the impoverished but the actually wealthy clergy of the country. The President of the Board of Agriculture spoke of the distribution of funds under the Local Taxation Account as being often accompanied by—I think he said provocative of—waste.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE (Mr. LONG,): No.
MR. COURTNEY: Well, he said extravagance, and extravagance and waste are almost the same.
MR. LONG: I was referring to the anticipation of a surplus.
MR. COURTNEY: That does not differ much from what I said. What I understand my right hon. friend now to say is that county finance committees, in anticipation of a growing and increasing income, the benefits of which they enjoy, were apt to be a little extravagant or wasteful in its distribution. I think that justifies what I said. What can we conceive more provocative of waste than this taking away of money without a check, and without the people who provide it having any voice upon it, and so turning the Local Taxation Account at large into something like the Irish Church Fund? The very suggestion of something of that kind shows danger. If the Local Taxation Fund is going to be made, as seems to be supposed, into a big bag, out of winch you may draw money as you want it, because it is growing—because the country is getting richer—you have, in the institution of this account, in addition to all the evils we recognised before, something like the creation of another Irish Church Fund, winch will be a ready prey to all Governments who want a little assistance. What have we done now?

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The Irish Church Fund has to provide £200,000 or £300,000 to meet the increase of the Teachers' Pension Fund, and if by any chance a strong Government, coming back fresh from the country at the beginning of its power, should propose to take from the Irish Church Fund, which seems to be inexhaustible, a million of money in order to found a university which may be accessible to the Roman Catholics, what should we think of the enormous gift so bestowed? But what are you doing here? Why, you are giving three millions of money. £87,000 a year, capitalised, means three millions of money, and you are going to give three millions of money as a new endowment—so wastefully employed that it is not employed to meet the cases which demand attention. It is scattered abroad, the greater part of it, amongst those who do not want assistance. Now, for these reasons I have found it impossible to concur in the policy of this Bill. It may be said—no doubt it has been said—what justification has this stiff-necked fellow for not bowing, like other people, in submission to what has been proposed? My final word in respect of this matter is this: I approach this problem as a Liberal Unionist. I know that is a word of vague import. If I said I was a member of the Church of England, or even, as we used to say at Cambridge, a bona fide member of the Church of England, I daresay I should not use a phrase less elastic, or more elastic, or more undefined. Well, I am a Liberal Unionist, and the word has at least an historic meaning. I carry my mind back, Sir, to that period of which Lord Rosebery spoke only the other day—to the period of 1886, before the disruption which caused some of us to become Liberal Unionists and others Home Rulers. In that prehistoric time Liberals were all, of course, occupied in some measure with the problem of the Church of England. Some amongst us were Liberationists, ardent for religious equality, and determined at the earliest possible moment to disestablish and disendow the English Church. I was never one of them. I belonged to the intermediates, if I may use the phrase, who looked forward with assurance to the day in which we should have a free Church in a free State. We were not alarmed at the prospect, but we did not desire in any way to accelerate it. On the other hand, there were other
1018
members of the Liberal Party who were then most staunch, and who remained staunch, in opposing any kind of alteration of the organisation of the English Church. There were these divisions of opinion amongst the Liberal Party before 1886, and we have, I believe, here amongst us Liberal Unionist representatives of those three divisions. Now, I confidently affirm this, that the Liberal Party, however much they differed amongst themselves in their views with respect to the Church of England, were united in this, that not one among them would dream of sanctioning an increased endowment. To that we should have been inflexibly and unitedly opposed. And I will say this of the Conservative Party, they were not very eager to make any proposition of that kind, which they knew would be hopeless of realisation. In 1876, 1877, 1878, and 1879 Mr. Sclater-Booth brought in Bills which contained proposals to deal with this problem, bat none of them receivet the favour of this House, notwithstanding the fact that the Conservative Party were in a considerable majority. Though the Liberal Party were much divided, especially on foreign questions, on this domestic question they were absolutely united, and they were supported by a certain number on the Conservative side who would all of them have resisted this endowment. Now, is there any reason why Liberal Unionists, who are merely Liberals as they were before 1886, should now, in 1899, entertain a different opinion from that which they held in 1886? As I have understood our position, we are ready to keep things as they are without alteration. We do not want to undo, neither do we feel called upon to assist in building up or in adding fresh endowments to those which exist already. Sir, why are we Liberal Unionists here? I mean, why is it that there are some seventy—("No")—are there not seventy?—well, it does not much matter—but why is it that there are some seventy who profess to call themselves Liberal Unionists instead of Conservatives? That is what I want to know. I want hon. Members, especially my right hon. friends on the Front Bench, to consider this question. Some of us, even before 1886, were returned as Liberals, and we represented constituencies which presumably, from that circumstance, apart from Home Rule, were Liberal constituencies.

1019
But we ourselves were opposed to Home Rule, and we were supported—those of us who survived—in these constituencies by a section of Liberals, like ourselves, opposed to Home Rule, but not otherwise changed in their opinions, and who came to join a minority of Conservatives in those constituencies, and so secured a majority. The Liberal Unionists, representing old constituencies of this character, sit here to make what was a Conservative minority into a Unionist majority. And then, consider those hon. Members who have come in since. Why do the astute managers of party conflict, who select candidates to go here and there, choose or select men who are Liberal Unionists instead of men called Conservatives to go to one constituency rather than another? They don't do it if they can help it, perhaps; but that only enforces the argument. The Liberal Unionists are necessary evils. That is the point which I am endeavouring to drive home. They are selected because they can appeal to a certain number of electors who can turn the scale and elect them. I can tell von one thing about the Liberal Unionists in the constituencies who return us. They are more or less persuaded that Home Rule is dead, and it is very difficult to keep them from not slipping back into that belief. I think it is a most mischievous error on their part, but that is the tendency. What use do they make of the legislation which is now proposed? Why, they say that the Conservative Government themselves show that they think Home Rule is dead, that they can dispense with Liberal Unionist support, and they will have to dispense with it. I think that is a great danger. I am, as I say, a Liberal Unionist, and I want to preserve the Union. I think it is a grave danger, if you propose to bring in any legislation, if you are forgetful of the fact that among the supporters of the Union there is this section, large or small, which is still operating in constituencies up and down the country, which turns the balance, and will continue to turn the balance if the Union is in danger, but which will turn the balance the other way if by action such as this the Government appear to show that in their opinion danger is past. This Bill is not only wrong as a solution of the problems with which it pretends to grapple; it not only proposes what is unexampled in modern legislation—an addition to the
1020
endowment of the Church of England—but by so doing it places the Unionist majority in peril by alienating the Liberal Unionists throughout the country, who have helped to give it its power, and as a Liberal Unionist I must vote against the Second Reading.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I think I must congratulate Her Majesty's Government upon the declarations which have been made by a number of Members on their side as to the view which they take of the consequences of this Bill. The Government affect very much ecclesiastical legislation in this House. We had a Benefices Bill last year, and I do not know they have reason to be pleased with the consequences of that Bill. I certainly think that before they have done with this Bill they will repent of having introduced it. We are at present living under a Parliamentary régime of what may be called legislation upon interim Reports. It is a new and altogether un-Parliamentary system. You send a Commission or a Committee whom you trust to examine a large subject which deals with a great number of interests, and then you solicit that Committee or Commission to report, not upon all those interests, but to pick out some particular interest that you desire to favour, and then upon the faith of that Report you secrete a sum of money, and bestow it upon that particular interest, and leave the rest to shift for themselves. That experiment was first begun in the case of the Agricultural Rating Bill. There was a Commission appointed to consider the whole condition of the agricultural interest, and by and by a Member of the Cabinet became charged with the affairs of that Commission. An interim Report was cooked up in a hurry, and was laid upon the Table of Parliament, and on the security of that interim Report they managed to obtain a million and a half of public money—a demand which, I venture to say, if they had waited for the full Report, no man would have had the courage to make. That was the first specimen of legislation by interim Report. The Government declared what, I believe, in joint-stock companies is called an interim dividend. But when the rest of the shareholders desired to have their dividend none has been forthcoming. There are a great many subjects dealt with in that Report

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which are of interest to many classes other than those which have been legislated for, but of these we have heard nothing. They got their million and a half of money, and the interim Report has done its work. I suppose if there is any question which more deserves to be treated as a whole, on account of the multiplicity of interests concerned in it, all dependent more or less one with another, it is the question of rating. It is a question in which the party which deals with a single interest is more to be condemned than that which deals with nothing. You cannot rate one man more without giving an advantage to another; yon cannot rate one man less without doing an injustice to another. It is under these circumstances that you have picked out from the Report of a Commission, appointed to consider the most complicated and important subject you could possibly refer to a Commission, a particular question, and by the aid, I suppose, of the Cabinet Minister in the chair, you get it to hurry up an interim Report, and endeavour to smuggle it through the House of Commons as a Ten Minutes' Bill. That is the way you are dealing with the rating question. I say that the system is unsound, it is most unfair to interests except the particular interest which you desire to favour. Now that is a thing which this House ought not to sanction, and is a thing against which, I think, we are bound to protest. These interim Reports, I say, are apt to lead to injustice in themselves, and they are an injury to the interests of every subject who is not himself favoured by them. But, Sir, the financial aspect of the question, as my right hon. friend the Member for Bodmin very properly said, is equally to be condemned. The money collected by public taxation has been allotted to a special class—that is, to the relief of the ratepayers of the country. How is that dealt with? I have the very words—because they struck me so much at the time, and I have taken pains to record them—of the right hon. Gentleman who with so much ability introduced this Bill, although I must protest against his financial principles. He said:
"Under our system the local authorities, who are the spending bodies, know nothing beforehand of these increased balances that are coming into their hands."
I suppose the Minister of Agriculture does not read the weekly account of the
1022
revenues, otherwise he would see that the amounts coming into the hands of the local authorities are recorded every week. Therefore, they can see perfectly well whether they are increasing or decreasing. The Minister of Agriculture said further:
"This rather tends to extravagance and bad administration."
That is quite true. The whole system tends to extravagance and bad administration. He went on to say:
"It will not throw upon any other class of ratepayers a practical burden of which they need complain."
That is rather a curious view. Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer think that he can throw about £87,000 and nobody feel the loss of it? The ideas of the Minister of Agriculture are very grand, but in the region of finance I should rather have thought that a loose kind of accounting. But, then, he says:
"I believe that the burden will not be felt by any of those upon whom it falls. It is a burden of which they would not know were it not for the speeches of the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite."
Why, you have been praying for an active Opposition, and yet you imagine that you are to be allowed to smuggle through this Bill and to rob the ratepayers of £87,000, and that if you only have the amiable connivance of the "hon. Gentlemen and right hon. Gentlemen opposite," you may succeed in doing it without the knowledge of the ratepayers of this country. My right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition jumped up at once and told you that your expectations were entirely unfounded, and that you had no right to count upon the amiable connivance of the Opposition; and he declined altogether this—I will not say dishonest, that is rather too harsh a term—but this disingenuous proposal for the connivance of the Opposition to conceal what they are doing from the ratepayers of England. So much for the finance of the Department of Agriculture. I come now, Sir, to the finance of the real financial Department. This matter was brought under the notice of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the year 1897 by a very powerful and influential deputation, and this is what he said to them:
"The rating of tithe-rent charge could not properly have been dealt with in the Rating Act of 1896. It stands on a different footing, and must be dealt with, if dealt with at all,

1023
in a different way. It could not claim the kind or amount of relief given last year."
Yet when you bring in your Bill the remedy is exactly the same, just the same in kind and amount as the relief to the agricultural interest—a relief of half the rate. This Bill is in exact contradiction to the statement then made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to the remedy which ought to be given in this case. Then there is a remarkable statement in the conclusions of the Royal Commission to the effect that this grant, this relief, this endowment—whatever you please to call it—is to be given on account of "exceptional acute dissatisfaction." There is "exceptional acute dissatisfaction" with most of the taxes of this country; and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is prepared to give away hundreds of thousands of pounds whenever he meets with "exceptional acute dissatisfaction" I think he will be obliged to part with the income tax at once. A more extraordinary ground on which to base a grant of this kind I never met with. The question is not whether there is acute dissatisfaction. The question is whether there is just ground for it. That is the point we have to deal with. I say nothing about the Report, which is the most charitable thing to do. I associate myself entirely with the right hon. Gentleman in his opinion of the character of that Report. It has been so completely analysed, and criticised, and smashed by one of the members of the Commission—the hon. Member for East Donegal—that it is hardly necessary to slay the slain over again; but I do think that the Commission's reading of Magna Charta will always remain as a monumental blunder of which a Royal Commission would have been thought incapable. What is the serious part of it is, that we have to depend upon the authors of that Report for advice as to the reform of the rating system of the country. The early part of that Report was occupied with what seemed to be a hankering after that pre-Reformation period when the clergy were treated as an exceptional class, both in regard to their submission to the law and their submission to taxation. I do not enter into that. We must condescend to come to the Reformation period, of which the characteristic was that the clergy were to be dealt with on the same footing as any other subjects of the Queen, and that the law applicable to others should be applicable also to
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them. That is the time of the legislation of Elizabeth, and of the substitution of the great Act for the permanent provision for the poor instead of that precarious provision that was in force under the ecclesiastical institutions which existed before the Reformation; and it is upon the Statutes of Elizabeth that you have to examine the character of this property and its rights and liabilities. I desire to meet the challenge of my hon. and learned friend the Member for Stroud. He said, "Meet the question of the justice of this claim. Do you maintain that the present rating of the tithe rent—charge is one that is just?" Yes; I do. The notion that it is unjust depends upon that fallacy which has been so luminously explained by my right hon. friend the Member for Bodmin just now. It was also explained with great clearness and force the other night by my hon. and learned friend the Member for Haddingtonshire. The fact is, the rate is not a rate upon the person at all; it is a rate upon the property. That cannot be repeated too often or made too clearly understood. The whole fallacy of this injustice is that you are putting the rate upon the person, and being governed by the conditions attaching to the individual; whereas the rate is upon the property. The individual suffers no injustice when he receives that property subject to those conditions. Now, I desire to deal with this matter from that point of view. Certainly I do not desire that the clergy of this country should be dealt with unfairly or harshly. I have always taken occasion to hear my testimony to the honourable and useful way, often at great sacrifices to themselves, in which they have laboured for the good of those among whom they live. I recognise the trials which they have experienced, and the carking care which besets them, due to the diminution of their incomes. The fall in prices has affected their incomes as it has affected the incomes of many other people. But the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill emphatically told us that the Bill has nothing to do with the poverty of the clergy, or considerations of that kind. He repeated that over and over again. He said that if the clergy were rich instead of being, some of them, poor, this Bill would be equally necessary, because it remedied an injustice which affected them, and the rich as well as the poor

1025
were entitled to justice. Very well. Let us consider this question, altogether apart from the circumstances of the impoverishment of certain classes of the clergy, leaving any question of sentiment altogether out of the argument. That the right hon. Gentleman strongly insisted upon. It is rather surprising, I must say, because that is not the light in which the advocates of this measure have generally presented it to us, or in which I think they are likely to present it in other places. However, we must take it from the Government that it has no relation at all to the distress of the clergy, and it becomes therefore simply a question of the incidence of rating, and how it arises in respect to the tithe rent-charge. Now the remedy proposed in the Report is by deductions in consequence of certain charges winch fall upon the clergy. It is a very remarkable fact that the Government have rejected the method of relieving the clergy by deductions, and they have taken in its place the method of relieving by a lump sum. Not one of you, even in your ten minutes, has told us what the deductions were, and ever since the introduction of this measure we have not been able to bring you to book as to the deductions upon which you rely. There is a sort of vague statement in the Report that there should be some regard to the services rendered, but as to the deductions, and the heads to which they belong, and what they amount to, we have never been able to bring the authors and supporters of this Bill to book. I followed the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Stroud. He said, "I will presently show you that this lump sum is equivalent to the deductions we claim"; but when he came to that point he never stated what deductions he claimed; still less did he show what was their amount, or that that amount constituted half the rates. Perhaps we shall hear from the First Lord of the Treasury what are the specific deductions which the Government claim: he will give us the figures as to the deductions, and show us that they amount to exactly half the rate. But, Sir, I have more to say upon tins subject of deductions. It is a much fairer method of dealing with the question than that of a lump sum, because there are some cases where a deduction will apply, and there are other cases in which it would not apply at all. I will take the stipend of a
1026
curate. Under the system of deductions, where there was no curate, there would be no deduction, but when you give a lump sum you give it equally whether there is a curate or whether there is not. Therefore the lump sum system is obviously one which is grossly unjust as compared with the system of deductions. NOW, just let us consider what is the character of this property, and what is the nature of the rate which is placed upon it. First of all, it is said that it is rated upon its gross value. That is an inaccurate statement. If you look at the twenty-fifth page of the Report you will find six heads of deductions that are made from the rate. There is nothing more inaccurate than the statement that is made by Members on the opposite side of the House that the property is rated upon the gross value. Then there is a list of eight deductions which have been claimed which are not allowed. The first is the "landlord's property tax." Of course that is not allowed, because there is no landlord. How could there be a deduction for the landlord's property tax? Then the "land tax." In that very interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer he said that the land tax was entirely out of the question as a deduction. "The liability to repair the chancel of the parish church." You might as well include the liability to repair the rector's house. "Personal services of the parson or vicar"; I will come to that directly. "Payments to curates," "payments to daughter churches," "pensions to retiring incumbents," "sums paid to the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty." The Chancellor of the Exchequer repudiated making a deduction for Queen Anne's Bounty. You might just as well claim a deduction from any ordinary mortgage; it is the money which is advanced for the benefit of the living, generally for the building of the rector's house, sometimes, I believe, also for the augmentation of small livings. Every one of these deductions which are claimed, and which are supposed to represent in the gross this 50 per cent. of the rate which is now going to be granted out of the general money of the ratepayers, has been disallowed by the courts of law; that is to say, they have been declared to be inconsistent with the Statutes of Elizabeth and that legislation which my right hon. friend has said has been in existence for 300 years. Here we have the Panty opposite attacking a

1027
principle which rests upon a tradition of 300 years, and in the interests of what? In the interests of a particular class. I do not call that a Conservative—I do not think that it is even a Liberal Unionist policy on the part of Gentlemen who sit on the Bench opposite. What is the true principle in this matter? It has been so well explained by my right hon. friend the Member for Bodmin that I shall not dwell upon it at any length. This is not a technical question at all. It is the fundamental principle upon which rating depends. The principle is that the rate attaches to the property itself, antecedently and independently of the interest of the person in whose hands that property may be. Every lawyer knows that that is a fundamental principle. I can illustrate it by a matter with which I think I was the means of compelling the House to be rather familiar in the year 1894, and that is the nature of the Probate duty. Probate duty is a duty which is paid out of property quite independently of how much goes ultimately to any individual. It is a tax upon the property itself, and is wholly independent of the condition or the interest or anything else of the person into whose hands it passes. That was established by the great and well-known case of the Mersey Docks, when the whole law upon that subject was thoroughly investigated. It was alleged, on the part of the trustees of the Mersey Docks, that inasmuch as they derived no benefit from the money raised they ought not to be rated—that rating was only applicable to parties who received benefit. That case showed that the rate was upon the property. That was followed by a case which was referred to the other day, which settled the claims for deductions. I am extremely averse to quoting law cases in this House, and I promise the House that it shall only be a few sentences. But it makes the principle of the law so clear that I think any layman will see the bearing of it. The claim was for a deduction on the tithe in regard to the stipend of a curate, and the Court said this:
"I can discover nothing, either in the words or in the spirit of the Act, exempting from liability the occupier of valuable property, merely because the property is not to be enjoyed by him or by anyone on behalf of whom he occupies, but is to be devoted to the benefit of the public."
And the Court concludes with one sentence, which really sums up the whole of
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the law and the whole sense of this matter. The words are:
"The fallacy of the argument is in confounding the rateable value to the poor-rate with the remunerative value to the incumbent."
And yet it is upon the remunerative value to the incumbent that the whole principle of claims for deductions is founded. That is contrary to the whole law of rating. It is a claim which has no foundation at all, and if you are going to give £87,000, or any other sum, in order to depart from that rule, you are in point of fact giving away the property of other people in order that the people who ought to pay shall not pay. This applies, as I have said, to the case of curates, and equally to the case of personal service. That is the only deduction which in the report, or in any of the speeches, I can find has really been relied upon. There is vague talk of allowing something for the personal service of the curate, but that is disposed of entirely by the principle to which I have already referred. But it does not depend upon the special condition attaching to this service. It is due upon the property itself, perfectly independently of the man who receives it; therefore, this personal service deduction is contrary to the whole principle, and I do not think that the Solicitor-General will dispute that proposition. It has been said, I know, that there is some difference in the Act of Elizabeth between the clergy as inhabitants and as occupiers. ("No, no!") I can quite excuse the hon. Member who dissents, and who has not had the advantage of a legal education; otherwise he would know that that distinction has been wiped out over and over again, and there is no foundation in law for it. As this matter has been referred to, I think it only right that I should make this statement. If personal service is to be a matter of deduction, why not the rectory in which the man lives? That is part of his personal service and necessary for his residence. Does anybody contend for a moment that, because the parson has to reside in the rectory, that is a reason why he is not to be rated? No, Sir, the argument of personal service will not hold water for a moment. But even supposing it did, I should like to know how the right hon. Gentleman would estimate the value of personal service. It is not to be the whole; it is a part. You have personal service and

1029
personal service. The services in this country are not all the same. There are some which are more numerous, there are some which are more ornamental, some which are most costly, and some which are more onerous than others. Are you going to take a figure of a man's services and deduct that from the rates on his property? The Government have not suggested what is to be the proper average of the remuneration of a man for his personal service. Therefore, for these reasons, the tax not being upon the person, but upon the property, I absolutely deny that there is any injustice in this case at all. Where the rate is on the property the question of justice or injustice cannot arise. It is because the Government knew perfectly well that they could not defend any of these deductions that they have thrown overboard the Report of the Commission, which recommended proceeding by deduction.
MR. LONG: No, no. We have not done so.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Then show me anything in the Bill which provides for this.
MR. LONG: I did not say there was anything in the Bill about deduction, but that the right hon. Gentleman is incorrect in saying that the Commissioners specifically recommended deductions as a basis of relief. The right hon. Gentleman will see that in the last paragraph of their conclusions the majority of the Commission recommended that relief should be given, and subsequently that three of the Commissioners recommended deductions as a basis.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Yes, they recommended that relief should be given.
MR. LONG: That is so, but not by deductions.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: If so, then by what process?
MR. LONG: They do not specify that.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: A nice Commission and a nice interim Report, which is hurried down to the House of Commons when the Commissioners have
1030
not had time to make up their minds as to what kiwi of relief shall be given! I am greatly obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his interruption. It only emphasises and italicises the criticism we have made on this Report. The only thing they have ventured to hint at is deductions, and when they come to the end of it I suppose they mistrusted their deductions, and so all they have done is to say, "Give them some relief; we don't know what, but we hope you will invent something for us." That is the Report on which you are going to take the money of the taxpayers of the country. I think the severest censure upon the Commission has been passed by the right hon. Gentleman, who has thrown their recommendations over and endeavoured to invent a lump sum to take the place of their unfounded deductions. The right hon. Gentleman, at all events, does not agree with his great defender, the hon. and learned Member for Stroud, because he is one who did recommend deduction, and he does not agree either with that great authority, Sir John Hibbert.
MR. LONG: I did not say that.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Well, whom does he agree with? We have got this lump stun of 50 per cent. bestowed on this favoured class. It has no justification in law, and in point of amount it is higher even than most of the witnesses ventured to suggest. The secretary and solicitor of the Tithe Rent-charge Owners' Union expressed the opinion that if a deduction were made for personal services it should be at least 30 per cent. He considered that the effect of a deduction of 45 or 50 per cent. would be to induce anyone to take a lease of the tithe. Another witness proposed an allowance of 25 per cent. in the case of rectorial tithes and 30 per cent. in the case of vicarial tithes. And upon that sort of evidence the Government give 50 per cent. That is the sort of way in which the finance of this Bill has been conducted. It will be said "That may have been the law in the time of Elizabeth, but we do not think much of the times of Elizabeth, and we do not think much of the 300 years which have elapsed since then; we will make a new rating law altogether on an interim Report and in a Ten Minutes Bill." The making of a new rating law in this country is a very serious matter. It affects millions of people, not only the

1031
rich, but the poor, and you cannot proceed too carefully and considerately in dealing with matters of this kind. This sort of attempt to hustle an interim gift to a particular class under the cloak of rating is one of the most unstatesmanlike proceedings I have ever seen attempted in this House. What is the sort of authority on which you endeavour to support this Bill? I have heard the great authority of Mr. Gladstone quoted. I think the date of Mr. Gladstone's opinion was given as 1852 or 1856. That is very nearly fifty years ago. Since that time Mr. Gladstone was First Minister several times; he was Finance Minister still more often. Mr. Gladstone was a man who was not careless of the interests of the clergy, and he never attempted to meddle with this tithe rent-charge. I venture to think that was because when he came to examine the question he had came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for interfering. Is that not a reasonable construction? Do you think that if Mr. Gladstone had been convinced that a great injustice was being done to the clergy in the matter he would not have attempted to remedy it? If you do you have a different appreciation of the character of Mr. Gladstone than I have. But that is not all. There was the Government of Lord Beaconsfield, with its great majority. During that time suggestions were made that there should be some deductions in this matter, but so little importance did the Government of Lord Beaconsfield and the Tory party attach to these proposals that with great alacrity they dropped them. Well, if that be so I think we ought to have some higher authority than any you have yet produced in this matter. Looking at this Bill, looking at the manner in which it has been brought forward, looking at the contents of the Bill, I confess I am lost in amazement to account for the genesis of the measure. The Government know very well that it is loudly condemned by their opponents. Yes, and that condemnation is audibly whispered by their supporters. I read this morning, even in one of the leading ecclesiastical journals, a condemnation of the imprudence, in the interest of the Church, of the course that the Government are pursuing. Party ties, no doubt, may compel Gentlemen opposite to support this measure, but I venture to say it will not be a hearty support. They know very well to-day,
1032
and they will know better hereafter, what the true public opinion is upon a new State endowment for the wealthiest religious community in the world. Can anyone conjecture under these circumstances what induced the Government to bring in a Bill of this character? I have never been able to arrive at the idea that it was a Machiavellian policy. They have been sighing and moaning and deploring for some time that they had not before them a united Opposition. I cannot help thinking that it is in order I to confer upon them that blessing that they devised this measure. The process on this side of the House is complete, the division on the other side is beginning. I cannot help fancying that the Government thought that they were suffering under a dangerous plethora of superabundant popularity, and that they wanted a little depletion in order to make their system more wholesome, and therefore they introduced this Bill. They have thought it very easy to take the money out of what they derive from the death duties. That is their milch cow, from which they feed all their patrons, a fund whose inexhaustible resources they are perpetually using in order to job for their friends. Well, there is another solution of this riddle that occurs to my mind. No man who sits for six months in this House can fail to be aware that there is a party whose predominant influence on those benches considers ecclesiastical politics, and no other, which has no regard for any other sort or condition of men except those who belong to the ecclesiastical class. They seem to have the power to compel Her Majesty's Government to do what they please. They are very ably represented by a par nobile fratrum, the angel to whom the Government have sold their souls, and who exact from them the uttermost farthing. I can account in no other manner for the way in which ecclesiastical legislation was forced upon this House last year and is forced upon it again this year. Last year the condition of the Church both spiritually and morally was brought to our notice, and this year a grant to the clergy is put forward. One would have thought that in the interest of the Church a prudent Government would have avoided proposing this grant. The truth is that in this matter they are not their own masters. Medical men tell us that disorders have their sequelœ which.

1033
are more dangerous often than the disorder itself. You are suffering to-day from the sequelœ of the Benefices Bill, you are likely to suffer a good deal more from the sequelœ of the Tithe Rent-charge Bill. Do they really believe that they are going to strengthen the Church in the affections of the people by presenting to them the Church in the aspect of this Bill, a bounty-fed clergy subsidised out of the rates? I do not know whether that commends itself to the noble Lords below the gangway and whether that is the ideal which they wish to be entertained by the nation. There will not be a ratepayer in this country who will not become aware of the nature of this proposal, and I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that the Opposition are not going to follow his advice to cover his delinquencies. The ratepayers of this country will be well aware that, contrary to the fundamental law of rating, a special exemption and a lump sum of money has been given to the clergy expressly as an equivalent for the ecclesiastical services they perform. What right have you to take a lump sum of money from the ratepayers of this country and give it as a deduction for the ecclesiastical services of a particular religious denomination? No wonder the stomach of the Liberal Unionists rise. We have heard the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bodmin to-night. You have put a good many straws on that camel's back. This is the last straw put on by the Minister of Agriculture. A scheme more calculated to bring public odium upon the Church from the injustice of the principles upon which it is founded is, in my opinion, impossible to conceive. They violate all the laws of civil awl religious equality. You say it is a small sum, but the principle is not a small one. £87,000! Was there ever so great a birthright trafficked away for so miserable a mess of pottage? I believe there is many a true son of the Church in this House and out of this House who regards the provisions of this Bill with a sense of shame. I read in the Report of the Commission that in the year 1846 the gain to the land-owners under the Tithe Commutation Act was estimated at £650,000 a year. In 1878 it was estimated at £2,000,000 a year. Is that not a fund from which some voluntary contribution to these distressed clergy might have been looked for, without plundering the funds of the rate-
1034
payers, most of whom, the majority of whom, are amongst the poorest class of the population? You have got your majority, and you will use it to-night. (Cries of "We will.") Yes, I hope yon will. You have made your bed, and on that bed you will have to lie. This Parliament will be remembered in future times for nothing more than this, that its principal and almost its only feats have been class legislation—class legislation and gifts of public money, which ought to be appropriated to the good of all, for the benefit of privileged interests. These were not your professions at the election which returned you to power. It was not upon such grounds that you solicited and obtained the confidence of the country. You have used your powers, and you are using them to-night, for purposes for which you have no mandate. You have made your choice and we have made ours. We have resisted, and shall continue to resist to the utmost of our power, these most unjust proposals, and we shall await with confidence the judgment of the nation between a policy of class legislation and the principles of equal justice.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE: I think we are thoroughly justified in saying that after the two speeches we have heard delivered this afternoon against this Bill the whole case against the Bill has been stated. We have heard to-night all that philosophy and party spirit can suggest against this Bill. Unfortunately all the philosophy was in one speech and all the party spirit in the other. The right hon. Gentleman has just asked to what is the introduction of this Bill owing. I have no authority to give an answer to the question, but I think I can suggest to him a very good explanation, an explanation he could have found for himself in the Report of the Commission to which he has referred. The explanation for the introduction of this Bill is, I take it, that the supporters of the Government, as a body, represented to the Government that there was in all parts of the country a deep-seated and long-enduring dissatisfaction with a condition which put an absolute injustice upon the clergy of the country. This is no measure that has been forced by the Government for special purposes upon its unwilling supporters, it is a measure which has been asked for by the supporters of the Government, who, like myself, thought in the first instance

1035
that this was a wise and just view, and we may be well content to have listened to those two speeches and to know that all that can be said against the Bill has been said. What is the case against the Bill? The right hon. Gentleman opposite flouted the Report of the Royal Commission and spoke of it with contempt, as something which should be treated by this or any Government as waste paper. Has he for a moment thought of what experience and political knowledge are represented by the names of those who signed the Report? This is a Commission not composed entirely of supporters of Her Majesty's Government, or of those whose training and habits in political life would predispose them to suggest a measure of this kind. Whose are the names appended to this Report? There is Sir John Hibbert, than whom, it will be admitted, there is no more staunch Liberal or more experienced man in questions of this description. There is the name of Hamilton, well known as one long associated with Mr. Gladstone, and trained in the traditions of Liberal administration and finance. There is Murray, the name of another private secretary of Mr. Gladstone, and certainly trained in the same school. And when I heard the right hon. Member for East Fife making a sort of appeal to the urban populations in this matter, and suggesting that the Bill was asked for only by the rural supporters of the Government, I wondered whether he noticed the names of two gentlemen put on the Commission expressly for the purpose of adequately representing the interests of urban constituencies—Mr. Clare, representing Liverpool, and Mr. Smith, representing Birmingham. But what did the Commission report?
"That the representations made to the Commission on behalf of the owners of tithe rent-charge not severed from the benefice have shown that the burden of local taxation on such owners is unduly onerous, and that sufficient allowance is not made for the fact that persons entitled to the tithe rent-charge are under a legal obligation to render services and perform duties in return therefor; that the case of owners of tithe rent-charge not severed from the benefice is based upon a ground which we believe to be fully established; that the present law, as interpreted by the Courts, works unjustly and places those owners in a much less favourable position than other owners who are also occupiers of rateable property; that there exists an exceptionally acute feeling of dissatisfaction with regard to the hardship of the law as it stands; and that,
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in view of all the circumstances, although incumbents are not entitled to be wholly relieved from the liability to be assessed for local rates in respect of the tithe rent-charge—indeed, such a claim has not been generally made by the witnesses who appeared before us—yet, pending the final recommendations of the Commission on this and other matters referred to us, the case of the parochial incumbent owning tithe rent-charge not severed from the benefice may properly be met by some special measure of relief,'
That Report comes to the Government and to this House with the authority of the collective judgment of men trained in different schools, and taking different views on parts of this question, but all united in the view that a real injustice is being done. I put this case upon the plea of justice. I quite agree with my right hon. friend in charge of the Bill that this is not a case in which any appeal is made for charity. But I protest against the unfairness with which the right hon. Gentleman treated this matter, and asked us to consider the two things as if they were wholly unconnected. They are not. Justice ought to be clone to all, and it ought to be the deliberate and anxious care on the part of this House to search out and remedy injustice. You cannot remedy every case of injustice; or we should probably have been dealing with the probate duties long ago. But if you find a case of manifest and grave injustice, pressing hardly year by year on ten or eleven thousand of one of the most deserving and hard-working classes in the country, surely you are bound to consider the fact that the persons who come to you for justice come to you not only asking for justice, but representing that the injustice which year by year you are allowing to be done to them is crippling and harassing and weakening them in the discharge of the highest duties! I was amazed to hear the right hon. Member for Bodmin condescend to the pitiful suggestion that this was an objectionable proposal, because the people who were rich would get more than the people who were poor. A superficial gibe like that is unworthy of my right hon. friend. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer were fortunate enough to-morrow to be able to reduce the income-tax by one-half, it would be perfectly true to say that the larger benefit was going to the richer people, because they paid on the larger incomes. But would anyone in this House suggest such a consideration, and complain that

1037
the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not acting with sympathy and justice, because he did not make better provision for the poor than the rich? If there is a case of manifest injustice which the House can easily remedy by this Bill, the fact that besides to the poor men who are very much harassed the relief will be given on the same grounds of justice to men who do not need it so much, is no reason for withholding the relief. I will not go back on questions of law—no one is more reluctant than I am to do that in this House; but when the right hon. Gentleman speaks of the Act of Elizabeth, I would remind him that the reason why the parson and vicar were mentioned in the Act of Elizabeth was to prevent it from being understood that they were exempted altogether from the liability imposed under the Act. The tithe rent-charge which the parson or vicar has is not mentioned in that Act as part of the property which, qua property, is dealt with. The inhabitants are dealt with first, and the parson and vicar are mentioned among the inhabitants who ought to pay according to their ability. But, I agree, that is a matter of no consideration now, because for many years the interpretation of this Act has been so well established that it would be idle to go beyond it. The real grievance is much more recent. It dates from 1836, when the Tithe Commutation Act was passed. There is no better principle of construing Acts of Parliament than that of construing them with reference to the law as it bad been declared at the time of the passing of the Acts, and that is a very important matter to be considered in regard to that. In 1830 the case of Jodrell bad been decided, and that decision would have given relief to the clerical titheowner. The Report of the Commission says:
"In 1830 it was decided that the titheowner was rateable only for that proportion of the value of his tithe which the rent received by the landlord for all the land in the parish bore to the whole annual value of such land, including the profits of the tenant."
That is to say, the titheowner ought to have taken off his assessment the same allowances as were made in regard to the other occupiers of land in the parish. Then the point is stated in terms:
"If the rent is one-half or two-thirds of the total annual profit or value of the land, the rate on all other property should be one-half or two-thirds of its annual value."
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The intention of that decision was, and the effect of it would have been, if it had been upheld and acted upon until now, to do very much what this Bill will do. It would have relieved the clerical tithe-owner in respect of that share which is there suggested as being perhaps one-half or two-thirds. That ease was decided in 1830, and if any lawyer had been asked in 1836, when the Commutation Act wits passed, to state the law with regard to the rating of the tithe-owner, he would have pointed to that decision. But in 1836, not only the Tithe Commutation Act was passed, but also the Parochial Assessments Act, the purpose of which was to deal with the assessments of all hereditaments. Then a very curious and interesting thing took place. Those who represented the clergy at that time were anxious to secure for them the benefit of the law as laid down in Jodrell's case; and it was arranged with the Government, and promised by the Government, that there should be a proviso put into the Parochial Assessments Act in these words:
"That nothing herein contained shall be supposed to alter or affect the principles and proportions according to which different kinds of hereditaments may now by law be rated."
If these words had been put in, they would have given statutory effect to the decision in the case of Jodrell. Unfortunately—though there is no explanation of the circumstance—those words were altered as the Bill was passing through Parliament; and on the words substituted the Courts, two years later, put a different interpretation.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The words were altered by Parliament.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE: Not upon any discussion in Parliament. There is no trace found of how it came to pass that the words were differently drafted, and no one can doubt that the words in the Act were honestly intended by the Government of the day to carry out the purpose of the words they accepted. By a Parliamentary accident words were inserted which two years afterwards Lord Denman interpreted the other way. From that day to this the grievance has not been allowed to slumber. Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have talked as if the complaint had been made just lately, and this appeal to Parliamentary generosity were

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because of what the clergy of the Church of England have suffered in recent years; but it is nothing of the kind. The grievance was complained of then, and has been complained of ever since, and when the right hon. Gentleman says that it was so long ago as 1852 that Mr. Gladstone used the strong words he did, I do not think he weakens the case for the Bill, for he establishes that the thing we now ask Parliament to remedy was denounced as an injustice by Mr. Gladstone 47 years ago. It is no answer to say that in later years Mr. Gladstone, having great authority, did nothing to redress the grievance. Unhappily Mr. Gladstone had to work with such instruments as he had at hand in his Parliamentary action. He had among those whose support was absolutely essential to his Ministerial existence those who would have resisted a proposal of the kind, as they resist it now, as a new endowment of the Church. But the question never slumbered; again and again it was set forth, again and again the clergy complained of the hardship, and surely now they should not be exposed to gibe and contumely because they ask the House of Commons to redress a grievance which has become intolerable. It is said this is a fresh endowment of the Church, this proposal to relieve the incomes of the clergy from burdens which are almost universally acknowledged to be unjust burdens. Well, we have quoted some opinions in recognition of this, and if there are two men belonging to the Party opposite who may be quoted as equal in authority on a matter of this kind to Mr. Gladstone and Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, then I leave the industry of hon. Members opposite to find out what they have said about it. So long as these declarations cannot be matched, cannot be controverted, cannot be overweighted by others, so long I think I am entitled to say the grievance is almost universally acknowledged and should be remedied. It is said that this is an endowment of the Church, and that the Church ought not to ask for an endowment from the State. It is said by those who are so very anxious for the welfare of the Church, it is said by these in sympathetic tones of sorrow, "How terrible a thing it is that the Church should accept this dangerous gift!" Sir, the Church is accepting no gift at all. There is no endowment, no gift. The clergy of the Church have asked, have
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clamoured, to be released from that which is an unfair burden on them, and for the House of Commons to yield to this demand and right this injustice involves no endowment, no gift of any kind. All sorts of topics have been introduced into this Debate, not indeed by the right hon. Gentleman to-night, but the other night there were constant references to the question of Protestantism and to difficulties with regard to the ministry. No one would be stronger than I in opposing and endeavouring to prevent practices of which we have complained; but what in the world has that to do with this Bill? To say that a clergyman in a country parish struggling to do his duty in circumstances of immense pressure that come around every man in the position of one ministering to the sick and poor, with the constant claims of others on his scanty means—to say that justice shall be denied to this man because somebody else in a fashionable church in some large town is indulging in extravagant ritualism, is surely to introduce an unworthy and irrelevant topic into this discussion. We have heard tonight an essay from my right hon. friend the Member for Bodmin on the present condition of the Liberal Unionist Party. The troubles that affect his position do not touch mine at all. I have the advantage of being supported by a good many very valuable and faithful friends of the Liberal Unionist Party in my constituency, and, so far as I know them, I think every one of them is at least as strong as I am in the desire to do justice to the Church. I have not the slightest fear of any loss of Liberal Unionist support in my constituency, nor need other Members have any fear in theirs. Then it is said by others, You are proceeding in the wrong way; you might make some allowance or deduction upon the method proposed by Sir John Hibbert and others. Of course, the Government have considered the different ways of meeting the grievance, and anyone can see there would be great difficulty in constructing an elaborate scheme, applicable with fairness to all cases and in all places. You would have to introduce a new set of terms and deductions into the administration of the Poor Law all over the country. This would be a matter of extreme difficulty, and political science need not necessarily be applied for the scientific dealing with a matter of this kind. All the members of the Commission agree

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that something should be done at once. All their Reports recommend that we should not wait for the final conclusion of their consideration of the subject of local taxation, but should do something at once. My hon. and learned friend, with two other Commissioners, recommended the proposal of deductions, but there was another and a supplementary Report by another member of the Commission. The right hon. Gentleman said that the hon. Member for East Donegal had in his Report "smashed" the Report of the Commission.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I said smashed the history.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE: I heard the word "smashed "; indeed, it is familiar to me as used by the right hon. Gentleman. I think I have frequently heard him say somebody has smashed something or somebody else. Now, here is the Report of the hon. Member for East Donegal. He is unable to assent to some of the statements of the Commissioners, but he says:
"I am of opinion that the case of hardship which is admittedly made out would be entirely, sufficiently, and prudently met by an extension to tithe rent-charge of the provisions of the Agricultural Rating Act, 1896."
The concluding sentence of his Report is this:
"I am pleased to find myself in agreement with the majority of my colleagues in dealing with the hardship inflicted by the exclusion of tithe rent-charge from the benefit of the Agricultural Rating Act, and am in favour of its inclusion as the proper method of dealing with the grievance complained of."
This is the Report of the dissenting Commissioner who has been so triumphantly quoted. I read it as practically a suggestion of the very thing the Government are doing in this Bill. We have now the authority of the whole Commission. It is said the Government are doing wrong, though they are proceeding—if not in terms, at least substantially—to carry out the proposals of the Commission; but we are told they are taking the money from the wrong fund. The right hon. Member for East Fife said some severe things in reference to the Local Taxation Account and finance in which I am very much disposed to agree with him. There were singular incidents in relation to the Act of 1888 which appear to have had somewhat unsatisfactory results. It is an old
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but interesting story, and I think much of the result was due to a want of courage on the part of the Government of the day in not persisting in a proposal because of a narrow Division on an Ascot Cup day which brought their majority down to four, but, chiefly, it was owing to the Parliamentary dexterity of the hon. Member for Louth, who sprang at the momentarily discouraged Government and forced them into a somewhat hasty arrangement which has not, I think, resulted very well. It is proposed to take money from this fund, and why not?
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The money you speak of is money from the whisky duty.
SIR EDWARD CLARKE: I am quite aware of that. Does the right hon. Gentleman think I have forgotten what, the Bill was? It was the beginning of this local taxation system with which we are dealing, and which I think was very unsatisfactory. It was the beginning of the system, and the result of the system as it now stands is that local authorities do get year after year large sums, increasing in amount, and have to find a way of spending these sums. ("Oh, Oh.") I do not think there is any public money spent in the country in regard to which there is more extravagance and waste than the expenditure of these sums, for the duty of spending the money in particular ways has been thrown upon people not always quite prepared for the responsibility. The effect of this will be to take this money from the ratepayers, not from the taxpayers; there will be no new taxation upon taxpayers; the grant money will be intercepted, and, instead of being distributed among the ratepayers, a fair apportionment will go to relieve the unfair burden which has been improperly put on one class. Now, I confess I think, both in the substance of its proposals, and in the method of carrying them out, this Bill is a good Bill. I am quite sure it will be received with satisfaction, not only by the 10,000 or 11,000 clergymen to be benefited, but by the populations among whom they are working, and who have seen the hardships from which the clergy are suffering. They will be glad to see them relieved, and I am glad to think that there is no real division on this side of the House among the supporters of

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the Government, either as to the wisdom of the proposal, or as to the excellence of the means by which it is proposed to carry it out.
SIR JOSEPH PEASE: Nobody who has known the history of the tithe or of Church rates but must have heard of the bringing in of this Bill with considerable pain. It seems to me that it will revive the controversies which prevailed in my youth between the Church and Dissent on a very paltry issue, and for a very small sum of money involving the great principle of the increased endowment of the Established Church of England. The manner of bringing in this Bill everyone in the House, on whatever side he sits, must have felt was most unfortunate. A Bill involving great principles in which vast masses of the people in this country are interested was brought in under a rule and under circumstances, as already described by the right hon. Member for Bodmin, never contemplated when the Standing Order was passed, and which I think the Government must already regret. Again, this Debate, involving the religious feeling of the country, is being pressed forward to a Division, under the abuse of another Standing Order. This is a great stretching of the Standing Orders, which I see with very great regret; because whatever Party is in power, the feelings of the other side of the House ought to be taken into consideration before the Standing Orders are stretched as they have been. This Bill is looked upon, and will be looked upon still more in the future, as a direct additional endowment of the Established Church. Now, the Established Church is already greatly endowed by the State. Its schools, without any local control whatever, are receiving something like two millions sterling per annum, and two years ago another endowment of £400,000 was placed on them, while the cities and boroughs on that occasion received no help whatever. My right hon. friend says that this Bill is an act of justice; but I say there is no act of justice to the clergy which gives to the rich a larger sum of money than it gives to the man in the same position of life who is poor. It was the same with the Agricultural Rating Act. The poor landlords who had lost their rents in Wiltshire, Hampshire; and
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other districts were rated on the decreased rent.
AN HON. MEMBER: The farmers were.
SIR JOSEPH PEASE: The farmers, then—their land was rated at the low rents, and they got some relief; but in my own district, where the rents had risen from 10s. to 20s. per acre, they also got relief. I say the principle is not a principle of honesty, but a bad principle. If there is distress which Parliament must relieve, let the grant go to those who are in distress, and not to those who are not in distress. The Bill is a clumsy Bill, and on that ground alone it ought to be repudiated. I view with very great suspicion these little bye Reports which come on when occasion requires them to meet the views of the Government. The question of local taxation, of which both counties and boroughs complain, arose in an acute form after the Agricultural Rating Act. These doles and piecemeal dealings have a tendency to make the local taxation of the country worse. Before legislation on the subject, the whole question of taxation, as affecting both the towns and the country, as well as the 11,000 clergymen whom this Bill affects, should be before Parliament and the country. I belong to a long pedigree of those who declined to pay Church rates and tithes, because they objected to national money being taken for the endowment of one section of the Christian Church, and on these grounds they were distrained upon for tithes. Long after the Act of 1836 they also refused to pay rates or tithes, because they believed that it was contrary to Gospel teaching. Large numbers of Nonconformists still look upon it as an act of injustice that one section of the Christian Church should receive national property, more especially when there is no longer harmony in the Church. What, after all, will this Bill do? A calculation has been made that on the average the clergy will receive £8 each. I know a good many who will get no more than £2, but others who do not require it, will receive from £8 to £10; and yet that is called an act of justice to the clergy! I am exceedingly surprised that the President of the Board of Agriculture should come here and minimise these points. There seems to be a desire merely to relieve a certain class, and to do a great injustice to those of us

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who believe that no further endowment of the Established Church should take place. The Bill has been brought in in a manner most unusual, and very dangerous to the best traditions of this House. Whatever may be said as regards justice or injustice, money is to be taken from the taxation not of the Church people only, but of the whole community, in order to endow the Church of England. That money has not been foolishly or unwisely spent by the Charity Commissioners, who have done an enormous amount of good with it in their districts. There are, however, some items of comfort in this measure. I am one of those who believe that it will hasten the day when the Church of England, disestablished and disendowed, will, freed from its fetters, teach the pure doctrines of Christianity to the great advantage of this country and the world.
MR. JAMES KENYON: I have read very carefully the interim Report of the Royal Commission presented to this House, and 1 quite agree with what has been said in regard to the injustice of the rates on the tithe rentcharge. It was the unanimous opinion of the Members of the Royal Commission that great loss had been sustained by the lowering of the prices of agricultural produce, and that the distress of the clergy was due to that. The average price of British wheat, barley, anal oats, per imperial bushel, was for the seven years preceding Christmas, 1835: Wheat, 7s. 0½d. barley, 3s. 11½d.; cats, 2s. 9d.; for the year 1894: Wheat, 2s. 1½d.; barley, 3s. 4¾d.; and Oats, 2s. 1½ and for the year 1898: Wheat, 4s. 3d.; barley, 3s. 4¾d.; and oats, 2s. 3½d. At the very lowest prices of wheat the 41b. loaf sold at Spalding at 3d., and the chairman of the Co-operative Stores at Bury says that flour was sold at half the price of the early days of the institution. Two items are not in the tithe—wool, which is half the price it was ten years ago, and milk, which at the present moment is delivered at Kentish Town from Derbyshire at 1½d. per quart. The result of this fall in the prices of agricultural produce, on which tithe rent is based, during the twenty years from 1875 to 1895 is that 2,100,000 acres of arable land in this country have gone out of cultivation, and have been turned into pasture land. The farmers have suffered from the low prices,
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and the tithes rent owners have suffered; but who are the people who have had the benefit? It is the ratepayers and the taxpayers in the towns. I represent an urban manufacturing constituency, and I believe that they are quite willing to have this injustice to the tithe rent-charge owners remedied. And I am certain that the farmers of the country would not have objected to the clergy being brought under the Agricultural Rating Act of 1696. It is an important matter to the dwellers in towns that they should be able to live cheaply; and they have lived cheaply during the last twenty-five years. But it is important, also, that we should get our food supply in this country, and not allow the arable land to go into pasture. But there is another way of looking at it. The working men in the towns are not at all anxious that the workers on the farms should come into the towns to reduce wages. What difference does the Agricultural Rating Act make to the ordinary £10 householder? Only 2s. 6d. a year; and this Tithe Rent-charge Bill will only cause an additional penny, making a total of 2s. 7d. It will pay the townspeople to hand that over to keep the agricultural labourers from coming into the towns. There is another point which should tell very considerably with the employers of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and other people who have invested their capital in mills and manufactories, and who are interested in the workpeople being supplied with cheap food. When the farmers of this country are prosperous they improve the home trade. There has been a good deal of talk in this House about the trade of China. I do not wish to underrate the importance of that trade, but the home trade is worth several Chinas, and I think the Government did a sensible thing when they brought in the Agricultural Rating Act of 1696, and this Tithe Rent-charge Bill. During the years these Acts have to run, the British farmers will have time to see whether they can compete more effectually with the foreigners who are sending agricultural produce to this country. One thing has struck me since I have had the honour of coming to this House. It is that the "drum ecclesiastic" seems to arouse more feeling than anything else. As soon as the tithe rent-charge is spoken of the cry arises, "Oh, the parson!" I hope this House will treat the parson as fairly as anybody else. My constituents,

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I believe, do not trouble their heads very much about the parsons, either Church of England or Nonconformist. They look after their pockets and what will best serve their own interests. I have consulted many of them, and I do not think I was blamed once for voting for the Agricultural Rating Act in 1896. I look upon this Bill as a corollary of that Act, and I think that it should have been made I one of the provisions of that Act.
MR. PICKERSGILL: The hon. and learned Member for Plymouth rests the case for this Bill mainly upon the Report of the Royal Commission, and for the twentieth time the name of Sir John Hibbert has been brought in in support of it. I am somewhat weary of these reiterated references to the authority of Sir John Hibbert. Many of us remember him, and all who knew him entertained a most sincere regard for him. But really, it is hardly ingenuous to cite Sir John Hibbert as being in favour of the Bill before the House. He was nothing of the kind. The fact is really the other way. Sir John signed a special Report which looked for a remedy in quite a different direction—that of reducing the rateable tithe rent-charge by deductions. In other words, Sir John desired to treat the matter as a question of assessment, while the Government have elected to treat it as a matter of rating, which is quite a different thing. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that the introduction of this Bill had nothing to do with the sufferings of the clergy. Why, then, is this Bill being rushed upon us?
SIR EDWARD CLARKEwas understood to say that the sufferings of the clergy might be a reason for pressing forward the Bill this session.
MR. PICKERSGILL: Then I rather misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman with regard to that. I accept, of course, the statement he has made. But although I shall not be able to press this View of the case as against him, I think I can press it as against another hon. Gentleman who has spoken in this Debate, and who speaks with some authority, because he is, I believe, the secretary of the so-called Church Committee, which has banded itself together to look after the special interests of the
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clergy. I refer, of course, to the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Tunbridge Division of Kent. The hon. Gentleman said with regard to the proposal of this Bill that as a dole it is beneath contempt. Well, Sir, I quite agree that when £87,000 is divided up in the ridiculous way prescribed by this Bill among 10,000 or 11,000 participators, the share of those who most need help will indeed be beneath contempt. But the benefit to the individual is by no means the measure of the loss to the community. And here, at all events, I must join issue again with the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth. I think the House will hardly endorse the sweeping criticisms which he passed upon the local bodies throughout the country in regard to the manner in which they use the grants from the Local Taxation Account. I have had some experience of local bodies, and I venture to say that the money which comes to them from the Local Taxation Account is for the most part wisely expended in the public interest. Now, this £87,000 is at the present time distributed in this way amongst the public authorities throughout the country in fairly large sums, and it is, I submit, very usefully employed in technical education and in other ways. Well, that work will be stopped, or at least checked, if this money is diverted, and I submit that the money will be simply wasted, either by being given to those who do not need it, or, on the other hand, being given to those clergy who, as we know and regret, are in such severe straits, that the gift of such a beggarly sum will be doing little more than adding insult to injury. I think there are, not only on this side of the House, but also on the other side, some who feel that this money will not be distributed so as really to do anything to meet the necessities of the case. I hold in my hand a copy of a letter, which has appeared in the public press, addressed by one hon. Gentleman opposite to a correspondent. I refer to my friend the hon. Member for Hornsey, who says, writing to a correspondent with regard to the proposals made in this Bill:
"I should prefer that the relief given should be extended in great measure, if not entirely confined, to the poorer clergy, whose necessities are severe."
I think there are some hon. Gentlemen, at all events on the other side of the House, who entertain similar opinions, but

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who, perhaps, will not express them with the same frankness which my hon. friend the Member for Hornsey has shown. The hon. Member for the Tunbridge Division last night said that this was a question of assessment: but if so why does the Bill treat the subject as a question of rating? In support of his contention he proceeded to say:
"Under this Bill the relief given to the clergy is contributed by other ratepayers."
That is a jugglery with words which is almost worthy, if I may say so without offence, of the President of the Board of Agriculture. It is true that the relief to the clergy is contributed by other ratepayers, but what other ratepayers? Not the neighbours of the clergyman who is relieved; not the fellow ratepayers of the clergyman in the same parish or in the same district. That would be too flagrant, and would never be tolerated. But the burden is imposed on a different body of ratepayers, and perhaps I shall show that best by referring to the case of London. I am a London Member, and am naturally disposed to regard this question especially from a metropolitan point of view. Now, Sir, let me briefly put before the House what the case of London is so far as this Bill is concerned. But first, let me say that this Bill is the last—well, I will not say the last, because if the Government have rope enough, I daresay it will not be the last, but at all events the latest—of a series of Bills by which the metropolis has been particularly hard hit. I shall refer, of course, only to Bills which are strictly analogous to the present Bill so far as the metropolis is concerned. Take, for instance, the Agricultural Rating Act. How was London affected by the Agricultural Rating Act? The share which London had to contribute under the Agricultural Rating Act may be fairly estimated at £375,000. And what does London receive back? The total amount is £5,245 15s. 2d.—a very magnificent dividend! Then, again, under the Voluntary Schools Act, the contribution of London may be estimated very fairly at £120,000, and London receives back £44,000. Lastly, under the Necessitous School Boards Act the contribution of London is about £20,000, and the return is nil. I now come to the Bill before the House, and the way in which London will be affected by it. In the first place, I
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will take the City of London. With regard to tithes the City of London is a peculiar case. The tithe in the City of London was settled more that 300 years ago by a decree made under the authority of an Act of Henry VIII. and since that time other commutations have been made. But the City of London, so far as the enormous majority of its parishes are concerned, never came under the Tithes Commutation Act of 1836, and, as a matter of fact, the payments which are made in lieu of tithes in the City of London are not rated, with the exception of a few parishes, which for the present purpose I may disregard. So far, there fore, as the City of London is concerned, in an enormous number of its churches the clergy receive absolutely no benefit under this Bill. Secondly, with regard to the metropolis outside the City. That case is different from the case of the City. We must, however, remember that a large part of London was built over before the 1836 Act. Before the Commutation Act, land was built over which ceased to be divertible. There remains the large and not inconsiderable part of London which has been built over since 1836, but I should think there could be no dispute that the clergy in the metropolis are supported to a very small extent indeed out of the tithes. Take the East End of London, with which I am particularly associated. I should say that the number of clergy in the East End of London supported out of the tithes to any extent is most insignificant. I believe that a very large number of churches in the East End of London were endowed under what was called the Bishop of London's fund, and others have been endowed by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. But, as we know, tithe rent-charge in the hands of Commissioners receives no relief under this Bill, and therefore the advantages which will the gained by the metropolitan clergy by this Bill will be very small indeed. I have not been able in the time at my disposal to ascertain what the amount is, but it has been estimated at £1,000, and I should not think the relief which under this Bill will go to the metropolitan clergy will be largely in excess of £1,000. Let me turn to the other side, and see what London will have to pay. That is very easily calculated. The amount which London will have to pay under this Bill bears the same proportion

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to £87,000 which London's share of the estate duty bears to the total amount of that duty paid in to the Local Taxation Account for England. If that is worked out by the simple rule of three, the result will go to show that £20,000 is the annual burden which this Bill will impose on London. Thus £20,000, which might be spent on technical education, will be diverted entirely from the metropolis in any shape or form so far as 19–ths of it are concerned, and will simply constitute, on the part of the people of London, a dole to the country clergy. It does not particularly concern me to refer to the case of other towns. But what I have said as regards London applies mutatis mutandis to most other large towns. Take, for instance, Manchester. I believe a very large number of clergy in Manchester have been endowed out of what is called the Manchester Capitular Revenues. I daresay these revenues consist to a large extent of tithe rent-charges, but then, as we know, tithe rent-charges in the hands of such bodies are exempted from this Bill, and so it would appear that the Manchester clergy will receive very little benefit under this Bill. Before I sit down I desire to say just a word as to the bearing of this Bill upon wider issues. The position taken up by the advocates of the Bill is that a tithe rent-charge is not income from property in land belonging to the Church, but a mere salary paid by the State for services rendered. It was said again and again by the representatives of the clergy before the Royal Commission, "no body of men ought to be rated on their professional incomes; we object to being rated on pay for work." Well, I have no unfriendly feeling towards the clergy, but I must say that I am amazed that hon. Gentlemen opposite, who hold themselves out as the special champions of the Church, should be so blinded—if I may say so without offence—by the mere purpose of the moment as to be eagerly trying to reduce the great historic position of clergymen of the Church of England to that of mere receivers of a salary. The claims which are now made on behalf of the clergy are absolutely impossible unless either, on the one hand, you revolutionise the law of rating in this country, or unless, on the other, you depose the incumbent of a parish from his ancient and historic position. The clergy want to have it both ways, but that is impossible. The in-
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cumbent of a parish cannot at once retain the dignity and the security which attach to the position of one who is the owner of a freehold interest in land, and at the same time enjoy the immunity of their Nonconformist brethren who merely receive a salary hi return for services rendered. This Bill, if it passes, will have very far-reaching results. It is a proposal to supplement the incomes of the clergy by money taken directly out of the pockets of the people. It will give an enormous stimulus to the cause of Disestablishment in this country, and Liberationists may quietly smile while they see the noble Lord the Member for Rochester, the other noble Lord the Member for Greenwich, and the hon. Member for the Tunbridge Division zealously but all unconsciously sawing through the branch of the tree which supports them.
MR. J. H. JOHNSTONE: It seems to me that the general tone of this debate has been more fitted for the other House when sitting as the supreme Court of Appeal in this kingdom than it is for the House-of Commons, for apart from that zeal, which is not always according to knowledge, and apart from the harangues which we have so often heard on Liberationist platforms, and which we are hearing over and over again this evening, the matter has been treated as almost a pure and simple question of law. We have heard again and again hon. Members of the Opposition benches telling us that the law has been settled for so many centuries, and therefore it ought to remain what it is. I think that argument is extremely useful, because the foundation of our case is that the law being what it is, unjust and unequal, those who complain of the grievance under which they suffer must needs come to this House for that redress which they cannot get in the courts of the realm. The finding of the Commission is that the law as at present interpreted by our courts works injustice. They say that that point is fully established, and I think in dealing with this measure there are only two points worthy of consideration—one is whether the conclusion of the Commission is justified, whether their finding is established by the facts set out in their Report; and the other is, is this the time to remedy the inequalities, the existence of which they say has been fully

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established? I do not think it lies within the mouth of this House to say that an injustice and inequality does not exist. More than two years ago, on the 23rd Mar, 1897, this House, by a sufficient and substantial majority, declared its opinion that the burdens of local taxation borne by the clergy were inequitable and excessive, and that the grievance was one which called for substantial relief. That was a resolution passed two years ago, and, turning to the report of the Royal Commission, I think that we must see that the grievance is one of long standing. It was a hardship of which the clergy have had just reason to complain ever since the very inception of rating itself, and the inequality which they originally suffered from was intensified by the Parochial Assessment Act of 1836, as interpreted by the law courts. The injustice, which is recognised by the Royal Commission, is the foundation of the Bill now before the House, and I am quite content to take my stand on that foundation. When the Commissioners find that there is no other class which contributes so large a proportion of their income to local burdens as the beneficed clergy I think the justification of this Bill is fully and completely made out. Let me illustrate this by the case of a parish with which I am familiar. The population is 1,300, and the acreage 12,000, there are two churches and three schools. The clergy-man is a man of education and ability, and was a contemporary of my own at the university. The gross income of the benefice is £357, and the net income which he is able to put in his pocket after paying necessary charges upon it is £166, and the amount of local taxation upon that net income of £166 is 7s. 9d. in the pound. I think that is sufficient to show how real and how genuine is the inequality of which the beneficed clergy with good reason complain. I can never regard the income of the clergy as a professional income—I cannot say that that which does not depend upon a man's health and popularity, and ability and effort can be considered as professional income in the same sense as the income of the professional classes—but at the same time I cannot help being struck with the great contrast between the position of the lay impropriator of tithes and the clerical owner of tithes. The lay impropriator may live where he likes, he may undertake any other employment which he
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likes, he is put to no expense in earning his income except the trifling expense of collecting it; whereas, on the other hand, the clerical owner is bound by the law of the land to render certain services, to live in a particular place, and do a certain work, and yet he is assessed on exactly the same basis and to exactly the same extent as the other man, who does nothing whatever to earn his income. I think I have established the point that there is injustice and inequality in the present rating of the beneficed clergy, and if I have not done so I will call one further witness—the hon. Member who signs the memorandum at the end of the interim Report, in which he dissents from almost every line of his fellow Commissioners' Report. But even he says that rates form a charge upon the gross income of the beneficed clergy, where all other classes are rated upon the net annual value of their occupation, as measured by the rental, less certain deductions and that in itself constitutes a real and substantial grievance. The Bill is inconclusive, because, pending the final Report of this Commission on Local Taxation, I do not think the Government or anyone else can pledge themselves to this as a final solution of the difficulty. I say the Bill is temporary and inconclusive. I frankly admit I think the greatest part of its importance arises from the vehemence of the opposition with which it has been received. But for that it might be considered a small thing. I do not indeed think it ought to provoke that opposition, because it adopts one of the most cherishd principles of the benches opposite—the interception of an unearned increment. A portion of the money coming to local bodies without effort, labour, or question on their part is intercepted and used for other purposes, thereby carrying out one of the cherished doctrines of the Opposition. (An hon. Member: "For the whole community.") An act of justice is for the benefit of the whole community. Sir, the question is whether this is the right way of dealing with this—dealing with it on an interim Report of a Royal Commission. The House has accepted that course before in passing the Agricultural Rating Act of 1696, an Act which I very much doubt if this or any future House will attempt to repeal. The same reasoning is equally applicable to this measure. The tithe rent-charge has for most purposes long been considered as land. The

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clergy very deeply felt their exclusion from the Agricultural Rating Act of 1896. I have thought, and I have not hesitated to: say, that I considered that exclusion was inevitable because the Report of the Committee on which that Bill was founded did not deal with the clergy but with the farming community. I do not think the clergy could have been included in that Bill. But I cannot appreciate the reasoning of those Gentlemen who say that because the case of the clergy was not dealt with in 1896 it ought not to be dealt with by a separate supplemental measure at the present time. Their position has been altered for the worse, if slightly so, by the passing of that measure, and I think we shall be justified in accepting the conclusion of the hon. and learned Member who said that the case of hardship which had been made out would be prudently and sufficiently met by the extension to tithe rent-charges of the provisions of the Agricultural Rates Act of 1896. The only question, it seems to me, that can be raised at all is whether we shall deal with the subject now or wait for the Report of the Royal Commission as a whole—wait until it goes through the long process of report and consideration, of compilation and digestion, and then of final legislation. The precedent of the Agricultural Rates Act is against that course, and when I consider the enormous opportutunities of dilatoriness which our Parliamentary system puts in the way of dealing with any single subject at one and the same time, I think the Government acted wisely and rightly in dealing with the measure at the present time in the present way. For a long time the clerical tithe-owner has had nothing but sympathy. I am glad to think the Government have felt the necessity and have had the courage to deal with this matter. I know it will be largely capable of being misunderstood, misrepresented and misinterpreted, and I honour the Government for having the courage and pluck to deal with a subject which has so long been waiting to be dealt with. I believe the clergy will receive their proposals with gratitude, and the electorate of the country will acquiesce in them as an act of simple, fair, necessary justice which has been too long delayed.
MR. LOGAN: I do not regret the introduction of this Bill. I shall leave that to the hon. Gentlemen opposite. The long-suffering
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taxpayer only needs this last straw to make him realise the kind of class legislation which the Government is constantly imposing upon him, who has to bear the burden of taxation. They will soon realise that the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India was more frank than judicious when he said a short time ago that the policy of this Government was to look after their friends. When the Government said they were the true friends of the toilers of the country they laid claim to a title to which they had no right whatever. Ever since they have been in power they have session after session lined the pockets of their political friends at the expense of the great mass of the taxpayers of this country. I have no objection to their looking after their friends so long as they do it at their own expense, but what I object to is their doing it at the expense of the taxpayers. Previous doles have been proposed on the pretext that they were for the benefit of the country. But this is a Bill in the interests of the clergy of the Established Church of England, and the relief is said to be necessary because the clergy are so miserably poor; but looking at the great wealth in the hands of the Churchmen of this country it is a standing disgrace to them that the clergy should be in the condition in which they are at the present moment. If poverty is to be urged as a reason for relieving people of their just burdens I presume that the Government will later bring in a measure for the relief of the agricultural labourers and Civil servants, land those three out of seven of the entire population of this country who are on the verge of starvation. It cannot be contended that it is right to relieve those who are among the least poor of the community at the expense of those who are bordering on pauperism. The excuse that the burden of finding this money will not be felt is a very paltry one, because it is simply impossible to give away £87,000 without those who have to find it feeling it. We are told that this Bill should be passed as a measure of justice, and the pretence that is made is that the tithe-owner is hardly dealt with by having to pay rates on his tithes. Now that has been shown to be fallacious, and it can be shown that the tithe-owners are now receiving a larger proportion of the profits of the tithe than it was ever intended that they should receive. Mr. H. A. Farquharson, examined by the

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Royal Commission who sat upon this subject in 1894, said:
"I submit that the tithe all over England is very much higher than it was ever intended to be by the Tithe Commutation Act. I am speaking of the seven years preceding the Tithe Commutation Act, which, I think, was 1836. The consequence was that they (the Commissioners) made enormous additions to the par value of the tithe in order to enable the tithe-owner to pay rates in future. Take the instance of a tithe-owner who said, 'the net value of my tithe has been £100 on an average for the last seven years, and the rate in the parish on an average of the past seven years has been ten shillings in the pound.' The Tithe Commissioners said, 'Very well, your par value in future is £150, that is £100 to give you your old net value, and £50 with winch to pay those rates.' But the moment that the new Tithe Act came into force the new Poor Law came into force, and the rates which had been ten shillings in the pound went down to half-a-crown in the pound. The consequence was that this tithe-owner, who ought only to have had £112 10s.—that is £100 for himself and £12 10. for the rates—got £150, leaving him £137 10s. for himself and £12 10s. for rates. The same witness instanced a parish in which the Commissioners added 19s. in the pound for payment of rates."
He went on to say:
"I believe that the high tithe is nearly always caused by the enormous additions made by the Tithe Commissioners for rates."
In a Return which Mr. Farquharson furnished to the Royal Commission on Agriculture relating to thirteen parishes in Essex with which he was acquainted, he showed that in 1893, when agriculture was at its worst, those thirteen parishes overpaid the tithe-owners £1,926, or 37¼ per cent., on account of the enormous allowance made by the Tithe Commissioners on account of rates. Sir Robert Giffen, whose authority will not, I think, be disputed in this House, told the Royal Commission on Agriculture that "tithe now is, I do not say a larger share of the gross produce, but it is a larger share of the net produce than it was in 1836." Mr. E. P. Squarey, of the great firm of land agents (Messrs. Raw-lence and Squarey), told the Royal Commission, whilst there had been a great fall of tithe between 1879 and 1894, the fall in tithe had not been commensurate with fall in the actual produce of the farm. I will suggest a solution to the Government with regard to this matter. It seems to me that the provision made for these rates in 1836 was ample, and I would suggest that the Government should deduct from the tithe rent-charge the
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amount that was added in 1836 for the purpose of enabling the clergy to pay their rates, and that we should then allow the tithe rent-charge to go free of rates altogether. That is a fair bargain for the land and would be a fair settlement of this question. If the clergy believe in the justice of their claim, they will gladly accept that suggestion in preference to the proposals in the present Bill. Under the circumstances, I think no case can be made for those proposals. I do not, as I have already said, regret the introduction of this Bill, because it has enabled the Government to reopen this question, and we, before it is closed again, shall endeavour to make the people realise that the tithe is the nation's reserved interest in the land, to be disposed of as Parliament thinks fit. In the past it has been devoted to the purposes of the Church, on condition that it paid its rates and taxes; but now the clergy seek to get rid of their part of the bargain we shall be amply justified in reopening the question. The tithe is an enormous burden on the country, and it is one of the main reasons why our farmers are unable to compete with foreign nations, and we may find it necessary to shift that burden off the land and leave Churchmen to maintain their Church in the same way that other denominations do. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer instanced two of his farms on which tithe and land tax were nearly equal to half the gross rent, and we know that land tax formed a very small proportion of that. A witness from Cambridgeshire said: "In some cases in my parish there is 12s. an acre tithe." A witness from Hampshire gave evidence that a farm of 640 acres in his occupation was paying £212 per year for tithe. A witness from Huntingdonshire said he was holding land at 12s 6d. an acre, on which the tithe was 9s. an acre. A witness from Somersetshire said there was a lot of land within three miles of him which was uncultured because the tithe came to more than the land was worth. I intend to vote against this Bill, because there is no doubt that this £87,000 will ultimately have to come out of the general taxation of the country. You may take it for the moment out of the local taxation of the country; bat the local taxation is fed by the general taxation of the people of the country; and though, no doubt, many of the clergy are poor, as compared with

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the millions of people among whom they live, and who will have to contribute towards this relief, they are in comfortable and affluent circumstances. This Bill is a gross piece of class legislation, providing for the few fairly well off at the expense of the many. It is such a Bill as, in my opinion, should not commend itself to Members of this House.
MR. PURVIS:: I wish to say a few words at once as a Liberal Unionist in reference to what fell from the right hon. Member for Bodmin. I am amazed that he should speak as if he were the mouth-piece of the Liberal Unionist Party. We are old friends, and have fought together—he for me in my constituency and I for him in his, during that ten years' Trojan war against Home Rule, in which we overcame our hon. friends on the other side. But I have had something to do with the organisation and work of the Liberal Unionists from the very first until now, and the last thing I should have thought of was to hear my right hon. friend talking as the mouth-piece of the Liberal Unionists. He certainly is not; and I hope and believe that they are quite ready and willing to help the Conservative Unionists to do anything which is found to be an act of justice to anyone. The arguments for and against this measure have of necessity been of a somewhat legal and technical character, but drawn from these arguments are certain plain conclusions on which lawyers and laymen alike will, after all, give their Votes for or against the Bill. I shall try to state those on which I shall vote as a Liberal Unionist in support of this Bill. At present rating falls on tithe owners as occupiers like the rest, but unlike the rest the tithe owners are rated on the gross value—not on the net. This is one hardship which the Bill seeks to alleviate. Now to be rated on the gross and not on the net is bad enough, but it is not the worst. The tithe owner is rated on what is income, which is a still greater anomaly than the other. Other people are rated on their dwellings and land and taxed on their income, and the clergy are rated like the rest on dwelling and land, but, unlike the rest, are both rated and taxed on their income. That is another hardship. How did this arise? For the law is but the outcome of the practice. The overseer, not being himself a tithe owner, and the amount of the
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tithe being an ascertained sum, down he put that sum in his rate-book, but he had a fellow feeling for other parishioners, who, like himself, were not tithe owners, and so rated them if anything less than the net value. Hence another hardship. Then as to the money to be provided under this Bill. My right hon. triend the Member for Bodmin calls it a fresh endowment of the Church, but how could you rightly capitalise what is to last only for two or three years, that is for the period assigned to the Agricultural Rating Act of 1696? It is also said the taxpayer will suffer. Why not? If he has been enjoying an advantage at the expense of his neighbour the tithe owner, that is no reason why he should continue to do so. I will not believe that the taxpayers are so mean as to begrudge this act of justice. Our opponents declare that it is a relief too scanty to be real, that a five-pound note every year is about all the poorest of the clergy can get out of it. Well I take leave to say that many a poor clergyman will hail the five pounds as a considerable aid for his children's clothes bill, or even in some cases for their schooling. We are told by hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is not desirable to relieve one class without dealing with the claims of other classes, but we hold it is better to go by steps when we can than to wait for some indefinite future when we might be enabled to deal with the whole question of local taxation. The whole is made up of its parts, and if we do not make a beginning with part we may never make an ending with the whole.
MR. CARVELL WILLIAMS: I have been much struck by the way in which the President of the Agricultural Board has repudiated the motives which it has been commonly supposed have actuated the Government in introducing this measure. He says it has no connection with agricultural depression. Then how comes it that it is he who has brought it in, instead of the President of the Local Government Board; to which matters of local taxation properly belong? And how is it that it is constructed on the lines of the Agricultural Rating Act, and that it will terminate with that Act? If there is no connection between the two the coincidence is at least curious. Two hon. Members opposite have expressed regret

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that the clergy were not included in the Agricultural Rating Act, and the same complaint has been made out-of-doors scores of times. A clerical correspondent of mine writes, "I lose one-third of my income for cheap bread." Yes! it is unfortunately true that what has been a boon to the multitude has been a pecuniary injury to the clergy. I believe that if the agricultural class were still in the enjoyment of the fat years of the past, instead of the lean years of the present, this clerical demand would not have been made. I believe further that we owe this Bill and its hurried introduction to the approach of a General Election and to the threats of the Established clergy. We are, however, told that this is not a Clergy Relief Bill, and the hon. Member for the Woodbridge Division says that he wants to strip the Bill of its clerical vestments, while the President of the Agricultural Board hopes that we shall hear no more about a clerical dole; but I can assure the one hon. Member that the vestments will cling too closely to be removed, and the other that he will continue to hear of the dole for many a day to come, If this Bill is not intended for the relief of the clergy as such, why are only the clerical receivers of tithe to have the benefit of it, when others have equally suffered from the diminution of tithe? If the Government are so anxious to do justice, why do they wish to do it on so limited a scale? The object of the Royal Commission on local taxation was to benefit all classes of ratepayers; but, without waiting for its Report, the Government has singled out two classes for immediate relief, and those two the most influential classes of the community, as well as those among whom they find their most numerous supporters. If, as we are told, relief has been too long delayed, that is equally true of other classes of ratepayers. The Government has had no word of sympathy for them, nor is it likely that, even when the Report is presented, the requisite changes will be made. The President of the Agricultural Board seems enamoured of the cleverness of his proposal, because the ratepayer will not feel the loss of the money of which the clergy will have the benefit; but he must have a very poor opinion of the ratepayers of this country if he thinks they can be so easily deceived. Parliament intended certain money to come into their hands for general public purposes,
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and this Bill will intercept it on its way, instead of its going direct into their pockets. The only difference, therefore, is that between highway robbery and burglary—the victim equally suffering from either method. What Parliament gave with one hand this Bill takes away with the other, and when local Chancellors of the Exchequer have to frame their Budgets they will have to provide in other ways for the deficit which it will create But this is much more than a ratepayers' question. The hon. Member for Stockport, in his striking and courageous speech, advocated the cause of the urban ratepayers; but he did more, for he declared that this Bill would impose an intolerable grievance on Nonconformists. That is true; because they will only not suffer, as ratepayers, but will have to give further support to a system to which they object. This measure is practically a revival of the policy which in past times gave large Parliamentary grants for the building of churches, and kept in existence for a lengthened period the odious system of Church rates. There are some Nonconformists who think that the removal of many of their grievances has had the effect of abating the desire for disestablishment; and if so, this Bill will have a useful effect as an irritant. Indeed. I believe that the advantage which will accrue to the disestablishment cause will be cheaply purchased by the £87,000 a year to be given for three years by this measure. I say so for two reasons. One is, that Churchmen will no longer be able to say that, as their endowments are their own, the Church does not now receive a single penny from the State. Of course, I differ from them as regards the endowments; but when this Bill has passed it will be no longer possible to make such a boast; as the money voted by it will be a complete answer. There is also the danger of fresh demands; for no one has stated why 50 per cent. has been fixed upon as the amount of the remission, and presently it will probably be contended that it is insufficient, and the whole claim upon the clergy may then vanish. A second reason I have for thinking that the Bill will advance disestablishment is the effect it will have on the finances of the Church. It is admitted that it will not do much to relieve clerical poverty; but it will do a great deal to prevent the suc-

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cess of efforts for its diminution. I strongly sympathise with the underpaid clergy; and the only question which divides us is as to the source from which additional remuneration should come. There appear to me to be only two legitimate sources. One is a redistribution of ecclesiastical revenues, which would give at least a competence to all the clergy, and will not excessively remunerate any. There is, however, no prospect of such a change, and therefore what should be looked to is the liberality and good feeling of the members of the Church. Look at the contrast which at the present time is presented by that Church and the Free Churches of the country! The latter are proposing to begin a new century by raising large sums of money for increasing the incomes of their ministers and creating new religious agencies; and probably about two millions of money will be contributed for those purposes. On the other hand, the Clergy Sustentation Fund, which was commenced at the Queen's Jubilee, is stated to have been a miserable failure; and other appeals on behalf of the clergy have met with but partial success. Why have they failed? Partly, I believe, because the Church is thought to be rich enough to provide for all the clergy, if the money were fairly divided; but the chief reason is that the endowments pauperise its members and repress liberality. In support of that statement, I will give the House two short quotations. One is from the Record whose fidelity to the Church cannot be questioned. Writing some time ago, it said:
"We are suffering as a Church from the liberality of our forefathers, the landholders of Saxon times. Not that the clergy have too much wealth in consequence of the gift of tithes—they are largely starving—but that the laity have from that cause too little liberality. They are largely pauperised, made willing to receive their spiritual privileges as a charitable dole."
That is from an Evangelical quarter, and here is similar testimony from the Church Times, which is in the opposite camp:
"The average Churchman, it must be confessed, is a miracle of shabbiness. … He has yet to learn the first rudiments of almsgiving."
I do not believe that the lesson will be taught him by tins Bill; on the contrary, I believe that for every pound which the
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Church will receive through this Bill it will lose two; while, at the same time, the distrust and prejudice with which the clergy are regarded will be increased. Those, how ever, are considerations which mainly concern Churchmen; whereas, I am speaking in the interest of the entire community, and especially in the interest of Nonconformity; and because I regard this as an unjust and a retrograde measure, I shall continue to resolutely oppose it.
SIR W. HART DYKE: I will endeavour to be merciful to my fellow Members who are anxious to speak, but I find it is hard to give a silent vote upon this measure. I have listened to this Debate with great interest, and it seems that in a very short time we have got to a direct issue—namely, whether certain clergy of the Church of England had or had not for a long period been suffering from a grievous injustice with regard to the payment of their rates. The issue is a very narrow one, and can be easily and clearly put before the nation. There have been many subtle arguments as to the historical nature of the case, on which I do not intend to dwell. The question is, are we satisfied with regard to this question of injustice? Is it true or not that the clergy have been rated on a different basis to other ratepayers? Is not it true with regard to the relative position of the clergy and other ratepayers that deductions are made in the case of the ratepayers which in the case of the clergy are conspicuous by their absence? I deny the fact that has been urged upon the House that every clergyman takes his cure knowing that there will be this incubus upon his income. Clergymen who, fifteen or twenty years ago, accepted a cure knew nothing of the kind. The rates in many villages near where I live have gone up enormously; there have been new sanitary and School Board rates, and not only is this a new burden on the clergyman of the parish, but deductions are made in favour of all the other ratepayers which are not made in his case. I say this constitutes a serious injustice, and we do not want to go back forty-five years, to the days of Mr. Gladstone and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, to find that out. The Government has been asked why is it and how is it that the Government have at this particular juncture brought this forward? It is not an unnatural question for Members

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to ask, but it is very easily answered. The Agricultural Rating Act did much to make it more acute, of that I have no doubt. Then as now we had this grievance, and what has emphasised the injustice was the passage of the Agricultural Rating Act of 1896. At the passing of that Act it was not possible to include the clergy in the Bill, but since then the Conservative party has pledged itself to deal with this injustice. After all, what is all this fuss about? We think nothing of parting with large sums of money in August, and now there is all this fuss about £87,000 in June for a limited period of years. Of course this proposal creates joy among the hon. Gentlemen opposite; they have had a very rough time lately. For many weary months their political horizon has been overcast with clouds, and if we can bring them a rift of sunlight I do not grudge it. But let them not be too sanguine as to what the ultimate result will be, because the case we can put before the country is a good one. They have got tired of beating the air on the Agricultural Ratings Bill; let them make hay while the sun shines, for when the country understands this question more fully it will be recognised that the Government is doing an act of justice. With regard to the motive power behind this measure, I introduced one of the largest and most influential deputations to the Prime Minister on this question last session; 104 Members of this side of the House waited upon him to urge upon him the desirability of bringing in such a measure. Whether we lose votes in the constituencies or not we reck little. There is no time that can he a bad time for political parties to redeem pledges, to redress a manifest injustice. I should like to say one or two words with reference to the attacks which have been made upon the Church of England in this matter. I am not a Church politican, and in any remarks I make I throw no blame on any denomination. We are told that the Church is a rich Church, and that this relief should come not from the outside but from within; but the Church, although individually rich, is poor having regard to the demands upon her resources. In a charge delivered by the late Bishop of Rochester, he says that in 1881 the population of a particular parish was 100,000, and that it is now 450,000, which is an increase of 35,000 per annum.
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The diocese therefore had to meet the needs practically of five additional parishes of 7,000 souls. The Church has not only to supply churches and schools, but a resident clergyman in each parish. I repudiate that in this matter the Church is guilty of any meanness because she does not meet this obligation which we are asking the House and country to meet. The more I look at this matter the more I am convinced that the Government have met the demand the Party has made upon them to meet this injustice. If it be true, as we hold it to be, that these clergymen have been unfairly rated in the past, and the other ratepayers have gained thereby, it is only fair that the other ratepayers should now repay some of the fine which has been so long inflicted on the clergy. I support this Bill because I think the injustice is manifest, and that the Government have right and justice on their side.
MR. LLOYD - GEORGE: The right hon. Gentleman has invited us on this side of the House to make hay while the sun shines; but as all the hay has been carted on to the landlord's and the parson's hayricks I do not think there is much for us to attend to. The right hon. Gentleman has also every confidence in the justice of the cause which he puts before the country; but that confidence does not appear to be shared by Oldham, where both the Conservative candidates absolutely repudiated this Bill, and said that if they were returned they would vote against it; but I understand that this Bill has destroyed any chance they might have had of carrying out the promise. Since this Bill of doles has been introduced into the House, the electors of Plymouth have expressed their opinions in an emphatic manner, and completely at variance with those of the hon. and learned Member representing them in this House. But I rise now as a Welsh Member to protest against this measure, because we have grievance with regard to this matter. Our grievance is a peculiar one, because this measure seeks to appropriate funds which are very largely drawn upon for educational purposes by Wales. Our grievance is still stronger, for the reason that in Wales we have exhausted every means under the Constitution to protest against using funds which belong to education to keep up a Church which only applies

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to a minority of the population. I would not say anything if a strong case were made out for remedying an obvious injustice, but in this case the clergy are not the only or the greatest sufferers by the anomalies of our present system of rating. It is not merely the rating of income, but the rating of machinery which produces the income as well. What is the case of the lodging-housekeeper in seaside resorts, as in my own constituency? He lives in a house which is larger than he himself can use, and from which he derives a precarious income, and he is rated upon the value of that house to an extent larger, perhaps, than the income he receives. But the case of the shopkeeper, the lodging-housekeeper, the quarrymen—all these are forgotten, and only the case of one section of the community is to be considered. The Government pick and choose. While on the question of the Agricultural Rating Act, I am glad we have had an expression of opinion from the Royal Commission in regard to that Act, which confirms exactly what we pointed out at the time it was under discussion. It has increased the burdens on the general ratepayers throughout the country. I hold in my hand a statement which has been produced by a rural district council in Yorkshire, which shows that in every single parish of the district the effect of the Agricultural Rating Act has been to raise the rates; in one case to the extent of a shilling, and in another case to 1s. 9d. in the pound. This is due entirely to the miserable system of doles initiated by the present Government. It is perfectly true that the clergy suffer, but what about the shop-keepers, the artisans, the lodging-house keepers, and all other sections of the community? Not a word is said about them. A good deal has been said during this Debate by way of expressing sympathy with the clergy in their distress; but the way in which the clergy have acted in this matter has lessened the sympathy which might otherwise have been felt for them. They gave evidence before the Royal Commission. They were there to represent their parishioners; they knew perfectly well that the grievances they endured were participated in by all their parishioners. But not a single word was given of any grievance suffered by these parishoners. It was all about their own injustice, their own grievance. The Rev. James Manners Sutton, a rector from Suffolk, gave evi-
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dence. One of the first questions put to him was, "I understand that the rates in your parish have, as a matter of fact, risen very much during the last three years." His answer was, "Very much indeed in my case, if that is what you mean." "I mean in the parish as a whole," said the Chairman. To which the reverend gentleman replied, "I have not gone into how the rates of the parish as a whole have risen." It is only when the facts are elicited, and when it is shown that the rates of the parish have gone up very largely through the operation of the Agricultural Rating Act, that this reverend gentleman very reluctantly admits that others suffer as much as he does. This is the "Am I my brother's keeper" attitude taken up by the spiritual guides of the people—
HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: I do not see why these gentlemen should be spared. They are coming here to ask for £87,000 at the expense of the people, who are suffering in many cases much more than they are, and I think it is high time that the facts should be stated in regard to them. They are not taxed on their professional income. The point has been made over and over again, that the maintenance of the poor was a tax on the tithe. That has been challenged. Of course, it was imposed in the first instance for the maintenance of the poor. We hear a good deal of the opinion of the Fathers of the Church nowadays. It is always quoted whenever there is a question of ritual. One of these Holy Fathers wrote:
"Men pay tithes for God's church; let the priest divide them into three—one part for the repair of the church, the second part for the poor, and the third part for God's servant."
What has become of the poor's third part? At the present moment they are getting 2s. in the pound, or a tenth, whereas formerly it was a third, or 6s. 8d. Now they say a tenth is too much, we should only pay a twentieth. The Fathers of the Church may be good enough for quotation to justify a breach of the law of the land, in regard to extravagant ritual; but whenever it is a question of fulfilling the obligations imposed on them, then the Fathers of the Church are thrown overboard, and the "King

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V. Jodrell" is brought in instead. It is very wonderful how the opinions of the clergy alter according to the character of these decisions in regard to ecclesiastical matters. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down quoted very largely from some authority with regard to the voluntary contributions of the Church towards carrying on its work. This was in reply to the taunts made from this side of the House, that if the clergy were in distress the members of the Church should supplement their income by their own subscriptions. There was a letter in the Standard this week which supports the Clergy Tithe Rent-charge Bill. The writer, who signs his name, says:
"I have examined the reports of the Church funds and charities, and have analysed the offertories at many large churches, with the result that the average contribution scarcely represents l½d. per worshipper."
Now the Calvinistic Methodists of Wales contribute 30s. per head, and among the members are the quarrymen of the community. These men sacrifice their lives to earn every penny they place on the altar; and yet they are asked by this Bill to contribute in addition in aid of clergymen whose supporters value their services at 1½d. per head. No marvel that there is a strong feeling in every part of the country in regard to the iniquity of this proposal now before the House. On what is this dole of £87,000 based? Upon a Report brought up in a hurry by a Commission appointed for another purpose. I trust hon. Members have perused the Report. As far as I can see, the main pillar and support of this policy was a clergyman of the name of Jones. The changes are rung on the name of the Rev. Mr. Jones on page after page of the Report. First of all we have what the Rev. Mr. Jones said in 1836, and then what he said in 1840: and then there is a pamphlet which proves that the Rev. Mr. Jones is of the same opinion in 1850; and then there is a quotation in a footnote from a letter written by the Rev. Mr. Jones to Sir Robert Peel. All is Jones until you get sick of the Rev. Mr. Jones, in spite of the honourable and ancient name he bears, and until you do not care "What Happened to Jones." Jones is really the basis of the whole case. But then he is supported by the Rev. Mr. Stevens, who is said to be an authority on tithe—quite a superfluous explanation, for he is a clergyman. It is just
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like saying that a lawyer is an authority on fees. Then after this clergyman there is some gentleman of the name of Peterson, who is a kind of bum-bailiff for the collection of tithes. That is the kind of impartial gentleman who gives evidence on which we are asked to grant this £87,000. Finally, there is the climax of the whole thing—the evidence of the secretary of the Church party in this House. And that is the evidence on which we are asked to vote money out of the funds used for educational purposes. It is said we must make deductions for the services of the clergy. What an insult to the clergy! Their services are valued by the Government at half the sum paid for them. I should say the services of the clergy are worth what they are paid for them. No, there is really no grievance. I would invite the attention of the House to the grievance Mr. Jones makes out. He says, before the Commutation days the income of the clergy was not known, and therefore the overseers could not get at it; and in the case of the land the overseers could not ascertain what the value is, and the farmer got off. But since the Commutation the value of the clergyman's interest is known, and he never escapes his little liabilities! And this grievance has lived since 1836, and Mr. Jones has left this as a post obit—that the clergy are not now in as good a position to deceive the overseers as formerly! This is a grievance seriously put forth by a minister of the only "Hall-marked religion" in the land. Is that a grievance on which to base a claim of this character? It is necessary not merely to make out a case of grievance, but a case of urgency. It is admitted that our system of local taxation is unfair, unequal, and inequitable. It is admitted by hon. Gentlemen opposite that large sections of the community are suffering sorely from the same grievance. Therefore we say, Why not redress the grievance of everybody at the same time? If you redress the grievance piecemeal it is not made less, but is increased. The grievance will be increased to all except the clergy by another 2d. in the £ by this Bill. You profess that you have got a case of special urgency for the clergy; but the real urgency is to be found in the case of the rural ratepayers, whose rates are exceedingly high at the present moment in many districts of England and Wales.

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A rate of 8s. in the £ has been quoted, but I know of a case where it is 11s. 3d. in the £. The result of these high rates is that there is a practical bar to every public improvement. The provision of open spaces, increased accommodation for the working classes, improved sanitation—all these things are being stopped by the high rates. I can give the evidence of clergymen themselves to show what a terror an increase in the rates is to them. One clergyman says, "I am very much afraid that next year will bring in some sanitary expense." Human nature is pretty much the same, especially if it is in holy orders. We have heard a good deal of the condition of the poor in large towns, of fever-breeding congested districts, and of people rotting in the slums, but nothing has been done to improve these conditions. It is the high rates that are stopping the improvements, and in passing this Bill we will aggravate the matter. What an answer this Bill will be to those Welsh constituencies who at the last election gave up their share in the great struggle for religious equality which has been part of the inheritance of their race! And what for? For a prospect of a 5s. pension when sixty-five years of age, and for the sake of the prospect of improved dwellings, All I can say is that the mess of pottage promised to them has been consumed by other Gentlemen who are higher up at the table. Yes; the disappointment is not confined merely to the Welsh constituencies. Go into Lancashire, into Cornwall, and all over the country, and anyone who looks up the record of this Government must see what effect it will have on the rural constituencies. There you have a gentleman who owns the whole of a parish, and all over the country there are communities working hard late and early to increase his wealth and consequence. He has got his old age pension already.
HON. MEMBERS: Question.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGE: It is the Question, and hon. Members will find it out. He has got it already; and then comes the priest of his household, who gets three times the income which the poor Nonconformist minister receives (£10, £20, or £50 a year)—and he gets his pension. But the man who was talked about far more than any other at the last
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election, the working man, is entirely left out. There was not a word said about the Clerical Tithes Bill then. It was not on the "Manchester Card." It was not on the "Birmingham Liberal Unionist Programme." But the promises made to the working man were there clear, definite, and detailed. The age was fixed, the amount of the pension was fixed, and "any further particulars can be supplied by the Liberal Unionist agents." But the money which was to be devoted to this purpose has been given to the landlord and the parson. Why, the squire and the parson have broken into the poor box, and divided its contents among them. I would remind hon. Gentleman opposite that these promises were not made by politicians hungering for office, and making any promises at random. They were made by gentlemen who at the moment were Ministers of the Crown, and that was what lent importance to them, and that is why they were believed. They were spoken, not on behalf of a great party, but in the name of the Throne, and "shall Caesar send a lie?" I say that the men who were promised some provision for old age are still left out in the cold, and the Tammany ring of landlords and parsons are dividing, by this Bill, the last remnants of the money between them.
MR. LOWE: As a representative of one of those large urban constituencies which were referred to the other evening by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife, I beg to ask the indulgence of the House for a few moments while I state, as briefly as I can, the grounds upon which I wish to give my hearty support to this Bill, and the reasons why I intend to vote for its Second Reading. In spite of the somewhat startling and sensational utterances of the hon. Member for Stockport, and notwithstanding the gloomy prognostications of the hon. Members for Bodmin and West Monmouth as to the effect this Bill is likely to have on the working classes in the constituencies, I must say that I am not at all afraid of the effect it will have on the working classes of Birmingham. Because, after a long experience of these classes, I am able to say that one of their chief characteristics is their great sense of justice and fair play, and that, if they are left to themselves, they can, in the great majority of cases,

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be relied upon to do unto others as they themselves would be done by. Now, if I thought for a single moment that this Bill constituted anything like an additional endowment of the Church of England by the State, I do not hesitate to say that I would not vote for it on any account whatever. But I very respectfully submit that it cannot be reasonably held to bear any such interpretation. For the relief which is proposed to be given by it, is not in the nature of a gift or bounty bestowed without any consideration on the other side; but it is a payment of a debt or obligation which has been incurred by the State, and which is justly due and owing to those who have suffered a public wrong at the hands of the community for many years past. Nor do I think that it is any valid argument against this Bill to say, as has been said by the hon. Member for Halifax and several other hon. Members opposite, that it is a return for services rendered at the last General Election, or that it is an interim dividend, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth described it. I do not know whether many of these unfortunate clergymen voted for the Unionist Party at the last General Election, but all I can say is, that if they did so it shows their good sense. It is certainly likely to encourage, rather than to deter, other sections of the community who have legitimate grievances to place their faith in that Party on any future occasion, when they find that the leaders of that Party are not only ready to make promises for the redress of those grievances at Election times, but to redeem their pledges and perform those promises when the Election is over, and as soon as an opportunity is afforded them. Now, I should like to go for one moment to another point. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition to compare the case of these clergy with that of the ministers of the Scotch Church, and to say that if those ministers had not a sufficient income the deficiency would be made up to them by the munificence of private individuals—viz., the members of their own Church. But if the right hon. Gentleman will pardon me for saying so, I respectfully submit that this is entirely beside the mark. I do not for a moment admit that the Members of the Scotch Church are more generous in the support of their church and ministers than the
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Members of the English Church are in the support of theirs; in fact, I think if we came to examine into the matter closely, we should find that the latter would be found to compare at least on equal terms with the former. But as I have said that is entirely beside the mark, and the question we have to decide in this Debate, and by the division which is to follow, is, not the relative generosity and open-handedness of the members of this or that particular church, but whether it is fair and right and just that a certain section of the clergy of the Church of England should be rated upon their professional incomes, which they receive only on condition that they do certain work and render certain services—when other clergymen of the same Church—when the ministers of every other denomination, and when those who follow any other calling or profession are entirely exempt from any such form of local taxation. We all know that lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers, and business and professional men of all kinds, are assessed and rated upon the annual value of the premises which they occupy, and that is considered a fair criterion of their rateable capacity. But these poor unfortunate clergymen are not only, rated upon the annual value of the houses which they occupy but also on their incomes—i.e., the only remuneration that they receive for the services which they render, and the only resources they have upon which to rely for the maintenance of themselves and their families. Well, Sir, I do not care to follow those hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who have conducted a laborious and intricate examination into the legal history of this case almost from time immemorial. I am one of those, referred to by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, who do not trouble their heads with the law as it was in the time of Queen Elizabeth. I say, "let the dead past bury its dead," and I am quite satisfied, for the purpose of the present question, to take the law as I find it to-day, and I say that the law as it now stands is a bad law, that it is unjust, antiquated, and out of date, and the sooner it is altered and put right the better it will be for all concerned. These clergymen are in very many cases—I hope in the great majority of cases—carrying on a most admirable work, and frequently in very poor parishes amongst very poor people, who stand greatly in need of all the assistance

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which can possibly be afforded them, and it would in most of these cases be a very great loss and hardship upon them if they were deprived of the services and assistance which these clergymen, poorly paid as they are, are able to render to them at the present time. Moreover, they are, by virtue of their training and education, entirely unfitted to follow any other form of employment, and they could not change their occupation even if they were minded to do so. "Oh, but!" say some very well-meaning people, "this may be an injustice, but why should the Government single out this from all the other inequalities and injustices which exist in our present system of rating, and go out of their way to find a remedy for it now; and this especially at a time when the clergy of the Church of England have been getting themselves into bad odour and disrepute by their illegal practices?" Well, Sir, it seems to me that the answer to this question is perfectly clear and obvious. In the first place, there are black sheep in every fold, but that is no reason why you should punish the whole flock for the sins of the few. If there has been wrongdoing, if there have been improper practices on the part of a certain number—and I think it is a very small number—["No!"]—well, at all events, a certain number—if there have been improper practices on the part of a certain number of the clergy, that may be a very excellent reason for punishing these wrongdoers, but it is certainly no reason whatever for withholding justice from, or for perpetuating an injustice against the whole class to which they belong. The reason why this case has become so urgent, the reason why the grievance has become so intolerable that it cannot wait to be redressed until the whole question is dealt with, is to my mind equally clear. It is because in consequence of the fall in prices, and, in many cases also, of the increase of rates, the hardship has been growing more burdensome and more acute every year; and I take it that it is this consideration, and this consideration alone, which has induced the Royal Commission to present the interim Report which has formed the foundation for this Bill; a Report which unanimously recognises the existence of the wrong, and almost unanimously recommends that some special measure of relief shall be immediately applied to it without waiting for the much longer period which must necessarily elapse before the
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whole of this complicated question can possibly be dealt with. I do not think it is altogether a fair or a courteous method of political controversy for hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to allege that the members of this Commission—who are all honourable men drawn from both political parties—and who possess, and deservedly possess, the confidence of both sides of the House—I say I do not think it fair to allege that they would lend themselves to a sort of underhand trick whereby they agreed to present this report at the bidding and instigation of the Government to help them out of a difficulty. I know several members of this Commission personally, and particularly do I know the Town Clerk of Birmingham. A higher authority on rating questions could not be found throughout the whole of the country, and I am perfectly sure that neither he nor any other members of this Commission would have lent themselves to so disingenuous a proceeding. Well then, my contention is, that the Report of a strong, reliable, and impartial Commission, founded upon a growing increasing wrong, is at least a sufficient justification for the action of the Government in singling out this injustice for special and immediate treatment. I further contend that it should have been dealt with three years ago when the Agricultural Rating Bill was passed, and that the present Bill simply remedies the omission which was then made by excluding these clergy from all participation in the benefits which were conferred by that Act. But, Sir, I very respectfully submit to hon. Gentlemen opposite that they should be the last people in the world to refuse to assist us in passing this Bill into law. And why? Because their former great leader, Mr. Gladstone, and the members of the Commission who were of their own way of thinking—and many other members of their own Party—have over and over again admitted that the present system of rating tithes is wrong, and that it constitutes a manifest injustice. This being the case, I contend that it is inconsistent with all their former traditions, and antagonistic to every political principle which they have ever professed, that they should not assist us in finding a remedy for this admitted grievance. I have always been taught to believe that it was one of the chief offices and functions of the Liberal Party to seek

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out any wrong, injustice or inequality which might anywhere be found in order that they might at once devote themselves to the task of setting it right. I know that they are not predisposed to look with any great favour upon anything which savours of the parson or the squire. I do not blame them for it in the slightest degree; for I know it is their natural instinct and that they cannot help it. But I also know that hon. Gentlemen opposite can on occasions be most tolerant, most fair, and most Liberal-minded even to a parson, and I do appeal to them on this occasion not to allow their sympathies to be deadened and their natural sense of right, justice, and fair-dealing to be warped and interfered with, merely because the class which is dealt with by this Bill happens to be that much-maligned class to which I have referred. If hon. Gentlemen opposite will for the moment try and banish from their minds the recollection that the persons to be relieved under this Bill are clergymen, and will think only of them as men, and as being in very many cases very poor men and very deserving men, suffering under a grievous wrong and injustice, I am not without hope that they will even at the eleventh hour reconsider the determination which they have formed to hamper and impede the progress of this very just measure of relief.
SIR H. H. FOWLER: Mr. Speaker, I have carefully listened to the whole course of this Debate, and I am bound to say, now that it is approaching its close, that I feel, to a greater extent than I did before, the difficulty, almost the impossibility, of reconciling the varied, the diverse contentions which have been urged upon the House in favour of this measure. The hon. Member who has just sat down added a new ground, which has not, I think, been presented before—namely, that it is a debt and burden owing by the State. Well, Sir, we have heard, not only of this being a debt and burden owing by the State; we have had complaints made about the injustice of rating tithes, about the injustice of the manner of assessment, of the special injustice in the rating of the clerical tithe-owner; and my right hon. friend the Member for the Dartford Division of Kent raised also to-night, and very frankly admitted, the extra
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injustice occasioned by the passing of the Agricultural Rating Act of 1896. We have also had, I think, pretty nearly the same contrariety of opinion in reference to the remedy proposed. I am not going into the history of this case, I am not going into the law of the ease, I am not going back 200 or 300 years with reference to finding out what was the position of the rating of tithes in this country. One of the witnesses, not a witness before the Commission, but a witness quoted by the Commissioners, who gave evidence before one of the earlier Committees, gravely informed that Committee—and the present Royal Commission considered his opinion so valuable that they have reprinted it for our information—that in his judgment it was not the intention of the framer of the Act of Elizabeth to rate spiritual tithes. I think we have no evidence of and no necessity to refer to what was in the mind of the distinguished draftsman, whoever he was, who drafted that Act of Parliament 300 years ago. I am content to confine what I have to say to what is the law to-day, and the law to-day is the law that was enacted in 1836. Whatever was the state of the law before then does not really concern the present issue. Lord John Russell, in introducing the measure, told the House that tithes were subject to the same rates as land, and that the Bill would be framed on that assumption. His Bill was so framed, and was so carried through both Houses of Parliament, and the Act enacted that tithe should pay all Parliamentary rates, all parochial rates, all county rates, and every other rate which might be assessed upon it. Therefore I am not arguing now as to whether that was right or wrong—that is not the question. The question is, what is the law, and the law is what was enacted in 1836, and that law affects all tithe-owners, whether clerical or lay. Now, we cannot separate the passing of that Act from the whole question of tithe commutation, of which it formed a part, and it is the fact of that tithe commutation which, I think, has brought about to some extent the present state of affairs—at all events, as I read the evidence and part of the recommendations of the Commissioners' report, I have come to that conclusion. The tithe commutation, I think, was a great advantage to the tithe-owner. I think he gained considerably by the commutation

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of an unfixed and uncertain payment into a fixed and certain payment. He was in a decidedly superior position to what he previously enjoyed. He was then subject to the disadvantages which might arise from deficient crops or other causes which might affect the produce of the soil; for the future, whatever might be the result, good harvests or bad, nothing was to affect his tenth, which was commuted for a money payment. It is worthy of note that Lord John Russell stated that at one time he had the notion of making the tithe a fixed charge upon the rent. I have no doubt that if that measure had been adopted it would have been very acceptable to those agricultural members who have in this House complained so bitterly of the heavy charge of the tithe on land, which was hardly producing any rent; but the result would have been very different to the tithe-owner. So far as the averages are concerned, for the first fifty years after the passing of the Act commuting the tithe, the tithe rent-charge was above par, the average being £102 9s. 9½d. Therefore there was no loss then. But I admit—and this is one of the circumstances which complicates this case—that there has been a terrible fall in the money value of the tithe during the last few years. I think the highest point reached in the last fifteen or sixteen years was in 1883, which was the last year when it went over par (£100 4s.9¾d.); but now I make out, according to the average of the last seven years, that it has got down to £68 14s. 11d.—at all events, under £70. This money payment was fixed subject to the payment of rates, and in every one of the three modes about which there has been some controversy the rate question was dealt with. Where the tithe was paid in kind and the tithe-owner paid the rates no deduction or addition was made in respect of rates. The gross value was commuted, and the sum so fixed was subject, as the tithe in kind had been, to rates. Where there was a composition for a fixed sum, and the tithe-owner paid the rates, the commutation was based on the fixed sum, and this sum was subject, as before, to the rates; and where (as Mr. Porter, the Secretary of the Ecclesiastical Commission, thought was the most common case) the composition was for a fixed sum free from rates, the composition was taken as the commutation value, with the addition of a sum for rates based on the average of
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the preceding seven years, and these two sums made up the commutation value. Where the rates were large the clergy, or, rather, the tithe-owner—for I do not wish to deal with this as a clerical question alone—got a distinct advantage, because the rates were taken on the average of the preceding seven years, and I think it will be difficult to find in the present century a period of seven years when the rates were higher than they were in the seven years preceding 1836. The cost of the administration of the poor in 1833 was 7 millions; for the seven years preceding the tithe commutation the average amounted to 6½ millions, whereas in the years which followed it went down to 4½ millions. Whatever hon. Members may say about rates having risen, it is an actual ascertained statistical fact that rates have gone down, and they are lower by 1s. 2d. in the £ than they were at that time, and still more in the rural districts than in the urban districts. The hon. and learned Member for Plymouth has referred to what he calls the unfair mode in which the assessment was and is carried out, and we have had in the Debate, and notably in the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Stroud, a series of arguments founded upon what the law ought to have been, instead of what the law is and what the meaning of Parliament was. The meaning of Parliament is expressed in what Parliament says in the Act, and the true interpretation of that meaning is for judges and for no one else. We cannot go behind the Act and the interpretation placed upon it. I may say in passing that the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth told us that a clause was agreed to be put in to produce a certain result. But somehow or other it was altered. But we cannot go behind what is in the Act of Parliament, and we have this singular confirmation, that that was not inconsistent with what the Duke of Richmond and the House of Lords intended, because the decision which finally demolished the contention which my hon. and learned friend looks upon with approval was given in 1840. Sir Robert Peel, at the head of a great Tory administration, came into power in 1841, and Sir Robert Peel was not likely at that time, having regard to the composition of his majority, to have permitted the continuance of an injustice found upon

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a breach of an understanding, in passing an Act of Parliament through the Upper House, and there can be no doubt that from the decision which the Court of Queen's Bench came to in 1840 the statesmen of that day, and the Conservative leaders of that day were satisfied that there was nothing inconsistent with what Parliament intended, or they understood to have been intended, three or four years before legislation would have followed. Every speaker has alluded to what Mr. Gladstone said in reference to the gross injustice of this mode of rating. My hon. and learned friend the Member for Plymouth read a quotation from Mr. Gladstone's speech, but he did not tell the House when that speech was delivered.
MR. CRIPPS: Yes.
SIR H. H. FOWLER: He did not tell the House the circumstances under which it was delivered; nor what the point was against which Mr. Gladstone was arguing when he made that remark. I will recall it to his recollection. Mr. Gladstone made that speech in regard to the Budget of December, 1852, in a very excited House, and in very excited circumstances. It was the concluding speech of a Debate which resulted in the defeat of the Conservative Government. Mr. Gladstone was arguing at that time against what? There was no question before Parliament as to the rating of tithes. There was no expression of any deliberate and well-formed opinion as to what course should be pursued in reference to a change being made in favour of the tithe-owner. Mr. Gladstone was arguing against a proposal of the Government of that day to bring the poor clergy within the range of the income-tax. The limit of the income-tax was then £150 a year, and what Lord Beaconsfield proposed was to reduce that limit under Schedules A and E from £150 to £50 a year, and under Schedules B and D—the occupation of land being under one schedule and the profits of trades and professions under the other—from £150 to £100 a year. Therefore Mr. Gladstone was dealing with what he considered an improper attempt, which he himself defeated, to impose the income-tax as a fresh burden upon the occupants of small livings, and with reference to that he did
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interject the remark as to the gross injustice of the rate. I do not wish to, minimise it at all. I think my right hon. friend behind me has called attention to the fact that Mr. Gladstone was not the man to shrink from redressing what he believed to be an injustice, and especially an injustice to the Church of England, in any shape or form. He had never been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time he made that speech, but after he made that speech he was Chancellor of the Exchequer for a long series of years, and he was also Prime Minister for a long series of years. We are told that this question never slumbered, but at all events I do not find that Mr. Gladstone ever dealt with it legislatively. But, Sir, there is another authority which has been quoted in this Debate, to which on this question, with all respect, I attach a greater weight. My right hon. friend described Sir George Cornewall Lewis as a great financial genius. I will describe Sir George Cornewall Lewis not only as one of the ablest, but one of the wisest, statesmen of this century—one of the greatest men that ever belonged to the Liberal Party. And Sir George Cornewall Lewis gave very clear and distinct evidence upon this point. We have been told by the bon and learned Member for Plymouth that Sir George Cornewall Lewis stamped with his high authority the objection to the rating of tithe-owners, and declared that it was an injustice. Let me read what Sir George Cornewall Lewis did state. He said—and it is in the Report—
"There is no doubt that this Act" (the Tithe Act of 1836) "has operated very considerably to the disadvantage of the tithe-owner with respect to rating, and that is the point which I am desirous of mentioning to the Committee. It has acted injuriously to the tithe-owner in this manner. It has exhibited the entire amount of his tithe in public and in authentic form, and therefore, the tithe commutation being known and ascertained, the overseer has put down the tithe-owner in the rate-book at the full amount. But, being himself generally a farmer, he rates the other farmers in the parish at an amount less than the annual value, a practice certain to give the occupiers of land within the parish an advantage in comparison with the tithe-owner."
Where is there any disapproval of the mode of rating there? He states a fact. [A laugh.] Will the hon. Member who laughs quote a paragraph which states that rating to the assessable value is contradictory to the law? It is always well to go back

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and see whether anything else was said. But that was not all that Sir George Cornewall Lewis said. In reply to further questions he said:
"It has been proposed not to rate tithe so far as it is a remuneration for services. It has been said that the rating portion of the tithe ought to be that portion which may be considered as the net payment beyond that for the remuneration of services, and that you ought to deduct from the tithe rent-charge as much as would cover the salary of a curate, which would be a remuneration for services performed, but the principle has never yet been admitted in the legislation of this country, but the entire tithe with certain deductions has been rated."
Then a noble Lord, who did not appear to be quite satisfied, asked—
"Is the Committee to understand that your opinion is that the owner of the tithe rent commutation charge is at present subject to no injustice in rating except that which may arise from the greater facility there is for obtaining tins net income?"
And Sir George Cornewall Lewis replied:
"I am not aware myself of any disadvantage to which the owner of tithe rent-charge is subjected than this—that his cards are shown, whereas the cards of other ratepayers are not shown; and in my opinion, the most proper and equitable mode of redressing that disadvantage is to compel the other party to show all his cards, rather than to withdraw the whole of them."
Not one word is said as to the injustice of which we have heard so much to-night. I now come to the remedy which the Commissioners suggest for the injustice which they allege exists. And what do they suggest? I am assuming that the injustice is admitted, which it is not. They said that the state of the law was unjust to the clerical tithe-owner, but that it was also unjust to the lay tithe-owner. You say you throw aside the argument of the poverty of the clergy, and that you proceed solely on the ground that this is an unjust law, and ought to be redressed. Then why confine your redress to one class of tithe-owners alone? Why leave out of consideration the owners of tithes separated from benefices? No distinction can be drawn which could hold water. It has been said that it is our duty to pay special respect to the opinions of gentlemen who compose a Royal Commission, and that they have been improperly criticised. All we are entitled to do is to deal with them in their public capacity. But I wish to refer to the history of this
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Commission. I took a part, if I may say so, in the movement in this House which resulted in the concession by the Government of the appointment of the Royal Commission on whose report this Bill is said to be based. When the Government were proposing to benefit, unjustly as we thought, one class of ratepayers and leave all the others out of consideration, and when there was a feeling—not expressed, perhaps, with the same force as it was expressed the other night by the hon. Member for Stockport—of hostility on the part of urban Members against the proposal of the Government, the Government said:
"We admit that local taxation bears hardly upon the urban taxpayer, and we promise that there shall be an immediate inquiry "—into what?—" into the rating of personal property as well as real property, with a view to giving relief to dwellers in towns as well as dwellers in the country."
The Commission was accordingly appointed, and what was it to inquire into? —"whether all kinds of real and personal property contribute equitably to taxation for local purposes." That was in 1896; and we have not yet got the Report of the Commission on that point. There has been a good deal of talk during this debate of the grievance of the clerical tithe-owner. I admit it. I also admit the grievance of the agricultural ratepayer. But I say the grievance of the urban ratepayer is greater. The President of the Board of Agriculture said the Government had arrived at the £87,000 by taking the average rate as 2s. 6d. in the £. What is the rate in Wolverhampton? What are the rates in all the large urban districts.? It is 7s. 4d. in the £. These rates are steadily growing, and we have no remedy proposed. I treat with the utmost respect the gentlemen who compose the Royal Commission on Local Taxation; I attribute no motives to them; but I say their first duty was to deal with the task entrusted to them, which was to suggest a remedy for the grievances under which all property holders labour in respect of local taxation, instead of reporting, as they have done, with regard to one class of property and one class of property alone. Now there are three courses suggested as a remedy by the Commission. First, we have the suggestion that there should be a special measure of relief. Secondly, that there should be special legislation for the purpose of dealing with the deductions; and

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we have also what, I think, was the very wise suggestion of my right hon. friend the Member for Clackmannan, with which he objected to special legislation. But, Sir, what I would submit to the House is this, if the law is unjust—that is your contention—well, then, alter the law. Do not vote a sum of money out of the public funds to be levied indiscriminately upon those who are suffering by this bad law. That is not constitutional; that is not in accordance with precedent. Many Members may be able to recall a case of rating injustice which was discussed in both the last and the preceding Parliaments. I am alluding to the question of the rating of machinery. There was a great majority of this House, both under Conservative and Liberal Governments, who considered that the state of the law with reference to the rating of machinery was most unjust and unfair. I remember my friend, the late Mr. Winterbotham making a most powerful and convincing speech on this subject, in winch he showed how it was crushing out local industries in Stroud, in Gloucestershire, and in the West of England, and other Members from all parts, both urban and rural, pointed out the same thing. Five times did the House pass the Second Reading of a measure for the relief of that injustice. In the time of the Conservative Government there was a majority of 153 for the Second Reading, and under the Liberal Government the majority was 152. The Bill was blocked for reasons into which I will not enter; but an hon. Member who took a prominent part in opposing the Bill said he objected to it on the ground that it was not fair to alter one description of rating until the time arrived for altering all descriptions of rating. Now, what would you have thought if my right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouth had come down and said with respect to that Bill "We have no time to alter the law; we are not prepared to do that; but we will give you a sum of money out of the death duties"? Such a proposal would have been laughed out of the House. It would have been said that he was playing, and improperly playing, with public money under those circumstances. You have no right to redress a bad law by making a present of the money of one class of the ratepayers in order to benefit another. That brings me to another point. The Bill proposes that the
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relief shall apply to the owner of any benefice. There is no distinction as to the value of the benefice. Of course, it is put upon the high ground that you must not distinguish between rich and poor benefices. Well, Sir, that is absolutely inconsistent with the argument that the present system of rating presses so hard upon poor benefices. That is what the Government did in the Agricultural Rating Act—they did not distinguish between land worth 10s. an acre and land worth £10 an acre. I had a letter the other day from a friend of mine who had received half his rates back, as a distressed agriculturist, and he tells me that he has sold the land for which he received this relief for £500 an acre. The same principle is applied to this measure. They come down to the House and point to the hardship of the men with large families and small livings; but they give the relief to all alike—they give it to the man with the living of £1,000 a year as well as to the man with a poor living. It is a wrong principle and given in an extravagant and unfair way. My right hon. friend the Member for Bodmin referred to a point upon which I wish only to say a word. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture talked of the sum of £87,000 as if it were of little account; but when once the House has allowed a grant of this kind, as an hon. Member reminded us to-night, it is very difficult to undo that sort of legislation, and if you are going to vote £87,000 the House must take its capitalised value, which is over £3,000,000. We are told that the Bill only operates for a limited period. Much the same argument was used with reference to the Agricultural Rating Bill. Now I come to an extraordinary matter, the finance of this Bill. There is to be an interception of an interception. The money that ought to go into the Exchequer is first diverted into the Local Taxation Account, and then the Board of Inland Revenue has power to pay it to the respective local collectors of rates. That is a question we shall discuss pretty fully when we go into Committee on that clause. I only mention it now. The right hon. Gentleman says, "There is a sum of money somewhere that we really do not know what to do with; it is a surplus which has grown up nobody knows how," and the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth actually said that the local authorities would have some difficulty in knowing how to spend

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the money. I wish that among his many advantages—his unrivalled advantages—the hon. and learned Member for Plymouth had the advantage of experience of municipal work for two years. He would find that municipalities have no difficulty whatever in knowing how to spend their money. He would find that they cannot at times answer the demands that come upon them. Every year a sum is paid to the authorities on account of their share of the local taxation account, and there is always a balance at the end of the year, but until the accounts are closed nobody knows what the exact amount is, and that balance is distributed early in the following financial year when it is received. The sum that was available at the end of the year March 31st, 1897—the Return for the year ended March 31st, 1898, is not yet issued, but it will not vary much—was £845,000. What is proposed is to take 10 per cent. of that sum away from the local authorities and give it for this new purpose; and in this connection I wonder if the right hon. Gentleman has worked out the sum. I have worked out some of the figures. I find that the County of Stafford is now receiving £22,000 a year from this surplus, and you are going to take 10 per cent. of that £22,000 from the County of Stafford. Then Lancashire. That is a county in which the Government have a special interest, especially at this moment. I have no doubt we shall see to-morrow morning that the Member for Plymouth and the Member for Dartford will make good their challenges and go down and address the electors of Oldham and try to do away with the unfortunate impression which has been made there by the fact that the two Conservative candidates have declared that they would not vote for this Bill. Well, Lancashire receives £100,000 a year from the balance of this fund, and this Bill will inflict on Lancashire a fine of £10,000 for the purpose of this endowment which the House is now asked to sanction. Do hon. and right hon. Gentlemen believe that this burden is going to be permanently placed on the back of the people without eliciting indignant protests from the ratepayers. But then, Sir, the Member for Stroud and the Member for Plymouth declare that this is not a question of doles or of charity. No, Sir, it is not a question of doles or of charity,
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I agree that the clergy of the Church of England, and the clergy of the Church of Rome, and the clergy of the various Nonconformist Churches are as a rule underpaid. I believe that the labourer is worthy of his hire, and especially that class of labourer that represents the ministerial offices in all the Churches. I admit that is not a question of charity. I admit that these clergymen have a right to have their miserably small incomes made up. They have a right to be relieved from the payment of a heavy burden. They have a right to a just remuneration for the lifelong labour, the unceasing sacrifices as well as the constant assiduity with which they discharge their sacred offices. But against whom have they that right? Not against the revenue of the country. They have no right against the taxpayers, who belong to all creeds or to no creed. They have a right, and the right is against the Church at whose altars they minister, a right against the Christian men and the Christian women of whatever rank in society, from the peerage to the peasantry, whom they serve in that office, and to whom they afford spiritual teaching and consolation. I am not going to say anything disrespectful of the clergy or the laity of the Church of England, but, Sir, I cannot help contrasting what the laity and the clergy are doing in Scotland—in the Free Church, in the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland—and in the whole of the Nonconformist Churches of England and Wales. Hon. Members apparently are not aware that these burdens of rates arise elsewhere than in the Church of England. Perhaps I may refer to one Church of which I know something—I mean the Wesleyans. Every married Wesleyan minister is entitled to and has a furnished house, rent free, and the rates of that house are paid for him. His Church never asks him to pay a single shilling of rates, and when it was discovered some years ago by the authorities of Inland Revenue that these furnished houses, rent and rate free, were an addition to the stipends, they charged income-tax on them, and the Wesleyan Church also pays that income-tax.

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In addition to the support of their Ministers the bodies to which I am referring in England and Scotland—and I do not exclude Ireland, for there is no class by whom there are greater sacrifices made than by the peasantry of Ireland for the support of the Roman Catholic clergy—bear their fair share of all the other extraneous charitable contributions which fall on their shoulders. They do not regard it as a burden—they regard it as a duty—to support their ministers—their churches—their schools—their missions—and all other departments of their church organisation; and is it right, is it fair, is it just that you should impose new taxation upon them, for that is what it amounts to—diverted taxation once raised is precisely the same as if you impose new taxation—in addition to the burdens that they already bear? I say, in conclusion—and I apologise for having trespassed so much upon the time which belongs to the right hon. Gentleman opposite—that the Church of England can—and if this enfeebling idea of rate-aided support can be got rid of will—do its duty to its clergy and will relieve them from a cruel and heavy burden. I admit there is a hard case. I admit it entirely. I have not had time to dwell upon it as I intended to. The real and true cause, is the heavy fall in the money value of the tithe commutation rent-charge. That is the real grievance; but 1s. or 1s. 3d. in the £ on the rates will not touch that sad diminution in clerical income. I say that the Church of England, if properly appealed to, will relieve its poor clergymen from this reduction of their stipends, and will show that, while the Anglican Church surpasses all other Churches combined in its unrivalled resources, it will equal them in the just and generous discharge of all its obligations.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I think those who, like myself, have had the duty imposed upon them of following out the course of this Debate, will admit that the speech to which we have just listened is in happy contrast in tone and temper to some of the speeches which have been delivered both to-night and on the preceding occasion. It is quite true that towards the end of his speech the right hon. Gentleman, who is, after all, human, could not resist a little elec-
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tioneering, and that he terminated his observations by a parallel between the English Church and the Nonconformist bodies, to the disadvantage of the former communion. I think the right hon. Gentleman is most unjust to the English Church. I have no means of comparing the relative liberality of members of the Church of England and of the Nonconformist bodies, and I do not go the length of saying, indeed I do not think, that the laity of the Church of England in all respects show themselves equal to the great responsibilities thrown upon them. But that Church contributed for Church purposes, I believe, something over £7,000,000 last year, and £7,500,000 in the year 1897–98, to her purposes, and, though that may be a less sum than the members of that Church ought to contribute, I do not think it is a niggardly contribution. But it is hardly necessary for me to enter a caveat against the suggestion that the English Established Church comes forward at the present moment to ask for alms of this House. The claim she makes may be just, or it may be unjust—I shall argue that question directly; but the basis of that claim, be it sound or unsound, is a claim of justice and not a claim of pity. And certainly I should think myself quite unworthy of the task which has been laid upon me if I were for one moment to suggest that we come to the taxpayers of this country as beggars for alms and not as claimants for justice. Before I dwell any further upon that, which is, after all, the central citadel of the case, let me deal briefly with three attacks which have appeared in almost every speech made from the other side of the House. The first of those attacks is that we have based our proposals upon an interim Report of the Royal Commission. I think that is a very absurd attack. The right hon. Gentlemen in most of their other speeches upon Royal Commissions have declared that they were an expedient of the Government for indefinitely deferring some difficult question which ought to be dealt with. No doubt the result of a very prolonged inquiry is that the consideration by this House of a question is deferred from year to year. Well, is it not a very great advantage to get over that difficulty by having a Report upon any branch of the general topic which can, with advantage and propriety, be dealt with separately? I do not admit that the procedure of the Government

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with regard to the Royal Commission has been in any way improper. It appears admirably suited to carry out the general objects for which that Commission was appointed. The second criticism that has been made seems to me, if I may venture to say so with all respect, even more frivolous. We have been attacked by almost every speaker, except the right hon. Gentleman, for introducing this Bill under Standing Order No. 16, and thereby curtailing, no doubt, the Debate on the First Reading. I think that accusation is made against us by hon. Gentlemen with that species of courage which is born of Parliamentary forgetfulness. They were constantly in the habit when they were in office of introducing in this way the most elaborate Bills—great factory measures, for instance, were introduced in this way by the right hon. Gentleman the late Home Secretary.
MR. ASQUITH: Only non-controversial.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: "Controversial" is a very difficult term to define; they were complicated and elaborate measures upon which, no doubt, a great many gentlemen would have had something to say if the Bills had been introduced in the older fashion. I remember a case in which not, indeed, a Member of the Government, but an hon. Baronet opposite, one of the Members for Glasgow, introduced under this Standing Order No. 16 a measure for the disestablishment of the Scotch Church, and the whole of the front bench opposite without any exception supported him in the course he took and voted with him for the First Reading. I confess that for my own part a small readjustment of rating does seem to me rather less important and less controversial than the disestablishment of a national Church.
AN HON. MEMBER: It was not under this rule.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I say it was under this rule.
AN HON. MEMBER: It was not a Government Bill.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I never said it was a Government Bill, I said that it was
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introduced by the hon. Baronet, one of the Members for Glasgow, and that right hon. Gentlemen opposite supported him in the course he took and went into the Division lobby with him. The third of these subsidiary attacks which have reappeared at every phase of this discussion is in regard to the machinery we have adopted for remedying the injustice, as we think it, at the present moment of the position of the clergy. That method is to intercept a portion of the money which goes into the Local Taxation Account, and this has been attacked by hon. Gentlemen opposite as if it amounted to a breach of some great and accepted financial principle, as if it were intolerable that this House should come upon the fund for any purpose, however important, or however much it might affect the general community. Again, I say this is an accusation born of the shortness of political memory, because the machinery of the course we have adopted is one that we have borrowed in all respects from the procedure of right hon. Gentlemen opposite. They also intercepted this fund, and they intercepted it by a demand upon the fund far greater than that which this measure will make upon it. I forget the precise object for which they made the demand.
AN HON. MEMBER: Swine fever.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, something about pigs. I must respectfully point out to the House that it appears to me quite as reasonable to take £87,000 a year from this fund in order to readjust on an equitable basis our local taxation, as to take twice that sum from the fund in order to deal with swine fever. I do not expect right hon. Gentlemen opposite to make the same balance of motive or estimate of importance as I do, but without balancing the relative importance of relieving an injustice to the clergy and of dealing with pigs, I am justified in pointing out that the machinery we have adopted can hardly be open to all the criticisms passed upon it, inasmuch as that machinery is borrowed without alteration from the procedure of right hon. Gentlemen opposite. I quite admit that these three points with which I have dealt are subsidiary points, they are to my mind relatively unimportant points, but they have bulked largely in this Debate, and I could not without disrespect to the House avoid touching

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upon them. But having dealt with them briefly, though I hope not unsuccessfully, I proceed to touch on what I regard as the paramount questions. Let me say on this part of my case that I think hon. Gentlemen have been very unsuccessful in rebutting the weight of authority which stands on record in favour of the proposition that the existing rates press with undue severity upon the clergy. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down tried to minimise the weight of Mr. Gladstone's opinion by telling us that it was delivered on an exciting night at the end of a Budget Debate which had for its result the turning out of the Government of the day. Well, I do not know whether these considerations ought or ought not properly to be regarded as qualifying the importance of the statement which Mr. Gladstone made in 1851, but let me for the sake of argument, in order that I may not discuss that point, remind the House that that was not the last time nor the most important occasion on which Mr. Gladstone delivered an authoritative and considered judgment upon this point. A Bill was brought in in 1856 by Mr. Robert Phillimore, and its object was the same as the object of this Bill—namely, to diminish the burden of rates on the tithe-owning clergy. I am sure the House will take it from me that that was the object of the Bill; if they doubt it, I will read Mr. Robert Phillimore's speech. Let me read this brief passage from Mr. Glad-stone's contribution to the debate:
"He would respectfully press upon the House that, after the universal admission which had been made as to the existence of the grievance which was the subject of the it would not be altogether creditable to allow small difficulties of detail and small differences of opinion to prevent the application of a remedy to that grievance."
That was not a statement made on the Budget or in the heat of some great Party conflict, but a considered utterance upon the Second Reading of a Bill brought in for the very purpose for which we are introducing this Bill. And while we can quote on our side such a great authority in this matter as Mr. Gladstone, and while we can quote the various gentlemen of all shades of political opinion who have signed this Report, the industry of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, which certainly leaves nothing to be desired, has not extracted one opinion in a contrary direction from any great authority on the
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subject since 1836 to the present time. That is a presumption in favour of our Bill which it would take a great deal to get over. But how do they try to get over it? They tell us that the rates are exacted from the tithes according to law; and they quote a great many legal opinions which show conclusively that rates are levied at the present moment from the clergy strictly in accordance with the law. Yes, Sir, it is because it is in accordance with the law that we wish to change the law.
AN HON. MEMBER: You do not change the law; you give them a dole.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: We do propose to change the law. I never heard a Bill of tins kind described as a Bill which did not change the law. Every Bill which becomes law alters the law, unless it is a mere superfluity. But a great deal too much attention has been paid to the dicta of courts of law and lawyers in this matter.
MR. ASQUITH: Oh!
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Well, that is my opinion. Lawyers and courts of law are very eminent authorities as to the verbal interpretation of Acts of Parliament. It is their business, and as long as they do it, it is not for poor laymen to say a word as to the way in which they do it, or as to the results which follow upon it. But I venture to think that we who are not lawyers or eminent judges are quite as well qualified, and even better qualified, to judge of the intentions of Parliament in passing the law. After all, we and occupied in passing laws ourselves, and we have open to us information which judges, quite rightly, by a self-denying ordinance refuse to consider. We have the Debates which precede the passage of the law, and we have collateral means at our disposal for discovering the intentions of the framers of the law. As far as I am able to understand the matter, the intentions of the legislature, from the Act of Elizabeth downwards, have been steadily thwarted by the courts of law—not with any corrupt motive, but the courts of law have not truly or accurately interpreted the intentions of the legislature which passed the laws. As far as I am able to form a judgment—and I do not see why I am not as competent to form a judgment in this matter as any gentleman

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even with the highest legal training—the effect of this Bill will be, I will not say to bring the law precisely into harmony with the intentions of the framers of this or that Statute, but it will be to put the clerical tithe-payer in the position from which he ought never to have been excluded by the decision of the judges. I now pass to a criticism made by many speakers, but principally by the right hon. Member for Bodmin. The right hon. Gentleman is accustomed to criticise the procedure of the Party to winch he belongs. We have in him that most valuable assistant—a candid friend always ready to tell us of our faults. But I sometimes think that he presses that congenial rôle almost to excess. We are accustomed to hear the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth, in his easy and genial style, represent our arguments in a shape in which we are wholly unable to recognise even the most familiar friends. If he adopted any other course in our Debates we should not recognise our old antagonist, and we should think that his hand had lost its cunning. I am glad to say I see no sign of failure of that kind in the course of to-night's Debate. But we are not accustomed to have such eccentric views of the subject-matter of our Debates put forward by even the most candid of our friends as those we have heard from my right hon. friend the Member for Bodmin. He has advanced the most astounding proposition, as I think it—that you must not consider the rates to be paid by a clergyman at all; he is personsonally liable, no doubt, if they are not paid, but still you must not consider they are paid by him; they are first paid somehow or other, and then everything that remains over is his stipend and he has no right to complain of a rating system which diminishes that stipend or right to ask for a reform of the system of rating to increase it If that doctrine is applicable at all it is applicable to every species of property, and not to tithe alone; and is it not obvious on the face of it that it is a preposterous proposition? Is it not obvious there could be no reform in our rating system if such a doctrine were really accepted? My right hon. friend has laid it down that any change in our rating system that diminishes the burden on any kind of property is an endowment of that property and pro tanto a robbery of other classes in the community. If
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that is so, then this House is incapable of reforming rating; the thing cannot be done. The only way to reform rating is to alter the incidence of rating, and, according to my right hon. friend, such alteration means the endowment of one set of people and the robbery of others. Does my right hon. friend think that that is tenable in argument, or that it is a principle that has ever been or can ever be accepted by the House? I may remind him of a few cases. In 1874 there was a great alteration in the incidence of rating of railway and other property in regard to certain classes of local taxation. Was that an endowment of railways? The thing is absurd. In 1845, I think it was, an Act was passed which made ministers of the Established Church of Scotland liable to pay poor-rates in proportion to their means and substance. It was an enabling Act; it gave the power to levy the rate to local authorities. That existed for twenty years, but in 1861 it was abolished, and members of the Scotch Church were relieved from that liability. Was that relief an endowment of the Church of Scotland? If it was an endowment passed by the uncontaminated Liberal Party, to which my right hon. friend looks back with such an air of regret. Yes; my right hon. friend told us—I do not know if the House was as full then as now-that he looked back with regret to 1886, and I rather gathered from his observations on the general history of politics in this country, of which we have heard a good deal not very relevant to this Bill before us—I gathered from him that if an eminent statesman were willing to go back and frame a Ministry upon the principles that prevailed in 1886, my right hon. friend would be very glad to be in it. Let me take another ease, which was referred to by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. He alluded to the Bill so often brought in and read a second time in this House—the Machinery Rating Bill. Now, the theory of my right hon. friend, and those who have echoed his sentiments, is that all rating is upon property; at all events, his view is that if you relieve one species of property of rates you are endowing the owners of that property. I confess I thought that was his view.
MR. COURTNEY: Of course it is impossible for me now to reopen my argu-

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ment, but when my right hon. friend comes to see the full report of the Commission on Local Taxation he will have an opportunity of reading a long argument of mine submitted at the request of the Commission, reconciling what he says is impossible—namely, respect for long-existing rates with the power of reconstruction of rates.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I can assure my right hon. friend I shall read with the utmost interest and attention his argument in the report to which he refers. I have not had the privilege of seeing it, so I can only found my answer to his speech upon the speech itself. Had I seen the document it would have given me infinite pleasure to have dealt with it to the best of my ability. My right hon. friend puts to me this dilemma. Supposing this Bill is passed, and supposing a liberal Member of the Church of England desires to increase the endowment of some particular church. Suppose, further, that, in order to carry out that object, he hands over to the clergyman a certain amount of tithe rent-charge which is in the hands of a lay impropriator. Would that tithe rent-charge be relieved of rates, or would it not? If it is relieved of rates, said my right hon. friend, then you are manifestly endowing the Church of England in such circumstances with a further endowment equal to half the rates. If, on the other hand, the tithe rent-charge is not relieved of half the rates, then are you not admitting that the logical basis of your Bill wholly falls? That, I think, was my right hon. friend's argument. He did me the honour to say that I was a person of great dialectical ability, and he waited with interest to see what answer I should give to this puzzle. But he forgot that I am also a Scotchman, and a Scotchman has, or is supposed to have, the habit of answering one question by putting another. I propose to answer that question by putting another. At the present moment, though the fact has been forgotten in this Debate, every Nonconformist place of worship throughout the kingdom is relieved of rates.
SEVERAL HON. MEMBERS: As well as the churches.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Of course; concurrent endowment. I put this to my
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right hon. friend, who is not less dialectically endowed than I am—supposing a piece of land is given, as it is given every day, for the building of a Nonconformist place of worship. That piece of land before it is given is liable to rates. As soon as it is given and the place of worship is built it ceases to be liable for rates. Now I should like to know how my right hon. friend deals with that problem.
MR. COURTNEY: My right hon. friend has himself given the answer; it is a concurrent endowment.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: My right hon. friend is perfectly correct, it is a concurrent endowment; and the difference between the two cases is this—that while, as far as we can judge from experience, the number of persons who choose the machinery of handing over tithe for the purpose of augmenting a living is extremely small, the number of persons who hand over land to build a Nonconformist chapel upon is, I am glad to think, very many. It makes no difference whether the land is sold or handed over for the purposes of my argument, and my right hon. friend's candid interruption brings me to a point which demolishes nine-tenths—and the most telling nine-tenths—of the arguments we have heard in this Debate. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have told us that whenever, at the cost of the general ratepayer, you relieve the Church of England of rates you are endowing that Church. I have heard that statement made by every speaker, and it has been usually the one statement which has brought down vociferous cheers from the gentlemen sitting on the other side of the House. How do they deal with this? They have even quarrelled with this freedom from rates enjoyed by Nonconformist chapels. They have told us that the Church of England might grovel for money, but the Nonconformist bodies were too noble to do so. Has the right hon. gentleman, who boasts, and boasts so justly, of the liberality of the great communion to which he belongs, ever protested against this? If so, he has protested in silence. The Act which frees these places of worship—and, in my judgment, quite rightly—from rates was passed, I believe, in 1844 or 1845. It has been in undisputed and increasing employment ever since. Every Nonconfor-

1099
mist chapel which has been built since then, and every chapel which was built before then, which is still in existence, constitutes or obtains an endowment from the State at the expense of the ratepayers, according to the argument which has been urged in season and nut of season. This may be a problem the solution of which is not easy, but, in Heaven's name, let us hear no more of this trash about endowments. Let the House notice that, while we ask only for a readjustment of rates, which, in our judgment, ought not to be described as an endowment, this freeing places of worship from rates is an endowment in any sense in which the word can be used, and is admitted to be an endowment even by so candid a friend of the Government as the right hon. Member for Bodmin. Therefore, let us argue the question henceforth on a somewhat different basis from that employed these last two days, and not lower the tone of our Debates by attacking the Church of England for its want of public spirit when, so far as I know, not a single Nonconformist has ever suggested that they should reject the rate aid given by the Act to which I have referred, and which is undoubtedly endowment in its purest and nakedest form. I should like every hon. Gentleman who proposes to vote against this Bill to ask himself whether, if there were any other class than the clergy of the Church of England suffering under this kind of disability, they would either make the speeches they have or give the votes they propose to give. Here you have, side by side, a man bound to do certain clerical work for, let us say, a nominal stipend of £400 a year. You have next door a Civil servant living in a similar house, under similar conditions. The one pays £5 a year to the rates, the other pays £50 a year to the rates. Each gets precisely the same benefit from the expenditure of the local rates, the same amount of police protection, the same accommodation in the way of roads, lighting, and all the other matters for which rates are paid. Is it not inevitable that in the minds of those overtaxed a feeling of soreness should arise? Is it not inevitable that he should come to this House—which, perhaps, until the speeches we have recently had he regarded as one of the fountains of justice—and ask that something should be done to relieve him? I have heard hon. Gentlemen lament over the poverty in which too
1100
many of the clergy of the Church of England are at present plunged, and tell us how grieved they are at the condition of things, and how much they think the spiritual efficiency of the Church is injured by the straitened means of those who have the care of its ministrations. I do not for a moment doubt the sincerity of these observations, though they do come oddly from those whose most earnest efforts are directed towards depriving the same clergy of all the endowments which at present they enjoy. But, though I do not doubt for a moment the sincerity of what has been said, I confess I do feel that at the bottom of the opposition to this Bill is not any theory of rating such as that of my right hon. friend, not any regard for the interests of the ratepayers at whose cost it is alleged this reform will take place, but a deep-rooted animosity to the Church of England. I listened with the interest which I always feel to the speech made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Fife. The hon. Gentleman never seems able to forget the ancient controversies between the Church and Nonconformity. He speaks with a bitterness upon these subjects, as if it was the morrow of that unhappy day when 2,000 of the Presbyterian clergy were turned out shortly after the Restoration. Can he not let these "old, unhappy, far-off things" be forgotten once for a while? Can he not feel that, bitter as those contests may have been, and unhappy as their results have undoubtedly been, they may now be allowed to slumber? I do not know whether the great Nonconformist divines—uncompromising Calvinists as they were—would have regarded the hon. Gentleman as their legitimate spiritual successor; but, whether he has inherited their doctrines or not, why should he inherit their controversies? Have we not reached, or may we not reach, a more peaceable age in which questions between one Christian sect and another may be dealt with without that bitterness which has flavoured too many of the orations we have heard from the other side? Sir, hon. Gentlemen have told us in terms of ill-conceived triumph that the cause we are now championing is an unpopular cause, that the clergy of the Church of England, and for various reasons, are not now a popular body. What we are doing may be easily perverted at the hustings, and in their judgment, at all events, we are doing

1101
little by the measure we are now pressing forward to, in the vulgar phrase, catch votes. That may be so, and yet I think that when the country has time to consider the claim that we make, and when they see that it is based upon justice, it may be that the prophecy of hon. Gentlemen opposite will not find a ready fulfilment. But let us suppose that their view is correct. They intend, I presume, or profess now that they will let this Bill, which only runs two years and a-half, die a natural death without renewal, and I presume they will mete out the same justice or injustice to the Rating Bill, of which we heard so much in 1896. I do not hear that prophecy of their policy received with the applauding cheers which I expected. One courageous gentleman, indeed, did interrupt me with loud applause, but there was an ominous silence brooding over the other Benches on his side of the House, and I venture to think that when the time comes we may not hear, perhaps, on the hustings of this country these loud attacks on this Bill we have heard to-night, or any specific or formal promise on the part of the leaders of the Opposition that they mean to reverse the system which this Bill and the other Rating Bill have introduced. I have many reasons for doubting that view. Perhaps the House will allow me to read one which has been given to me by an hon. friend of mine who was concerned in an election in June, 1898—my hon. friend the Member for Hertfordshire. I have been given a circular issued, as
I understand, by the Hertford Central Liberal Association. It states:
"The present Government, which holds office largely owing to the support of the clergy, have done nothing for them in respect of rates, and still refuse to do anything. Although every £100 of tithe rent-charge is now worth only £65, they have still to pay heavy local rates, which further diminishes their declining incomes. Briefly stated, the grievances of the clergy are as follows:—(1) their houses are over-assessed; (2) their tithe endowments are over-rated; (3) the tithe-owning ratepayer ought to be as considerately treated as the land-owning ratepayer. Why should the clergy support the Unionist candidate at the present election? Why not vote for the Right Hon. C. Robert Spencer?"
Well, Sir, I cannot concur with the advice given at the end of that extract, but the sentiments contained in the earlier part of it seem unexceptionable. I entirely agree with Hertford Central Liberal Committee, and I am convinced that as the Hertford Central Liberal Committee think today the general Liberal Party will think to-morrow, and that when they, in common with the rest of the country, really consider the position in which these clergy are placed, they will, not indeed on grounds of charity, but spurred on by a legitimate feeling for poverty and straitened means, concur with the policy which this Government has adopted, and which I earnestly trust before this session ends we shall see carried to a complete and satisfactory issue.
The House divided:—Ayes, 314; Noes, 176. (Division List, No. 210.)

AYES.

Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir A. F.

Bartley, George C. T.

Brassey, Albert

Aird, John

Barton, Dunbar Plunket

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Allhusen, Augustus Henry E.

Bathurst, Hn. Allen Benjamin

Brookfield, A Montagu

Allsopp, Hon. George

Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir M.H.(Brs't'l

Bullard, Sir Harry

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Beach, W. W. Bramston (Hants

Burdett-Coutts, W.

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Beckett, Ernest William

Butcher, John George

Arnold, Alfred

Begg, Ferdinand Faithfull

Carlile, William Walter

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Bemrose, Sir Henry Howe

Cavendish, R. F. (N. Lancs.)

Bagot, Capt. J. FitzRoy

Beresford Lord Charles

Cavendish, V. C. W.(Derbsh.)

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Bethell, Commander

Cecil, Evelyn (Hertford, East)

Baillie, James E. B (Inverness)

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

Baird, John George A.

Biddulph, Michael

Chaloner, Captain R. G. W.

Balcarres, Lord

Bigwood, James

Chamberlain, J. Ansten (Wrcr.

Baldwin, Alfred

Bill, Charles

Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (Manc

Blakiston-Houston, John

Clarington, Spencer

Balfour, Rt. Hn. G. W. (Leeds

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Chelsea, Viscount

Banbury, Frederick George

Bonsor, Henry Cosmo Orme

Clare, Octavius Leigh

Barnes, Frederic Gorell

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

Clarke, Sir E. (Plymouth)

Barry, Rt. Hn.A. H. S.-(Hunts

Bousfield, William Robert

Cochrane, Hon. Thos. E. A.E.

Barry, Sir Francis T. (Winds'r

Bowles, Captain H. F. (M'dl'x

Coddington, Sir William

Coghill, Douglas Harry

Helder, Augustus

Milner, Sir Frederick George

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Henderson, Alexander

Milward, Colonel Victor

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Hickman, Sir Alfred

Monckton, Edward Philip

Colomb, Sir John Charles R.

Hill, Arthur (Down, West)

monk, Charles James

Colston, C. E. H Athole

Hill, Sir Edward Stock (Bris.)

Montagu,Hon.J.Scott (Hants.

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Hoare, Edw. Brodie(Hampst'd)

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Cook, Fred. Lucas (Lambeth)

Hoare, Samuel (Norwich)

Moore, William (Antrim, N.)

Cornwallis, Fiennes Stanley W.

Hobhouse, Henry

More,Robt.Jasper (Shropshire

Cotton-Jodrell,Col. Edw. T. D.

Holland, Hon. L R.(Bow)

Morgan,Hn. F.(Monm'thsh.)

Cox,Irwin Edward Bainbridge

Hornby, Sir William Henry

Morrell, George Herbert

Cranborne, Viscount

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Morrison, Walter

Cripps, Charles Alfred

Houston, R. P.

Morton,ArthurH.A. (Deptford

Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

Howard, Joseph

Mount, William George

Cruddas, William Donaldson

Howell, William Tudor

Muntz, Philip A.

Cubitt, Hon. Henry

Howorth, Sir Henry Hoyle

Murray, Rt. Hn. A. G. (Bute)

Curzon, Viscount

Hozier, Hon.JamesHenryCecil

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Hubbard, Hon. Evelyn

Murray, Col.Wyndham (Bath)

Davies, Sir H. D. (Chatham)

Hughes Colonel Edwin

Myers, William Henry

Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

Hutchinson, Capt. G.W. Grice.

Newark, Viscount

Digby, John K. D. Wingfield-

Hutton, John (Yorks. N. R.)

Nicholson, William Graham

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Jackson, Rt. Hn. Wm Lawies

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Dixon-Hartland,SirFrd. Dixon

Jebb, Richard Claverhouse

Northcote, Hon.Sir H.Stafford

Dorington, Sir John Edward

Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Jenkins, Sir John Jones

Doxford, William Theodore

Johnston, William (Belfast)

Pease, Herbert P. (Darlington)

Drage, Geoffrey

Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex)

Penn, John

Dyke,Rt.Hn.SirWilliam Hart

Jolliffe, Hon. H. George

Percy, Earl

Egerton, Hen. A. de Tatton

Kemp, George

Pierpoint, Robert

Elliot, Hn. A. Ralph Douglas

Kennaway,Rt.Hn.Sir John H.

ilkington.R.(Lancs.,Newton)

Fardell, Sir T. George

Kenyon, James

Platt-Higgins. Frederick

Fellowes,Hon.Ailwyn Edward

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. William

Pollock, Harry Frederick

Fergusson, Rt HnSirJ.(Manc'r.

Keswick William

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Field, Admiral (Eastbourne)

Kimber, Henry

Priestley,Sir W.O.(Edinburgh

Finch, George H.

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Pryce,Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Knowles, Lees

Purvis, Robert

Firbank, Joseph Thomas

Lafone, Alfred

Pym, C. Guy

Fisher, William Hayes

Laurie, Lieut.-General

Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

Fison, Frederick William

Lawrence, W. F. (Liverpool)

Rankin, Sir James

FitzGterald,Sir Robert Penrose-

Lawson, John Garant (Yorks.)

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

FitzWygram, General Sir F.

Lecky, Rt. Hn. William E. H.

Rentoul, James Alexander

Fletcher, Sir Henry

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Richards, Henry Charles

Flower, Ernest

Leighton, Stanley

Ridley,Rt.Hn. SirMatthew W.

Folkestone, Viscount

Llewellyn, Evan H. (Somerset

Ritchie,Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson

Foster, Harry S. (Suffolk)

Llewellyn, Sir Dillwyn-(Sw'ns a

Robertson, H. (Hackney)

Galloway, William Johnson

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Robinson, Brooke

Garnt, William

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Rou d, James

Gedge, Sydney

Long,Col.CharlesW.(Evesham

Royds,Clement Molynenx

Gibbons,J. Lloyd

Long,Rt.Hn, Walter(Liverpool

Russell,Gen.F.S.(Cheltenh'm)

Gibbs,Hn.A.G.H.(City of Lond

Lopes, Henry Yarde Buller

Russell, T. W.(Tyrone)

Gibbs,Hon. Vicary (St.Albans)

Lorne, Marquess of

Ruterford, John

Giles, Charles Tyrrell

Lowe, Francis William

Ryder, John Herbert Dudley

Gilliat, John Saunders

Lowles, John

Herbert Dudley

Godson, Sir Augustus Fred.

Lowles, Archie Kirkman

Samuel, H.S.(Limehouse)

Goldsworthy, Major-General

Lubbock, Rt. Hon. Sir John

Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

Gordon, Hon. John Edward

Lucas-Shadwell, William

Savory, Sir Joseph

Gerst,Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred

Scoble, Sir Andrew Richard

Geschen,RtHnGJ.(StGeorge's

Macartney, W. G. Ellison

Seely, Charles Hilton

Goschen, George J. (Sussex)

Macdona, John Cumming

Seton-Karr, Henry

Goulding Edward Alfred

MacIver, David (Liverpool)

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Graham, Henry Robert

Maclean, James Mackenzie

Sidebotham, J. W. (Cheshire)

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Maclure, Sir John William

Sidebottom,T.H.(Stalybridge)

Green,WalfordD(Wednesbury

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Simeon, Sir Barrington

Greene, Henry D.(Shrewsbury

M'Calmont, Col J (Antrim,E.)

Skewes Cox, Thomas

Gull, Sir Cameron

M'Iver,SirLewis(Edinb'rghW.

Smith, Jas. Parker (Lanarks.)

Gunter, Colonel

Malcolm, Ian

Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)

Hall, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Manners, Lord Edward W. J.

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Halsey, Thomas Frederick

Maple, Sir John Blundell

Stanley, Hon. A. (Ormskirk)

Hamilton,Rt.Hn.Lord George

Martin, Richard Biddulph

Stanley, Edw. Jas. (Somerset)

Hanbury, Rt. Hon. Rby. Wm.

Massey-Mainwaring, Hn W F

Stanley, Henry M. (Lambeth)

Hanson, Sir Reginald

Maxwell, Rt Hn Sin Herbert E.

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

H rdy, Laurence

Mellor, Colonel (Lancashire)

Stephens, Henry Charles

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Melville, Beresford Valentine

Stewart,SirMarkJ.M' Taggart

Haslett, Sir James Horner

Middlemore, J. Throgmorton

Stock, James Henry

Hatch, Ernest Fred. George

Milbank,SirPowlettChas.Jhn.

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Heath, James

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Stunt, Hon. Humphry Napier

Sutherland, Sir Thomas

Warde, Lieut-Col.C.E. (Kent)

Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B.Stuart-

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Wyndham, George

Talbot,Rt.Hn.J.G.(Ox. Univ.

Webster, B.G. (St. Pancras)

Wyndham-Quin, Major W.H.

Thornton, Percy M.

Welby, Lieut.-Col. A. C. E.

Wyvill, Marmaduke D'Arcy

Tollemache, Henry James

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon-

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Tomlinson, Wm. Edw. Murray

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Young,Commander,(Berks,E.)

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

Younger, William

Ushorne, Thomas

Wiliams,Joseph Powell(Birm)

Valentia, Viscount

Willox, Sir John Archibald

TELLERS FOR THE AYES— Sir William Walrond and Mr. Anstruther.

Vincent, Col. Sir C. E. Howard

Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.)

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Wodehouse,Rt.Hn. E. R.(Bath

Ward, Hon. Robert A. (Crewe)

Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

NOES.

Abraham,William (Rhondda)

Flynn, James Christopher

Morley,Rt.Hon. J. (Montrose)

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

Moulton, John Fletcher

Allen, Wm. (Newc.u.-Lyme)

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Murnaghan, George

Ambrose, Robert Andrew

Fox, Dr. Joseph Francis

Norton, pt. Cecil Williams

Ambrose, Robert

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Gold, Charles

O'Connor,T. P.(Liverpool)

Asquit, Rt. Hon. Herbert H.

Gourley, Sir Edward T.

Oldroyd, Mark

Atherley-Jones, L.

Grey, Sir Edward (Berwick)

O'Malley, William

Austin, M.

Griffith, Ellis J.

Palmer, Sir C. M. (Durham)

Bainbridge, Emerson

Gurdon,Sir William Brampton

Palmer. G. Wm. (Reading)

Baker, Sir John

Haldane,Richard Bardon

Paulton, James Mellor

Balfour, RtHnJ.Blair(Clackm.

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir Wm.

Pearson, Sir Weetman D.

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Harwood, George

Pease,Joseph A. (Northumb.)

Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

Hayne,Rt. Hon. Charles Seale-

Pease, Sir J. W. (Durham)

Billson, Alfred

Hazell, Walter

Perks, Robert William

Birrell, Augustine

Hedderwick, Thos. Chas. H

Pickersgill, Edward Hare

Blake, Edward

Hemphill, Rt. Hn. Charles H.

Pilkington, Sir J.A (Lancs SW)

Broadhurst, Henry

Hegan, James Francis

Pirie, Duncan V.

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

Holden, Sir Angus

Price, Robert John

Burns, John

Holland, Wm. H. (York,W. R.

Priestley, Briggs(Yorks.)

Burt, Thomas

Horniman, Frederick John

Provand, Andrew Dryburgh

Buxton, Sydney Charles

Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

Caldwell, James

Hutton, Alfred E.(Morley)

Randell, David

Cameron,SirCharles(Glasgow)

Jacoby James Alfred

Reckitt, Harold James

Cameron, Robert (Durham)

Johnson-Ferguson,Jabez Edw.

Rickett, J. Compton

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Jones, David B. (Swansea)

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Carmichael, Sir T. D Gibson-

Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

Samuel J. (Stockton on Tees)

Causton, Richard Knight

Kearley, Hadson E.

Schwann, Charles E.

Cawley, Frederick

Kilbride, Denis

Scott, Chas. Prestwich (Leigh)

Channing, Francis Allston

Kitson, Sir James

Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

Clark, Dr.G.B. (Caithness-sh.)

Langley, Henry

Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B)

Clough, Walter Owen

Langley, Batty

Sinclair, Capt.Jn. (Forfarshire

Condon, Thomas Joseph

Lawson,SirWilfrid(Cumb'land

Smith,Samuel (Flint)

Courtney,Rt.Hon. Leonard H.

Leese, Sir J. F. (Accrington)

Souttar, Robinson

Crilly, Daniel

Leng, Sir John

Spicer, Albert

Crombie, John William

Lenty, Thomas Richmond

Stanhope, Hon. Philip J.

Curran, Thomas (Sligo, S.)

Lloyd-George, David

Steadman, William Charles

Dalziel, James Henry

Logan, John William

Stevenson, Francis S.

Davies,M.Vaughan-(Cardigan

Lough, Thomas

Strachey, Edward

Davitt, Michael

Lyell, Sir Leonard

Stuart, James (Shoreditch)

Denny, Colonel

MacAleese, Daniel

Sullivan, Donal (Westmeath)

Dewar, Arthur

MacDonnell, Dr. M. A. (Q.C.)

Sullivan, T. D. (Donegal, W.)

Dillon, John

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Tennant, Harold John

Donelan, Captain A.

M'Crae, George

Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.

Doogan, P. C.

M'Ewan, William

Thomas, Alf. (Glamorgan, E.)

Douglas, Charles M.(Lanark)

M'Ghee, Richard

Thomas, David Alfd. (Merthyr

Dunn, Sir William

M'Kenna, Reginald

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Edwards, Owen Morgan

M'Laren, Charles Benjamin

Ellis, John Edward

M'Leod, John

Wallace, Robert

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Maddison, Fred.

Walton, John L. (Leeds, S.)

Evans,SirFrancisH.(South'ton

Mappin, Sir Fredk. Thorpe

Warner, Thos. Courtenay T.

Evershed, Sydney

Mellor Rt. Hn. J. W. (Yorks)

Wedderburn, Sir William

Farquharson, Dr. Robert

Mendl, Sigismund Ferdinand

Weir, James Galloway

Fenwick, Charles

Montagu Sir S. (Whitechapel

Whiteley, George (Stockport)

Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

Morgan, W Pritchard(Merthyr

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

Williams, John Carvell(Notts.

Wills, Sir William Henry

Wilson, John (Govan)

Yoxall, James Henry

Wilson, Charles Henry (Hull)

Wilson, J. W. (Worctrsh. N.)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)

Woodhouse, Sir J. T. (Hudd'rsfd

Mr. Herbert Gladstone and

Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

Woods, Samuel

Mr. M'Arthur.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday next.

REFORMATORY SCHOOLS AMENDMENT BILL [Lords]
SECOND READING.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
MR. DALZIEL: I have an Amendment on the Paper to refer this Bill to a Select Committee, but I understand that the Bill itself will be of so much use to our English friends on this side of the House that I prefer to do nothing which would delay its passage.
Adjourned at twenty minutes before One of the clock.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
  TAFF VALE RAILWAY BILL.
    WOKING WATER AND GAS BILL.
    Committee to meet To-morrow.
  NORTH-WEST LONDON RAILWAY BILL.
  Re-commiteed: The Committee to meet To-morrow.
  BOOTLE CORPORATION BILL.
  The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn: The Order made on the 15th instant discharged; and Bill committed.
  SCUNTHORPE URBAN DISTRICT GAS AND WATER BILL.
  Reported from the Select Committee with Amendments.
  CORK CORPORATION (FINANCE) BILL.
  Reported without Amendment.
  PORTSMOUTH CORPORATION BILL [Lords].
  Reported with Amendments.
  BLACKPOOL IMPROVEMENT BILL.
  Report from the Select Committee, That the Committee had not proceeded with the consideration of the Bill, no parties having appeared in opposition thereto; read, and ordered to lie on the Table: The Orders made on the 23rd instant and Monday last discharged; and Bill committed.

  SOUTH-EASTERN AND LONDON, CHATHAM, AND DOVER RAILWAY COMPANIES (NEW LINES) BILL.
  Report from the Select Committee, That the Committee had not proceeded with the consideration of the Bill, no parties having appeared in opposition thereto; read, and ordered to lie on the
  942
  Table: The orders made on the 13th instant and Monday last discharged; and Bill committed.

  EAST LONDON WATER BILL.
  Report from the Select Committee That it is not expedient to proceed further with the Bill; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
  MIDLAND RAILWAY BILL.
  The Queen's consent signified; and Bill reported from the Select Committee with Amendments.
  LEITH HARBOUR AND DOCKS BILL.
  The Queen's consent signified; and Bill reported from the Select Committee with Amendments.
  FYLDE WATER BOARD BILL [Lords].
  Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
  KENSINGTON AND NOTTING HILL ELECTRIC LIGHTING BILL.
    BARRY RAILWAY BILL.

      LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAILWAY (NEW RAILWAYS) BELL.
      LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE RAILWAY (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL.
      Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

  GROSVENOR CHAPEL (LONDON) BILL [Lords].
    HAMPSTEAD CHURCH (EMMANUEL, WEST END) BILL [Lords].
    Returned from the Commons agreed to.
  BRYNMAWR AND WESTERN VALLEYS RAILWAYS BILL.
  Returned from the Commons with the Amendments agreed to.
  BARTON-ON-SEA WATER BILL [Lords].
    LANARKSHIRE (MIDDLE WARD DISTRICT) WATER BILL [Lords].
    Returned from the Commons agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (GAS) BILL.
    LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.

      LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 7) BILL.
      LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 9) BILL.
      LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 11) BILL.
      LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDERS (HOUSING OF THE WORKING CLASSES) (No. 2) BILL.
      Committed to a Committee of the whole House.

  PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 2) BILL.
  Committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 16) BILL.
  Committed to a Committee of the whole House To-morrow.
  MILITARY LANDS PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
  Committed to a Committee of the whole House.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 7) BILL.
  House to be in Committee To-morrow.
  GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 2) BILL [Lords].
  House in Committee (according to Order); the Amendments proposed by the Select Committee made; further Amendments made; Standing Committee negatived; the Report of Amendments to be received to-morrow.
  TRAMWAYS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 2) BILL [Lords].
    TRAMWAYS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 3) BILL [Lords].
    Amendments reported (according to Order), and Bills to be read 3a To-morrow.
  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 18) BILL.
    ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 19) BILL.
      PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 1) BILL.
      Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 6) BILL.
  Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 149.)
RETURNS, REPORTS, &c.
  TUBERCULOSIS.
  Report of the Right Honourable Sir Herbert Maxwell, Baronet, M.P., F.R.S., and P. H. Pye-Smith, Esquire, M.D., F.R.S., the delegates of Her Majesty's Government at the International Congress on Tuberculosis held at Berlin on the 24th, to the 27th May, 1899.

  TRADE REPORTS.
  I. Annual Series:

  No. 2296. Morocco (Tangier and District).

  No. 2297. Japan (Hakodate). No. 2298. Peru.

  No. 2299. Norway.

  No. 2300. France (New Caledonia).

  No. 2301. Denmark.

  II. Miscellaneous Series:
  No. 506. Turin Exhibition of 1898.

  MINT.
  Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Deputy-Master for 1898.
  Correspondence relating to recent land legislation in Ceylon.

  INDIA (RAILWAYS).
  Administration Report on the Railways in India for 1898–99.
  Presented (by Command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  Fifty-third Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy to the Lord Chancellor.
  INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION BOARD (IRELAND).
  Rules and programme of examinations for 1900.

  PUBLIC RECORDS (WAR DEPARTMENT).
  Fifth Schedule, containing a list and particulars of classes of documents which have been removed from the office of Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the War Department, and deposited in the Public Record Office, but which are not considered of sufficient public value to justify their preservation therein.
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

PETITION.

  MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS (BOROUGH FUNDS) ACT, 1872.
  Petition for amendment of; of the Urban District Council of Mytholmroyd, in the County of York.
  Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

  ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 3) BILL.
  THIRD READING.
  Order of the day for the Third Reading read.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 3a."—(The Earl of Dudley.)
  THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: My Lords, I do not wish to stand in the way of the Third Reading of this Bill, but before it passes into law I should like to call attention to what I regard as the very serious principle which the Bill involves. Your Lordships may recollect that in the year 1882, when the Act was passed, a very short time was allowed before the purchase clause came into existence under which the local authority could take over the property of the under-
  946
  takers. As a result, no one could be found to put money into the electric lighting industry. In 1888, however, the period in the purchase clause was extended to forty-two years. As a result of this security, a large quantity of capital was put into the electric lighting industry, not only in London, but throughout the kingdom. After that Bill had passed your Lordships' House it went back to the House of Commons, where certain words were proposed to be inserted on the motion of Sir George Campbell. The insertion of the words was opposed by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who was then President of the Board of Trade, and also by the ex-President, the late Mr. Mundella. Without any further discussion the House adjourned, and when the House again had the matter before it the words were inserted without any discussion whatever. The words provided that, notwithstanding any existing Provisional Order, another Provisional Order or licence might be granted in the area to which the Bill referred. After the Bill had received the Royal assent, the Board of Trade instituted a public inquiry as to the best method of carrying out its provisions. The inquiry, which lasted, I think, eighteen days, was held at Westminster by Major Marindin, whose report resulted in the laying down of the principle by the Board of Trade that certain areas should be allotted to each undertaker, that there should be two undertakers to an area—this implied a limited competition—and that the current supplied to the consumers in that area should be varied—that is to say, one should be the alternating system, and the other the direct system. It was also laid down that, in the event of the local authority of the parish or area desiring to undertake the work itself, it should receive preference at the hands of the Board of Trade; and since that time, when a local authority has once started the supply in an area, no private company has been allowed to compete with it. During the whole of the inquiry it was never understood by the engineers or promoters of companies, or by those who were financially interested in them, that at any time a local authority would be allowed to compete against the existing company. Until the present time this has never been allowed. I have always considered competition a desirable thing; it keeps

  947
  down the price, and obviates, to a certain I extent, what are considered to be the evils in relation to the gas and water supplies of London. But I maintain, and I am supported by all interested in electric lighting in the contention, that it has not been hitherto contemplated, where a local authority is put in the position that it can, if it desires, purchase the undertaking of the company supplying its district at the end of forty-two years, that the local authority should obtain an order to supply the district, and in that way depreciate the property which it might purchase at a later date. I feel that I am not expressing myself very well, but it is extremely difficult to put a matter of this kind clearly before your Lordships. I do not object to competition upon an equal basis, but I do not regard, and I am borne out by the experience of others; the competition of a local authority as fair competition. I will explain why it is not fair competition. First of all, it is easy for a local authority to get capital cheaply on the security of the rates; secondly, it has a long period in which it can make a sinking fund; and, thirdly, it has no dividends to pay to shareholders. As to the technical part of the question, the local authority is not compelled to give notices in the same way as a company. When an electric lighting company desires to supply light to a house, it has to give no less than thirteen different notices, and these notices extend over a period of thirty days. The local authority only has to give notice when it proposes to disturb the mains of a gas or water company. Immediately it receives an order, the local authority can instruct its men to connect the house at once, whereas the rival company would not be able to do this within thirty days. Again, there is nothing to prevent a local authority from selling the current at cost price, or even below cost price. They can by that means reduce the price charged to the consumer to such an extent that the company could not exist, as the whole of the customers would naturally desert the company in order to take the cheaper supply. I have very great doubts in my own mind whether this is not the line of conduct which will be adopted in the present case under this Bill, because the local authority refused to accept a clause binding them not to supply current below cost price. The local authority also refused to pur-
  948
  chase the undertaking of the company at a price regulated by the amount of expenditure that had been incurred by the company. I cannot help thinking that, if this Provisional Order is allowed to pass without a serious protest, it will be followed to a large extent by other local authorities, who will apply for Provisional Orders to supply districts in which companies have large spent a large sum of money and have commenced working, and in that way defeat the clause which provides for purchase at the end of 42 years. Therefore, I would venture to ask the Board of Trade to say what I fear they cannot say—namely, that they will not make a precedent of the principle contained in this order, but will obtain an instruction from Parliament in another year as to how they should act, in order to prevent the grievous injustice which will arise from the passing of Provisional Orders of this kind.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (The EARL of DUDLEY): My Lords, if I may say so without disrespect, there is probably no member of your lordships' House who is better qualified to give an opinion upon a matter of this kind than the noble Earl who has just addressed you. I have listened with the greatest attention to the arguments put forward, but I am bound to say that I think the procedure he has adopted in making this protest on the Third Reading of the Bill is a little unusual, and also a little inconvenient. The Bill has already passed through the House of Commons in two sessions, and when it came before the Committee of this House the opposition of the company in which the noble Earl is interested was withdrawn, but a protest is now raised at the eleventh hour. Of course, I do not deny the right of the noble Earl to take that course, but I think it is a little different to the general principle under which Private Bill Legislation in this House is conducted. My noble friend seems to think that this Bill contemplates a serious change in the policy which has governed the granting of Provisional Orders for electric lighting, and that there is no precedent for a local authority being granted an order to supply electric light in a district where a company is already supplying it. There is a precedent in the case of Newington, and I believe the company in which the

  949
  noble Earl is interested was there supplying electric light. It is true that no opposition was offered on that occasion, but still the precedent is the same. The Vestry in that case was, as proposed here, given the power to compete with a private company. My noble friend also Seems to think that the Board of Trade have in some way introduced a new principle into this Bill by giving this power to the Vestry, but I would remind the House that in 1888 an Act was passed which distinctly authorises the Board of Trade to grant such power, and with the permission of the House I will just read the last words of the section:
  "The granting of authority to any undertakers to supply electricity within any area, whether granted by licence or by means of a Provisional Order, shall not in any case hinder or restrict the granting of a licence or Provisional Order to the local authority, or to any other company or person within the same area."
  Those words clearly contemplate not only competition in different districts, but competition by a local authority. My noble friend seems to think that the danger of giving such a power to a local authority is that there is no security that they will supply electricity at cost price, and he said, I think, that they would not be under the same obligation as a company to make a profit. I cannot help thinking, however, that the ratepayers of a certain district would protest very strongly if their local authority contemplated supplying electricity at the cost of the rates, the effect of which would be that the general ratepayer would have to pay for the electricity used by a certain few. I do not believe a case has ever arisen in which a local authority has attempted to take such a course as that feared by my noble friend. The noble Earl also thinks that this Bill will be made a precedent, and that other local authorities will step in and apply for orders. The granting of Provisional Orders under such conditions must, of course, depend upon the circumstances of each case. What the Board of Trade has to remember, first of all, is that it has been undoubtedly laid down that competition is a good thing, and that, if the existing company is not performing its work thoroughly and well, the Board of Trade should grant an Order to a competing company so that a supply should be assured. Therefore, if ill the future a
  950
  local authority promotes a Provisional Order asking for power to supply electricity in a district in which the supply is already sufficient, that fact will, of course, weigh very materially with the Board of Trade, but in the case we are now discussing this was not so. The noble Earl will, I think, hardly deny that serious allegations were made before the Committee of the House of Commons against the company with which he is connected. I believe it was stated that, although his company had been in possession of their Order for nine years, none of the mains had been laid in any of the streets comprised in the compulsory area, notwithstanding the fact that by the Order the company were under the obligation to lay the mains in the compulsory area within the space of two years. A case of that kind would, at any rate, afford a strong reason for supposing that competition was desirable and justifiable. It has been proved in other districts that, before the inhabitants will use electricity to a very great extent, facilities must be given, and its utility must be demonstrated in an easy and tangible way. You cannot expect people to ask to be supplied with electricity unless the lamps in their streets and some of the shops are lighted by electricity, so that they may see the advantage of the light. Therefore, I think that on all grounds the Board of Trade have been perfectly justified, in view of the Act, and in view of the inquiry which Sir Francis Marindin made, in granting the Order in this case. To safeguard themselves the Board of Trade embodied this Order with another one—that of Marylebone—in a separate Bill, in order that Parliament might have every opportunity of considering these Bills, which are practically on all fours, and of deciding whether they would accept the principle or not. The House of Commons threw out the Marylebone Order, but on two occasions endorsed the Bermondsey Order, and, this being so, I think it would be a very strong step for your Lordships' House to take at this stage to throw it out.
  THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I do not ask the House to throw out the Bill.
  THE EARL OF DUDLEY: I think the fact that the House of Commons has twice accepted the Bill is sufficient proof

  951
  that the noble Lord need not fear that by it any dangerous precedent will be set up.
  On Question, agreed to.
  Bill read 3a accordingly, and passed.

  SUMMARY JURISDITION ACT (1879) AMENDMENT BILL.
  SECOND READING.
  Order of the day for the Second Reading read.
  LORD PENRHYN: My Lords, the object of this Bill, which has come up to your Lordships from the House of Commons, where it met with no opposition at all, is to include the offence of obtaining money, etc., by false pretences in the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879, so as to enable trifling cases, with the consent of the accused, to be dealt with summarily, as may at present be done in trifling cases of larcency. As the law now stands, magistrates are obliged to send small cases of false pretences for trial at quarter sessions, and the persons charged are sometimes kept a long time awaiting trial. In Carnarvonshire, not long ago, a man was charged with obtaining less than 2s. worth of beer by false pretences. He was committed for trial on 26thJuly, and was in gaol awaiting his trial until 20th October following, when he was immediately acquitted. This, I think, illustrates the hardship that may sometimes be inflicted.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: So far as I can tell, this is a very desirable Bill, but I cannot help remarking that there was great difficulty in hearing what the noble Lord said, owing to the position he took up.
  LORD PENRHYN: This is the first time I have attempted to introduce a Bill in your Lordships' House, and I hope I may be forgiven if I did not speak as clearly and as well as I ought to have done.
  LORD BELPER: My Lords, I can say, on behalf of the Home Secretary, that this hits his entire approval. It seems only reasonable, where very small sums are
  952
  involved, that, with the consent of the person accused, the magistrates should be able to deal with the ease summarily; but it is very desirable to guard against the possibility of justices allowing charges for false pretences to be used for the purpose of enforcing mere debts. On behalf of the Home Secretary, I shall have to move an Amendment in Committee, providing that the accused shall be informed by the magistrates what, in law, false pretences are, so that there may be no chance of his pleading guilty to a charge on which he is not liable to be convicted.
  On Question, agreed to.
  Bill, read 2a (according to Order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.

  POOR LAW ACTS AMENDMENT BILL [Lords.]
  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  LORD HARRIS: My Lords, several causes have contributed to induce the Local Government Board to introduce this Bill. The Departmental Committee on Poor Law Schools urged the Government to give Guardians of the Poor larger powers over children supported out of the rates than they possessed under the Act of 1889, and a Bill to that effect has been twice introduced into the House of Commons by Mr. Flower. That Bill has been supported by communications to the Local Government Board from over 200 Boards of Guardians, but as the Bill is not making progress, the Local Government Board have thought it wise to introduce a Bill themselves in your Lordships' House. The Act of 1889 gave guardians power, where a child was maintained out of the rates and had been deserted by its parent, to retain the child under their control until sixteen years of age in the case of a boy, and eighteen years of age in the case of a girl. Where, too, a parent had been imprisoned for some offence, such as cruelty to a child, the child might be taken under the control of the guardians. The Bill which I am now asking your Lordships

  953
  to read a second time enlarges those powers, and enables guardians to take charge of a child in cases where they are of opinion that by reason of mental deficiency, habits, or mode of life, the parent is unfit to have the control of it, and in cases where a parent has been sentenced to imprisonment in respect of any offence against any of his or her children. Under the Act of 1889, guardians could only take control of the child whose parent was suffering imprisonment for cruelty in respect of that child, but under this Bill the guardians will be able to take charge of any of the children of such a parent, and of the children of a parent who is permanently bedridden or disabled, or is the inmate of a workhouse, and consents to the guardians having control. They may also take charge of a child whose parents, or, in the case of an illegitimate child, the mother of the child, are or is dead. These are the alterations in the Act of 1889 which this Bill proposes. Your Lordships will understand that it applies only to those children who are being supported out of the rates, and that the guardians may at any time rescind the resolution if they think it will be for the benefit of the child that it should be so rescinded. A court of summary jurisdiction, if satisfied, on complaint made by a parent, or, if there is no parent, by a guardian of a child, that there was no ground for the resolution, has also power to determine the resolution. As I have already informed your Lordships, the Act of 1889 applies to boys up to the age of sixteen, and girls up to the age of eighteen. Clause 2 of this Bill will make it apply to children of both sexes up to the age of eighteen, and, if the children consent themselves, within three months of arriving at the age of eighteen, they may be kept under the control of the guardians up till the age of twenty-one. Clause 3 provides a penalty in cases where persons endeavour to tempt children away from the control of the guardians. The object of that clause is to prevent undesirable relatives, who are not fit to have the control of children, from endeavouring to tempt children away. In Clause 4, which relates to rather a different subject, power is given to the guardians to visit those young persons for whom they have obtained situations as servants, and whom they have apprenticed, wherever they
  954
  may be, up to the age assigned. Under the present Act they can only visit the children if they are still in the situation that was first found for them. Under this Bill they can be visited so long as they are within the union, or within a short distance of the union, whether they are in the place of first service or not. Clause 5 provides that Section 4 of the Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act, 1871, shall be amended by increasing the power of guardians to call for a longer notice of discharge where a pauper is constantly in the habit of discharging himself without sufficient reason from the workhouse. Under the present Act, where a pauper has discharged himself from a workhouse twice within a month, he has to give 72 hours' notice when he desires his discharge. The Bill proposes that where a pauper discharges himself more frequently without sufficient reason the guardians may call for a still longer notice—namely, 168 hours. In such a case it will be necessary for a direction to be entered in the minutes specifying the name of the pauper to whom it applies. These are the provisions of the Bill. They have been strongly supported by various bodies, including a large number of boards of guardians, and I trust that, under the circumstances, your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I have no reason to say anything against the principle on which this Bill is founded, but I think some of its provisions will require careful consideration in Committee. I may not understand the Bill correctly, but it appears that its provisions are to take effect when one parent has misbehaved. The husband may have run away and deserted a child, but the mother may remain and be perfectly fit to take care of it. I certainly think the Bill will have to be scrutinised hereafter, probably in the Standing Committee, but the general object is an excellent one. I feel very great doubt as to Clause 4. This clause provides that, when a young person has been placed cut in service from a workhouse, the visits to that young person which the guardians may make shall not only continue during the time that the young person is in the

  955
  service to which he or she was first sent, but shall continue afterwards when the child shall have gone to another situation.
  LORD HARRIS: Within the union.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: Of course. It seems to me that if there is one thing more desirable than another it is to remove, as soon as possible, from children who have gone out into the world all recollection of their having been paupers. I think this provision in the Bill is open to considerable objection. If a child goes back to the guardians and is again placed out by them, it is perfectly reasonable that they should continue to visit, if they think it necessary; but if a young person has obtained another situation without the intervention of the guardians, and has thereby become disconnected with Poor Law administration, it is not to the advantage of the child that it should continue to be visited by the guardians. Nothing has a more deleterious effect upon a child than to ticket it as a pauper, and I think this clause of the Bill will require very careful consideration in Committee.
  THE LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER: My Lords, I rise to support the Second Reading of this Bill, which appears to me to be more important and more far-reaching in its beneficial consequences than perhaps may be suggested by its title or by a hurried perusal of its contents. The fact that we have five Bills under our consideration in one week, three of them in charge of members of the Government, dealing with questions affecting the education of the young is not without significance as showing the interest which is at present being taken in exceptional educational problems, and I am quite sure that in no one of the matters with which these Bills deal is legislation more urgently required, though perhaps the circle within which it is to work is small, than in the cases to which the present Bill refers. Anyone who is familiar either with the administration of the Poor Law as regards children going out from workhouses into the world, or with the management of institutions, unconnected with the Poor Law, which exist for kindred objects, will know how real is the need which this Bill is intended to meet. I, for one, desire to express my gratitude to Her Majesty's
  956
  Government for having taken in hand a measure which has been struggling for several years ineffectually to obtain a hearing in the House of Commons, and which I hope will now rapidly become law. It is impossible to exaggerate the distressing character of the cases which occasionally come before those who have taken charge, as far as they can, of children during this particular period in their lives. In a number of cases, children who, have been taken away from evil homes and looked after until they arrive at the age when they are old enough to earn something for themselves, have been at the first moment taken back by their relations to those homes where everything that has been learned is unlearned. If the peril is great in the case of boys, it is ten times greater and more terribly in the case of illegitimate girls of fifteen or sixteen, who are taken back under the control of a mother who is far from-having their true welfare at heart. This Bill will give wider powers to Poor Law authorities as to children whom they are able to protect, and will prolong the protection which is thus given. At present, as the noble Earl stated, desertion by the parent is a necessary preliminary too the child being taken by the guardians; but under this Bill, whether the parent has deserted the child or not, if the guardians are of opinion that the child is in unfit keeping they will be able to take it away. A parent who is unfit either owing to mental deficiency or evil habits of life may now be relieved, if I may use the word, of the responsibility of taking care of the child, and the guardians may undertake that duty, charging the cost to the parent, the understanding being that this refers only to, children who are under the Poor Law. All legislation of this kind is subject to two dangers. Either that we may be sentimentally relieving very poor parents of a control which we ought rather to help them themselves to exercise, or, on the other hand, our sympathy for children in an unhappy home may lead us to interfere illegitimately with the rights of control which parents ought to have. It seems to me that the Bill safeguards us from any probable difficulty under bath these heads. In the first place, if such parent considers he or she is unjustly treated by the child being taken away, the parent will have the right of appeal to the court, who will decide

  957
  whether the guardians have been justified or not in the action they have taken. I think the force of public opinion is at present so strong with regard to the rights of parents that even in the case of parents other than those whom we should desire to see in charge of children, we need not fear that their interests or rights will be unduly interfered with. No provision in the Bill is more important than that which extends the age during which the protection of the guardians may last. At present girls become free from the control of the guardians on reaching the age of eighteen, and boys on reaching the age of sixteen; but under this Bill both sets of children will be under the control of the guardians till the age of eighteen, and if, three months before that, when they are perfectly able to judge for themselves, they desire to remain for three years longer under the protection of the authority which has taken charge of them hitherto, they will be able to do so. The Bill, which is drawn on eminently practical and wise lines, does not yield merely to a sentimental cry, but meets a real need, and I trust your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.
  On question, agreed to.
  Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

  MANCHESTER CANONRIES BILL [Lords].
  Read 3a (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.
  YOUTHFUL OFFENDERS BILL [Lords].

    COMMITTEES.
    House in Committee (according to Order).
    Clauses 1 to 5 agreed to.
    Clause 6:—
    LORD NORTON: My Lords, I wish to draw attention again to this clause, which is one of those provisions by reference, which is ab utely unintelligible without having the Act to which it refers before your Lordships. The House is called upon to pass this clause in the dark.
    LORD JAMES OF HEREFORD: I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, but I have thought his suggestion a good one, and have prepared an Amendment, setting out in exact terms the effect of this clause.
    LORD NORTON: Under those circumstances, my Lords, I shall not make any further objections at this stage.
    Clauses 6 to 19 agreed to.
    Bill reported without Amendment, and recommitted to the Standing Committee.

  FINE OR IMPRISONMENT (SCOTLAND AND IRELAND) BILL.
  Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
QUESTIONS.

  ESTATE DUTY ASSESSMENT.
  THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (The Earl of MORLEY): My Lords, I beg to ask H.M. Government whether, in assessing the value for estate duty of property sold after the death of a testator, the Treasury is justified in refusing to deduct the costs of the sale from the purchase-money. This question is one of no very large or important nature, and it in no way affects the principle of the Finance Act of 1894. It merely affects in one particular point the method of administration of that Act. As the House is aware, on a succession being created the property of the deceased person is valued, and the value reckoned according to the Act, which says:
  "The value of any property shall be estimated at the price which, in the opinion of the Commissioners, such property would fetch in the open market if sold at the time of the death of the deceased."
  The valuation having been made, and, we will assume, the duty having been paid on that valuation, it may happen that the successor may sell some of the property. In a case of that kind the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, if the purchase money of the property is in excess of the valuation, claim to be entitled to receive estate duty on the excess. I assume that, on this principle, if the purchase money was less than the valuation, the successor

  959
  would be entitled to a reduction on the amount paid. The ways of the Inland Revenue, however, are rather remarkable, and I am afraid an applicant would not have much chance of obtaining a reduction. I think, parenthetically, it is a question whether there should not be some time limit after which further claims should not be made; but my point is that the value of the property sold is clearly the price it fetches, less the costs of the sale. In all transactions of life that principle is, or ought to be, acknowledged, but the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or the Treasury refuse, in estimating the value of the purchase money for the purpose of paying estate duty, to deduct the reasonable costs of sale. This action is, in my opinion, unjust and inequitable. The ease is stronger in regard to works of art and matters of that kind. We will assume that a not very remarkable collection of works of art is lying in a country house. The value of a collection in that particular place would be probably less than the valuation OH which the duty has been paid, but if the works are brought to London and sold they would probably fetch a much larger price. On paying duty on that larger sum it is only fair that the successor should be allowed to deduct from the purchase money the cost of the commission in respect of the sale, which would probably be 10 or 12½ per cent., and also the cost of conveyance to London. It seems to me that this is so obviously a fair and equitable claim that it can hardly be resisted, and I trust that the noble Lord who will answer for the Treasury will give us some hope that the practice which at present prevails will be altered, or, at any rate, that the question may be considered by the Committee, which I understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer said would sit in the autumn, to deal with questions arising in reference to the Finance Act. I think the scope of that Committee might be somewhat enlarged to enable them to consider the point to which I have called the attention of the House to-night, and which deals not with the principle of the Act, but with the mode of administration. In almost all cases the amount of duty claimed under this practice would be so extremely small as not to be worth anyone's while to protest against it. The Inland Revenue Commissioners, as we all know who have dealings with them, have a keen sense of the duty resting upon
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  them to extract every penny they can for the revenue of their country, and the attempt of any individual to protest against the injustice to which I have referred would be absolutely futile, and would never be undertaken. Therefore the only way of bringing a small matter of this kind before the public is to call attention to it in your Lordships' House.
  THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (Viscount CROSS): My Lords, it is not for me to say what the law should be, but simply to say what the law actually is, and the answer to my noble friend's question as to whether the Treasury is justified in refusing to deduct the costs of the sale from the purchase money seems to me to be in the affirmative. The estate duty is imposed upon principal value of all property which passes on death (Section 1, Finance Act, 1894), and the "principal value" is to be estimated to be the price which in the opinion of the Commissioners such property would fetch if sold in the open market at the time of the death of the deceased"—Section 7(5). There is a special rule laid down for valuing agricultural property—see the proviso to Section 7 (5)—but that proviso contains no provision for allowing the costs of sale. The analogy of the probate duty was preserved as far as possible in the new estate duty. Under probate duty law the grant and the stamp duty on the grant covered the gross assets of the deceased, and no costs of administration or realisation of any kind were ever allowed against probate duty. The idea seems to be that as the property exists at the moment of death so the estate duty falls upon it with only those deductions which are expressly authorised by the Act. No deduction of costs of sale is expressly authorised by the Finance Act, 1894, except in Section 7 (3), which runs as follows:
  "Where the Commissioners are satisfied that any additional expense in administering or in realising property has been incurred by reason of the property being situate out of the United Kingdom, they may make an allowance from the value of the property, on account of such expense, not exceeding in any case 5 per cent. on the value of the property."
  It may therefore be inferred that, except in the particular case referred to in Section 7 (3), no such deduction was intended. Consequently, as no such deductions were made against probate duty, and the

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  Finance Act, 1894, contains no express enactment enabling such deductions to be allowed, they are invariably refused.

  CEYLON—CONDUCT OF MR. RAMANATHAN.
  LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY: My Lords, I desire to ask the Under Secretary for the Colonies whether the Ceylon Government has dismissed Mr. Ramanathan from the office of Solicitor-General, or has ordered the prosecution for libel of the newspaper which accused him of fraud. In March last I suggested to Her Majesty's Government that it was incumbent upon the Ceylon Government either to dismiss Mr. Ramanathan or prosecute the newspaper which had accused him of fraud. No Government which respects itself can allow an officer holding so high a position as that of Solicitor-General to be accused of fraud. It will not be a sufficient answer for the noble Earl to say that the newspaper was an insignificant one, and was not worth notice, because the Ceylon Government, through its Attorney-General, prosecuted the same paper a short time ago on account of libelling the daughters of a police court clerk at Galle. The Indian Government either prosecutes, or orders its officials to prosecute, and pays the costs, in one case I know of, where the official lost the suit. In the case of Mr. Ramanathan there is an accumulation of offences. Since March last he has published a book which he might have dedicated to the Secretary of State, but which, if it had been dedicated to the Under Secretary, would have been a gross insult. It is entitled "A Commentary on St. Matthew." The Madras Standard calls it a Travesty of St. Matthew. Mr. Ramanathan speaks of Christ as a Yogi—he probably used the word in its spiritual sense only, which means a person who seeks Yoga, or communion with the Deity. But as a Hindu he ought to have known that a Yogi is a person who goes about with hardly any clothes, with his hair matted down his back, and his body covered with ashes. Anglo-Indians who have seen them would think this term highly disrespectful to Christ, and I think, as a matter of taste only, it is not fitting that a Solicitor-General of a Christian Government should, whilst in office, write a book of that kind. I cannot conceive how the noble Earl the Under Secretary can refrain from either insisting upon Mr.
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  Ramanathan's dismissal, or else parting company from the Colonial Office.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (The Earl of SELBORNE): My Lords, the Secretary of State has received no information from the Acting Governor of Ceylon respecting Mr. Ramanathan of the nature indicated, and that gentleman could not in any case be dismissed from office without the authority of the Secretary of State. Mr. Chamberlain's attention has been called to articles in a Ceylon newspaper, in which Mr. Ramanathan is accused, not of fraud, but of champerty, and I will ask for a report on the subject. So much for the answer to the exact question asked by the noble Lord, but I cannot let the matter drop there. Mr. Ramanathan is a distinguished Tamil gentleman who occupies the important and honourable position of Her Majesty's Solicitor-General in Ceylon. I wonder if the noble Lord who put this question on the Paper has thought what the feeling of that responsible gentleman will be when he sees that the journals of your Lordships' House have been used to convey such gross insinuations against his character. It does not seem to me to be a fair use of Parliamentary questions to put on the Paper a notice containing such imputations merely on information picked up, I know not where or how, and without there being a shadow of foundation for them. On behalf of the office which I have the honour to represent, and which is the guardian of the interests of Her Majesty's servants serving in the colonies, I altogether protest against such use of the privilege of Parliamentary questions.
  LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY: The noble Lord has had three months' notice of this.

  THE PALIAMETARY DEBATES.
  LORD HAWKESBURY: I beg to ask Her Majesty's Government whether arrangements can be made by which peers may be supplied with copies of The Parliamentary Debates in the same way as Members in the House of Commons.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY): My Lords, I am afraid the question is one of finance. The House of Commons votes

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  for the benefit of its own members the money to purchase the publication of Hansard. I am informed that the House of Commons has not extended that liberality to the House of Lords. I understand that no change can be made in the present year, because no Estimate has been voted. I presume the matter will be for the consideration of the authorities of the Treasury during the coming recess.
  House adjourned at twenty minutes before Six of the clock, till To-morrow, half-past Ten of the clock.