Sitting of 7 December 1900

Preamble
Several other Members took and subscribed the Oath.
ADJOURNMENT.
Resolved, That this House, at its rising this day, do adjourn till Monday next.—(Mr. Fellowes.)
PETITIONS.
  LICENSED PREMISES (HOURS OF SALE) (SCOTLAND).
  Petition from Selkirk, for alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY.
  Petition from Blakeney, for prohibition; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  POST OFFICE (DISTRICT MESSENGERS' COMPANY).
  Return (presented 6th December) to be printed. [No. 381.]
POST OFFICE (TELEPHONE SERVICE).
Return (presented 6th December) to be printed. [No. 382.]
SUPERANNUATION ACT,1884.
Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated 17th November,1900, declaring that Mr. Alexander MacDonald, Commander of the cruiser "Vigilant," under the Fishery Board for Scotland, was appointed without a Civil Service Certificate, through inadvertence on the part of the Head of his Department [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS (INDIA AND THE COLONIES).
Copy presented, of Reports as to the Indian and Colonial Regulations respecting Commercial Travellers [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

IRISH LAND COMMISSION (JUDICIAL RENTS).
Copy presented, of Return of Judicial Rents fixed during the month of April,

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1900 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

IRISH LAND COMMISSION (PROCEEDINGS).
Copy presented, of Return of Proceedings of the Commission during the month of September,1900 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
RESTRICTIONS UPON BRITISH INDIAN SUBJECTS TN BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES.
Return presented, relative thereto [Address11th May,1899; Sir William Wedderburn]; to lie upon the Table.
QUESTIONS.

  SOUTH AFRICAN WAR.—NOTIFICATION TO FOREIGN POWERS OF THE ANNEXATION OF THE REPUBLICS.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs have Her Majesty's Government notified to any foreign Powers the annexation of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony by Great Britain; and has this annexation been recognised by any foreign Power; if not, what steps do Her Majesty's Government propose to take in order to secure such recognition.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Viscount CRANBORNE,): The annexations have not been notified to any foreign Powers. The precedents have been examined, and it has not been found that such notification is necessary, or that recognition of the fact of annexation by foreign Powers is dependent on formal diplomatic notice.

  WAR OFFICE CONTRACTS.—TENDERS FOR BICYCLES.
  MR. CHARLES MURRAY: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether his attention has been called to the issue of forms of tenders for bicycles on terms which directly contravence the spirit and letter of an undertaking given by the late Financial Secretary to the War Office on 28th July, † and whether he will
  † See The Parliamentary Debates, Fourth series, Vol. LXIII—page 301.
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  suspend the issue of such forms of tender until he has given an opportunity to the firms interested of conferring with the Secretary of State.
  MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS () (for Lord Stanley): I have examined with the Secretary of State the forms of tender recently issued for 130 bicycles required for further experiment in South Africa. I find that although tenders were issued to sixty-seven firms in conformity with my undertaking given on 28th July that there should be no monopoly, in certain particulars where interchangeability of parts is essential the tenders, which specify the manufactures of one firm, do not altogether conform to the instructions given. I have, therefore, ordered them to be amended, leaving it to the tendering firm to provide of their own manufacture parts interchangeable with those already supplied.

  REPORT OF THE INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT.
  MR. DALZIEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the fact that the Report of the Intelligence Department of the War Office on the Military Forces of the Transvaal previous to the outbreak of war has been published in certain American newspapers, he will, for the information of Members, consent to lay it upon the Table of the House.
  MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: Yes, Sir.
  MR. DALZIEL: Will it be published in the present session?
  MR. J. POWELL-WILLIAMS: I cannot say. I will inquire of my right hon. friend.

  COURT MARTIAL PROCEDURE.
  COLONEL NOLAN (Galway, N.): I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he would make some statement which would recognise or discountenance the apparent innovation of one court martial inquiring as to how the members of another court martial have voted.
  MR. J. POWELL-WTLLIAMS: No question regarding the unanimity of opinion of the members of a court martial previously held should be allowed to be

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  raised before a court martial. Some instructions to this effect have been issued, and will be made general.

  THE WAIMA INCIDENT—ARBITRATION.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give information with regard to the progress of arbitration on the subject of the affair which took place at Waima in 1893, as to which arbitration was announced as having been agreed upon in principle at the time of the discussion of the Foreign Office Vote in 1899, and on which immediate arbitration was promised in the discussion of the Foreign Office Vote in August last.
  VISCOUNT CRANBORNE: All points in connection with the Arbitration, including the selection of the Arbitrator, are settled with the exception of certain details as to procedure, in regard to which a reply is now being awaited from the French Government.

  CONSULAR TRADE REPORTS.
  MR. BRIGG: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in order that the Trade Reports issued by the Foreign Office may be more easily understood and consequently rendered more commercially valuable, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will request the Consuls and others who furnish Trade Reports to give the amounts contained in those Reports referring to weights, measures, and coinage in their English equivalents.
  VISCOUNT CRANBORNE: Instructions were given in 1889 to Her Majesty's Consuls that in every case the equivalents in English money, weights and measures should be used. Exceptions to this rule are occasionally made in case of lengthy tables in well known currency or measure, such as francs or metres. The attention of Her Majesty's Consuls will, however, be again called to the importance of strictly observing the instructions of 1889.

  MALTESE COURTS OF LAW—OFFICIAL LANGUAGE.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State
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  for Foreign Affairs, whether any deputation waited on the Secretary of State for the Colonies during his recent visit to Malta relative to the proposed imposition of the English language in place of Italian in Courts of Law; and, if so, will he state the nature of the reply which was given, or lay upon the Table of the House any Papers on the subject.
  The SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN,): The matter referred to by the hon. Member was not mentioned at my interview with the elected members. Parliamentary Paper No. 287 of 1899 gives the latest information which is available on the subject.

  POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK—LOSS ON TRADING—ASSETS AND LIABILITIES.
  Mr. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that for the last four years the trading of the Post Office Savings Bank has resulted in a yearly loss amounting, for the four years to the end of 1889, to £34,123; and, whether he can say what the reason is of this loss being sustained, and whether he proposes to take any steps to place the Post Office Savings Bank on a sounder and more satisfactory footing.
  The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH, Bristol, W.): The answer to the first paragraph of the question is in the affirmative, but it is probable that the current year will show a profit. The reason of the loss was that it was impossible for some years to invest the Savings Bank funds so as to pay the rate of interest to the depositors fixed by law. The subject is one which I think should engage the attention of Parliament.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that the balance-sheet of the Post Office Savings Bank on the 31st December, 1899, showed an excess of liabilities over assets of £504,928s. 10d., the assets being valued at the market price of the day. Whether these assets included £67,330,884 of 2¾ per cent. Consols; and whether the market price and consequent value of those Consols, at that price, has since increased or decreased. Whether the liabilities of the

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  Savings Bank, amounting to £130,138,344 on 31st December,1899, consisted almost wholly of deposits payable at call. Whether in case of the assets of the Post Office Savings Bank being insufficient to meet the claims of the depositors the Consolidated Fund is liable to make good the deficiency. And whether he proposes to take any steps, either by forming an adequate reserve in cash, or in any other way, to secure the Consolidated Fund from having to make good any such liability by placing the Post Office Savings Bank in a position to meet the claims out of its own assets.
  SIR M. HICKS BEACH: The answer to the first four paragraphs of the question is in the affirmative, except that the deposits are legally payable at ten days notice—the price of Consols has decreased since the date named. I introduced a Bill last session to deal with this subject, though I was not fortunate enough to be able to proceed with it or to secure the support of the hon. Member for the remedy which I proposed. I can take no steps in the matter at the present time, nor make any promise as to the future.

  METROPOLITAN POLICE—PAY.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps, if any, have been taken towards raising the pay of the members of the Metropolitan Police force, seeing that some time has already elapsed since the members of the City Police force received a substantial increase of pay.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. RITCHIE,): I must deprecate the comparison suggested in the hon. and gallant Gentleman's question, but I may say that the matter of the emoluments of the Metropolitan Police was under the consideration of my predecessor when he left office, and is now receiving my attention.

  RAILWAY RE-BOOKING CHARGES.
  COLONEL NOLAN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if his attention has been drawn to the habit of re-booking goods, particularly those of small weight, on or between the railway systems of Ireland, and if he could issue regulations which would limit the powers
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  of the railway companies to charge for this re-booking.
  The PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. G. W. BALFOUR,): My attention has not been directed to this matter, and I am not aware of the precise point of hardship upon which the hon. and gallant Gentleman desires the intervention of the Board of Trade. It is clear, however, that the Department has no power to issue regulations limiting the powers of railway companies to charge for re-booking.

  DELETERIOUS MATTER IN BEER.
  MR. FREDERICK WILSON: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will take steps to define the word "beer" like bread, butter, etc., or whether beer is still to be made of any article grown, manufactured, or imported into this country.
  The SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GRANT LAWSON,): Legislation would be necessary to give effect to the wishes of the hon. Member. My right hon. friend fears he could not undertake to introduce a Bill for the purpose; but desires to point out that adulteration of beer may be dealt with under the-existing law.

  POST OFFICE TELEPHONES—BREAKING UP OF LONDON STREETS.
  MR. BARTLEY (Islington, N.): I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General,, whether he is aware of the inconvenience that has been caused all over London by the taking up of the streets for the telephone,, and that Victoria Street has been almost. impassable for six months, and that each house has been blocked up for about six weeks; and whether some steps can be taken to reduce this inconvenience to the public.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, Worcestershire, E.): The Postmaster General is aware, and he is sorry that it should be so, that great inconvenience has been caused by the works for the new telephone service in London. The facts are not, however, quite as stated by the hon. Member. Excavation in Victoria, Street was not begun until

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  24th August, and the duct work was completed more than a week ago. The Postmaster General is satisfied that every endeavour is and will be made to minimise the inconvenience to the public. It should be understood that the Post Office is not responsible for the whole of the inconvenience which has been caused. Electric light companies have made and are making extensive excavations in many cases along the same routes as those followed by the Post Office.
  MR. BARTLEY: If the Post Office did not commence the work until August, someone began it for them a month or two previously.

  ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS— APPEALS AGAINST DISMISSAL.
  SIR JOSEPH LEESE: I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education whether a measure giving the right of appeal to teachers in cases of their alleged wrongful dismissal by managers of schools receiving grants under the Day School Code will be introduced by the Government during the session of 1901, in accordance with the statement in the House of Commons on the 2nd of August, 1900, that, having considered the question, the Board of Education are of opinion that legislation is necessary, and they hope to introduce a Bill dealing with the subject next session; and whether he will include in the Bill a power of appeal against dismissal for teachers employed in schools under the Endowed Schools Acts, 1869 to 1889.
  THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (SIR JOHN GORST,): Her Majesty's Government intend to deal with the question of the dismissal of elementary school teachers in the session of 1901, but they cannot undertake to include the teachers of endowed schools referred to in the question.

  SCOTTISH CROFTERS—ISLAND OF BARRA.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether he is aware that crofters and cottars in the Island of Barra, many of them the sons of crofters who were evicted from lands now forming large farms in Barra, have repeatedly applied to be located on some of the
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  lands in the islands which have been scheduled by the Deer Forest Commissioners as suitable for occupation by the people, and that the people failing in their object and being on the verge of starvation have signified their intention to seize certain lands on the estate of Lady Gordon Cathcart, known as North-bay Farm, Barra; is he aware that the Barra Parish Council petitioned Lady Gordon Cathcart on behalf of the people without avail, and that efforts to secure land for the people under the Allotments Act of 1892 have likewise failed; and, in view of the fact that Lady Gordon Cathcart is sole owner of the island, will he state what action he proposes to take to bring about a solution of the land question in Barra, and other parts of the Highlands of Scotland.
  The SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. C. SCOTT DICKSON,) (for Mr. A. GRAHAM MURRAY): Without accepting all the statements contained in the first part of the hon. Member's question, I deeply regret to say that it is the fact that some the cottars in the Island of Barra signified their intention to take forcible possession of some land let to a tenant on the estate of Lady Gordon Cathcart. At the same time they sent petitions to Lady Gordon Cathcart and to the Congested Districts Board. The Secretary for Scotland, with the concurrence of the Lord Advocate and on behalf of the Congested Districts Board, sent Mr. Mclntyre, of the Crofters Commission, to inquire and report on the whole circumstances. The report has been received, and the Secretary for Scotland is now in communication on the subject with Lady Gordon Cathcart, who has always shown a warm interest in the welfare of the island, and he hopes to be able to find a solution of the difficulties which undoubtedly exist. The attempts to secure land under the Allotments Act, 1892, were not successful.

  SMALL HOLDINGS IN GALWAY AND MAYO.
  COLONEL NOLAN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he will take steps to empower the Congested Districts Board to enlarge small holdings in all of the counties of Galway and Mayo instead of merely in those parts entitled Scheduled Districts; and if he will pro-

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  pose a suitable increase for this purpose either in the total funds of the Congested Districts Board or in its borrowing powers.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON, Londonderry, N.): At the request of my right hon. friend I will reply to this question. Legislation would be necessary to give effect to the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. Such legislation is obviously impossible in the present session, and I cannot give any undertaking that it will be proposed in the next session.

  MINISTERS AND PUBLIC COMPANIES —POSITION OF MR. G. W. BALFOUR.
  MR. WHARTON: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade a question of which I have given him private notice—namely, whether the statement which appears in the report of the speech made yesterday by Lord Rosebery in the House of Lords that the light hon. Gentleman is a director of several public companies is correct?
  MR. G. W. BALFOUR: No; the statement is not correct, and I think it is to be regretted that Lord Rosebery should have made it without taking the trouble to ascertain the facts. During the last five years I have been a director not of several companies, but of one company in which I myself and my family were largely interested. Since my appointment to the Board of Trade I have resigned that directorship, and at the present moment I am not a director of any public company.

  LICENSING COMMISSION—PROPOSED LEGISLATION.
  MR. TRITTON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether Her Majesty's Government have considered the Report of the Royal Commission on Liquor Licensing Laws; and whether they intend next session to introduce legislation in accordance with, or to give effect to, any of the recommendations contained in either of the two parts of the Report.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.): As regards this question, I think it premature to make any statement with
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  regard to legislation which cannot take effect, of course, during the present, session.

  THE PRIME MINISTER'S SALARY.
  MR. DALZIEL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Prime Minister is in receipt of any salary from public funds; and, if not, whether it is the intention of the Government to make any provision for same.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There will be in the next session an Estimate put upon the Votes for reviving for the Prime Minister a salary of £2,000 a year, I.think it was, that used to attach to the office of the Lord Privy Seal.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Is that the office the salary of which was abolished, by Act of Parliament in 1884?
  [No answer was returned.]

  MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S SPEECH OF YESTERDAY—PERSONAL EXPLANATION BY MR. DALZIEL.
  MR. DALZIEL: Sir, I rise to ask your permission and the indulgence of the House to make a brief personal explanation. It will be within the recollection of the House that during the debate last night the remark was made by some hon. Member to the effect that the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary was speaking the truth for the first time. I notice this morning that, in many leading newspapers, I am credited with that remark, and I further understand that several hon. Members of the House are of the opinion that I made it. [Ministerial cries of "No."] Many hon. Members have expressed that opinion to me. I only rise to say that I did not make the remark. I accept no responsibility whatever for it, and I therefore think it is due to the right hon. Gentleman and the House, and above all to myself, that I should entirety dissociate myself from it.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
MR. JAMES LOWTHER: I wish to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the fact that there is no Private Bill business, he sees any objection to public business commencing at a quarter past three?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I understand that the business of the swearing in

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Members—the only business which practically has to precede public business—is now so far advanced that no objection exists to public business beginning at a quarter past three. Perhaps this may be taken as a public notification that we shall so commence on Monday. I beg now to move the resolution which stands in my name on the Paper, and which, I think, requires no word of explanation. It is exactly similar to the Order moved under like circumstances in the autumn of last year. It is designed entirely for the convenience of the House, and I hope that it will be accepted without discussion.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That, during the Winter Sittings, no Motions for leave to bring in Bills be given except by a Minister of the Crown; that on every day Government Business do have precedence, and that at the conclusion thereof Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without Question put; and that the provisions of Standing Order No. 56 be extended to all the days of the week."—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I do not rise to offer any objection to the intention of the resolution, but I think the phraseology of it is, to say the least, remarkable. It refers to the "Winter sittings." May I point out that if we are to meet again in January or February, that also would be a winter sitting. Would it not be better to substitute some other words, such as "until further notice"?
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: This is a Sessional Order, and would only have operation as such.
MR. T. M. HEALYsaid he objected to that portion of the motion which provided that the Speaker should adjourn the House "without Question put." He would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that on several occasions considerable inconvenience had been caused to Members by their being unable to ask for information to which they were entitled. He remembered one case, in regard to a colliery explosion, where that occurred, and where some information was very greatly desired, but could not be obtained because of a rule of this kind. Without offering any objection on the
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present occasion to the motion, he would appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to agree to the elimination of that particular provision should such a resolution be brought forward in some future session.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESwished to ask the First Lord for some information as to the real import of the resolution. It stated that Standing Order 56 was to apply to every one of the sittings. What did that Standing Order do? It said that the question that Mr. Speaker leave the chair should not be put unless "on first going into Committee of Supply on the Army, Navy, or Civil Service Estimates respectively." Now this was a new House. There was no Committee of Supply and not even a Chairman of Committees. Could it rightly be said that Estimates presented to a new Parliament were Supplementary Estimates? Were they not rather original? Before he agreed to the resolution he wished to know what its effect would be. In his belief, according to the true and proper reading of Standing Order 56, its effect was that only on first going into Committee of Supply was it possible for Members to move Amendments and to raise a general discussion on the Estimate: He had derived, from the "Votes and Proceedings," the knowledge that a Supplementary Estimate for war was to be presented. It had, in fact, been presented. He was surprised that no information to that effect was conveyed in the Speech from the Throne, and that the Estimate had been smuggled on to the Table in some way hitherto unknown to the constitution and practice of the House. This resolution implied that hon. Members were to be deprived of the power of moving Amendments and raising a general discussion on the motion to go into Committee of Supply on those Estimates, although, according to his belief, this was a first going into Committee of Supply. If it did not imply that, then he was in accord with the resolution. As this was a new Parliament it certainly ought not to be deprived of its constitutional right of bringing forward grievances before it dealt with Supply; and if, as he feared, the resolution of the First Lord was intended to take away that right from them on this occasion, he, for one, would have to vote against the motion. He noticed that the new. Estimates were

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called "Supplementary Estimates." Were they really so? This was a new Parliament, which knew nothing of what was done by the last Parliament. If it was to be taken to have such knowledge, then they might just as well go back to the Votes in Supply for the war year 1805 as to those of the last Parliament. He wished to put two questions, and he would address them to the Speaker, if he might be allowed to do so. First he would ask whether, when it came to consider the so-called Supplementary Estimates, the House would have the power of dealing with the policy and principles underlying the original Estimates. The Speaker's predecessor in the chair solemnly ruled, after a heated debate, that on the occasion of Supplementary Estimates being presented it was not competent for a Member of the House to go into the policy raised by the original Estimates, because on those original Estimates an opportunity had already been afforded for doing so. He was afraid that the feeling in official quarters was strongly against him, but he did press for an answer to his questions—whether this new Parliament was to be precluded from raising a general discussion on the motion that Mr. Speaker leave the chair, and whether it was to be prevented from dealing with the principle of the Estimates originally submitted, and to which these new Estimates professed to be "supplementary." This was a very important question, and he was anxious to have it made clear what would be the effect of passing the resolution.
MR. SPEAKER: The second question of the hon. Member is premature. It may never arise, but if it does arise, and I am in the chair, I will then answer it. With regard to the first question, I understand it to be whether, when Committee of Supply is called on as an Order of the Day for the first time in the present session, the question must be proposed that I leave the chair, and debate may arise thereon. I think no such question can be proposed, and for this reason: The words of the Standing Order are that no such question can be put "unless on first going into Committee of Supply on the Army, Navy, and Civil Service Estimates respectively." The Army, Navy, and Civil Service Estimates mentioned there are, I take it, and I think they have always been understood to be, the Estimates of the year for the services of
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the year. Subsequent Estimates presented to the House for the services of the same year are Supplementary Estimates, whether they are presented in a new session or in a new Parliament. When the ordinary Estimates for the year are presented in February they are dealt with by the House, and the grants are supposed to be sufficient for the services of the year; the Appropriation Bill is passed, and the whole business, financial and otherwise, is put an end to by a prorogation as completely as it is by a dissolution. But in a new session, where Supplementary Estimates are presented, there is no question that I leave the chair, and consequently no debate can arise; and the same rule must apply to the case put by the hon. Member.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I am afraid that, after that answer, I shall be forced to vote against the resolution.
MR. DALZIELsaid he wished to move as an Amendment the omission of the words which provided that the Speaker should adjourn the House without question put. As the motion at present stood, every opportunity for private Members was taken away, and he thought there was absolutely no precedent in the history of Parliament for a House containing hundreds of new Members to be called together, and the Government thus taking upon itself the responsibility of saying that they should discuss one question and one question only. Hon. Members had just come back from their constituencies, having, no doubt, made many promises, and they ought, at least, to have an opportunity of raising cases of urgency on the motion for adjournment. But if this motion were carried in its present form, the result would be that, immediately Government business was disposed of the Speaker would leave the chair, and, no matter how urgent a local question might be, an hon. Member would not be allowed to ask a question in regard to it. As they were meeting at the present time solely in consequence of the absence of foresight and capacity of the Government, and entirely because time after time blunders had been made in the framing of the Estimates to provide for the cost of the war, he submitted that Ministers ought not to make that extraordinary claim upon the House. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to allow the motion

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for adjournment to be put in the ordinary way, as there was not the slightest chance of the opportunity being unduly taken advantage of. It was conceivable, especially while military operations were going on, that serious questions might arise in the course of the day upon which both the House and the country would desire information. Of course, a Minister might, by leave of the House, make a statement, but then, if that were allowed, the Government would be breaking their own rule. As the right hon. Gentleman was always ready to make reasonable concessions, and as he believed this privilege would not be abused, he asked him to assent to this Amendment. They all recognised that in this session they were not to raise questions unassociated with the war. But he did want to secure that, if a Member had brought to his notice a matter of great importance to his constituency upon which he wished information, he should have an opportunity of putting the question at the rising of the House. In the interests and to safeguard the privileges of private Members he urged the right hon. Gentleman to grant this small concession.
MR. HERBERT LEWISseconded the Amendment, and endorsed the appeal made by his hon. friend. He pointed out that the privilege had never been abused in the past—at any rate during the time he had been a Member of the House. All they wanted was that they should have on the adjournment an opportunity of raising any urgent question, and of asking Ministers questions in regard to it.
Amendment proposed—
"In line 4, to leave out the words from the word 'precedence' to the word 'and' in line 5."—(Mr. Dalziel.)
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The resolution is strictly in accordance with numerous precedents set by both sides.
MR.DALZIEL: At the end of sessions.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: What difference does that make to the argument of the hon. Member? I see no reason for differ-
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entiating between the beginning and the end of a session when the House desires, as it undoubtedly does in this case, that the only business discussed shall be Government business. The interruption of the hon. Gentleman was not only irrelevant but incorrect in its imputation that this provision has only hitherto been adopted in resolutions brought forward towards the end of sessions. Although I do not deny that there may occasionally be some slight inconvenience because a Minister on the adjournment of the House is not able to answer some question, I think that to modify the resolution as suggested would open the door to very serious and grave inconveniences. Government business might have concluded some night at eight o'clock, and many Members have gone away in the belief that no other business would be taken. But some private Member might keep the whole machinery of the House at work in order to discuss some matter in which he was specially interested. I am, however, quite willing to consider whether, on the next occasion when such a motion is made, a degree of flexibility which will permit questions to be put cannot be introduced. I do not think that the method proposed by the hon. Gentleman would attain that end, except at the cost of great public inconvenience. It must be remembered that questions can be put at half-past three the next day, and that when any important information does arise, it is promptly sent to the press, so that hon. Members, as well as the public, see it the first thing the next morning.
MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I think the right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that the adoption of the Amendment would open the way for private Members' motions after Government business had been finished, and I am sure that that is not what the House would desire. The object of my hon. friends might be attained if in lieu of the words, "That the Speaker do adjourn the House without Question put," were inserted, "That Mr. Speaker do put the Question for the adjournment." If this were done, hon. Members would retain the right and privilege of addressing questions to members of the Government.
MR. T. M. HEALYsaid the Leader of the House had dropped a remark of the

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greatest significance. He suggested that on the motion for adjournment there might be something in the nature of a surprise. He gathered from that that the right hon. Gentleman feared the action of the Colonial Secretary, for the only occasion on which, so far as he could remember, the privilege of making a statement on the motion for adjournment, was abused, was at a time when we were nearly getting into a war with France, because the Colonial Secretary suddenly came down in a most menacing manner, and announced that an unwarrantably aggressive attack had been made upon British officers and soldiers by French troops. Of course, if the Leader of the House was of opinion it was desirable that the Colonial Secretary should not have opportunities of repeating such conduct, that was a matter they must settle between themselves. He held there was a considerable difference between the beginning and the end of a session, and that while such a motion as this might not be warranted at the commencement, it might be reasonable in the month of July, when the House had had an opportunity for five or six months of threshing out questions. Still, as the right hon. Gentleman had given a sort of promise that ho would consider the point before a similar proposal was made on a future
occasion, it would be for his friends to consider whether the Amendment should be pressed.
MR. DALZIEL: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept the suggestion of the Member for Dundee? If so, I will withdraw the Amendment.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am afraid that is hardly practicable. Supposing Government business came to an end early in the evening, we might go on discussing the adjournment until midnight.
MR. DALZIEL: The discussion would have to be pertinent to the adjournment.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There can be no question pertinent to an adjournment.
MR. DALZIEL: I believe it has been held by the Speaker that Members may only put questions of urgency on the motion for adjournment. It is, therefore, quite impossible to raise a variety of subjects, or to have an academic discussion.
Question put.
The House divided.—Ayes, 215; Noes,100. (Division List No. 2.)

AYES.

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Chamberlain, J Austen(Worc'r)

Foster, Sir M. (Lond. Univ.)

Aird, John

Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Chapman, Edward

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Arkwright, John Stanhope

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

Galloway. Wm. Johnson

Ashmead-Bartlett, Sir Ellis

Coddington, Sir William

Garfit, William

Asquith,Rt.Hn. HerbertHenry

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert J.

Atkinson, Rt. Hon John

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Gordon,Hn. J. E.(Elgin&Nairn)

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Colomb,Sir John Charles Ready

Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

Bain, Colonel James Robert

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Gordon, Maj W (Tower Hamlets)

Baldwin, Alfred

Cranborne, Viscount

Gore, Hon. F. S. Ormsby-

Balfour,Rt.Hon. A. J.(Manch'r

Cross, H. Shepherd (Bolton)

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

Balfour.Rt Hn Gerald W(Leeds)

Dickson, Charles Scott

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Balfour, Maj. K.R. (Christch.)

Dimsdale, Sir Joseph C.

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor)

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Greene,SirEW(B'ryS Edm'nds)

Bartley, George C. T.

Douglas, Rt, Hon. A. Akers-

Greene, W. Raymond-(Cambs.)

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

Duke, Edward Henry

Grey, Sir Edward (Berwick)

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

Groves, James Grimble

Bignold, A.

Dyke, Rt, Hon. Sir Wm. H.

Guthrie, Walter Murray

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

Hain, Edward

Bowles,Capt.H.F. (Middlesex)

Ellis, John Edward

Haldane, Richard Burdon

Bowles, T.Gibson(King'sLynn)

Emmott, Alfred

Hambro, Charles Eric

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

Faber, George Denison

Hamilton.Marqof (L'nd'nderry

Bullard, Sir Harry

Fardell, Sir T. George

Hardy,Laurence(Kent,Ashfrd

Burt, Thomas

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edwd.

Harris, F. Leverton(Tynem'th)

Buxton, Sydney Charles

Fergusson, Rt. Hn.Sir J.(Man'r

Hay, Claude

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst.

Hayne, Rt. Hon. Chas. Seale-

Causton, Richard Knight

Fisher, William Hayes

Hayter, Sir Arthur D.

Cayzer, Sir Charles William

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

Heath, Arthur Howard(Hanley

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

Fitzroy, Hon. Edw. Algernon

Heath, James(Staffords.N.W.)

Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J (Birm.)

Flower, Ernest

Helder, Augustus

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

Mitchell, William

Simeon, Sir Barrington

Hickman, Sir Alfred

Molesworth, Sir Lewis

Sinclair, Capt. John(Forfarsh.)

Higginbottom, S. W.

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

Hoare, Sir Samuel (Norwich)

More, Robert J. (Shropshire)

Smith,HC(N'rth'mb.Tyneside

Hobhouse,Henry(Somerset,E.

Morgan, D. J. (Walthamstow)

Smith, Jas. Parker (Lanarks.)

Hogg, Lindsay

Morley,Rt.Hn.John(Montrose

Spear, John Ward

Hope J. F(Sheffield,Brightside)

Morris, Hon. Martin Henry F.

Spencer.Rt.Hn.C.R (N'rth'nts)

Hornby, Sir William Henry

Morton, Arthur H. A. (Deptford)

Stanley,Hon Arthur Ormskirk

Horner, Frederic William

Mount, William Arthur

Stewart, Sir M. J. M'Taggart

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

Stock, James Henry

Howard,Capt. J(Kent,Faversh

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham)

Murray, Col.Wyndham (Bath)

Stroyan, John

Hozier,Hon.JamesHenryCecil

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Thomas, David A (Merthyr)

Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

Thomas,F.Freeman-(Hastings.

Kennaway,Rt. Hon. SirJohn H.

Parker, Gilbert

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Kenyon, Hon. G. T.(Denbigh)

Parkes, Ebenezer

Tufnell, Col. Edward

Kitson, Sir James

Pease, Herbert P. (Darlington)

Tuke, Sir John Batty

Knowles, Lees

Peel, Hon. William Robert W.

Valentia, Viscount

Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

Percy. Earl

Vincent, Col. Sir C.E.H(Shef'd.)

Langley, Batty

Pilkington, Richard

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Laurie, Lieut.-General

Pirie, Duncan V.

Walker, col. William Hall

Lawson, John Grant

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Lee,Lt-Col.A.H(Hants.F'ham

Plummer, Walter R.

Warde, Lieut.-Col. C. E.

Leese,SirJoseph F.(Accrington

Purvis. Robert

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Pym, C. Guy

Wason, John C. (Orkney)

Leveson-Gower,Frederick N.S.

Radcliffe, R. F.

Welby,Lt,-Col.A.C.E.(Ta'nt'n)

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Randles, John S.

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon-

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Rankin, Sir James

Whiteley,H.(Ashton-under-L.)

Long, Col. Chas. W.(Evesham)

Reid, James (Greenock)

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

Long,Rt.Hn.Walter(Bristol,S.

Reid, Sir R. T. (Dumfries)

Williams,Rt Hn J Powell-(Birm)

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Rentoul, James Alexander

Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

Lowe, Francis William

Ridley, M. W. (Stalybridge)

Wills, Sir Frederick

Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

Ridley, S. F. (Bethnal Green)

Wilson, John (Falkirk)

Lowther,Rt.HonJames(Kent)

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Charles T.

Wilson, John (Glasgow)

Macdona, John Cumming

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

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

MacIver, David (Liverpool)

Ropner, Colonel Robert

Wodehouse,Hn.Armine(Essex

Maclure, Sir John William

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel W.

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

M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Wylie, Alexander

Majendie, James A. H.

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Young,Commander (Berks, E.)

Maxwell, W. J. (Dumfriesshire)

Seely, Charles Hilton(Lincoln)

Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

Seton-Karr, Henry

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

Middlemore, J. Throgmorton

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Sir William Walrond and

Milward, Colonel Victor

Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

Mr. Anstruther.

NOES.

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Furness, Sir Christopher

Mansfield. Horace Rendall

Allen,CharlesP(Gloue.,Stroud

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Markham, Arthur Basil

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Grant, Corrie

Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

Atherley-Jones, L.

Gurdon. Sir William Brampton

Murray, Hn. A. W. (Midlothian)

Barlow, John Emmott

Hardie, J. K. (MerthyrTydvil)

Newnes,Sir George

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Harmsworth, R. Leicester

Nolan.ColJohn P (Galway, N.)

Bell, Richard

Harwood, George

Norman, Henry

Black, Alexander William

Healy. Timothy Michael

Norton, Capt. Cecil William.

Blake, Edward

Helme, Norval Watson

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Brigg, John

Hobhonse.C. E. H.(Bristol,E.)

Oldroyd, Mark

Broadhurst. Henry

Holland, William Henry

Pickard, Benjamin

Brown,George M. (Edinburgh)

Hope. John Deans

Rea, Russell

Caine, William Sproston

Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

Reckitt, Harold James

Caldwell, James

Joicey, Sir James

Rickett, J. Compton

Cameron, Robert

Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

Rigg, Richard

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

Kearle y. Hudson E.

Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

Channing, Francis Allston

Kinloch, Sir John George S.

Robson, William Snowdon

Cremer, William Randal

Labouchere. Henry

Schwann, Charles E,

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

Lambert. George

Scott, Chas. Prestwich (Leigh);

Dewar, John A.(Inverness-sh.

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Shipman, Dr. John

Dilke. Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Leigh, Sir Joseph (Stockport)

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

Leng, SirJohn

Soares, Ernest J.

Duncan, James H.

Lloyd-George, David

Stevenson, Francis S.

Dunn, Sir William

Lough, Thomas

Strachey, Edward

Edwards, Frank

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Taylor, Theodore Cooke

Farquharson, Dr. Robert

M'Cann, James

Thomas, Alfrd(Glamorgan,E.)

Fenwick, Charles

M'Kenna, Reginald

Thomas, JA(Glamorg'n,Gower)

Fuller, J. M.F.

M'Laren, Charles Benjamin

Thomson, Frederick W.

220

221

Tomkinson, James

Whiteley, J. H. (Halifax)

Woodhouse, Sir J T(Hudd'rsf'd)

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Yoxall, James Henry

Warner, Thomas Conrtenay T.

Williams, A. O. (Merioneth)

Wason, Eugene(Clackmannan)

Wilson,Chas.Henry(Hull,W.)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Weir, James Galloway

Wilson,Fred.W.(Norfolk,Mid

Mr.Dalziel and Mr. Herbert Lewis.

White, Luke (York, E. R.)

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

Whiteley,George (York, W. R.)

Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Ordered, That, during the Winter Sittings, no Motions for leave to bring in Bills be given except by a Minister of the Crown; that on every day Government Business do have precedence, and that at the conclusion thereof Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without Question put; and that the provisions of Standing Order No. 56 be extended to all the days of the week.

ADDRESS IN ANSWER TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH.
[SECOND DAY'S DEBATE.]
Order read, for resuming adjourned Debate on Question [6th December], "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as followeth:—
"Most Gracious Sovereign,
"We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. Gordon.)
Question again proposed. Debate resumed—
MR. LABOUCHEREsaid the Colonial Secretary on the previous night made a somewhat aggressive speech, and as he continued speaking till close upon midnight there was no opportunity of replying, and he had consequently to move the adjournment of the debate. It would be admitted that the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman in reference to his conduct were not absolutely complimentary. The Colonial Secretary made a very singular statement during his speech, one which showed the tone of recklessness of the statements he was fond of making both inside and outside the House. His hon.
222
friend the Member for the Rushcliffe Division had complained that the letters which formed the subject of the debate had been received by the right hon. Gentleman before the prorogation of the last Parliament, and yet were not submitted to the Members concerned until after the Parliament had broken up. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to that, said "Not at all; I sent them on the 6th of August." The right hon. Gentleman was right, no doubt, in the letter, but not in the spirit of his answer, because on the 8th of August Parliament was prorogued. Now, if the right hon. Gentleman had been exceedingly anxious that the Members concerned should have an opportunity of discussing these letters before Parliament was prorogued, it was evidently absolutely impossible if he only sent them in order that the hon. Members might make their observations upon them on the 6th August. Assuming that these hon. Members were in London, an answer might have come on the 7th, and then these would have had to have been printed, and the papers could only have been presented to the House on 8th August. Now, the House met at an early hour on the 8th—it was a purely formal proceeding—and how on earth could hon. Members have come down at ten o'clock in the morning and entered into a long discussion of these letters? He thought his hon. friend the Member for Rushcliffe had been most unfairly treated, and he could not help thinking that hon. Gentlemen opposite, after having heard the statement of his hon. friend, would share to a very great extent in that opinion. His hon. friend had received letters from the Cape, where martial law was going on, saying that certain transactions had taken place which were most undesirable. His hon. friend did not come down to the House to make a statement without full knowledge, but simply wrote out to the Cape to say that he wanted to have the facts before him. What else ought he to have done? The Cape was an English colony, and surely, as the representative not only of persons

223
in that House but persons in the colonies, and especially in a colony where martial law had been proclaimed, his hon. friend had only performed his duty by writing to his correspondents, and asking them to furnish him with facts. As far as he could understand, the Colonial Secretary would not have objected if he had asked to be furnished with mere facts; but he observed that what the hon. Member did ask was, "Furnish me with a stream of facts." Now, when one wanted to have facts one could not have too many; and that was an exceedingly small point on which to found a charge against his hon. friend of the nature he so much objected to. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary went on to say that his hon. friend wanted these facts in order to damage Her Majesty's Government. He did not know whether his hon. friend wished to damage Her Majesty's Government. Personally he himself would be delighted at any time to damage Her Majesty's Government. He did not believe that his hon. friend took these strong views, because he was a very staid gentleman, but even if that was not his object, it might have happened that he would have damaged Her Majesty's Government. Were they really to say that if a Member of the House thought there was due cause to bring a matter before the House he was to be restrained, declaring to himself "No, I will not do so because it may damage Her Majesty's Government"? If that was to be done they had better all go home; they had better have no Opposition at all, although hon. Gentlemen opposite did their best to tell them that they would be delighted to have a good strong Opposition. It seemed to him that it was not his hon. friend who wanted to damage Her Majesty's Government, but it was the Colonial Secretary who wanted to damage a political opponent in the person of his hon. friend. That appeared to him was the conclusion to be drawn from what went on the previous night. What they had found out at last in regard to these letters was that they were laid hold of by the Censor from among the papers of a gentleman who was believed to be, where martial law existed, a rebel. He could perfectly understand, if there had been a case against that gentleman, and if they really believed that he was a rebel, that they should look into his papers; but he did
224
not consider that they had any sort of right to publish a private letter found among these papers addressed by his hon. friend to that gentleman's wife. As he had said, he thought his hon. friend had entirely cleared himself from the slightest imputation of disloyalty or conduct not proper to the Empire. And he believed that hon. Gentlemen opposite,, if they stated fairly their own views, would be of the same opinion Now in regard to his own letters, the Colonial Secretary took a more unfavourable view of these than he did of the letter of his hon. friend the Member for Rushcliffe. The right hon. Gentleman said that these letters showed "moral treason." He did not know what "moral treason" was, although he could conceive of immoral treason. He did not care for these adjectives that were always being invented nowadays; they were only words. What was the position at the moment when these letters were written? He did not think that anyone in the House would say that he had ever sought in any sort of way to conceal his opinion of the war. He considered that one of the reasons which were leading us to the war was the personal antagonism that existed between the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary, and Mr. Kruger. The negotiations, he thought, suffered from that antagonism. He was not one of those who thought that everything was perfect in the Transvaal. Very far from it. It seemed to him a thorough Conservative Government, and if he had been there he should in all probability have been an opponent of Mr. Kruger. But he did not think that the wrongs which the Uitlanders were suffering from were worth our going to war for, all the more as the right hon. Gentleman had told us they had agreed on nine-tenths of the questions at issue. At that moment a conference was proposed by the right hon. Gentleman himself. Well, what was it that he (Mr. Labouchere) did? He recommended President Kruger to accept that conference, and he mentioned to Mr. Kruger arguments which he thought would have some weight with him in agreeing to it. That was the best way; that was what was called diplomacy. It was not the new diplomacy, which appeared to him to be to insult as much as possible your opponent, and to drag in every sort of thing you could imagine to

225
make him hostile to you. He told President Kruger that if he assented to this conference he would have a full opportunity of discussing the questions in detail—on what might be called the Committee stage of the conference. He had never seen any objection either to Mr. Kruger going into details, or any reason why they should be forced upon him if he did not accept them. They were merely little details of alterations in the registration law, and it seemed to him a piece of insufferable impudence for us to go to a foreign country and claim a change in its registration law, considering that we had without exception the worst registration law in the whole habitable globe. His object was to get the whole matter out of the hands of the right hon. Gentleman, and, he admitted, out of the hands of President Kruger also; for he did not think that either of them was a negotiator whose ways were particularly likely to make for peace. He thought that time was everything in these matters—it gave an opportunity for feeling to cool down; and he believed that if the conference had been agreed to in principle we should not have had war; that we might somehow or other have come to a friendly arrangement with the Transvaal. Time was in our favour, and if general principles were agreed on we should not have gone to war on questions of minor details. He gathered from one of the speeches which the Colonial Secretary had made in the country that what seemed to have irritated him was that he had said to President Kruger that he would have the advantage of giving a second fall to the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary. He thought that would have been a very pleasing thing to President Kruger, and he believed that President Kruger would have done it. He quoted also an incidental remark, which he thought well summed up the situation, made in the course of a debate in the House by a right hon. friend—namely, that the Colonial Secretary's speech was a little "bluster" of his own with the main points arranged by his colleagues, who sat like policemen to watch and see that he read them. He appealed to hon. Members on this side of the House and to some on the opposite benches, whether that was not the general opinion. It might have been right or it might have been wrong; but it was the current opinion, and he thought that it
226
was quite right. It was said to be encouraging Mr. Kruger to lead him to suppose that in yielding to the proposal for a conference he would not be enabling the Colonial Secretary to score a point, but rather that he would get the better of him on the occasion. Did the right hon. Gentleman want war or not? They had been told that the whole matter in debate was a question of registration law; but when the war had taken place hon. Gentlemen seemed to have thought that that was a little too thin for the country. So they had, he would not say invented, but evolved or realised from their moral consciousness that there was a great conspiracy in South Africa—that the Transvaal people had united with the Dutch in our colonies, and that they were determined sooner or later to go to war, and that it would be a good thing if we went to war at once and nipped this conspiracy in the bud. The right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary had to a very great extent accepted that view. In one of his speeches in the country he said he was charged with the responsibility for the war, and that if that were true it was a feather in his cap. He did not know whether it was or was not; but if the right hon. Gentleman did want war it was evident that he would have been sorry if a conference had been accepted and had led to some sort of arrangement which would have tided over this conspiracy. Certainly a great many gentlemen opposite were of that opinion. What did The Times say when President Kruger refused the conference, or rather when he said, "I would first put in a counter-proposal, and if you do not agree to this counter-proposal, it must be understood that I fall back on the conference." Why, when the counter-proposal was refused by us, and the right hon. Gentleman told us that the conference was not to take place, did The Times, which represented the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite, deplore that? Not at all. On the contrary, The Times said it was a happy escape—that we had very nearly missed going to war by coming to an arrangement which would have prevented the war. So that certainly he was justified in believing that, if not the Colonial Secretary, a great many hon. Gentlemen opposite, and their organs in the press, would have regretted if President Kruger had accepted the conference, since they rejoiced that he had refused to do so.

227
Now what was the object of his letters? We were not at war with the Transvaal at that time. The right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary seemed to think that when the Government was engaged in what he called very delicate negotiations, nobody even in this House, no Englishman, had got the right to step in and try to aid negotiations leading up to peace. That was, he need not point out to the House, a perfectly new doctrine. Everybody knew of a famous case last century in regard to Mr. Fox, when Mr. Pitt wanted to go to war with Russia. The charge made against Mr. Fox was that he had recommended the Empress of Russia not to yield, and Mr. Fox's defence was that he had made that recommendation to prevent our being dragged into war. But he (Mr. Labouchere) had recommended Mr. Kruger to yield,and he could not really understand—it might be stupidity on his part—how in the world any patriotic Englishman who did not want war, and who desired that we might get what we wanted without war, could object to the letter he wrote, seeing he recommended President Kruger to yield. The Colonial Secretary had been good enough to send him copies of these letters, and had invited him to make observations upon them. Never before had he been invited by so eminent a person as a Secretary of State to make observations on any letters of his, but he was afraid the invitation was given not in a friendly but a hostile manner. What business had the Colonial Secretary to issue any such invitation? He had no right whatever; all Members of the House were equal and had equal rights, and the Colonial Secretary had no more right to invite observations from any Member than he (Mr. Labouchere) had to invite the right hon. Gentleman to make observations upon any letter he might have picked out of a waste-paper basket and intended to publish. He wished to be courteous to the right hon. Gentleman, and therefore he had made the observations asked for, and as an exchange of views, suggested that the right hon. Gentleman should make a few observations as to what was going to be done with regard to the Hawksley letters. He had always understood that the refusal of the right hon. Gentleman to produce the Hawksley letters had led Mr. Kruger to infer that the right hon Gentleman was in some way connected with the Jameson raid, and in the
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interests of the House he had suggested that the right hon. Gentleman should confide to him a few observations. But when he received the letter from the right hon. Gentleman he smelt an electioneering trick. The right hon. Gentleman had been in America, and might be compared with Mr. Croker, in so far that he was a past-master as an electioneering boss. He suspected that these letters had something to do with a General Election, and would be published just at the time of the election, so he endeavoured to stop that by publishing the letters himself. He was absolutely indifferent to the right hon. Gentleman's opinion with regard to any political action of his, and he had no doubt the right hon. Gentleman was equally indifferent to any opinion which he might entertain with regard to the political actions of the right hon. Gentleman. He now differed absolutely and entirely from the right hon. Gentleman in almost every particular, politically, but the time had been when the right hon. Gentleman was his Gamaliel, when he sat at his feet, and when the right hon. Gentleman was his especial leader. His opposition to the right hon. Gentleman was purely political, and would disappear if the right hon. Gentleman returned to the true faith. If he came back as a repentant sinner, he would welcome him with open arms. He had told the right hon. Gentleman that in the matter of the letters he was responsible to his electors, and his electors alone. At the last election, when his electors knew all about these letters, they gave him a majority, and indeed the only pledge he was asked to give at the election was when an elector got up and asked, "Will you pledge yourself to keep your eye on Joe?" and he promised to keep his eye on Joe. He might be wrong, but he was proud of those letters, and he was only sorry that Mr. Kruger did not take his advice. If he had the Government would not have had the "happy escape" they had when Mr. Kruger would not agree to the conference. Passing to the letters of Dr. Clark, who was not a persona grata at the present moment to hon. Gentlemen opposite, but who was a friend of his, he must remind the House that when Dr. Clark told Mr. Kruger that there would be some military advantage in passing the frontier and attacking our colonies he also said that those advantages would be outweighed by the bad moral effect that it would

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have here. That was advice, therefore, to Mr. Kruger not to do it. Another thing to be remembered was the fact that Dr. Clark had long been in the Transvaal, and for many years had been the recognised Consul in this country for the Transvaal. He had been so recognised by the right hon. Gentleman, who had treated him as a sort of go-between, between Mr. Kruger and himself. Dr. Clark's letter commenced with the statement that he had had a long interview with Mr. Chamberlain, and had discussed with him some of the questions between the two Governments. The right hon. Gentleman could not have thought that his interviews were with Dr. Clark alone. He must have known that Dr. Clark would have transmitted his views to President Kruger. There was one paragraph in the letter which threw a searching light on the matter, and that was the paragraph alluding to the refusal of the right hon. Gentleman to consent to a tribunal composed of the four Chief Justices of South Africa, presided over by Lord Russell of Killowen, on the ground that such a tribunal must be a partisan tribunal. Such an objection, having regard to the head of the proposed tribunal, showed the temper and animus of the right hon Gentleman—that he should suggest that a tribunal presided over by Lord Russell would be partisan in its character. With regard to the letters of Chief Justice de Villiers, the right hon. Gentleman no doubt asked for permission to publish them, but if he did why did he not publish his own letter also? The Chief Justice could not refuse to have them published, because such a refusal would have cast an imputation upon him, but he said he had no objection to their publication. But the right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well that those letters were only part of a correspondence. All the letters which had passed between the Chief Justice and Mr. Kruger, and Mr. Reitz and Sir Alfred Milner ought to have been published. The Chief Justice held the balance between them. Was the House to understand that Sir Alfred Milner threw the protests which he received from the Chief Justice into the waste-paper basket? The right hon. Gentleman said he had not got them, but if he had not it would be easy to get Sir Alfred Milner to telegraph them over. Another point which had to be considered was the
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fact that these letters were written to President Kruger before he made any concessions. What he would like to see were the letters which Mr. De Villiers had written after Mr. Kruger made concessions. The House had a right to complain of the one-sided view which had been placed before it. All sorts of statements were sent over to this country backed up by affidavits, but no man could form an opinion of only one side of a case. Then with respect to the letters written by Mr. Merriman. He was the minister of Sir Alfred Milner himself, and was one of the most distinguished men in Cape Colony. Surely if we had a colonial Governor who took, he would not say surreptitiously, certain private letters written by him he ought to have told him—he met him every day—that he had got these private letters, and that he intended to send them over to the Colonial Secretary. Sir Alfred Milner was a subordinate, and what he did he did in carrying out orders. Surely on every principle of fair play Mr. Merriman was badly treated when Sir Alfred Milner sent over these letters to the Colonial Secretary. So much for the letters. He had one or two remarks to make on the subject of the right hon. Gentleman himself. The right hon. Gentleman, in his speech on the previous night, had bitterly complained that insinuations had been thrown broadcast against him and attacks made upon his private character. There had been no insinuations made. There had been statements made, and those who made those statements were ready to stand by them. They were taken from the records of Somerset House and the reports of various public companies. There was no attack on the private character of the right hon. Gentleman, and all that could be said was that there had been an attack on certain financial matters affecting his position as a Minister of the Crown, which he thought everyone had a right to bring fairly before the House of Commons. They knew what occurred in the case of Mr. Mundella. Mr. Mundella was one of the most honourable of men, but he got himself mixed up unfortunately with some company. It was not in connection with a contract for the Government, but he got mixed up with the company in some way, and it was found that he ought to resign his position in the Cabinet. He did resign

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his position. It was perfectly wrong for the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary to imply that it was unfair and unjust to make insinuations, when they were dealing with a practical matter of this kind affecting his position as a Minister of the Crown. His hon. friend the Member for Carnarvon had given notice of an Amendment on this subject, and he would state his case. He did not think they would accuse that hon. Gentleman of making insinuations. He generally called a spade a spade in that House. The right hon. Gentleman would have a convenient opportunity of replying and they would be able to form their own conclusions on the matter. The right hon. Gentleman, knowing that there was to be an Amendment brought forward on the subject, went out of his way to talk for a long time about his private character. He was very angry with his right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition. He (Mr. Labouchere) thought the Leader of the Opposition made an uncommonly good speech. He knew there was a tendency on both Front Benches to indulge in a sort of official Brahminism which united them together very much. He was always glad when that was broken through, and when gentlemen on the Front Bench on that side of the House talked to the gentlemen on the other Front Bench in strong, firm language. He was glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition stated his views in language which could not be misunderstood. The right hon. Gentleman said in reference to the publication of the letters, that such an act, if done in private life, would exclude a man from the society of honourable men. Did anyone deny that proposition? He thought it was a true one. Nobody doubted that these were private letters. The question, then, was not whether his right hon. friend was right in the proposition he had laid down, but whether it was not absolutely necessary in the interest of the whole country that these matters should be published, and that although they were private letters this salutary rule of dealing between man and man should be overruled. All he could say was—he could not go into men's minds—that they were used for the purposes of party, and the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary must have known perfectly well when he published them a little while before an election that they
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would be used for electioneering purposes. What was the Colonial Secretary's answer to that? He said his right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition would do well not to associate with him. They had nothing to do with whether these spirits associated or not. He was always upset when there was a consultation between gentlemen on that side and the other side of the House behind the chair. He would be very glad if they would make a vow not to speak to one another while in that House. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition would be obliged to break social relations with the Colonial Secretary. The Colonial Secretary went out of his way to say that he had had some sort of social relations with the Leader of the Opposition, and had not enjoyed them, and so everything was for the best in this best of worlds, so far as that was concerned. He said: "You must not only drop my acquaintance, but you must drop the acquaintance of every member of the Cabinet, because I submitted them to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet agreed."
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: No, he did not say that.
MR. LABOUCHERE: My right hon. friend says he did not say that. My right hon. friend is more cautious than I am. I will take it that he submitted them in some sort of way. This was entirely a departmental thing. Mr. Goschen the other day had stated that he could not go closely into every matter connected with the government of the country. They could easily suppose that Mr. Goschen and the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House had really no time to go into the subject of the letters, and therefore he did not think they could be made responsible for the publication of them.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): Yes, Sir, we are certainly responsible for them.
MR. LABOUCHERE: All the Cabinet.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Certainly.
MR. LABOUCHEREwas sorry to hear it. They knew what sort of re-

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sponsibility this was. The matter was a departmental one, not a thing of paramount importance, and, of course, it would be left to the head of the department. The next thing that the right hon. Gentleman complained of was that the Leader of the Opposition had said that the Colonial Secretary stated that most of them were traitors. The right hon. Gentleman to some extent denied it. He admitted that he had not spoken in amiable language, and he (Mr. Labouchere) did not think he had. An hon. Member pointed out that he had used the word on 22nd September, and what was the reply of the right hon. Gentleman? The right hon. Gentleman said the report was not very lucid. He did accuse the writers of the letters of being traitors, and afterwards went on to speak of a portion of the Opposition. He said he would not call them traitors, but misguided individuals, but in his mind was the word "traitors." He could only say to the right hon. Gentleman that if the report was not lucid the explanation was not lucid. There was no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman did go about the country bringing charges against them, and it seemed to him that he went a little further than he intended in this particular case. If he did not on every occasion call them traitors, he used language which implied that that was his opinion. As to the date of the election, the right hon. Gentleman said that suddenly he and his colleagues had read an article headed "The gilt off the gingerbread." He believed the newspaper was the Westminster Gazette. That article said that a reaction was taking place, and possibly the Government had not so strong a hold on the country then as they had formerly. They were asked to believe that the Government having read this article in a Liberal paper, at once said, "We must have an election." Well, never had an article such an effect—especially an article in an Opposition paper—since the world began, and he could only congratulate the paper. He would tell the House what he thought was the position of matters. If they had had an election in July he believed their opponents would almost have cleared them out of Parliament. He was speaking generally. The party opposite would have gained more than they had gained if the election had been earlier. He believed that if the election had been put off till January the Liberals
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would have come much nearer winning the election than they did in October. A reaction had set in. The Government saw the tide was rising, and they said, as practical people, "Let us look to our own interest." There was no use of the right hon. Gentleman or the First Lord of the Treasury being indignant with their opponents when they said that they looked to their own interest in fixing the date of the election, because the Duke of Devonshire had admitted it himself. He was an honest man. They were told by the right hon. Gentleman that they were misleading the electors. Why, the Government supporters not only appealed to the passions of the electors, but they declared again and again that it was not a party election. The whole idea of hon. Gentlemen opposite—and he said it with the greatest respect—judging by their organs in the press, was that they should dictate the policy of the Opposition. They were to carry on the Opposition under certain limitations. On minor details they might oppose, but they must recognise the great principles of the national faith. He had to tell them that they were not going to have such a dummy Opposition. They were there to oppose and they must oppose. He believed one of the reasons why they lost the election was their weakness during last Parliament. Yes, they were too flabby. They did not do their duty. They came back in no great numbers, but they made up in quality. They had come back determined not to be any longer open to those reproaches which had been thrown upon them. Gentlemen on the Front Bench were burning to oppose. A right hon. Gentleman opposite—he was not sure whether it was the First Lord of the Treasury or one of his colleagues—said his great anxiety was to have a strong Opposition. Well, so far as they could accommodate him they intended to give him a strong Opposition. They admitted freely and frankly that they were beaten at the last election. It came at a moment of excitement, but they did not think they did badly at that election, considering all the circumstances. The Colonial Secretary demanded an unanimous vote for the country; he did not get it, but he beat his opponents, and that, after all, was the object of an election. The Government had a good working majority, and it was no good

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sneering at the Opposition because they frankly admitted that majority. But they had come to the House to put forward the great principles of the Liberal creed, and they were determined to keep those principles alive. In regard to the war they considered themselves as patriotic as the supporters of the Government, and, although they might differ upon matters which they considered to be to the advantage of the country, they were not going to be bullied and cozened out of their views. They had been sent to the House to state those views, and they intended to do so, in season and out of season.

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR—TERMS OF SETTLEMENT.
MR. EMMOTT: I rise with considerable diffidence to move the Amendment standing in my name to the Address in reply to the gracious Speech from the Throne. Although this is not the first occasion on which I have had the honour of addressing the House it is the first occasion on which I have spoken in one of the more important debates. There is one thing in which I am sure I shall carry the whole of the House with me, and that is in the observation that what we all desire is that this war, which has been so prolonged, should be ended as speedily as possible. To us this war is no light matter. It moans a constant loss of precious lives and of countless treasure, but we can bear the strain. To the Boers, however, it means not only loss of life and great destruction of property, but also the entire upheaval of the old order of things for them, the upset of their most cherished traditions, and the continuance of a struggle which, in my opinion, is absolutely hopeless, but in which we may all admit they have fought gallantly and well. I feel diffidence also, because my task is a very difficult and delicate one. Even a humble member of the rank and file of the Opposition like myself has a responsibility at a time like the present, and it will be my earnest endeavour to say no word which can possibly encourage the enemies of the Queen or do anything to prolong and embitter the already lengthy struggle. I have never yet expressed in this House my views on the war, and I shall not this afternoon follow the mover and seconder of the Address in discussing the questions of its justice or inevitability.
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I have explained my views to my constituents, the people most concerned, and I need only say now that as regards the later stages of the negotiations my own opinion, for what it is worth, is that the principal blame of their failure lies with Mr. Kruger. But to argue this point would be to detain the House unnecessarily, and, furthermore, it has no bearing on my Amendment. What is the present condition of hostilities? What has been occurring in these partly conquered States during the last few months? When Kimberley, Ladysmith, and Mafeking were relieved we annexed what is now the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal. By that annexation we displaced the Government they had had in the past, and the fact that there is no Government with which to negotiate adds a little to our present difficulties. Our early treatment of those colonies was of the mildest character. We were told that the burghers were delighted we had come, and that they were rapidly laying down their arms. We had every hope the war would soon be over, but we soon found that was far too rosy a view. The war, I regret to say, is not yet over; those States are annexed, but not conquered; there is no effective occupation apparently at a greater distance than twenty miles from the railway, and often it falls far short of that. Our generals, I think, very naturally altered their tactics somewhat. They issued proclamations more severe in character. We are told now, and I accept the statement, that the struggle has degenerated into a guerilla war. I do not care very much about names—although I am not very fond of hearing myself or my hon. friends on this side called "traitors" and "pro-Boers"—and I do not care whether this is now a guerilla war or not. What I look at are the facts. The facts are that within the last week or two we have heard of 2,500 men under Do Wet, who have unfortunately captured very recently 450 of our own soldiers, besides killing or wounding sixty more. Almost at the same time we heard of another 2,500 men under arms, the commandoes under Viljoen and Erasmus, and of disturbances in other widely-separated parts of these annexed territories; while only yesterday we heard of an attack on a convoy proceeding from Pretoria to Rustenburg, in which fifteen were killed and twenty-two wounded. All I say is that if this

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is a guerilla war, it is even yet a very serious war. I quite agree that the cause for which the Boers are still fighting is absolutely hopeless, and greatly regret that the bloodshed, though useless, yet remains so great. We are rather short of information from the Government in regard to this matter. I do not suppose they can tell us why the war is continuing, but we are constantly asking ourselves that question. The contest is utterly hopeless; we must win; we have practically endless resources, and I am sure we shall not turn out to be inhuman conquerors. But the Government can apparently tell us nothing. All we do know is the practical matter that we are called together time after time to vote huge sums of money for the continued prolongation of the war. We were told the war was to end three months ago. A member of the Government, the present Secretary of State for War, expressed the belief the Boers would stop fighting as soon as they observed that the Liberals did not win the General Election. He led us to imagine that Botha and De Wet before they planned the day's campaign sat down to read the election returns in The Times newspaper. But the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said last night words to the effect that when the hopelessness of this struggle is brought home to the Boers by their friends the struggle will be stopped. That is a very different story. The noble Lord's chief did not go so far as that, and the First Lord of the Treasury in a speech very sympathetic in tone, but somewhat unsatisfactory in matter, did not give us any hope that he had any plan by which the struggle could be brought to an end. I ask the House, is there anything more that we can do? I venture very respectfully to profess my belief that there are other things we can do; but—and this is very important—they must be done under certain overriding considerations. With very few exceptions practically the whole of the candidates in England and Scotland at the recent General Election stated that they agreed absolutely and entirely to the annexation of these two States. Everything we do must of course be subject to that consideration; secondly, we must continue to prosecute this war with the utmost vigour until the struggle is ended, apart from anything we may do
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on the political side. But there is another consideration of the utmost importance—namely, that we have to live with these Boers in the annexed States in the future. Lastly, whatever we propose must be, as far as we can make it, just and right and politic in itself. It must not partake of anything in the nature of a bargain or bribe. In other words we must not attempt to give to Botha and De Wet what has been refused to Kruger and Steyn. I want to say one word on the conduct of the war. I cordially re-echo the excellent remarks of the Leader of the Opposition last night. Lord Roberts is generally acknowledged to be one of the most humane generals who has ever filled a great part in the annals of war, and when Lord Roberts says our soldiers have fought like heroes, and out of battle have behaved like gentlemen, I confess that that carries far more weight with me than a very large number of anonymous statements to the opposite effect. At any rate, with regard to our generals, our officers, and our soldiers, we admire the extraordinary courage, skill, and tenacity with which they have fought in this war, and we owe very much to them. The responsibility which lies on a general who is conducting a campaign for his country is enormous; it is greater almost than that which lies on the statesmen of the country. I think we should be very slow to cast any blame on these men who are doing their best for us. The crisis of the war is over, but during the crisis the Prime Minister said that he had abdicated in favour of Lord Roberts, or words to that effect. I have reminded the House that when we first occupied these new territories we accorded them the mildest treatment, but that unfortunately did not lead to an end of the war. There were constant raids on the railways and communications, and a more severe policy has since been tried, under which, I suppose necessarily, a large amount of territory has been laid waste. The question I want to ask is, Can the Government tell us that this more severe policy is proving more successful than the milder treatment did? The present policy is causing serious uneasiness in the minds of a great body of people in this country, and it is causing grave friction and anxiety, I believe, in our colonies in South Africa. I admit to the full the difficulty of the situation. There are obviously two lines of consider-

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ation. There is, first, the military line. There is the desire of our generals to end the war as speedily as possible by any methods that may usefully and properly be allowed in war. But at the back of all that there must be also the political considerations—the consideration especially that we have to settle this war in a permanent form. We have to try to make the men who are now fighting against us loyal subjects of the Queen in the future. I do not want to say one word which may be taken to mean that I seek to interfere with anything that is necessary in the way of the military campaign, but obviously the comparatively severe policy now being carried out—the confiscation of large numbers of cattle, the burning of a considerable number of farms, and the deporting of women and children—is inducing a deplorable political and economic condition in these colonies. That economic and political condition, I am afraid, may be consistent with a considerable prolongation of this guerilla warfare, and the situation calls for the highest statesmanship that this country can produce. I think it is time that the Government made a statement on broad and generous lines of what they propose for the political and economic settlement after the war. I have put down as an Amendment to the Address the following words—
"Humbly to represent to Your Majesty that it would conduce to the pacification of the conquered territories, and to the future good relations of the European races in South Africa generally, lif measures for securing the liberty and property of those now in arms who surrender, for the settlement of those territories, and for promoting the reconcilement and well-being of their inhabitants, were announced at the earliest possible date."
As I do not wish merely to talk vague generalities, I should like to make one or two suggestions, because I feel that it would be wrong to move a resolution of this sort without them. Let me say a few words upon the question of the; burning of farms. The feeling in regard to this matter both in our colonies and here is very strong, and all of us who are humane men feel that it is repugnant to our feelings to think of the necessity of laying waste these territories of our own and of using measures which are still very hard and very severe. To me war is always hateful and generally unnecessary, and this war is especially hateful in
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this sense, that we have been forced to fight and crush out the independent national existence of a brave and resolute race. But we did not seek this war as a nation. I do not believe myself that the Government sought this war, but when the war had once begun there could have been no peace in South Africa until we had conquered both States. War being necessary in that sense we cannot make it with rosewater. I fully admit all that, and I am not complaining of this burning of farms, because I have not the facts before me which would enable me to do so. We must leave the generals in the field to judge in a matter of this kind. I do, however, ask the Government to let us know whether this policy is having a good effect or not. If it is not—if they cannot assure us on the authority of the generals that it is—then I do ask the Government, as soon as possible, to put a stop to it. There is another thing that I should like to mention in connection with the farms, and it is that I think it is very desirable that the inhabitants of these colonies should be told that wherever farms are destroyed for military purposes compensation will be given to the owners unless they can be directly proved to be responsible for some act of war which is punishable in that way. And now I wish to say just a word about the political status of the fighters. As regards the Boers in the field we have no responsible Government to negotiate with in these two colonies, and I want to point out what I believe to be correct, and it is that the generals who are leading the armies of the Boers are excluded from any amnesty. I venture to say that it is impossible that a generous nation—and ours is a generous nation—should not admire the skill and courage of the Boers, and the extraordinary ability and resource which has been shown by some of their generals. I do, however, ask, as a practical matter, if they are excluded from amnesty, how can they give in? I make the suggestion with all humility that, instead of demanding an unconditional surrender, we should promise and ensure to all officers and men who will cease fighting against us their personal freedom, their unmolested return to their farms, and the payment of compensation for those farms which have been destroyed for military reasons and not for any treacherous act. There are farms which have been laid

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waste because they stood within ten miles of the railway. Many of those farms may possibly belong to some persons who are prisoners at St. Helena. I do not want to prolong my remarks unnecessarily upon this subject, but I do not think these farms ought to be given—I do not know that they are being given—to the new settlers who are to be induced to stay in the country, however numerous they may be. I do lay the greatest stress upon the necessity of some efforts being made to inform the Boers what has been promised, namely, that as soon as possible complete self-government will be given to them when the war is over. I come now to the question of the prisoners. Can nothing be done by taking some trouble to convey to the mass of Boers who are now fighting, and by telling the prisoners in Ceylon and St. Helena, that as soon as the war is over they can come back to their farms, and that they will receive, as they ought to receive, compensation where their farms have been destroyed in their absence, through no fault of their own? I come now to the question of the rebels. I do not know sometimes whether I ought to be glad that I am not a lawyer, but I am afraid that this is a very difficult legal matter. Can we make rebels simply by proclamation? There are many different kinds of men fighting against us. Some of them are men who have been fighting against us all along, and have never surrendered. Surely we cannot treat those men as rebels. There are other men who have surrendered, and afterwards broken their oath under the threat of death. We cannot treat those men as rebels. There is another class of men who have deliberately broken their oath without sufficient cause, and they present a much more difficult question, but I do not think that they can form a very large proportion of those who are fighting against us. I do attach the very gravest importance to the economic situation which the prolongation of this unfortunate struggle is making. The whole of the cattle, in many instances, are gone. Farm buildings have been destroyed, the land has gone out of cultivation, and recovery from such a condition of things as that must naturally be very slow. I maintain that we shall have to lend money for the purpose of restoring the agricultural condition of the Transvaal and the Orange River
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Colony. We cannot imagine that these countries will be able to do these things for themselves. Very soon the gold mines will get to work, and, however heavily they are taxed, the whole of the money will be required for keeping our J army and police to preserve order in those countries. There will be no money for restoring agriculture, or for the purpose of paying the cost of the war to this country. There will be no money for objects of this kind. I have sketched certain lines because I felt that I must say what is in my mind. I may have made mistakes here and there, but I will venture to say in conclusion that this policy, if it is tried, can do no harm, and it may do good; because if it is tried and obtains any measure of success—or if it obtains no measure of success—we should, I think, have done something to conciliate the feeling of our follow colonists in Cape Colony and Natal, many of whom are loyal to us, and who yet must sympathise by blood and tradition with the Boers. I am sorry that I have detained the House at a much greater length that I had intended, but I have now done. I simply make one appeal in conclusion. We stand on the threshold of a new century. Behind us lies a great and glorious past, and before us lie new hopes, new duties, and new activities. And what is the most splendid achievement of the century which is just drawing to its close? It is not the triumphs we have won from time to time on the field of battle; it is not oven the victories we have won in the peaceful paths of commerce. I believe that the noblest achievement of this century will, in the opinion of future historians, be that we have learned for the first time how to bind our colonies to us by bonds of affection, and how to make our colonists loyal, happy, and contented citizens of a great Empire. That result has been achieved in two ways. It has been achieved, in the first place, because they have enjoyed an autonomy more complete than has ever been granted to colonists before; and in the second place, because our statesmen have had the wisdom, in times of crisis, to adopt a wise, a bold, and a generous policy. I believe a crisis exists in South Africa at the present time which calls for such a policy as this, and because I believe that I do most earnestly and respectfully urge upon the House and upon the

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Government the Amendment which stands in my name.
MR. TREVELYAN: I would much sooner not be seconding this Amendment, firstly, because of my consciousness of my own personal inadequacy to do so; and secondly, because I, in common with a very largo number of Members on this side of the House, think that this question of a settlement is a national and not a party one. I am, if I may be allowed to say so, one of the Members on this side of the House who have silently and steadily supported the policy of the nation, and approved, in all the most vital respects, of the action which the Government has taken. Just because of that, I think we, beyond all others, feel a greater obligation upon ourselves to protest against what we believe to be the possible prolongation of the war and the retarding of a settlement, not so much by the ill-action of the Government at the present time, but because of its over-expectation of some happy development in South Africa; and because, as we think, of its unjustifiable reliance upon military methods alone. What is the situation? The Leader of the Opposition yesterday challenged the Government to declare its policy in South Africa openly. We had an eloquent, and what we all recognise to be a well-meaning answer from the First Lord of the Treasury, but it was a vague answer. It was merely a repetition of good intentions, which we all have. He was challenged, in particular, with regard to the destruction of property in South Africa, which, in the opinion of many of us, is more than anything else endangering the prospects of an ultimate peaceful settlement. It is not by the delimitation of the territories or the letter of constitutions that the settlement is going to be made, but success depends much more upon the spirit than the particular forms in which the Government undertakes that settlement. It is for this reason that some of us have, for weeks past, been pressing to get information with regard to the destruction of property in South Africa. Have we not a right to be anxious? We are not painting out of our own imaginations a miserable picture of South Africa. Half the evidence at least which comes from South Africa—I am not going to say whether it is right or wrong—tends to
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prove that in the Orange Free State and in the Transvaal at least half the farms are already in ashes. I do not say that this is so. There have been letters in Conservative and Liberal papers, letters by pro-Boers and by people who have supported the Government throughout, which definitely say that at least half the farms in South Africa in those two colonies are now level with the ground. Are we not reasonable, then, in discussing what prospect this holds out of a settlement in South Africa if this grim supposition is true,—that not merely a few farms on each side of the railway have been burned, but that whole districts have been desolated? I do not wish to discuss the question in the least this afternoon from the point of view of the international morality of it; I do not wish to discuss it even from the point of view of the efficacy of the military methods which have obtained up to this time. It may be that it is not only correct according to American military handbooks, but also even according to the agreement entered into at the Hague Conference. It may be so, but supposing the burning and destruction of these farms is in accordance with all international understanding in regard to war; supposing, even, it has really been successful in reducing the commandoes under Both a and De Wet, which none of us believe, how can we be blind to the spirit which it is creating in South Africa, and which will breathe after this war is over? Men can fight, and over the bodies of their fallen comrades opponents will be able to shake hands; but we are going to ask thousands of Boors when this war is over unless the Government adopt some other policy—to go back to farms where there is no grain, no cattle, no farm houses—men who will have no capital wherewith to begin the world again, and with nothing but bitter memories of the war', and of what they will think the injustice—I do not say it is injustice—meted out to their wives and children after they had been driven away to St. Helena or Ceylon. How can these men settle down as good citizens? The thing is impossible. I cannot believe it for my part. The most important thing that we require of the Government is that the Government should say what they are going to do, not merely out of pity for I these people—we all have learned to

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harden our hearts; not out of pity for the women and children—that is not the proposition, but in the interest of the political and economic future of South Africa. Let the Government tell us what their picture is of South Africa, unless they are going in some way or other to replace these people on their farms, except in cases, as my hon. said, where there is some for burning them down, to immediate treacherous during the war. The Government is bound to give us some notion of the policy which they are going to adopt in regard to these people, who cannot otherwise be good citizens of our Empire; for after all they are our fellow-citizens. If it was a question of devastating an enemy's country, we might leave them to mend the thing after the war is over; but the Boers are going to be citizens of South Africa, and you will have to keep them. There is the doleful prospect of their raiding the country in guerilla bands, or you will have to build prisons or workhouses for them, unless you have a definite economic policy of placing them somehow on the land, whether British or Boer. Now I pass from that question, and wish to say a few words about the general attitude of the Government. I think we were able to understand, from the debate of yesterday, that the general policy or attitude of the Government is that until these unreasonable people unconditionally surrender, you will not declare the details of your policy showing them what really you are going to do with South Africa. Now I suppose we are all agreed upon two main facts—that this country has got to pursue adoublepolicy—a policy of strength, and, side by side with it, a policy of conciliation. There are none of us who will consent again to a condition of things under which it would be possible for war between the Dutch and the English to break out in South Africa again if we can help it. As I understand it, we are going to be the police of South Africa, and the British Empire will see to it that Dutch and English will never again fight. But it is not only force that is wanted—none of us can believe it is only force—and this motion I am seconding is directed in the main to this proposition: that in spite of the fact that the Government give lip service to conciliation, our action shows nothing except force. The First Lord of the Treasury spoke last night
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and said it was the intention of the Government to give free colonial institutions to the Boers as soon as possible, and as soon as ever the war is at an end. We have had this vague and general statement from the very beginning of the war, though it is true that these have ceased to be rather less emphatic recently. If you read the speeches during the General Election of the chief leaders in the Ministry, you will find there is not much allusion to that particular part of the settlement involved in granting free institutions; and it is rather discomforting, in spite of the speech made by the Leader of the House, to find that the Leader of the other House could suggest that it would be generations before free institutions could be granted to the Boers. But even if the declaration of Ministers in England were everything that could be desired, that is not everything. The Boers, as someone has said already, do not read the daily papers every day. What you want to do is to impress this policy, which we firmly believe the Government wish to carry out, on the Boers, and show them that we mean it as well as that we intend finally to annex the Republics to the Empire. I want to consider two indications which the Government have given in regard to this question. The Government have had opportunities of putting their policy before the Boers in a very distinct way. We all of us remember the exchange of telegrams between President Kruger and the Marquess of Salisbury on the 5th and 11th March. We remember the calamitously unconciliatory telegram which President Kruger sent. By the silence of the House of Commons, we all agreed that the answer that Lord Salisbury sent was in the main agreeable to the ideas of the country. But there were many of us who regretted on that occasion, when it did become necessary for this country to say definitely that we were going to adopt a policy of annexation, that we did not couple that declaration with some further enunciation of our policy; that we did not as well hold out a hope of something more being granted them within the Empire. The Government, however, simply sent an abrupt telegram that we were not prepared to assent to independence. The Government might have declared their policy more fully; without bogging or bargain-

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ing with the Boers they might have offered terms upon which they could have surrendered then. My belief is that if such an offer had been made, at that time or soon after, it is extremely likely the Boers would have accepted your conditions. But there is another feature of the Government action during the summer which, in my opinion, was even more calculated to make the Boers uncertain as to whether they were really to be given full citizenship in the State in which they would have to live. At the end of the summer the question arose as to the punishment of the rebels in Cape Colony. Most of us entirely agreed that it is a reasonable and effective, not too severe punishment which the Cape Parliament adopted of disfranchising the rebels for a period of five years. But the Home Government wrote out to Cape Colony to urge that the rebels in that colony should be disfranchised for the term of their natural life. I do not want to argue the question whether that policy was wrong or right. It seems tome, personally, to be a most unstatesman like suggestion if these people are to be citizens fifty years hence of the continent of South Africa. But what did the Boers think of it? Is it not obvious that the Boers would argue: "If the Government say to the Cape rebels—'You are never again to be citizens of a British State, because you, in your hot youth, were foolishly drawn away by sentiment or by compulsion into rebellion, we are not going to give you back free institutions'—does not that go to make it rather unlikely that we, the Boers, are going to live under free institutions? "However, all that we on this side of the House are asking the Government to do by this motion is to try the effect of a Proclamation setting forth the policy they intend to pursue with regard to the Boers when the war is concluded. On 2nd September the policy was initiated of burning down district sin order that peace might ensue. It is not much to ask that the Government should now initiate a new policy, should at any rate give a chance to a Proclamation which would state the most vital and essential things for the settlement of the country. Surely it is worth toying, even if some of the Government supporters have not confidence in its success. I only appeal on the ground that we may, by our action, be allowing the misapprehension to con-
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tinue on the part of the Boers that what we are doing in South Africa is merely standing there as distant and irreconcilable conquerors. We here are all conscious of our own justice, but what do the Boers know of that? We must show them what our intentions are, and that our Empire is come to South Africa, not as a conqueror, but as the great and patient arbiter between warring passions and to prevent racial feud in that unhappy country.
Amendment proposed, at the end of the Question, to add the words—
"And we humbly represent to Your Majesty that it would conduce to the pacification of the conquered territories, and to the future good relations of the European races in South Africa generally, if measures for securing the liberty and property of those now in arms who surrender, for the settlement of those territories, and for promoting the reconcilement and well-being of their inhabitants, were announced at the the earliest possible date."—(Mr. Emmott.)
Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. J. Chamberlain,): The subject with which we are now dealing is undoubtedly of the greatest and most urgent importance. I do not think that anything could more worthily occupy the attention of the House, and for my part I congratulate the House, and I congratulate myself, that for a time, at any rate, we have emerged from those strictly party and personal controversies in which we have hitherto been engaged. Therefore, I must say if anything could prove that conclusively to the House it would be the extremely moderate tone which has been taken up by the two hon. Members in the able speeches which they have addressed to the House. I must ask the indulgence of the House in endeavouring to reply, because I have taken upon myself a duty which I am not entirely qualified to fulfil. In dealing with the state of South Africa it must be borne in mind that for many months past the portion of South Africa of which we are speaking has been under I military administration, and that there-| fore all the reports with regard to administration have gone to a different department—the War Office. As the House is aware, my right hon. friend Mr. Brodrick is temporarily absent from our debates, and

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it is impossible I should adequately fill his place, but still I will do what I can with the information at my disposal, and which I have been able to obtain from other departments. But before I do so I must say one word or two, not at all in an unfriendly spirit, about the resolution which has just been moved. Why is this resolution moved? It must be admitted by anyone who looks at it that it is a colourless resolution. It expresses a platonic desire that certain intentions should be announced which both the hon. Gentlemen have been good enough readily to ascribe to the Government—rightly to ascribe to the Government. There is nothing in the suggestions which are made in this proposal which we are not perfectly prepared to accept in substance. We are to do something that will "conduce to the pacification of the conquered territories and to the future good relations of the European races in South Africa generally"; and in order to do that we are to announce "measures for securing the liberty and property of those now in arms who surrender, for the settlement of those territories, and for promoting the reconcilement and well-being of their inhabitants. "Well, Sir, we have announced all those intentions. We have announced in general terms measures—it may be taken that the Government have announced them in the proclamations which have been issued by Lord Roberts—we have announced them in statements made to the country by responsible Ministers, we announced them last night in the speech of my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Treasury, and I hope I may be able, as especially concerned in this matter, to add somewhat to the fulness of these announcements. But I cannot alter in the slightest degree their spirit, which, as I say, is substantially the spirit of the Amendment now before us. Now, speaking as I do, at the very commencement of the debate, I am obliged to anticipate—I am obliged to ask myself, will the future of this debate be conducted on exactly the same lines as those upon which the two hon. Gentlemen who have just addressed us have proceeded? If so, I would go on at once to reply to the questions which they have addressed to me; but it is within the knowledge of the House that there are still, as there were in the last Parliament, three different sections of opinion in the Opposition.
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There is the opinion, for instance, of those who hold that the war was unjust, and that now the only remedy for the evils which we all deplore is the restoration of independence to those two colonies. I agree with the hon. Member for Oldham that that party is less numerous in the House now than it was before, and that it is probably still less numerous |in the country in proportion than it is in this House.
MR. EMMOTT: I hope I was not comparative.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: No; I am not quoting the hon. Member, but what I mean to say is that I agree with him that it is only a small fraction, in the country at any rate, who would consider for a moment a proposal to restore independence to those colonies, and under those circumstances I think it would be a waste altogether of words to deal with that side of the question. But then there is another section which certainly takes a somewhat stronger view of the situation than the two hon. Members to whom I am replying. Their view is, as I understand their declaration, that annexation must now take place, must be considered an accomplished fact, and can never be reversed, but that we ought immediately to establish self-government on the lines of the self-governing colonies in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. If they do not go quite as far as that—and I do not want to put it in an exaggerated way—they go as far as the hon. Member who has another Amendment on the Paper, and who says that—
"The time should be more clearly indicated when there will be extended to these populations the principles of self-government prevailing in the other South African colonies"
—that is to say that we are to be called upon now, at this moment, to declare at what time, or approximately, we consider that full self-government can be accorded to those colonies. And there was a trace of that in the concluding words of the hon. Member for the Elland Division, because he suggested that it would have a good effect upon the Boers at the present time if we were able now, or if we had earlier been able, to meet President Kruger's demand for independence by offering in return the grant of local self-government. Well, now, of course with these later views the Government do not

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agree. We really think that it is impossible that reasonable men should ask us to fix any time to-day when full self-government can be granted. But we are prepared to lay down three definite objects as the main and principal objects of the Government, and they must be carried out successively; one stage must be concluded before we can possibly commence the second stage, and so on with the third. Well, in the first place we want to put an end to this guerilla warfare. The guerilla warfare which is going on is of the most unsatisfactory and most unprofitable kind. Nobody can gain by it. Lives are being lost, the country is being ruined, the future of the country is being damaged. I am prepared to admit that we are face to face with the possibility of something like a famine in consequence of the destruction caused—
SIR WILLIAM HAECOUET: Hear, hear.
MR. J. CHAMBEELAIN: In consequence of the destruction caused, not merely by the military operations on our part, but also—and I think myself much more so—by the operations of the Boers themselves. We have seen in a great number of cases that Boers, returning to the country in which men have gone back to their farms, having given their parole not to take arms again against us, have treated their own countrymen with what I cannot call anything less than barbarous cruelty, have beaten them, have insulted them, have forced them back into their own ranks, and have robbed them of their property and destroyed their farms; and although I am not able to give any positive statistics to the House at the present time, it would not surprise me in the least to find when we come to sum up the results of this policy that the Boers have destroyed and burnt more farms than the English. That is a most disastrous and distressing state of affairs. These guerilla bauds are of different kinds. I think the numbers have been very frequently exaggerated, and I would advise the House not to take for granted what is said in casual telegrams that such-and-such a leader has so many thousand troops under him. There is no doubt they differ in their character. There are bands of considerable numbers and led by leaders of
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such distinction, such known courage and character, as General De Wet, General Both a, General Delarey, and General Viljoen. There may be others, but I name these, for their men may practically be called at the present moment organised bands under considerable leaders. Unfortunately, the warfare which these bands are carrying on may, in a certain sense at any rate, still be called legitimate warfare. But there is warfare of a totally different kind. There are large numbers of mercenaries, chiefly foreigners, and a certain number of Cape rebels, who are in very small bands, going about the country picking off a Britisher whenever they can snipe him in safety, either from behind a farm or behind a stone, or as often as not plundering the people and natives of the country. That is the state of things deplored by the hon. Gentleman who moved the resolution, and which we deplore as much as he does. The question, then, is—How are we going to deal with it? The hon. Member makes some suggestions. He spoke, in the first place, of severe treatment. He was most moderate in his statement of the case. He said the mildest measures had been adopted in the first instance. He admitted that those mild measures had been insufficient—that they had not produced the result expected of them—and then he said severer measures had been adopted. He did not say they were unnecessary, but he asked that we should say whether they, in our opinion, were successful, and whether the time had come when they could be moderated. What were those severer measures? He spoke of the taking of cattle. Let me say that, according to the proclamation of Lord Roberts, whose humanity is proverbial, and who therefore could not under any circumstances be accused of unnecessary cruelty, cattle are always to be paid for by the troops, or a receipt given, which is as good as payment, except in those cases in which the owner of the cattle has been guilty of acts of war or of outrages which are punishable by all civilised nations who are at war. Therefore the taking of cattle does not mean necessarily that the owner of the cattle is placed in a position of impossibility of continuing his occupation. If he has not got the cattle he has got the money for them, except in the cases in which destruction

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has taken place as a punitive measure. Never in the history of war has war been carried out with so much humanity on the part of the officers and of the soldiers concerned as in the present war. The hon. Member also spoke of the deportation of women. That sounds like something serious, but I believe it will be found that it is only for their own protection, and as such I defend it. If we are unable in this vast country to occupy and garrison every bit of it, when our troops are removed, if women and children are left alone they remain there in some danger—in danger from those marauding bands of which I have spoken, and also from the vast native population.
MR. T. M. HEALY: Why send them out of Pretoria?
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: And, Sir, this native population is answerable, I believe, for every case of proved outrage either upon women or children. I believe, and the last reports we have received confirm that belief, that in no case has a British soldier been justly accused of such an outrage. But such outrages have taken place, and in many cases the removal of the women has been with a view to protecting them. In some cases they have been deported from towns. [An Hon. Member: From Pretoria.] Undoubtedly they were taken from Pretoria, because at that time, when our hold upon Pretoria was not so strong as it is now, they were avowedly in many cases acting as spies and communicating with the enemy, and it was quite impossible that they should remain in our lines. Then I come to what, after all, has been the principal, I will not say complaint, but the principal point to which the hon. Member has called attention, and that is the burning of farms. I hope the House will remember the proclamation of Lord Roberts with regard to this matter; he has authorised the burning of farms. But before I go into that I should like to recall to the House the observations of the hon. Member for the Elland Division. He quoted from an anonymous statement; and said that whole districts had been devastated, and that half the country had been destroyed.
MR. TREVELYAN: I said that if the evidence coming to this country was accepted it suggested that half the
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country had been devastated, I think it is rather for the government to tell us what has happened.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I am not complaining of the hon. Gentleman. His observation, then, was that if the evidence coming to this country, which I regrad as absolutely worthless, is true, it suggests to the hon. Gentleman's mind that half the country has been devastated. I cannot at this moment give to the House exact information as to the number of farmhouses that have been destroyed, but we have telegraphed for it,; and Lord Kitchener informs us that, though very difficult, he thinks it may be possible for him to give some statistical information upon the subject. I cannot contradict this anonymous information. I can only say that I shall be very much surprised if it does not turn out to be most grossly exaggerated. I think I ought to make one other observation on that point, not in mitigation of any judgment passed upon the policy of burning farmhouses, but in order to show the House that the matter is not quite so important from an economic standpoint as hon. Members think. A farmhouse in the Transvaal is little better than, if so good labourer's cottage in this country, and accordingly the pecuniary damage done is really not so very great. Of course that does not justify the burning—the mere fact that the loss is small—but it does render me less pessimistic about the consequences than the hon. Member appears to be. Then I come back, and I say the House will bear in mind that Lord Roberts's proclamation was to the effect that, in the first instance, general officers were authorised to burn down farmhouses as a punishment in cases in which they were used as fortified places, or places for the concealment of arms, or in which the white flag had been improperly used, or where they had been the scenes of gross treachery and of acts contrary to the laws of war. As a matter of right and morality, the Government are prepared to sustain Lord Roberts absolutely. The question of policy is always one that may, in my opinion, be open to consideration—that is to say, a better punishment might be found. The punishments by the laws of war include death, and it may be argued that a personal punishment, even of the most severe character, would be more

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likely to prevent the acts of which we complain than the burning down of a farmhouse. But as to the moral right to punish men guilty of these offences we have not the slightest doubt. Then, Lord Roberts was placed in the most difficult position which a general could possibly occupy. He had his base 1,500 miles away at least from his front, through a most difficult country, and he was served only by a single line of railway, and any catastrophe to the railway might have meant a catastrophe to the whole Army. Now, Sir, it is all very well to talk of humanity, but humanity must first take into account our own people, and it was of the first importance, it was the clear duty of Lord Roberts, to take any steps in his power to prevent the cutting of the line and the danger which would thereby accrue to his force, and he accordingly issued a proclamation that in the case of the destruction of the line persons in the vicinity would be held responsible, and that farmhouses in the vicinity might be destroyed. We understood this proclamation to mean that he would require evidence of some complicity on the part of the persons whose farmhouses were destroyed.
MR. T. M. HEALY: There were no such words in the proclamation.
MR. J.CHAMBERLAIN: I am not saying that the words are exactly to that effect. I am saying what we understood, and we inquired the other day, when the matter assumed greater importance, whether the construction we placed upon the proclamation was true, and we have a reply from Lord Kitchener, who has now taken the place of Lord Roberts, that we are perfectly right in that assumption. Now, therefore, we are reduced to the question whether it is necessary in any way to alter the practice of our generals with regard to the burning of farmhouses in these definite cases—cases of people guilty of acts against the usages of war, or guilty of treachery, or involved in the destruction of the line of communication. Let me say that since the proclamation was ordered no doubt the situation has to a certain extent changed, because the position of the British forces is certainly much stronger than it was at that time; that is to say, although there is still all this skirmishing going on, regular warfare has
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practically ceased. Therefore, it is open to the General now in command to reconsider his position and substitute other punishments, if he thinks it right to do so. The hon. Member who moved the resolution said, I think, that for his part ho was content to leave the matter in the hands of the military authorities, and it is perfectly clear that the Government is bound to leave this large discretion in their hands. But the House may rest assured that both the Government and all the generals in the field, including Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief, are of opinion that this particular punishment should be used as sparingly as possible. They regret that there should ever have been occasion for employing it, and they hope that to whatever extent it may have been employed in the past—and they believe the extent has been very much exaggerated—in the future it will be employed still less than in the past. The hon. Member complained or suggested—he made suggestions in the most moderate way, and therefore I should like to reply to them—that in the proclamation issued to the Boers in arms the leaders have been excepted from the amnesty. That is only partially true, but it is not a complete statement, because the hon. Member will see that in Lord Roberts's proclamation——
MR. ASQUITH (Fifeshire, E.): Of what date?
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: It is 28th September. I think that is his last proclamation.
MR. ASQUITH: No: the last was 3rd October.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I may be wrong, because I am dealing with matters which are really War Office matters; but I am doing the best I can for the House. The proclamation I am going to quote is "Government Notice 115, 1900." It is dated the 28th September, and the notice says:—
"By the Military Secretary's telegram general officers commanding have been empowered to promise that burghers who surrender voluntarily will not be sent out of South Africa provided they have been guilty of no acts other than fighting against us. This concession does not apply to those who have taken a prominent military or political part in the war, nor to those who have broken their

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oath of neutrality, nor to foreigners. In the event of a military or political leader enquiring as to the terms of surrender, the question is to be referred direct to the Army headquarters."
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether that is to be distributed to hon. Members?
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I cannot say. I can see no objection. In the meantime if any Member desires to see it, it is at his disposal.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Has it been delivered to the Boers?
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: Really, I am endeavouring to explain this matter with great fulness to the House, but right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen delay one by interruptions. What I want to point out is that I do not understand from this that it is right to say that leaders are excluded from amnesty. The only point with regard to political and military leaders is that they must enquire beforehand of the terms to be granted to them. They are not necessarily and automatically included in the terms offered to the other burghers. For that there is evident and sufficient reason, because the cases of important men amongst these leaders are very different, and there may be cases in which it would not be safe or desirable that they should remain in the country; while, on the other hand, there are other cases in which every possible liberty would be gladly extended to them. Then the hon. Member went on to say that he thought it would be well if we gave an intimation to the Boers in which we should promise them compensation for farms destroyed for military purposes, and that we should tell the prisoners who are now abroad that similar compensation would be made to them for any damage which was done to their property during their absence. I do not think the hon. Member can quite have appreciated what would be the result of such a statement as that. To begin with, we should be giving to the Boers who have been in arms against us a great deal more than we are giving to any of our own subjects. Up to the present time the Government has not undertaken, has, indeed, repudiated, any liability whatever for any
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damage done to property in the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony belonging to British subjects. The view taken is that when a man I goes from his own country to a strange country, and there suffers damage from acts of war, he is not entitled to go to his own country and demand compensation. Well, it is perfectly clear that if we repudiate compensation to British subjects—Englishmen and others—whose property may have been destroyed or damaged during the war, either by the Boers or by our military operations, we cannot offer it to those who have been in arms against us. Then the hon. Gentleman went on to say that we ought to give money for restoring the condition of the country. As I understood, he has in view only one form of spending the money. I do not know whether he suggests that this money is to come out of the pockets of the British taxpayer, but if so the proposal is that we are to vote a very considerable sum of money for setting up again in business everybody who complains that he has been injured in the course of the war, even although the injury is entirely due to his own action, or the action of those I who represent him. I must say I think; that is a very strong proposal, and I venture to think that, no matter what the Colonial Secretary might do, there is no chance whatever that the Chancellor of S the Exchequer would listen to it for a I moment. My answer to the next suggestion of the hon. Member may, perhaps, be more satisfactory to him. He says—"When you come to a full and peaceful possession of the country you will find yourselves face to face with an economic crisis." I do not know—I hope he is pessimistic in that view; but if we do, undoubtedly it must be the duty of the Government of those colonies to deal with it, and they must deal with it out of the funds of the colonies, not out of the pockets of the British taxpayer. Whenever a civil administration is established in South Africa no doubt the financial and fiscal part of its labours will be amongst its most important work.[Opposition cheers.] The hon. Gentleman cheers. What does he mean? He is one of those who have said, and probably truly, that there is great wealth in the Transvaal. But, if there is great wealth in the Transvaal, then there is a great source of taxation, I am

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entirely with the right hon. Gentleman there.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: And I am entirely with you.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: Then, if there is a great source of taxation, might not the country in a short time be able to pay its way even though it may have to do something to meet the economic crisis which the hon. Gentleman refers to? Now, Sir, I think I have dealt with the suggestions of the lion. Member, and also generally with the military administration so far as it has been in any way called in question. But I now come to what I call the second object of the Government. The hon. Member for the Elland Division has complained that the Government rely too much on military force, and that we show nothing but force to the Boers. I do not think that is the case, but, at all events, I claim him as a supporter when I say that our first object should be to get rid of the military administration. If so, I think he is a little at variance with his leader, because there has long been a point of contention between the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and myself, both in this House and in the country, in regard to a certain statement of his that there should be a military administration and then self-government. I hold that that would be entirely an impossible position, and it is not to that that the Government are going to pledge themselves. We say there must be an intermediate state of things, and for the sake of giving it a name we call it Crown colony government, but everybody knows, who knows anything of the administration of our colonies, that there are the most different kinds of Crown colony government, and, therefore, a little further explanation may properly be required before the House will understand what we mean by Crown colony government. Our view is that there must be three stages—the pacification, I will not say the absolute and complete pacification, but a much greater pacification of the country than has yet taken place; then must come Crown colony government, which really means civil as opposed to military administration; and only after that has been tried can self-government be adopted. As regards the military administration, we are prepared to make all allowances for the
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difficulties under which these countries have been governed by the officers who have been appointed to these posts, but what we do say is—and it is no criticism, it is no aspersion upon military men, whose business is to make war and not to govern—that they are not by the necessity of their occupation as well qualified for civil government as persons who have devoted their whole lives to it. There are many instances in which you find that military men make most admirable civil servants. Sir Henry Norman, one of the most distinguished of our civil servants, was a military man, and many other's may be in the minds of all present. But as a rule military men are not fitted for this work, and while we are grateful to them for what they have done, we want to substitute for them as quickly as possible a civil administration. Sir, I am afraid almost to say anything about the time at which this can be accomplished, because of the difficulty of the position with which the whole House is familiar. It is not well to prophesy in such circumstances, but perhaps it will be sufficient if I say that I hope—it is not a prophecy—that before the House meets again something in the nature of a civil administration may have been established both in the colony of the Transvaal and in the Orange River Colony. As to the general lines of that administration there is no secret, and the Government are prepared to give all the information in their power. The matter, I should say, is still the subject of constant telegram and despatch proceeding between South Africa and this country—between Sir Alfred Milner and the Government—and, of course, there are a great number of details which can only be settled after the framework has been created. But it is our intention to recommend Her Majesty to appoint Sir Alfred Milner as Governor of the two colonies—of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony.
MR. PIRIE: You will lose South Africa.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: We propose to appoint a Lieutenant-Governor for the Orange River Colony. We propose that both the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor shall have the assistance of an executive council, which will consist, at all events, of the principal officers of

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the Government. We do not propose that the constitution of the Orange River Colony should necessarily be the same as the constitution of the Transvaal Colony, either at starting or in the immediate future. It will be dealt with upon its own merits, dealt with separately, and we think it possible, from the circumstance with which everyone is familiar, that an earlier beginning to greater political liberty may be made in the Orange River Colony than in the Transvaal. That is due to the fact that the Government of the Orange River Colony previous to the war was by common consent a very good Government, and, consequently, speaking generally, of course, and not of individuals, we shall find there probably the means to creating a satisfactory administration more quickly than we can do in the case of the Transvaal Colony. To one point we attach the utmost importance, and that is an early, I would almost call it an immediate—although there, again, discretion must be left to those who are on the spot—creation of municipalities. We propose that there should be a municipal government for Pretoria, for Bloemfontein, and for Johannesburg, and probably for some other centre, and to these we hope to be able to delegate all the powers usually delegated to local authorities. Beyond that it is impossible for me to say anything at the present moment so far as detail is concerned.
SIR E. ASHMEAD-BAETLETT: Who will be the High Commissioner?
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: Sir Alfred Milner will hold the office of High Commissioner in addition to the office of Governor of these colonies. I am sorry I did not make that clear. That is all that I can say, and I think it is all that the House can fairly expect from the Government in these circumstances. But I want to assure both sides of the House that the principle on which we shall act in connection with this administration is the necessity—the desirability, of course, but the necessity—of consulting local opinion as far as that is possible, of disturbing as little as possible anything in the nature of local custom, local law, or local practice. So far as we can we shall be guided by a desire to leave things, in the Orange River Colony especially, as
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they were. I am not alluding to the Transvaal without the qualification that there, of course, we shall have to make very great alterations in connection with the complaints which were the original cause of the war. In further pursuance of this policy, we lay it down as our duty, we admit it to be our duty, wherever we can with safety to the States, and with proper consideration to the real interests of the population, to appoint natives to all the posts in the Administration.
MR. JOHN MOELEY: You don't mean natives?
MR. J. CHAMBEELAIN: I mean, of course, Afrikanders. I forgot the meaning to be attached to the word. I mean that the existing white population there shall be as far as possible the store on which we shall draw for our local administration. Under these circumstances I believe we can promise that there shall be throughout South Africa equal laws, equal liberty—not, indeed, political independence. In the first instance, that must be more restricted in these two colonies than it is in the colonies of the Cape and Natal, but a liberty and constitution, leading ultimately to self-government, which Ave all desire to see established as soon as possible. Hon. Gentlemen have, I think, recently suggested that these intentions of ours, both with regard to the immediate pacification of the country and the terms that might be offered to those now in the field against us, and also with regard to the future character of the government of the country, should be promulgated amongst the Boers. I entirely agree. I believe that has been done. I might almost say I am afraid it has been done, because, if it has been, it leaves us no opportunity of doing more. The House will remember that Lord Roberts allowed various people to go up to see General Botha and General De Wet and acquaint them with the terms he meant to propose. On one occasion Mrs. Botha, who, I believe, is enjoying British hospitality at Pretoria, and who then enjoyed the hospitality of Lord Roberts, was the channel of communication; and at another time Mme. Joubert and a gentleman of Boer origin who was supposed to have influence with these leaders. If we can do anything more in this direction we are willing to do it; and I confess

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that, for my part, I am not satisfied not to try. Therefore I may inform the House that I have already communicated with Sir Alfred Milner suggesting a form of proclamation and asking for his opinion about it, and suggesting also that this proclamation should be printed, not only in English and Dutch, as previous proclamations have been, but in Taal, the patois language which is the only one many Boers understand. I have asked also for suggestions as to the people who would be likely to have the most reasonable influence with the Boer leaders. I assure the House, on the part of the Government, that nothing will be wanting on our part. We entertain absolutely no vindictive feelings whatever towards the men who have been in arms against us. We recognise, so far as the great majority of them are concerned, that they have carried on this war with great distinction, so far as personal gallantry is concerned, and also that they have shown the greatest consideration for the wounded and prisoners who have fallen into their hands. There have been exceptions. I do not want to dwell upon them, but, speaking of the great mass, we do not at all complain of the way in which they have carried on this war. They are brave foes, and they should be treated as brave foes; and it is in that spirit that we shall approach them. I hope I have given the fullest explanation in my power of the intentions of the Government. I should myself be sorry to see a division taken on the Amendment before the House. I see no difference between us so far as intention is concerned, and I should be sorry if there should be any appearance of difference of opinion with regard to such an important matter. I do not urge that view with any party object, because it is clear under existing circumstances the division would not be a favourable one for the other side. But on general grounds of policy I hope the suggestion may commend itself to them. They have elicited, if not an entirely satisfactory explanation, at all events a perfectly frank and candid one, and they will be prepared to admit that, so far as our desire goes, we are willing to meet their view of the case.
MR. ASQUITH: The House, I am sure, will share the satisfaction which the right hon. Gentleman has expressed, at the beginning of his speech, at the very moderate tone in which my two hon.
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friends discharged their duty, and I think it only fair on our part to acknowledge that the level of argument in the non-contentious atmosphere was successfully maintained by the right hon. Gentleman. He has asked why this Amendment was moved. But I think if he will compare the declarations to which we have just listened with the speech, I will not say made in another place, but with the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury, we shall find the most ample justification for the proposal of this Amendment. The House, when it rose last night, was in a state of absolute darkness as to the intentions of the Government with regard to the future of South Africa. Thanks to the Amendment the curtain has been lifted, and the right hon. Gentleman has given us in the latter part of his speech this evening a very lucid sketch of the future settlement, of which I will only at this moment say this, without committing ourselves—as we ought not to do at a moment's notice—to its details, that it does seem to afford a modus vivendi in these conquered territories, which may be the precursor of that fuller, larger, and more complete measure of self-government to which the Government and every party in the State is pledged. The right hon. Gentleman has travelled over a great deal of ground. The point to which I wish mainly to confine myself is rather the immediate situation, than the ultimate future. The right hon. Gentleman has asked what more could we do than we have done to make known our intentions to the Boers? and referred to Lord Roberts's proclamations, I believe that from first to last Lord Roberts has issued six or eight proclamations, but they have never been presented to Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman has read to us an extract from a paper which has apparently been prepared in one of the Departments of the Government. I can only express the hope that the Boers are more familiar with these documents than the British House of Commons. At any rate, surely after what the right hon. Gentleman has told us to-night it is the first duty of the Government to lay those proclamations on the Table in order that we may have—
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I will lay them to-night.
MR.ASQUITH: I am glad to hear that, because until it is done we are at a

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great disadvantage in criticising the action taken in the past. But let me point out how, reasonably and indeed inevitably, the Boers may have misconceived some of Lord Roberts's intentions. Take the famous proclamation whereby Lord Roberts ordered that when the railways and lines of communication were injured all farms within a certain distance should be burned. I venture to say that 99 people out of 100 in this country thought that proclamation applied to farms within the prescribed distance whether the occupiers of those farms have shown any complicity in outrage or not. We are told now that that is not the interpretation to be put upon the proclamation. But is not that, the interpretation the Boers have put upon it? If it is, may not that account to some extent for the difficulty with which you are at present embarrassed in arriving at a settlement of the question? The other point to which the right hon. Gentleman referred is a still more important one. I mean the passage in the proclamation of Lord Roberts at the end of September, in which he appears to exempt military and political leaders from the terms he offers to their followers. I have got a summary of that proclamation, and it contains these words—
"Burghers are informed that as soon as the leaders submit, peace will be declared and prisoners liberated. Exception will be made only in the case of members of the late Government and those directly responsible for the war, and its present disastrous prolongation."
Read in the ordinary way, that passage would exempt from the terms offered by Lord Roberts every one of those leaders, Botha, De Wet, and the rest, whom the right hon. Gentleman recognises to be persons of responsibility, exercising command over more or less organised forces, and through whose good offices and mediation alone it is possible to bring home to the minds of the ordinary Boer follower the intentions of the Government and the opportunity the Government has in store if he will surrender his arms. Surely the plainest dictates of policy are that, if we are, as I hope we are from what the right hon. Gentleman has said, going to make a new departure in this matter, terms should be offered to leaders and followers alike, and every inducement offered to the leader to make known those terms to his followers and commend them to them. The right hon. Gentleman has said this is now a guerilla
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war. So it is; perhaps one of the most extraordinary in history. From a Parliamentary Paper issued this morning we find that we have no less than 210,000 men in the field, and we are said to be spending a million and a half sterling per week. But what is the condition of things which is incident to this guerilla war? Your men are being captured by hundreds and shot by scores. A British convoy cannot move safely for any considerable distance in either of these conquered colonies. British garrisons are being besieged in places which six or seven months ago were taken from the enemy, and, in fact, you have throughout the length and breadth of these two newly-incorporated territories a state of war in the legal, practical, and popular acceptation of the term. Surely the first problem the Government have to solve is this—what are the means by which, at the earliest possible moment, that condition of things can be cured? for I agree entirely with the right hon. Gentleman, and I think it is in consonance with the teaching and experience of history, that there is no form of war so exacting and demoralising to both sets of combatants as this guerilla warfare. Look at your soldiers. All the pomp and circumstance of war have gone. There is nothing left of it, for them, but hardships and squalor. Their time and strength are taken up, not in fighting pitched battles or doing the ordinary duties of soldiers, but in the uncongenial task of burning farms, capturing stock, and presiding over the removal of non-combatant women and children. Of work of this kind soldiers very soon tire, and I do not believe that there is any officer in command in South Africa who is not anxious, now that it has reached its present stage, that it should close. If that is the effect upon our own soldiers, we may be sure that the present condition of things is equally disastrous to men fighting on the other side. An illustrious general, recently returned from the field, in a speech made the other day, said there is now hardly anybody left in the field against us in South Africa but mercenaries and bandits. With all deference to him, I venture to doubt the accuracy of that description. Certainly there are leaders in command of forces opposed to us who do not fall within either category. But no doubt it is perfectly true that, whether they are burghers or mercenaries, their condition

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is such that they must live on the country and they will soon be reduced to the necessity of following the role of freebooters and marauders all over the country side. So, then, you have two great machines of devastation carrying on their work side by side in these territories, and it is easy to fore-east the result before many months have passed as the reduction of the whole country to a state of destitution. This justifies the proposal we have made—that Her Majesty's Government, whatever ultimate settlement is meant, should make immediate suggestion to those still in the field and to those who are prisoners of war, such as may tend to put an end to a ghastly and hideous state of things, and accelerate the conclusion of peace which is the necessary preliminary to an ultimate settlement. I do not at all agree—and I do not follow in that respect my hon. friend who moved the resolution—that this is a matter primarily for our generals. In the sphere of military strategy we respect the general, just as an the sphere of technical right we respect it he opinion of the lawyer, but in this, which is, I venture to think, a larger and wider domain—the domain of policy—lawyers may well be silent, and it is the business of the soldier not to give, but to take, orders. I earnestly trust that Her Majesty's Government will look at this matter in a larger and wider point of view, and not confine their consideration to strategical, or supposed strategical, necessities or the strict technicalities of international law. Can anything practical be done to shorten the struggle? One or two suggestions have been made to-night—and I will only refer to them without supplementing them—which might have the effect we desire. First of all, take the case of the prisoners in Ceylon and at St. Helena. I suppose there are there 15,000 burghers of either State—the very backbone of the community. I hope some hon. Members have read, and that those who have not will read, a most interesting account in one of the monthly periodical publications this month, of a visit paid by a most accomplished lady to the prisoners in St. Helena. From that account we find that the prisoners are kept in total ignorance of what is going on in their own country, and I suspect that the only thing that filters through to them from time to time is a vague rumour that this or that farm
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has been burned. Now surely there is an elementary principle of policy and humanity in the suggestion that they should be informed of what is going on, and that they should know, what many of them do not know, that it is the intention of the Government to restore to them their liberty and property, and that they should have means of communicating with their fellow-citizens who are still in arms, and of exercising such influence as they can to compose and bring to an end this most unhappy state of things. Surely such a step is not beyond the resources of the Government? There is, and I will venture to mention it, as regards these prisoners in St. Helena and Ceylon an economic question of considerable magnitude and difficulty. Most of these prisoners are owners of farms, and a largo proportion of this property is subject to mortgages and charges. The farms are idle, the stocks are to a large I extent destroyed, the owners cannot carry on cultivation, and meantime mortgage interest is accumulating, and to an extent the farmers will be quite unable to pay, and I earnestly submit to the consideration of the right hon. Gentleman that unless something effective is done there will be a campaign of foreclosure, mortgagees will take possession of the property, and these men, after suffering temporary expatriation as; prisoners of war, will find themselves permanently banished from their homes. I was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say I that taxation of the new colonies would be resorted to, though I am not sure that the announcement will be welcome to some sections in the Transvaal; but, whether it be welcome or not, it is undoubtedly a simple principle of justice, and whatever funds are necessary for these or other purposes, I hope it is well understood they will be raised on the security of the revenues of the colonies. As regards those still in the field, surely it might be possible after what has been said to-night—and I cannot but think it would be right and proper—to readjust the terms of the already numerous, confused, and conflicting proclamations, so that Boer leaders and their followers may have placed be fore them, in simple language that each one of them can understand, a definite statement that if they surrender their

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arms, leaders and followers alike, they will be entitled at the earliest possible opportunity to resume the exercise of the rights of freedom and the cultivation of the property from which they have for the time being been dispossessed. I believe action of this kind, involving no departure from the principles laid down by Her Majesty's Government, could be adopted, and that within a measurable distance of time it would bring the war to a close, opening the door to that intermediate state of things the right hon. Gentleman sketched to us to-night. As I said at the outset, the Amendment has been useful in eliciting the statement we have heard, and I cannot help thinking that the discussion has shown that there is really practical unanimity in the House as to the lines upon which, in the situation in which we find ourselves, we ought to proceed. The right hon. Gentleman has disclaimed, in eloquent and obviously sincere language, any vindictive spirit or temper in arriving at the ultimate settlement. Would it not be possible in that same spirit with which he is animated to send by the authoritative voice of the British House of Commons, combining the judgment and agreement of both parties in the State, a solemn invitation to those still in arms to surrender, with a certain assurance that if they do so they shall not be prejudiced in person or property, and that it is the firm and fixed resolve of this Parliament, without distinction of party, that in the new state of things which we hope will be evolved from the existing chaos we are going to be true to the pledges given in the first instance, and throughout expressed, to make the country now incorporated in the British Empire in the truest and fullest sense self-governing and self-respecting communities.
MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: I said just now that I would lay the Papers to which the right hon. Gentleman referred on the Table to-night. I forgot at the moment that the Papers are not in my keeping; they are at the War Office, but I have communicated with the War Office, and I am sure they will be laid before the House as soon as possible, though I do not know that the will be to-night.
MR. T. M. HEALY: This war has been described as a just war, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife stated here to-night that there was practical unanimity in all quarters of this
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House as to the manner and the lines of the settlement. He also added that this Amendment would have been justified and done its work if only by eliciting the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies. It, therefore, come to this, so far as I can understand it, that the two sections of the British parties in this House are practically agreed that the Amendment is only a sham Amendment, and that there is no reality in the debate so far as the Liberal Opposition is concerned, and that practically the Liberal Opposition have divested themselves of all right of criticism. I cannot see what is the position of an English Member who starts with the proposition that this is a just war. If it be a just war what right has he to criticise the mode in which it is being conducted by his own country? If it be a just war, and if hon. Members opposite are animated by prudent and patriotic motives, what right is thereto demand on their part statements from the Government which seem to imply that though it be a just war it is being conducted by most unjust methods and under most vindictive-circumstances? I do not admit that this is a just war. I do not take the view that the policy laid down by the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary has the remotest hope of success, and I state, for my own country and for myself, that you are only plunging: your country and South Africa into further difficulties, and you are only involving us in taxation you have no right to impose. The right hon. Gentleman has made two wholly inconsistent statements. In the first place, he has laid down that the forces of those who are waging war against you in South Africa are small and insignificant, and that he hopes in a few months to be able to start some form of civil government in the country. If that statement be true how comes it that you have still 200,000 soldiers there to combat these men? Has it come to this: that the one result of this war' is to prove that twenty Englishmen are equal to one Dutchman? That is really what it comes to. When you ask us to swallow the statements about the generous conduct of the soldiers, of their great valour, and their great bravery, we cannot forget that you have more armed men in South Africa than the whole male population of

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these States together. I cannot help seeing in all this business the same policy of falsehood which has been manifested throughout. The Colonial Secretary hopes soon to establish civil government, but Lord Salisbury says it may take generations, and I am inclined to put my money on Lord Salisbury in the pessimistic view that he expressed in another place—I was going to say the hereditary chamber, but I think, after recent events, the House of Commons rather than the House of Lords, ought really to be called the hereditary chamber. What is the position of the Colonial Secretary? A year and a half ago le started out with the pretence that the difference between him and Kruger was that between a five and a seven years franchise. After the fourteen months war the Outlanders and Transvaalers are told that neither can get the franchise for which so much blood has been spilt, and that it may be generations before even effective local self-government can be established. That is an appalling verdict on the policy of the right hon. Gentleman. Let the negotiations with President Kruger be right or wrong, we now have this avowal after the expenditure of £100,000,000 and the sacrifice of the lives of the bravest and best of the men. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife asked for the issue of a proclamation—as if there had not already been enough of them—to cajole the Boers still under arms to surrender. What is the temptation held out to them? They found their country as one of your generals wrote of our country in the days of Queen Elizabeth—"Your Majesty, "said he, "has nothing now to reign over in Ireland except carcases and ashes, so that the lowing of a cow or the sound of aploughboy's whistle cannot be heard from one end of the country to the other. "That might well be said of South Africa at the present moment. The Colonial Secretary said that only poor huts, such as labourers inhabited in England, had been destroyed, and therefore it would not greatly matter, so far as the question of compensation was concerned. But I read in an English newspaper that De Wet's house, which was destroyed, was erected at a cost of £2,000; grand pianos were given to the flames, and the soldiers cheered as they watched the rosewood furniture burn, while they poured paraffin on his household gods. What
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inducement do you offer De Wet to come in from the veldt when he has a rifle and a horse, and can stop convoys and capture men 400 at a time whenever he pleases? He is to find Sir Alfred Milner installed as Lord Lieutenant of the Transvaal, with a Deputy Lieutenant—probably one of the dismissed members of the late Government. Does anyone who has studied the methods of the British Government in any country in which it has established its supremacy over a subject race suppose that such a prospect will tempt such a man? First of all, the Boers would not believe your words. They would say that you had broken the terms of every proclamation you have issued; that at the Sand River Convention you promised absolute independence; that when you took the Transvaal in 1877 you promised not merely a Crown colony, but a local Parliament; that after Majuba you I promised independence with a suzerainty, and in 1884 by the London Convention gave absolute independence; but that all these Treaties were broken. I wish to give the Boers in the field some slight sketch of what will happen if they surrender. In the first place, every man put over them, from Sir A. Milner down to the humblest magistrate, will be a bitter enemy of the Boer cause, the Dutch régime and the Boer race. In every dispute between the Boers and their neighbours, the English settlers or the Colonials, they will be judged by judges inimical to their interests, and the jury franchise will naturally be so arranged as to exclude every Dutchman from the jury box; and if the jury franchise is not sufficiently artistic for that, there will be a system of "stand by," and challenge to achieve the same result. With regard to education, will not Sir A. Milner establish schools from which is excluded all teaching of the Dutch language—a point upon which the Dutch have the strongest possible feeling—and in which every incident connected with the late war will be given in the school books in the form the most discreditable to the Boers? There will also be laws against newspapers; and, of course, freedom of speech cannot be tolerated. You will not allow public meetings in Ireland. Is it likely they will be permitted in the neighbourhood of battlefields? The Dutch have tenacious memories, and will they not be anxious to celebrate the anniversaries of

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the splendid valour and courage, and stubborn resistance of their race t Can Sir Alfred tolerate a state of things of that kind? What will become of the Transvaal flag? The Transvaal flag will become a treasonable emblem and you must make laws against seditious emblems. These people have watered their flag with their heart's blood, and that is the reason why they must not be allowed to exhibit that flag in public. Any Dutchman in the future who flies the Transvaal flag upon the anniversary of the Battle of Colenso will get at least six months hard labour, for such an act would be regarded as an outrage against his Queen and country. No man is better acquainted with how to conduct these matters than Sir A. Milner, for he has been a Unionist candidate in this country, and he understands the patois of oppression and the jargon of misgovernment as it is spoken in Ireland. He doubtless will not use any of the coarser expressions of Irish government, such as "Do not hesitate to shoot, "and he may not even take away the clothes of his prisoners when they are in gaol, but no doubt he will act entirely according to precedent. It is to that state of things that you invite the co-operation of De Wet, Botha, Delarey and all the other fighting Boer generals. One of the great attractions brought out in the speech of the Colonial Secretary for these gentlemen to surrender is that there are to be three great administrative municipalities established in the Transvaal—on the Birmingham model of course. Can anyone suppose that these municipalities are intended to be set up except to help the British garrison in the Transvaal? Barracks will be wanted for your troops, and forts will be required; the garrisons must have regimental bands in order that certain loyal and patriotic airs may be played on the anniversaries, such as the Annexation of the Transvaal, or the capture of Cronje. Just fancy what festering sources of disaffection and disloyalty such a system will set up. I do not think I have ever heard, as the outcome of the British mind, a more complete scheme for keeping the Boers and the Boer generals in the field than that proposed to-night by the Colonial Secretary. The First Lord of the Treasury did pay these brave men a tribute for their gallantry and the kindness with which they treated the wounded prisoners. A few phrases of that kind
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are much more effective to fighting men than all the talk about municipalities and Crown colonies, and other things of that description. And if these statements be true what becomes of the pretences on which you started out upon this war? If you confess that prisoners are well treated, what about the "grievances" of the Uitlanders who provoked this war? They were not prisoners, but free men. These prisoners had no press or right of public meeting, and now you are obliged to confess that they were treated well by the Boers. What a light that throws upon the petition to the Queen, at 5s. per head, from the 100,000 Uitlanders in the Transvaal! It is only part of the abominable system of hypocrisy that has run through this business from beginning to end. I do not think there would have been so much to say against this war had you started boldly and openly on a buccaneering and piratical policy. If you had put on your signboard, "John Bull and Co, thieves," that would have represented an intelligible policy. But you said the Dutchmen were treating the Uitlanders with injustice, and that they were oppressing the mine owners. Now, when you have got the country into your own hands your position is that for generations you will not be able to establish the system which you went to war to create. As to the mines, I think the tax on dynamite fades into insignificance before the suggestive statement of the right hon. Gentleman to-night. I think the tax on dynamite was 6d. per hundredweight. If that is so, I want to know what will be the royalty on gold. I understand that wherever the Government of the Queen is established the laws of Great Britain are carried. If that be so, then every ounce of gold that has been mined in the Transvaal from the date of Lord Roberts's proclamation annexing the Transvaal will have to pay the Queen's mining royalty. In addition to that, we have the Colonial Secretary's opinion that these places will have to bear an enormous proportion of the cost of the war. That is very satisfactory to me in one sense, but it must be very unsatisfactory to the Chartered Company. The war up to the present, has cost something like £100,000,000, and of that sum Ireland will have to pay from £12,000,000 to £15,000,000. The £16,000,000 which you propose to raise this session involves nearly two

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years of the total revenue of Ireland. I want to ask the House has British statesmanshipcometothis—that there was no other means of bringing about a settlement in South Africa except by the wasting of £100,000,000 of money, by the sacrifice of between 20,000 and 30,000 lives, and by the sending out of this enormous army, 220,000 strong? Have the resources of civilisation been brought to this pass, that you allow your Minister to hail this as a feather in his cap, when that feather has cost you £100,000,000, and to enable the Minister to put it in his cap has cost 30,000 lives? That feather will long be remembered in English history. It is now bedraggled and stained with blood. It is a remarkable fact that those who gained I most by this war, whether in reputation or in dividends, have sacrificed themselves least. We have heard of the Dublin Fusiliers, the City Imperial Volunteers, and the Inniskilling Fusiliers, but who has heard of the Birmingham Blazers? The Prime Minister had two sons at the front—one at Mafeking, and the other who is now on the Treasury Bench. How many had the Colonial Secretary? How many of the shareholders in Tubes, Limited, have taken the field? Has it not come to this: that while the peasantry and the gentry of this country and of Ireland have suffered and died on behalf of your flag, those who have gained most by the war have remained around their cosy firesides at Highbury? Can any of you deny it? In walking through the streets of Dublin I have seen numbers of poor men who have come home from the war, having lost an arm or a leg; I see the reports of the guardians' meetings, at which men and women have been admitted to the workhouse in consequence of the war, and I want to know where the gain or glory or glamour for Ireland comes in? I absolutely deny that there is unanimity on both sides of the House with regard to any part of this policy. From one end of Ireland to the other is nothing but horror and detestation felt towards it. And let me say this is not simply because we are anti-English. I believe that the conduct of the Americans in the Philippines was less excusable than your conduct in the Transvaal. Unlike the Americans in the Philippines, England has some rag of justification for her action. I do not believe the conduct of the English
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army in the Transvaal or, the English generals has been any worse than the conduct of the American generals in the Philippines, where I have read of Catholic churches being tabernacles rifled, and the chalices of the natives pawned in the of San Francisco. There as those from the in unhappy omen, when the right hon. Gentleman wants to justify his policy, that it is to America in the miserable squabble with the Philippines he has to go. It is not because the sentiment of Ireland is anti-English that I condemn this war, but because the war is an outrage on free institutions, because it has been got up at the instance of greedy capitalists, who, I am glad to say, will see their shares go down in the morning when they read the announcement which has been made from the Front Bench; and, above all, we believe so far from fusing the two races together, so far from leading to a good understanding between the two countries, the effect will be to lay up for yourselves the same store of hatred and ill-will and dislike which, in other parts of the world, has been the fate of England whenever she has come into collision with white races. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to say that you would offer these Boers self-government, and that they must be content with whatever form of self-government you offer them. What is more easy to give the outward forms of liberty and to deny the reality? Have the Irish not got the outward form of liberty? The Irish come to this House and are outvoted in every division. In the same way I could have constructed a Constitution for the Boers which would have looked the most perfect thing on paper, but which would cause the Boer to go down on his knees and curse the British Government from the day an Englishman landed in his colony. In their hatred of Englishmen the Boers almost outrivalled the Irish. Now the problem seems, from the Boer point of view, to be an extremely simple one. They can lose nothing by fighting. You have bereft them of their liberty and independence. You have stolen their country and burned down their farms. What has the remaining Boer to expect—call him guerilla, bandit, freebooter, what you like? Absolutely nothing. He is a free man, with a gun on his

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shoulder, and a horse under him, and I should like to know if any man with any ordinary independence, with any touch of spirit in his blood, would surrender that position and exchange it for the position of a British slave. I think these men seem to consider that it is better to be a Boer corpse than a British subject. That seems to me to be the opinion entertained by those holding out. When the war had broken out not much more than a month—when Mafeking and Ladysmith and Kimberley were being besieged—we were told that the Boers were utterly sick of the war, and that they were constrained to join their commandoes by Joubert, De Wet, Botha, Delarey, Cronje, and other generals, and that they were absolutely sjamboked into the trenches. But now that the sjamboks have been burned, you find it still takes 200,000 men to govern the country. If that is correct, and if the pretences which started the war are false, what more reliance can be placed now upon the pretences that you carry it on in hopes for the future which were wrong a year ago? Will not these hopes be just as wrong two years or twenty years hence as now, and may we not in twenty years hence, those of us who survive or those who come after us, be still debating what is called the South African Question, and the condition of the South African colonies? At the present moment your great possessions in China and elsewhere are absolutely imperilled by this absolute locking up of 200,000 troops in South Africa. Does any man imagine that your settled and stable trade in China is not a thousand times more valuable than all the trade in South Africa? And yet in order that a Birmingham leader may have a feather in his cap, 200,000 men are locked up in South Africa, while Russia is matching off with Manchuria, and Germany with Kiou Chiou, and Italy is putting in a demand for a slice, and all the rest of Europe is looking on with satisfaction, and while the total British force in China seems to amount to something less than 8,000 men. That may be a spirited foreign policy, but I do not believe it is either successful or statesmanlike. But while the Irish people have to pay this large sum, they alone, of all the three Kingdoms, get nothing from this war except wooden legs. Occasionally you have bought a horse in Ireland, but taking the
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fifteen millions which we will have to pay for the war, I do not suppose that you will have expended in that country more than, roughly speaking, £50,000 to £100,000. Well, I suppose that ultimately you hope to hunt these Boers down like rats. I do not know how that may be, nor do I see how the great Liberal party can fairly object to that policy once they proclaim this war to be a just one. How can they object to deportation of these men to St. Helena or Ceylon, when Cromwell sent Irishmen to the Barbados, and Liberals put up a statue to the man who did it, and broke his promise of quarter to Irish garrisons 'I Very well, you have hunted these men down like rats, and you have exterminated the last of them in the field, but you have not, so far as I can make out—at all events, you do not admit that you have—destroyed the women and children there. Well, we know that in the time of Queen Elizabeth, James, and William, millions of Irishmen were so exterminated or exiled. But we also know that such of these Boers as return from St. Helena, or survive the climate of Ceylon, will not have the kindest memories of British rule. So far as I can make out, in order to hold the country you must have policemen and blacks and negroes to do the work. Lord Salisbury hinted that greater kindness would be shown to the natives, and that greater kindness will be to enrol a kind of a Dutch Royal Irish Constabulary. So, therefore, you have arranged for yourselves in South Africa and you have planted there a new combustible which will only wait the torch of some opportunity to break out in flames on some future occasion. You admit that you are not loved in Europe. Even Lord Salisbury boasts of your splendid isolation. I fancy you cannot deprive the Boers entirely of arms, but must, in consequence of the wild state of the country, allow them something in the nature of arms to keep down the game and protect themselves from the natives. What the Boers will do is to wait the first opportunity when you are in difficulties, and then they will return to their commandoes. It is all very well to indulge in platform platitudes, but you should recollect that you are dealing with a stubborn race. The Dutch fought the Spaniards for centuries, and were willing to break down their dykes and swamp their country in order to drive out their enemies. The

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Spaniards were, I imagine, at that time as great an empire as you are to-day; hut we have seen the Spanish Empire go down until it has lost its last colonial possession, and the same may befall the British Empire. My sympathies are with the Boers. My hopes are for their freedom and their independence, as settled by your own solemn conventions with them. In repelling unprovoked aggression I wish them success in battle; I wish them success as an army in the field either as guerillas or as a standing army. These are my wishes for them, and I think I am as much entitled to offer up these wishes and aspirations on their behalf as Mr. Fox did in this House for the independence of the revolted American colonies. That was the language they held when they believed that aggressions of an intolerable character were being practised in your colonies. If those were the sympathies of your bygone statesmen in regard to a mere imposition of a tax on imports, how much more, would it be the case here of men with whom you have made three solemn Conventions at different times; whose liberties and independence you guaranteed and whose country, on the colour and pretence of a miserable franchise, you have deluged with blood; whose population you have deported, and over whom, as a Governor, you propose to place a man who went out there determined to have this war, and who has now made the Transvaal a country of carcases and ashes, and whom you now propose to allow to wield the sceptre of power over the ruin he has made. At times there have been heard appeals made to common sense, and there used to be a voice in this House raised on behalf of right—the voice of Mr. Gladstone—that organ-voice which was raised in indignation against every wrong, whether it was in Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland, or the Transvaal itself. Where is there such a voice to-day? We have the Liberal party, like petty Pontius P dates, washing their hands of the guilt of innocent blood. If the Opposition were genuine, or really worthy of their dead Leader, they would have raised their voices to-night, not in the manner in which this debate has been conducted, against a war which was made in order that the Member for West Birmingham should have a feather in his cap, and in order that Sir Alfred Milner might be made the Governor over what
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is called a united South Africa. If the common voice of mankind has any effect on English opinion, it is a remarkable fact that there is not a civilised nation in the world which is in sympathy with the action taken by the English in the Transvaal; that, of course, gives no pause or stay to the policy that you have adopted. But some day, sooner or later, this nice question that you have raised about burning farms may come home to yourselves. We know, of course, that your fleet is very great and your army very powerful, but we have read of late of projects for the invasion of England. No doubt they are as old as William the Conqueror, but one day they may succeed—more improbable events have happened—and then the burning down of your beautiful mansions within ten miles of any of your south-coast railways will bring it home to your mind. Many people, I among others, yet entertain a superstitious opinion that there is a judgment of the Almighty for the deeds of nations as well as the deeds of individuals, and we may be content to wait God's own good time for the vengeance which is His.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: We have reached a time of the night when a debate assumes a particular phase, and when many hon. Members have unfortunately engagements or distractions elsewhere to which they wish to do full justice. Therefore I think it is right that I should at once express the view I take of this Amendment. It is an Amendment for which I may say that I am doubly responsible, because I quite agree with the action of my hon. friends who moved and seconded it in such an admirable way, while it also bears out the policy which I endeavoured yesterday to impress upon the House, and which I thought the Government ought to pursue. But we have had from the Secretary for the Colonies a speech which I at once frankly say is very much more favourable to our object than we anticipated. We had yesterday a most kindly and benevolent view of the question put before us by the First Lord of the Treasury, and he not only refrained from giving any definiteness to the excellent intentions he professed, but he refused to give that definiteness; and, therefore, I cannot say that he left the question from our point of view in a very

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satisfactory position. We had another speech, which we read this morning, delivered in another place, which certainly appeared to go in a diametrically opposite direction, because the Prime Minister said from his place in the House of Lords that in his estimation self-government would not be given to the inhabitants of these I two countries for many years, and even for generations. If that was the best prospect held out by the Government of course it would be no inducement to us. But the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies has practically accepted this Amendment—in fact, I would ask the Leader of the House whether it is not possible for the Government without derogation of its dignity to accept the words as they stand. The Government cannot, of course, accept a hostile Amendment enforced upon them by a vote of the House, but they can accept any Amendment which is to their own taste and according to their policy. If, however the right hon. Gentleman does not incline towards the words, and if he has some objection I of detail, I do not force the Amendment upon him; but we are left in the position that there is apparently unanimity on the main question in the House. We all think, as has been said again and again. I that statesmen should have more to do in this matter in its present stage than the mere soldier. I do not wish to speak with any disrespect of the soldier or of the generals, but the political view ought to come into full play as well as the mere military view, and certain promises or expectations ought to be held out in the most public way to the men now in the field, to the population generally, and to the prisoners who are exiled, in order that they may know exactly what are the intentions, the benevolent intentions, of the people of this country and of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman went further, and sketched a future scheme of government for these two colonies. For the most part that scheme of government appeared to be very much what we should desire to see adopted, but I cannot accept it until we see its full details. We are not expected to do so; but, putting that aside, there was in the right hon. Gentleman's speech an acceptance of the general principle which we wish to enforce for the approval of the House and for adoption by the Government. I do not think that
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this ought to be left where it is. I think we have done good service in bringing, forward this Amendment, because it puts in an explicit form that which is the general sentiment throughout the thinking and feeling men in this country. We have put it in that form, and the Government have accepted it; for I understand that that was a little more than a, conversation across the floor of the House; it was rather a solemn acceptance by the Government. If we could read the feeling of the House of Commons, there was a unanimous acceptance of the principle embodied in the Amendment. In these circumstances I think it would be well that we should; have no division, because we do not wish that we should appear to be divided on the subject. Although in some cases it is necessary to take a division in order to enforce some particular doctrine or theory, in this case what we ask has been conceded substantially by the Government, and therefore we should probably gain nothing, by taking further steps in the matter. If my hon. friends are willing to withdraw the Amendment, I should be very glad if the House would give them leave to do so.
MR. JOHN BURNS (Battarsea)said, fourteen months ago this country entered into war with the two Boer Republics. He believed then, and his belief was the same now, that the war was due to a misunderstanding, that the misunderstanding was not worth war, and that the war might have been avoided by tact, temper, and arbitration. The House was told fourteen months previously that the war was levied neither for goldfields nor for territory, but for the purpose of enforcing equal rights for all white men. Those declarations appeared to have been forgotten by the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary in some of the proposals he had just laid before the House. In to that war the British people had entered, against his advice and his strongest utterances in the district in which he had been born and bred, in a confident, light-hearted, and optimistic spirit. They were told that they would have their Christmas dinner in Pretoria; that the war was to cost£10,000,000, and that one army corps would suffice to teach the recalcitrant Boers that British rule was better than local self-government. The Government had been a year out in

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their calculations with regard to the time, £90,000,000 in cash; they had required six army corps more than it was expected would be necessary; and each successive general who had returned home had said, as previous generals had I been saying months before, that the war was over. Yet the war still went on, and it was because he opposed this war in its initiation that he stood in his place in the House upon the first opportunity to protest against its continuing, and to tell hon. Gentlemen, inside the House and outside the House, who expected fourteen months ago that the Boer Republics would succumb in so short a time, that they were just as much out in their calculations with regard to the suggested scheme of the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary, which had just been placed before the House, bringing peace and contentment to the Boers a year hence, as they were in their other calculations fourteen months ago. On the General Election he had emerged from the stormiest campaign which he had ever fought. He had fought the campaign, into the petty personalities of which it was not necessary to go, and won his election upon one issue and one alone. That issue was, "is this war necessary," and 6,000 London workmen, by returning him to Parliament, said "No." The one important question before the House at the present moment was the settlement of South Africa. That question he also put to his constituency, and 6,000 London working men, after fifty meetings, the like of which he had never held before, returned him to his seat for the purpose of demanding that the war should be brought to a termination upon the basis of giving these two Republics that independence which they formerly possessed; the self-government for which they fought and died; and the right to do as they liked with their own, and in which ho wished them all success. He held that view when it was condemned and unpopular, and he held it now when the instinctive justice of the British people was beginning to prevail, and their inherent love of fair play was gaining ground now that the Rhodesian press had prostituted itself so far as to disgust even those who earned their livelihood by writing the lies which it contained. He believed that the people, now that they were sober and clothed in their right mind, if they were
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asked upon a perfect register to express, their opinion, would support the views he put to the House of Commons. He disagreed with the Amendment. It was neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. It was, in a word, but a note of interrogation to the Colonial Secretary. And he disagreed with the Colonial Secretary's response, which, as the facts would prove, was nothing more or less than a counsel of despair. It was a stopgap expedient that he had put before the House to tide over some temporary difficulties, and instead of bringing peace to South Africa and conciliating the Boer Republics, it would only retard and confuse a permanent settlement. It whispered settlement to the ear, but brought no hope to the heart of the men who had been so sturdily fighting. The right hon. Gentleman said, at the end of fourteen months, that he was prepared to do certain things in the future, as if there was no past to wipe out; but it took two to make a bargain. We had to hear what the Boers had to say to the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman, and unless he was very much mistaken—and he hoped he might be—he was perfectly convinced that the settlement would provoke instead of conciliate and would cause confusion where a more generous suggestion would have met with acceptance by the Boers. The proposal did nothing for the personnel, for those who had been governing Africa, or those who had taken a prominent part in the negotiations with the Boers. It left the personnel untouched and unchanged, and so long as that was the case, and the personnel which involved this country in the war was still stationed in South. Africa, the war would go on. It was because he disagreed with the personnel in South Africa that he disagreed with the proposals of the Colonial Secretary, and he predicted them being an utter failure. There was one good feature in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and one only, and that was its manly and conciliatory tone. And had the negotiations fourteen months ago been carried on by speeches couched in that spirit, and expressed in that mode, and the country educated before the event, it would have averted a calamity which had involved two nations in ruin, and we should not have had 12,000 of our brave lads' bones bleaching; in South Africa, and should have saved the expenditure of £100,000,000. This war had damaged our prestige, and almost

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ruined our reputation as a just people. He welcomed the change in the tone and temper of the right hon. Gentleman. Apart from that there was another thing which might create a misunderstanding. The right hon. Gentleman, in his scheme, quite overlooked the fact that the Boers would never sacrifice that freedom for which they were fighting and dying like men. No one would suppose from the right hon. Gentleman's speech that we had 250,000 men at death-grips with 20,000 of the bravest guerilla troops that ever took the field against us or any other country. The right hon. Gentleman ignored that in his proposals How long was the military rule to last for the pacification of the country? For five or six years at least. After that there was to be an intermediate stage. How long was that to last? For another twenty years, after which was to come Crown colony government, and then the gradual devolution of municipal government in selected areas in which the Boers were not to have delegated right or personal right, but these delegates were to be nominated by somebody in Pretoria. He did not think that would suit the loyal Dutch, who had always been on our side, because it would mean not only martial law for the Transvaal and Orange Colony, but Cape Colony as well, as it was impossible to prescribe orders for any particular geographical area when the population was discontented and intermixed. The result would be a crisis in the political, social, and economic situation, with a fall in employment wages. There would be an increase of destitute white men from all over the world, who, sympathising with the Boers, would bring about a condition of things in which the last stage would be worse than the first. He objected to the scheme of the Colonial Secretary, because it appeared to him that the Boers, in order to get back to their peaceful occupations, would have to sacrifice everything they had been fighting for. That would not make for peace, or permanent settlement. The scheme was irreconcilable with the statement made by Lord Salisbury on the previous evening in another place, in which he had said that it would probably take a generation or two, perhaps several, to bring about a settlement in South Africa. He preferred in this matter to follow the judgment of Lord Salisbury rather than that of the Colonial Secretary, and he thought it was a calamity for this country that for the past five
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years the Colonial Office could not have been filled concurrently with the Foreign Office by Lord Salisbury, for then, in all probability, the war would not have occurred. This scheme not only conflicted with Lord Salisbury's statement; it was not in harmony with the statement made by the First Lord of the Treasury when he, with that considerate kindness which, during this war, he had conspicuously shown, put forward his views. But when the House was told that the war was to be prosecuted with vigour and unremittingly, and when they were told that it might take a generation or two before popular government would be secured, such statements precluded the possibility of any such settlement as that proposed by the scheme put forward by the Colonial Secretary. It was one of the main proposals of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme to govern the people of one country in their own country by another people who knew nothing about it. He wished to remind the House how it had been misled in all the Estimates brought forward with regard to the war, and to briefly mention what it was that we were engaged in. What were the facts with regard to this war? In November last our casualties were 3,739 men hors de combat in the month, or more than in many of the preceding months, not including 10,000 men suffering from enteric in our Cape hospitals. Two hundred and fifty thousand troops in South Africa, and more wanted. Those soldiers who had a right to be relieved of their military duties months ago were war sodden and wasted, horses were dying by the thousand, and moreover our soldiers were face to face with the state of things which was not such as they expected. The Boer was to be dirty, ignorant, and, above all, corrupt, the whole of which story had been done away with by the speech of the Colonial Secretary, who, after fourteen months, had said that the Boers were gallant soldiers and treated our wounded excellently well. He did not require to have £100,000,000 spent and 30,000 of his fellow-subjects to die to emphasise that fact. He might be taking a pessimistic view, but he did not think so. First of all, the whole thing was to be settled when we took Pretoria. Pretoria was taken in June, and there had been 25,000 casualties since we had taken the Boers' chief cities; we had lost more guns than we had ever surrendered to any

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former enemy, including those which we lost to America through a very similar blunder committed by a foolish king and a foolish Parliament 100 years ago. The whole of this had been done to give votes to men who did not want them, to confer a franchise on Uitlanders, who whenever they had no chance of fighting against us were trying to assassinate Lord Roberts. Those were the men for whom we had gone to war. Eleven of them had been recently arrested, and there was not a Dutchman among them. This was an interesting side - light on what occurred, and he ventured to predict that the casualities, many though they were when Pretoria was taken, would be nothing to what they would be three years hence, unless the war was settled upon lines which granted independence to the Boer Republics. What were the elements which ought to make for generous concessions in this matter? In the first place the European world was against us, as was also America, for the reason that 120 years ago York Town taught a lesson to a foolish king and a still more foolish Parliament who thought they could impose upon America what the Colonial Secretary's scheme sought to impose on Africa. They fought us and beat us, and Lord Chatham then, and he now was happy to say that we deserved defeat, and as a result there had been 120 years of hatred against this country, because the sense of injustice still rankled in their breasts. America was against us, and for the independence of the Boer Republics. Little Switzerland, which had always looked upon this country as a sanctuary where a man could speak the thing he thought, regretted the new diplomacy which had effected so wonderful a change in this country during the last few years. Belgium was also against us, Prance and Germany. With the exception of the Kaiser, there could not be found a German in the country who would accept the Colonial Secretary's scheme. The colonies were not with us; that is to say, they did not come because they thought the war was just, they came to save us from an Imperial disaster. We had tested them once with the Soudan, and then with this crime, and though the Government might attempt to summon the patriotic spirit from the vasty deep, a third time it would not respond. He believed that had the late election been fought on manhood suffrage and a new register the verdict would have been
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reversed. The Government had only obtained four seats as a result of the poll, though how those seats were obtained he did not intend to enquire. We could not afford to have the desolation of a country, the destruction of farms, and the deportation of population much longer. The hon. Member for the Ecclesall division of Sheffield said that it was all right. If the hon. Baronet had had a gun in his hand and been one of Rundle's half-starved troopers, and had seen farms destroyed of men he was beginning to respect, in order that Rhodes might be enriched—
SIR E. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT: I saw it all except the increased riches of Mr. Rhodes.
Mr. JOHN BURNS: He knew what the hon. Member would have to do in such circumstances. He would be ordered to make a strategical, movement to the rear in order that he should see nothing except what suited those in command. All this was going, on, and what for? Because we were too proud to admit that we were wrong in this war. Whom were they going to allow to be the medium of conveying even the Colonial Secretary's scheme to the Boers? Sir Alfred Milner. He had great sympathy for a bold man struggling with adversity. He wished Sir Alfred Milner success in whatever the Government, might ask him to do, if it made for permanent peace, but he did not believe they could achieve it through the man who had declared the policy of "Never again." He could not be liked, by the Dutch, who knew that he found fun in shooting at a dummy of President Kruger at a shooting gallery. Until they minimised the political difficulty by having some one personally more acceptable to the Boers than Sir Alfred Milner they could not get any settlement, and they would have to fight right out to the bitter end. They might kill all the Boer men in South Africa, but so long as there was a pregnant Boer woman or mother left the struggle would go on even with women for many years. The 16,000 or 17,000 Boer prisoners some day must be released, and they would go back to where their hearthstones had been, where their desolated farms now were, and they would fight for them as our forebears fought for their liberties in Scotland nearly two hundred years-ago, and as Irishmen fought for their

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homes in more recent times. If they thought that Sir Alfred Milner was going to destroy this spirit in the Boers they were mistaken. If the Colonial Secretary thought that exhausting and wasting war would make these men tractable he was greatly mistaken. He did not believe there would be any surrender for years. There would be no settlement short of independence, and until that was granted this war would go on. But whilst the soldier was doing his portion of the work the statesman should do his. He believed that a soldier should only be asked to do soldier's work. Officers and men had done their work, and they had earned their respite. The time had come when the soldier should have a rest, and when the statesman should begin, and when politicians should accept responsibility for the mischief which had been done, and extricate South Africa from the turmoil in which it was placed. It was most refreshing now to see how wisdom came after the event. We were going to give no compensation to the British colonists. If the right hon. Gentleman had only said that with regard to the franchise two years ago we should have had no war at all. We were to have a Crown colony, with Sir Alfred Milner as Governor. That was mo suggestion at all. It was proposed that beyond being High Commissioner for a country larger than England, Scotland, and Ireland, he was to be Governor of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony. Why it was impossible. They were asking too much when they imposed this duty upon him. He was to have Lieutenant-Governors, and then there were to be executive councils. Who was to nominate these councils—Cecil Rhodes or Messrs. Beit, Eckstein, and Co.? The Government was under a delusion if they thought they could differentiate the treatment of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. They could not give them differential treatment. If they attempted it it would fail, because blood was thicker than water. They were to consult local opinion. Why consult local opinion now? Why did not they do it before this war broke out? Having burned their fingers they were now trying to save their arms. His answer to all that was, "It won't do." It would only illuminate the folly of the negotiations between this country and the Boers for the last five years. It indicated that we
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should have a complete change in our system of treating with them. If he had his way that change would be to have the Colonial Secretary out of his office at once, Sir Alfred Milner home from the Cape, and a cooler, wiser, more patient, and more tactful man sent to succeed him; and he should have a captain's guard put round Mr. Cecil Rhodes tomorrow morning, because so long as he and his rascals were at large in South Africa there could be no peace there. When he was on his trial here the South Africa Committee whitewashed him. The Colonial Secretary described him as a man of honour; and even to-day he was strong with the Government, as was proved by an extraordinary contract for guns with a German firm. They had heard that twenty-seven batteries of guns had been made for this Government. Who signed the order? Cecil Rhodes. How was it that the only criminal in South Africa was allowed to escape? The Colonial Secretary said he was going to consult legal opinion. Were Sir Alfred Milner's councillors to be the nominees of Cecil Rhodes, as they were? If so, there was an end to the prospect of peace in South Africa. Some would say, "The hon. Member for Battersea is not a politician or a diplomatist." If to act in the way certain people did he hoped he never would be. If to involve free countries in all the horror they had witnessed was statesmanship, he never wished to be a statesman. He wanted to see a settlement of this war. He wanted a better scheme than that suggested by the Colonial Secretary. He wanted the British people to recognise this fact: that anything short of independence would dissatisfy the Boers, would be unacceptable to the Orange Free State, and would lead to permanent chaos and ruin, and the ultimate loss to Great Britain of South Africa. The wisest, permanently safest, most generous, the boldest, and the proper thing to do was for this great country to say that the time had arrived when they should make some measure of reparation to these two small Republics. What was more, he believed that now was our opportunity. The Colonial Secretary said they were brave men and the world testified that they were in a military sense better soldiers than ourselves. Everyone recognised the superiority of Mr. Kruger as a writer of despatches to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. We

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were beginning the century mosity and jealousy and suspicion upon this country because of its spread-eagleism during the past six years. We could not afford to keep locked up in South Africa 250,000 of our soldiers for a cause that was not worth the death of a single grenadier, for an object which twenty years hence every Briton would be ashamed of having subscribed to. The present situation had arisen from a succession of blunders that any politician of ordinary ability might have avoided, and which posterity would curse us for having allowed this country to drift into against the sober judgment of the common people, and against the wish of our friends in all parts of the globe. He came straight from an election where he preached the independence of the Boer people and condemned this country for the action it had taken. For two months his wife and himself were subjected to treatment such as no Uitlander was ever subjected to in South Africa. He had for nine consecutive days to stand in the passage of his own door with one of Killick's best cricket-bats in his hand, resolved that he would fill his area with Rhodesian rascals and blackguards if they ventured to attack. Jew salesmen from Covent Garden and Billingsgate had engaged roughs to smash his windows and morally and physically intimidate him, but the better class of Conservative workmen were now endorsing the attitude he had taken up. He condemned the policy which was being pursued because he wished to see Greater Britain greater in the best sense of the word. He did not want South Africa to be a second America. He opposed their policy because he believed it to be fraught with danger and disaster to the British race, probably in the near future, and with threatenings of our pre-eminence as a great political people. He asked for the independence of the Boers to be restored to them, with equal rights for every white man. Until this was done this war would go on. The war was conceived in selfishness, begot in money, and pursued with ignorance and blundering of the worst possible kind. He wished to see all that swept on one side and freedom granted to the people for its own sake, instead of a scheme of government founded on the fraudulent Throgmorton Street and Exchange rascals for whose war had been fought.
Sir E. ASHMEAD-BABTLETTsaid he would not have spoken at the present time, but for the remarkable and fantastic speech to which they had just listened. Although the hon. Member for Battersea received the support of nearly 6,000 working men at the recent election, there were over 5,800 votes cast in the opposite direction. He wished to call the attention of the House to what the hon. Member had said with regard to the Uitlanders. The hon. Member seemed to be labouring under some extraordinary misapprehension as to the meaning of the word "Uitlander." He seemed to think that the Uitlanders in the Transvaal were what they would call "foreigners"—Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen—men of the nationalities to which the eleven men belonged who were deported for plotting against the life of Lord Roberts. The majority of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal were Britons, and the hon. Member had been guilty of a gross injustice to them when he said that they did not fight in the war.
MR. JOHN BURNS: The only honest Uitlanders were the Northumberland, Durham, and Cornish miners who came home and would not fight.
SIR E. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT: There were 30,000 British Uitlanders in Johannesburg, and they were driven from the Transvaal by gross injustice before the war began, and from among these some of the most gallant fighting men were recruited. It was monstrous that they should be misrepresented in that House. The Imperial Light Horse, consisting of Uitlanders, had sacrificed their lives on the battlefield. They were the men who showed such splendid courage in the defence of Ladysmith—e.g., British Uitlanders from Johannesburg. Many other corps, and especially mounted corps, made up of the same class, had shown great courage and skill in warfare, and had been of much service to our arms. He protested against the way in which the hon. Member for Battersea had thought fit to stigmatise these gallant men. He did not think it necessary to defend Mr. Rhodes in any detail.
MR. JOHN BURNS: Will the hon. Gentleman quote the South Africa Committee's opinion of Mr. Rhodes?
SIR E. ASHMEAD-BARTLETT: No, I it is not my business to quote the South Africa Committee's opinion of Mr. Rhodes.
MR. SPEAKER: I must remind the House that the question of Mr. Rhodes and the South Africa Committee is not before the House.
SIR E. ASHMEAD-BARTLETTsaid he had had an opportunity, of which he was very proud, of accompanying Lord Roberts and the forces under his command, and he shared to the full the privations of the troops. He did not think the hon. Member for Battersea would have enjoyed the positions in which he frequently found himself. From his own personal experience he was able to say that Mr. Rhodes had been the life and soul of the defence of Kimberley, and had devoted much of his time to the relief of the starving population of that place and of the wounded, both British and Boer. When, owing to the loss of a convoy, the army before Paardeberg was almost starving, Mr. Rhodes collected every cart and wagon he could find and sent them out laden with provisions for the service of our Army. He protested against the language that had been employed that night against a man who was one of the greatest living Englishmen, and who had saved South Africa for this country.
MR. C. P. SCOTT: I do not think that the House is greatly concerned to-night either with the character of Mr. Rhodes or the conduct of the Uitlanders. My own opinion of Mr. Rhodes is that we owe this war to him, because if it had not been for the Raid we should not have had the war, and, therefore, on him rests as great a responsibility as ever rested on any human being. As for the Uitlanders, no doubt, like other people, they have good and bad among them, and I agree with the hon. Member for Battersea that the best of them came home and refused to fight. We are face to face to-day not with questions of this kind, which are largely historical and personal, but with as great a political problem as ever any people were called upon to solve. What is it that we have got to do? I put aside the military question. Let us imagine—and it requires some stretch of imagination—that this war is at an end. What have we to do then? We have got to govern a people upon whom, for a good or a bad reason, you have inflicted the direst calamities, and from whom you have taken those things they value most in the world. We propose to do this at a distance of 6,000 miles from our
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shores, and not only that, but after you have travelled that distance by sea you have to travel 1,500 miles by land. How is it proposed that this country, great and resourceful as it is, shall permanently hold in subjection a people as brave, as stubborn in their love of freedom, and as true in their patriotism as ourselves? How is it proposed that we shall govern these people—I do not say to-day or to-morrow, but how are we going to do it permanently? That is the problem we have before us, and that is the problem which should have been present to the minds of our statesmen at every stage of the war. I rejoice at the marked and auspicious, change of tone in the Colonial Secretary to-day. The right hon. Gentleman is necessarily a potent influence in the councils of the Government, and I hope we may look upon this change of tone,, although we saw little to correspond with it in the utterances of his nominal chief, as pointing to what is to be the tone and temper of the Cabinet, and I hope also it is a reflection of a change of tone which has come over the councils of an even more potent influence in South Africa. We cannot expect a man after he has inflicted an infinite calamity on his country to turn round and say he has been wrong, but I do think it is a first sign of grace to see him speaking with decency and temper in this House of our opponents in this war. The right hon. Gentleman has accompanied that change of tone with the announcement of certain changes of policy, but I do not think those changes are very important. There was a gap in the course of development which he sketched out. He did not tell us how we were to start these changes. He told us he wished to grant, as soon as possible, municipal self-government—an excellent thing; that he wished to repatriate the exiled Boers—also an excellent thing; that he wished those whose farms had been burned, and whose means of livelihood had been destroyed, to be treated with generosity—another excellent thing; but he did not tell us how these things were to be brought about. The first thing these men want to know is, what is going to happen to them if they lay down their arms. Is there to be a complete amnesty? They want to know, secondly, how they are going to live in their own country. We are given no information upon either of these points. The right

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hon. Gentleman did not tell us that the leaders of the Boers now in arms could claim amnesty; on the contrary, he told us there were some of them to whom it would be unwise and impolitic to extend an amnesty. That is absolutely insufficient. Nothing short of a generous and complete amnesty to the whole of those in the field, provided only they will lay down their arms, will have any effect whatever. As to the repatriation of these poor people, how is it to be done? Obviously, it will be a very costly matter. It is all very well to speak of these farms as being but poor establishments. I dare say they are, but there are a great many of them, and there are not only the farms, but also the stock. The whole of South I Africa is held in stock-farms; without the stock the farms are useless. You have swept the country nearly bare of cattle and provisions, and it will be no small matter to restore not only the houses but also the stock of these people to enable them to live. The very first thing a statesman has to do in approaching this problem is to decide who is to pay, and what is to be the machinery for re-stocking these farms and for putting the people back on the land. The right hon. Gentleman indicated that that was not a matter for which we were responsible, but that the colonies would be responsible. What does he mean by that? The colonies cannot pay until they have money. The Free State is a poor State; it will be years and years before it has enough to pay its way; it has no gold mines, and we robbed it of its diamond mines; it is a purely agricultural people, and what prosperity it had was obtained almost entirely by trade with the Transvaal, and the Transvaal is now ruined. Take the Transvaal. The Transvaal is a poor State if you regard it simply as an agricultural community; the only wealth it has—and what a curse it has been to it—is the gold. Gold can only be got at when the country is settled, and even then how long will it be before the mines begin to pay? Everybody will tell you that it will be some years before the gold in dustry can be got properly to work again, so that you will not get any money out of the Transvaal. That pre-supposes that the' country is settled and that you have something like stable order, but before you can get that you must get rid of these bands of armed men. It is, therefore, a circle in which we are walking. It is perfectly idle to tell us that the
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colonies must pay. This country has got to pay, and it will get the greatest value for any money it has ever spent if the sending back of these people produces any degree of contentment in that devastated land. I am not very sanguine as to the future of these States. We have to deal with a people of indomitable spirit. When they do lay down their arms I think they will say to us, "Well, you have conquered us; govern us." They will have nothing to do with us or our Government, but will stand and bide their time; they will nurse the grievances, and the griefs, and the awful memories which we are burning into the national conscience and mind of that people. But we are bound to do what we can. The task may not be a very hopeful one, but we are bound to approach it, and so far from approaching it in the spirit of conferring some great favour because we are restoring some little portion of that which we have destroyed or taken away, we ought to be grateful for anything we can do to restore any approach to prosperity and any degree of contentment in that country. So far from taking a lofty attitude and thinking we are treating the people with generosity we ought to feel that we owe them an infinite reparation. [Ministerial laughter.] I am quite aware that that is not the opinion of hon. Gentlemen opposite. It is not to be supposed they would take that view, and I do not expect them to. If they believed, as I believe, that by this war they had inflicted the direst blow upon the Empire of which they profess to be so proud, that they had struck at every principle of freedom and of the rights of nationalities for which this country through history has been famous as the champion, that by the expenditure of £100,000,000 and the loss of thousands of lives they have only created a political problem infinitely harder than that which they had to solve before the war began, why, of course, it would be more than human nature could bear. That is why they dare not face the facts. That is why they shut their eyes to truths which are as palpable as the daylight. That is why they will go on groping in the dark. If they did but dare to face what is the truth there would be a little possibility that they might evolve some degree of order out of the chaos they have created. The problem, I admit, is a cruel and hard one. It is possibly insoluble; I think it-may be insoluble; but at least we have

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got to try to solve it. For that task we must have a little courage. It is all very well to talk about courage in the field. That has never been lacking on the part of Englishmen. We now need something more than that, something more rare; we need political courage. I know there is real and grave danger in extending any large measure of political rights to a people just emerging from a cruel and devastating war. But there is danger in every course, and the only question we have to consider is which is the course with least danger and most honour. I say without hesitation that the only course consonant with honour, and at the same time the safest—though it is not free from danger—is to grant to these people at once a large measure of self-government, to run the risk, to give them at least a foretaste of what you say you have in store for them. What are these people to think when the Prime Minister states in the House of Lords that it may be generations before they receive this self-government? If we wait for generations, if we wait for one generation, what prospect is there that we shall ever be able to grant it? This thing will not grow easier, and unless we are prepared now and here to make a beginning I believe the time will never come when we shall feel it to be safe to extend to these people the liberties of which we talk so much, but are prepared to concede so little. We have reached one of the turning points in this long business, and am glad there is at least some sign that the Government are prepared—and I trust the administration in South Africa -are also prepared—to look at matters in a different light. But it is useless to indulge in mere generalities and the expression of good intentions. [Ironical Ministerial cheers.] Well, if hon. Gentlemen think I have been too general I shall be only too delighted if they will give me the opportunity of being more particular. You have got to approach this matter in a broad and courageous spirit. It is not for me—the House would not listen to me I did—to draw up an elaborate scheme of self-government. I would say this, if you begin with a Grown colony you will end with a Crown colony. You will never get any further. But I suppose the matter is past praying for. We shall doubtless muddle along as we have muddled along before, but I do not think we shall get from our political muddling much more advantage than
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from our military muddling. Unless we are prepared to offer something more than mere vague assurances, and to offer definite terms and conditions to the individual who will surrender, and to the whole of these armed bands, including the leaders, and also to give them some immediate instalment of self-government, so that they may see we are in earnest, we may as well give up the whole business, and simply rely upon force. The powers of this country are almost unlimited, and the spirit of our people is so great that we are prepared to go through any calamities rather than surrender in a cause which we believe to be just and necessary. [Ministerial cheers.] I am quite prepared to credit hon. Gentlemen opposite with holding that conviction. All I appeal for is that they will endeavour to look at the facts fairly and squarely. Every day disproves some prophecy to which they have given credence, and shows that they have miscalculated every military, moral, and political force with which they had to deal. It is now time that they should try to realise things as they are in order that they may not plunge the country further into an abyss of disaster and disgrace.
MR. KEIR HARDIE: I am one of those who have been saying things outside the House about the war because I happen to hold strong opinions concerning it. I am opposed to all war in the abstract. The civilisation and the Christianity of the nineteenth century should have produced some other method of settling disputes than an appeal to brute force. But apart from that general predilection, I am opposed to this war in particular on two main grounds; first, because I convinced myself, by as careful a study as time and circumstances would permit, of the literature relating to the history of South Africa, and of the conduct of the negotiations which preceded the war, that the war was unnecessary and unjust; and, secondly, because I also convinced myself that the war would have an effect the exact opposite of that intended—that so far from extending the Empire the inevitable result must be the curtailing of the Empire. You cannot build up an Empire of free peoples by force. You may hold coloured races and undeveloped peoples in subjection by force, but you cannot hold Europeans, with all the strength, which an agricultural life gives, under the conditions existing in South Africa. It is

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not a question of the Transvaal which is now at stake. We are face to face with not only the possibility but the probability of the loss of South Africa. The Dutch of the Cape, it will not be denied, were loyal subjects of the Queen previous to the outbreak of the present war. Today, as one old Dutch clergyman expressed it, they are loyal because they are compelled to be. There is all the difference in the world between a loyalty held by compulsion and a loyalty the outcome of respect, esteem, and affection. If the war in the Transvaal cost nothing else than the loss of the loyalty of the Cape Dutch, that would have been a price far too great to have paid for any advantages the Transvaal is likely to bring. I have special pleasure in having the opportunity of being in the House on the evening which marks the beginning of a new departure in our South African policy. Like preceding speakers, I could have wished, since a change had been agreed upon, as it evidently had, that it might have been a more generous change. Much has been said as to the encouragement which those holding my own opinions concerning the war have given to the Boers to continue fighting by expressing their sympathy with them, but I venture to submit to the House that even if all that has been said in that respect be true it has not given one tithe of the encouragement to continue fighting which the speech of the light hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary to-night will give. When the news filters through that at length the Cabinet has condescended to abandon its rigid attitude of unbending determination to insist upon unconditional surrender on the part of men in the field, the predominant feeling in the minds of those men will be the old military maxim, "Keep the enemy on the run." They will feel that they have gained half their battle, and that they only require to continue fighting long enough to achieve the end they have in view. But apart altogether from this view of the matter, I regret exceedingly the method which is to be adopted to have the new proposals brought under the notice of the men who are still fighting. It seems that the old policy is to be continued of sending out semi-authorised messengers, male and female, to beg and appeal to the leaders of the Boers to surrender their arms. Failure has attached itself to that policy in the past as it has to every other
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undertaken by the Government in connection with the war, and failure must again dog the footsteps of any like attempt. The tributes paid to the Boers to-night and last evening convinced the House, if it required convincing, that the men who are in the field against us are not merely men of courage but men of honour and self-respect. They are fighting probably as much for the principle of being treated as men as from any other cause. These men are patriots in the fullest sense of the word. You ought to ask for an armistice between the contending forces to enable the terms of peace to be discussed. If the House desires, and if the Government desire, that the Boers shall cease fighting; if they desire to give the new terms an opportunity of being considered on their merits, the Government should go the length of declaring to those men now in the field an armistice for one month to give the terms an opportunity of being considered. If it is said that that would compromise the dignity of this nation, my reply is that, with regard to this war, the nation has no longer any dignity to compromise. In the end the war must come to this, and the sooner this advice is accepted and acted upon the better it will be for ourselves and for them. Some things have been said to-night concerning the conduct of the war, especially in relation to the burning of farms. But before I pass on to that question I should like to call the attention of the occupants of the front Government Bench to two questions in connection with the administration of affairs in South Africa, to which I shall ask for an explanation. There is first of all the statement repeated over and over again—and, so far as I am aware, it has not yet been officially contradicted—that conscription is being enforced at Johannesburg. I desire to know upon what authority Sir Alfred Milner is enforcing conscription upon British subjects as a condition to being allowed to return to what is nominally British territory. Is he acting according to law, and, if so, what law? If Sir Alfred Milner is not acting under law, I wish to know will he be prevented from taking one more downward step in his mad career? A great conference of the Dutch people has recently been held at Worcester, and we have been told that a great number of troops have gathered in the locality to preserve the peace. Those who, like myself, take part occasionally

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in labour disputes know exactly what that means. In this case not only have the troops been called in to preserve the peace, but cannon have been mounted on all the surrounding hills commanding the open space in which the meetings are being held. And why? These people are British subjects. They are meeting together unarmed, as they have a constitutional right to do, to discuss matters of grave public importance affecting them and affecting us, and why do we permit this insult, this incitation to rebellion, to be held out to these men as is done by the mounting of guns in the manner I have stated? I will now pass to the other part of my remarks, chiefly with regard to the burning of the farms. I want to submit to the House that, in this regard, as in some others, the proclamations of Lord Roberts and our other generals, if not illegal, at least are contrary to the provisions of the Hague Convention for the carrying on of war between civilised countries. Article 4 of that Convention provides in regard to prisoners of war—
"All their personal belongings except arms, horses, and military papers, remain their property."
MR. SPEAKER: If the hon. Member looks at the Amendment he will see that a discussion as to whether the war has been carried on according the provisions of the Hague Convention does not come within the terms of the question before the House, and is not relevant.
MR. KEIR HARDIE: I thought that, as several other speakers had been allowed to go rather wide of the subject, the same licence would have been granted to me. I do not know that I have any more to say in regard to the terms of settlement. I feel very strongly with regard to the opinion expressed by some of the previous speakers that this war will not end short of the restoration of independence to the two Republics. There is one feature of the proposed settlement to which I should like to call attention for a few minutes. We are told that there is to be a distinction between the form of Government offered to the Transvaal Republic and that which will be offered to the Orange Free State. We have not been told why this distinction is to be made. In the Orange Free State there are no gold mines, and no mine speculators to dictate the terms of peace and the form which the Government of the country shall assume. In the Transvaal,
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the men who forced the war upon the nation will see to it that when the settlement comes, in so far as they can affect that settlement, it will be in their interest, and thus we have a fresh incentive to the Boers to continue fighting to the bitter end. One further statement made appertaining to the settlement was that of giving compensation to the Boers whose farms have been destroyed. The right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary has stated that he believes the numbers in regard to farms destroyed have been very much exaggerated, and that the farms are not of much value. So far as my information goes—and I have tried to find out the truth—the number of farms burned in the two States number between 1,200 and 1,500. The hon. Member for the Ecclesall Division of Sheffield has told us that most of these farms would cost very little to rebuild. If that be so, then the cost of compensating the Boers would not be so great as has been stated. But there is another side to this question. The war is now costing us £1,500,000 per week, and it may drag on for months. Now one month's cost of the war would more than compensate all the losses sustained by the destruction of property. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer desires to study economy he should support this proposition to pay compensation, if by that means the war might be brought to an end. I do not think I have any more to say in regard to the settlement, although I shall, later on, have more to say on other aspects of the war, for I have no intention whatever of modifying the views which I have given expression to outside of this House simply to meet the convenience of hon. Gentlemen inside the House. I believe that the nation was lied into the war, bluffed through the war, and tricked into endorsing the policy of the war before it had time to recover its sanity. We have been told that the war was undertaken in order to "wipe something off a slate," but unless a better settlement is proposed we shall have to put something else on to the slate. All that has been wiped out up to the present has been the finest act of moral courage that was ever shown by a British statesman in settling a question of international politics. If those who support the Boers on both sides of the House had but the moral courage and the insight of the late Mr. Gladstone, who knew the right and had the courage to do the light in the face of public clamour,

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our troubles in South Africa would grow less, and the outlook there would not be so gloomy. I will conclude by saying that I am delighted to find that the party opposite, with its big majority, is beginning to see a glimmer of the fact that the Boers cannot be defeated, and the British Empire, with all its power, has pitted itself in vain against the people of those two Republics. What you are dealing with are men, and not machines, which have been demoralised, debilitated, and degraded by a bad system of commercialism. They were free men, and they are people who love freedom. I shall therefore endeavour inside the House, as I have endeavoured outside, to educate the nation to my views that even the strongest Government of modern times—which is already weak at the knee—will be compelled to concede to these two Republics the only form of settlement which can be accepted by them, and that is the complete restoration of their independence.
MR. EMMOTT: I think it is generally agreed that the reply of the Colonial Secretary has been so sympathetic in tone and so generally satisfactory that it would be a pity to divide the House on the Amendment which I have moved. I have therefore pleasure in accepting the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, and I ask the leave of the House to withdraw.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Main Question again proposed.

BRITISH INTERESTS IN CHINA.
MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I rise to propose the Amendment to the Address standing in my name. Having regard to the grave crisis still confronting us in the Far East, at appeared to me incredible that neither in the speech of the hon. Member who moved the Address, nor in the speech of the hon. Member who seconded it, was there the slightest reference to the situation in China. Although Parliament has been called together in special session for the sole purpose of providing the necessary money for the carrying on of military operations in South Africa and in China, even the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury concluded his -speech and sat down without making the slightest reference to the important crisis with which we are face to face in the great empire of China. It is true that
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when the right hon. Gentleman's attention was called to this grave omission he did make some slight reference to the I question. He said: "Oh, yes; papers will, I suppose, be laid on the subject of China. Meanwhile, I do not know that there is anything bearing on policy to mention, or upon our military operations, the digest of which was thoroughly explained to the House when the former Vote was taken." But since the House separated a great deal has taken place in China. We have had the Anglo-German Agreement concluded. The object of that agreement is stated to be the desire on the part of Great Britain and Germany to maintain their interests in China and their rights in existing treaties. It sets forth in that agreement that—
"It is a matter of joint and permanent international interest that the ports on the rivers and littoral of China should remain free and open to trade, and to every other legitimate form of economic activity, for the nationals of all countries without distinction; and the two Governments agree on their part to uphold the same for all Chinese territory as far as they can exercise influence."
If the Anglo-German Agreement conferred equal rights and privileges upon both of the contracting parties then, speaking personally, I should say that it was a step in the right direction. But when we come to examine that agreement, and try to gain some knowledge of what is meant by the maintaining of their rights and their interests in existing treaties; when we come to interpret that by the language used by Count von Bulow in the German Reichstag, we find that it does not confer equal rights and privileges. Count von Bulow said—
"It is our desire, and it is our intention, to stick to the basis of the Treaty of 6th March, 1808, and not to go beyond this Treaty."
When we remember that that is a secret treaty between Germany and China, and that it has reference to the great province of Shantung, with its 30,000,000 of population, then we begin to see and wonder whether those equal and mutual rights throughout the Chinese Empire are secured to England as well as to Germany under this Anglo-German Agreement. The full details of the agreement between Germany and China have not yet transpired, but we do know that that agreement secures for Germany exclusive preferential rights in the matter of railway construction and industrial and commercial enterprises. When this Anglo-German Agreement was announced to the

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world, the two Governments sought to get the adhesion and the concurrence of the several great Powers interested in China to the principles laid down in that agreement which I have cited. If I may I be allowed, I wish to offer my congratulations to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs upon his appointment to that most important and responsible position, in which I am certain he will give his most conscientious and earnest efforts to the duties with satisfaction and benefit to the Empire. We need in this House more information in regard to the present commercial and political situation in China, and I would ask the Under Secretary to-night to give, as far as he can, information to the House in regard to the several matters which I am now raising. I wish to know how far the Anglo-German Agreement and the seeking of the assent of Russia to the principles laid down in that Agreement affect the Anglo-Russian Agreement concluded some time ago, which conceded to Russia exclusive rights in the matter of railway construction north of the Great Wall of China, and which equally conceded to Great Britain similar exclusive rights in the matter of railway construction in the Yang-tsze region. Under this Anglo-German Agreement we accord to all the nations of the earth who become parties to it equal rights with ourselves in the matter of railway construction, in the undertaking of industrial and commercial enterprises, and trade generally by what we know as the open door. Therefore, it appears to me that so far as the assent of Russia to the principles of this Anglo-German Agreement is concerned, and to thepolicyindieatedinit—the policy of equality of trade and of territorial integrity in China—I am afraid those principles are evaded by the fact that it is only a partial obligation with Russia under her existing treaty rights with China. She will enjoy preferential rights in the great districts of Manchuria on the one hand, and Germany will continue to enjoy preferential rights in the province of Shantung on the other hand. Therefore, as far as we are concerned, all this Anglo-German Agreement does is to give I away something on the one band, and; receive nothing back for it on the other hand. We have accorded to all the nations of the earth equal rights in our special sphere of influence, whereas we have confirmed by this agreement preferential rights in favour of Germany in
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Shantung, and in favour of Russia in Manchuria. We have had, on the part of France, a general statement in favour of the open door. On the part of the United States of America we have had a declaration which, I venture to say, is of the most satisfactory character. It is a clear and definite announcement of a policy which I hope will be followed by Her Majesty's Government. The American policy in regard to China is-stated to be—
"To seek a solution which may bring permanent safety and peace to China, preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity, protect all rights guaranteed to friendly Powers by treaty and international law, and safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Empire."
That is a declaration of policy which represents exactly what Great Britain desires to have in China, and I only hope that there will be concerted action on the part of Her Majesty's Government, especially with the United States of America, in furtherance of this just and equitable policy. Now the Americans also hold a strong view in regard to the question of indemnity. It appears to me that it would be a short-sighted policy on the part of Her Majesty's Government if they supported Germany, or any other nation,, which makes excessive demands in the matter of financial indemnity from the Government of China. It is of much more importance to us that in the settlement of the China question which concerns us to-day, we should have such a rearrangement of commercial treaties as would give the Chinese Government a largely increased revenue that would enable them to pay their officials properly, and thus prevent the necessity of them appropriating funds passing through their hands. We could very reasonably ask China to allocate a certain proportion of money for the improvement, under an international Conservancy Board, of the great commercial arteries, of China, the great waterways, by the removal of obstructions to navigation. Not only this, but we should have as one of the main conditions of the final settlement in China the opening of the inland waterways of that great Empire freely and completely to the trade of all nations. We well know that it was announced in this House with a flourish of trumpets that an agreement had been come to with the Chinese Government that the inland waterways of China were to be opened so

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that British ships could take British goods to every riverside town and station in China. But now it is within the knowledge of the House that that agreement, so excellent as it appeared to be, has proved to be practically a dead letter. When the late British Minister at Peking was entertained before he left England, he spoke very strongly of the great advantage of the opening of the West River to the trade and commerce of Great Britain. I have just received a communication from on leading commercial firm interested in trade on the West River, which states that owing to the restrictive regulations and differential treatment accorded to British vessels on the West River, the shipping companies of Hong Kong have withdrawn all their vessels and have sold them, and that that has left the British flag practically unrepresented in these waters. That is a very serious position of affairs, commercially considered, for the British subjects who have invested a considerable amount of money in the building of steamers especially to conduct commercial operations on the West River. What I would urge upon Her Majesty's Government in connection with the settlement which they have to make in China is that their best endeavours should be used, so that the opening up of the inland waterways to trade should be fully accomplished on just and equitable lines, in order that the trade of the civilised world with the Chinese Empire may be developed and increased, and that we, as Britishers, may enjoy a fair share of the increase which is possible in connection with that trade. There is another question that I should like to refer to, and regarding which I desire to have as much information as the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is in a position, with due regard to the public interest, to give to the House. It is the question of the railway from Tong Ku, through Tientsin to Peking, and from Tong Ku to Shan-hai-Kwan and Niu-chwang. It is within the knowledge of the House that this railway was built with British capital, and that the original agreement which gave to those who advanced the money a mortgage over the line which was being constructed from Shanghai towards Niu-chwang was, by the intervention or interference of Russia, altered, so that by the agreement with Russia the security of British investors was limited to that portion of the railway south of the Great
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Wall of China. What came to many as a great surprise was that. Her Majesty's Government should in some way or other have so weakly upheld the rights and interests of British subjects that the-manager of that railway and his officials have been entirely pushed on one side, and that the railway to-day is under the control of Russians and Germans. Though we understand that in case of military exigency some arrangement of this kind might be temporarily necessary, what I cannot understand is the information which comes to me that the Russians have actually painted engines bought by British capital in the Russian colours; that they have altered the names of the railway stations and signal cabins into the Russian language, and any person travelling to-day over the railway would naturally regard it as a Russian line. I hope that the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be able to reassure us that this control by Russia of that railway is a very temporary matter, and that the Government have received the fullest assurances that when military exigences disappear the railway will be restored to the control of its rightful owners. A telegram appeared in The Times on December 4th, which stated that by the imperative order of the Czar the Russians were handing over the Shan-hai-Kwan Railway to the Germans. If that is so, it may be a convenient way of having the railway passed over to the control of the late manager and the officials under him. That would be a very satisfactory ending to this matter. I only desire to have information on this very important question because I cannot forget that the Russians interfered and altered the terms of the contract under which money was advanced to the Chinese Government for the construction of this railway, and that the Foreign Office took a note of the transaction and allowed the fact that it had taken a note of it to be introduced into the prospectus on the strength of which the British public were asked to invest their money. Therefore, in regard to this railway, there rests upon Her Majesty's Government a special responsibility to support the just rights and interests of British subjects who have invested their money in it. I do not say that they have not taken all reasonable steps to uphold these rights and interests, but that at the present moment we are without information on the subject, and

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it is information, so far as it can be given, that I desire. Not only are the Russians in control of the Shan-hai-Kwan line, but it is also reported that they have transported railway material and rolling stock bought with the money of British investors to Manchuria, and that they are utilising it there for their own purposes. There is another question upon which I should like some information from the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and that is the question of the Niu-chwang. It is the only treaty port, unless we consider Talienwan a treaty port, that there is in the great province of Manchuria, where there are enormous possibilities of trade expansion. With Niu-chwang British subjects already do a trade amounting to £3,000,000 sterling a year. What has happened there? I may say, Mr. Speaker, that one advantage of the trip I recently made to China is that though we have had no Papers laid on the Table of the House for months and months, I have had weekly letters from the best informed men in various parts of China, and I am in a position to know something of what has been occurring in Manchuria, in Peking, in the Yang-tsze Valley, and in Southern China, beyond, perhaps, what is in the possession of any other Member of the House. What happened in Niu-chwang? We had it from the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs last night that the Boxers were active in the neighbourhood of Niu-chwang, and that there arose a military necessity for the Russians to enter on the military control of Niu-chwang, and that they were justified in assuming the civil administration of the city. But all I can say is that the treaty consuls in Niu-chwang drew up a strong protest against the action of the Russian military authorities in attacking a stockade without their knowledge and sanction. What were the facts with regard to the attack of the Russians on Niu-chwang? The Russian soldiers opened fire without any attack whatever having been made upon them by the Chinese soldiers, who were men lent by General Hu to the taotai of Niu-chwang, and who had been the garrison in that stockade ever since the time of the Chino Japanese war. The Russians attacked that stockade, they shelled the city of Niu-chwang, and I have it from residents in Niu-chwang that but for the strong intervention and protest not only of the foreign residents in Niu-chwang but even
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from the Russian residents themselves, the inhabitants of the city would have been practically massacred by the Russian soldiers. One letter stated that the Russian behaviour was simply revolting, and that had it not been for the intervention of the English and of a few Russians there would have been a general massacre in Niu-chwang, and that in the villages round innocent people had been killed and violated on all sides. I am sure that in view of information like this the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will modify his view as to the origin of the Russian occupation and administration of Niu-chwang. Another letter from one of the most responsible merchants in Niu-chwang states that the Russian soldiers, especially the Cossacks, were worse than wild beasts; that women were butchered, that children three or four years of age were bayonetted, and that men, women, and children were slaughtered indiscriminately. When demands are made on China for the cutting off of the heads of generals and high officials I would have it remembered that at any rate there are many Europeans who are not in a position to throw stones at the Chinese. The accounts which I have read are from men on the spot, who know all about what has taken place, and whose statements I can confidently rely upon. With regard to the assumption of the civil and military administration of Niu-chwang I have already read to the House the fact that the treaty consuls protested against the action of the Russians, which was taken without any consultation with the consuls of the other Powers, who have equal treaty rights with Russia. The following proclamation was issued by Vice-Admiral Alexieff on the 9th of August, 1900—
"I have the honour to inform you hereby that Mr. Ostroveskhow has been intrusted with the temporary civil administration of the city, with the title of Civil Administrator this appointment to be submitted to Imperial sanction. Mr. Ostroveskhow has received from me the necessary directions for this purpose, as well as written regulations…
"Captain Clapier de Colongue is appointed Commandant of Niu-chwang. He will command the garrison, and have charge of the land and river defence of the city. The details of this organisation are exposed in special regulations for the provisional administration, and Mr. Ostroveskhow will not fail to communicate them to you in due time."
This was done without any previous consultation whatever with the consuls of the other Powers enjoying equal rights

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with the Russians in the treaty port of Niu-chwang. The House will notice that the appointment of the Russian Civil Commissioner was made subject to the sanction of the Russian Government, and not subject to tin consent of the consuls of other Powers. It will be seen that the necessary regulations for the civil administration of Niu-chwang by the Civil Commissioner were to be framed by the Russian admiral on his own initiative entirely. The House will also notice that the proclamation announced the appointment of a Russian military commandant to take charge of the city, and that the detail of this organisation was exposed in special regulations which had been drawn up by the Russian admiral without any consultation with the other consuls. Thus the House will see how completely the British Consul at Niu-chwang has been ignored by the Russians, and that this important treaty port, with which the British Empire does a trade of not less than three millions sterling annually, has passed not only under the civil administration, but also entirely under the military control of Russia alone. The merchants of Niu-chwang repeatedly telegraphed to the admiral on the station to send a British gunboat to Niu-chwang to uphold the just rights and interests of England. A gunboat was eventually sent, but it remained in Niu-chwang only two days, and with its leaving the power of the British residents to uphold their rights and interests naturally suffered. Then as to Manchuria itself, it is known that the Chinese have been invited by the Russians to resume the civil administration of Manchuria under Russian protection. Now the question is, what does that mean? My own belief is that Russia to-day is in military occupation of Manchuria, and will remain in military occupation of Manchuria for all time. What we have to face is the fear that the Anglo-German Agreement, contravening as it does, as far as Russia is concerned, the Anglo-Russian Agreement, and the principle of the open door or equality of opportunity for trade, and for undertaking all commercial and industrial enterprises equally on the part of all nations in China may be rendered applicable to only a portion of China. I hope the interpretation which I have put upon that agreement may be shown by the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to be a mistaken one. It is
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supported, however, by the evidence I have and by the policy declared both in the German Reichstag and also in the French House of Assembly and by the references in the German press which state that the agreement is not intended to cause Germany to interfere with Russian aims and aspirations in Northern China in the slightest degree. We have a considerable number of troops in Northern China. We have nearly 20,000 Indian troops in the whole of China, and we are told we have some 7,500 troops in Northern China. What I should like to know is, when the Government is seeking from this House further money for the conduct of operations in China, why it is that these 7,500 troops in Northern China were not occupied in protecting the property of British subjects instead of being engaged in pursuing companies of Boxers all over the country? This question of the upholding of our just commercial and political interests in China is no small question. We have been told by the late Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in answer to a question, that a total foreign trade of £70,000,000 sterling is done with the Chinese Empire, and that the British Empire has not less than £43,000,000 sterling of that trade. We know that with a population of 400 millions—almost a quarter of the world's population—in China there is practically, under proper conditions, an almost unlimited possibility in respect of the extension of trade. We have heard a great deal since Parliament met about South Africa. I recognise the difficulty that Her Majesty's Government have had to contend with in that country. I recognise and do not wish to minimise how crippled they have been in regard to dealing effectually in the matter of upholding our just lights and interests in China by the fact that at least 200,000 soldiers are locked up in South Africa; but though our soldiers are locked up in South Africa I say it is discreditable to us, doing as we do more trade with China than the whole of the other nations put together, and professing as we do profess that with the naval forces at our command we have control of the seas of the world, that our naval force on the China station to-day is only third, instead of first, in point of power. And if our soldiers are kept in South Africa supporting our interests there, I say it is neglect on the part of Her Majesty's Government that our naval force in

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China was not equal to the occasion, and that when our interests ought to have been upheld in such an important commercial centre as Niu-chwang that port was left for months together without even a gunboat. I think when the House is now asked to find this money for the conduct of operations in China that we have a right to require that Her Majesty's Government shall give us an assurance that more adequate measures will be taken to uphold our vast commercial interests in that great empire, and that in connection with the settlement which we hope will be speedily arrived at Her Majesty's Government will take care that no unjust demands are made on the Chinese, who, after all, have shown themselves patriotic. The Russians and the Germans have seized Chinese territory, and can we blame the Chinese when, even under the name of Boxers, they band themselves together and endeavour to expel the intruders? We know that when the allied forces entered Peking, practically unresisted, most shockingly disgraceful outrages were perpetrated by the so-called civilised and Christian forces of Europe. Therefore, I say we are not in a position to throw stones at the Chinese, even though they have treated missionaries and even women in a manner which we must all deplore. I hope, however, that in the settlement which Her Majesty's Government have to effect they will make no demands on the Chinese for the decapitation of generals or high officials in that empire. We ought to seek to include in that settlement measures to advance the commercial interests of this country by the opening up of China to trade. Our policy ought to be as was announced by Her Majesty's Government, the preservation of China for the Chinese and the opening up of their country equally to the trade of all nations. I am sure that if Her Majesty's Government pursue that policy and exercise a wise moderation in their action and attitude towards the Chinese in this particular crisis they will have the support of the whole British nation irrespective of party. I beg to move the Amendment which stands in my name.
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE (Bristol, E.): The importance of the subject and the extent of the operations which have taken place in China deserve a rather more lengthy reference than was made
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either in the Queen's Speech or in the remarks of the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The fact that the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs only referred to one isolated part of these operations is all the more remarkable, because in the Parliaments of the other countries chiefly interested——
The UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Viscount CRANBORNE,: Why were not questions put to me?
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: In each of the foreign Parliaments the Minister responsible for the Foreign Office availed himself of the opportunity afforded by a question having reference to one or two matters to dilate at some considerable length on the policy which his country had thought fit to enter on with regard to the position in China. The Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs did not take any such opportunity, and it is, I say, all the more remarkable because the Ministers of other countries had dilated on their policies at considerable length. In the German Reichstag the Minister not only made a detailed and lengthy statement of what the German policy was going to be, but in the German House of Representatives a memorandum was issued dealing at great length with the objects with which the German expedition had been sent out. It was stated, first of all, that the policy of the German Government would be directed to promoting the interests of Germany; no matter what might be the interests of other countries, that particular attention would be given to the interest of German commerce generally, and that particular care would be taken of German mining and railway interests. These promises have been practically fulfilled to the letter. A very few weeks ago the Germans entered into what we have always regarded as our particular sphere of interest—the Yang-tsze Valley—and appointed consuls for commercial purposes in that region. While we have always claimed almost exclusive interests in the Yang-tsze Valley, the Germans have been very particular in refusing to acknowledge our special influence in that region. But the German Reichstag is not the only House of Representatives in Europe in which Chinese policy was declared during the last few weeks. Take the French Chamber of Deputies. M. Delcassé went out of his way not only to state at great length

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French policy in China, but he also detailed at considerable length the military operations in which the French troops were engaged. We in this country have been obliged to be content with despatches sent from the seat of war relating to more or less isolated achievements of the troops themselves, whereas the French people are told not only details of the engagements in which the French troops were concerned, but also what the future military operations were to be. No such information has been given to this House, either when the expedition went out to China or when the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs spoke on Thursday. But the French Foreign Minister has even gone further. Not only has he told the French Chamber what the French Government are going to do, but he has made a special proposal to the allied forces in China as to what the policy of the Concert of Europe should be. The principles of that proposal were four in number: that proper reparation and punishment should be dealt out for past offences, that adequate compensation should be paid, that such offences should not take place in future, that sufficient indemnity should be paid for the losses sustained by European residents in China, and that a sufficient force should be retained to prevent the recurrence of the late unhappy events. The British Government have given no indication beyond the Anglo-German Agreement to the Concert of Europe as to what they propose to do. The French and German Governments have each laid down their policy, and America has not been behind in that respect. The American President in his address dealt at very great length on the policy of the American Government with regard to China, and I cannot for the life of me see what considerations there are which can prevent the English Government following suit in this matter. I wish to draw attention to the circumstances under which the Vote was granted last session. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked the House to vote him three millions of money, and he divided that sum into three portions—one portion amounting to one and a half million was to be devoted to the expenses of the war—the second portion of half a million was to provide for any contingencies which might arise with regard to the expeditions from India to China
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—and the third portion of one million was to be what he termed his second line of defence. That line of defence has been swallowed up by the expense of the present expedition, and I think it is worthy of notice by this House that the same want of provision which prevailed with regard to South Africa has also been noticeable in connection with the Chinese expedition. Everyone will admit that the despatch of forces was imperative, but I venture to submit that an approximate estimate of the cost of the expedition was not less imperative. Certainly, pledges were given on the 2nd of August last as to what the policy of the Government should be with, regard to this expedition. We were told that we wore to maintain a leading position in China due to our past position in that country, to the enormous trade we did with the Chinese, and to the general interests which we had in the development of Eastern countries. I do not think that anyone who has listened to the hon. Gentleman, and who has closely followed what has occurred in China during the last four or five months, can contend that we hold a leading position in the Concert of Europe. We were also told, and it was a very curious contrast, that while on the one hand we were to hold the leading position in China our policy was to be a negative one. If the Government have not carried out the first part of the policy laid down by the late Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, there is not the slightest doubt that they have fulfilled to the letter the second part. We were also told that the Government would resolutely oppose any partition of China. That was satisfactory as far as it went, but as a matter of fact, portions of China have been already dealt out to various countries. We have taken possession, at great cost to ourselves, but with no result to our policy, of Wei-hai-Wei. There is not a gun mounted there. One of the forts we were to build is only half finished, and the other does not contain any defensive armaments at all. Russia has practically occupied Manchuria, that occupation being, according to themselves, only temporary. Twenty years ago an expedition was sent from this country to take "temporary" possession of Egypt. We are still in Egypt, and twenty years hence Russia will still, be in Manchuria. What we ask is that what has been done by Germany, France,

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America, and Japan should be done by this country, and by a responsible Minister. There is grave danger lest the prolongation of negotiations should lead not merely to the dissolution of the European Concert, but also to the dissolution of European peace.
Amendment proposed—
"At the end of the Question, to add the words—' And we humbly represent to your Majesty that it is essential that more adequate measures should be taken for the safe-guarding of the vast commercial and political interests of the British Empire in China; and we further humbly submit that no demand should be made on the Chinese Government for the punishment of Chinese officials which would not be equally imposed in the case of a European Power, and also that reparation should be sought in increased facilities to trade rather than by a money indemnity.'"—(Mr. Joseph Walton.)
Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
Viscount CRANBORNE: The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has complained very much that the Government have taken no opportunity to make a general statement with regard to their policy in China. It was not my good fortune to trouble the House of Commons with my presence very much in the last session, but from the usual channels of information I gathered that the subject was not absolutely ignored during those months, and by referring to records I find my right hon. friend who preceded me in this office made a statement as late as 9th August, and a very long and detailed statement a few days before that. It is really going a very long way to complain of the silence of the Government in respect of their policy in China. The hon. Gentleman expressed surprise that I had not taken an opportunity to make a general statement of policy. I will be quite frank with the House. I do not think that this is a suitable opportunity for making a general statement of policy. If any hon. Member desires information, of course it is my duty to answer him to the best of my ability. That is what I am here for. But I am also entitled to imagine that if no hon. Gentleman does ask me a question it is because everyone feels, as I do, that the present moment, when negotiations are pending, is not the moment to go into detail with regard to what is passing in China. The hon. Gentleman pointed to the utterances of foreign statesmen. I do not think that
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this House has anything to learn from the French Chamber, but if the hon. Gentleman will examine the statements made by French statesmen he will find, as a general rule, that their utterances are of a very general character, and when looked at very closely do not amount to very much. The hon. Member quoted with approval the observations of the German statesman who said that the German Government would study the interests of Germany. If that is anything, I will repeat the statement in this House, and say that the English Government will study the interests of England. I do not think any hon. Gentleman doubts that for a moment. I am afraid, therefore, that my observations must be of a very general character. With respect to Niu-chwang, I did not say last night that there were great popular disturbances I said that the Boxer propaganda had reached there, and that there were considerable disturbances. I said that the missionaries had retreated there, and that the railway officials had been driven back within fifteen miles of the city. That may be said to have constituted a state of things in which military operations might be necessary. The hon. Member for Barnsley says that I declared that those operations were thoroughly justified. I was very careful not to express an opinion on the subject. I am quite aware that differences of opinion may exist on that point; but it would be very rash, without further information, to condemn the action of the Russian officer in command. The hon. Gentleman said that England had been ignored in this matter, but he himself told us that the English representative in company with the representatives of the other Powers at once approached the Russian officer.
MR. JOSEPH WALTON: My statement was that the proclamation assuming for Russia the military and civil administration of Niu-chwang was issued without the slightest consultation with the consuls of the other Powers.
Viscount CRANBORNE: I know that when representations were made to the Russian officer he told the representatives of the other Powers that the occupation was a purely temporary one, and would in no way prejudice the rights of other Powers. How can it be said, therefore, that

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England was ignored? Why should hon. Gentlemen try to embitter matters by bringing charges which I do not think can be substantiated? The hon. Gentleman also asked me questions on many other matters of detail. I venture to think he was engaged in what was quite a legitimate proceeding in pressing his views on the Government, but it is not possible for me to tell him what will be the outcome of the railway difficulty in China. I myself am not entitled to take anything but a sanguine view, but I certainly cannot tell the hon. Gentleman what will be arranged finally as a result of the concerted action of the Powers with regard to that matter of the opening of the waterways and the adjustment of the revenue. I believe the hon. Gentleman is an authority on these matters, and if he seeks to lay his views before the Government I can assure him that they will receive every consideration. He has spoken of the great political and commercial interests of England, which he says ought to be safeguarded. We are doing our best for the commercial and political interests of England, and being, as we are, a great commercial country, the first and far away the most pressing matter is to restore tranquillity in China. That tranquillity can be restored alone by the concerted action of the Powers. We have proved by experience that concerted action is possible in the course of the recent military operations. I do not deny that there are difficulties about concerted action, but I venture to say that the difficulties of concerted action diplomatically pall before the difficulties of concerted military action. Yet we have succeeded in carrying out most difficult military operations by concerted action among the Powers with the result that in a very brief period, relatively speaking, the Legations at Peking were relieved. But concerted action must lie undertaken, in the first place, in a spirit of conciliation—a spirit rather different from that which my hon. friend the Member for the Ecclesall Division of Sheffield applies to these subjects. The hon. Member who moved the Amendment said he wondered why British troops, instead of looking after the Boxers, had not been engaged in defending British interests in China.
MR. JOSEPH WALTON: In protecting the property of British subjects in the first instance.
Viscount CRANBORNE: It is only by adopting a very conciliatory attitude that we can hope to obtain the result we desire—namely, the restoration of tranquillity in China without loss to British interests. No doubt this must be accompanied by a firm determination to protect British interests. I do not deny that, but what right has the hon. Gentleman to suppose that this firmness is not being, displayed? The hon. Member declares that he knows this that and the other, and he hopes, perhaps, that he may draw from me a detailed statement, but I must disappoint him. It is not possible for ma to go into details to justify the action that has been taken. I repeat, the restoration of tranquillity is the first and most important way of preserving the commercial position of England. The next most important way is by preserving the territorial integrity of China, and I. stated last night that the Government have done their utmost to effect with the other Powers the safeguarding of that integrity. Perhaps it would have been wiser if the hon. Member had awaited the Papers which I promised to lay on the Table before he went further into the matter. Lastly, there is the other method of protecting, the commercial interests of Great Britain—there is what is called the policy of the open door. There, again, he knows that in the Anglo-German Agreement steps have been taken, perhaps not very great steps, but distinct steps forward, in placing on record in the most formal manner that the English Government and the German Government and the other Governments who have adhered to that agreement are determined to make one of the main planks in their policy the maintenance of the open door in China. I say, therefore, that the Government have been engaged, and I think with some success, in studying the highest commercial interests of Great Britain in that country. The hon. Member is in such a hurry. He thinks all this can be done so quickly and so easily. Of course that is not the case. He must be content. I am afraid, to wait for the very slow, but I hope effective, development of the policy in which the Government are engaged. Then, at the end of his Amendment, he says that no demand should be made on the Chinese Government for the punishment of Chinese officials which would not be equally imposed

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in the case of a European Power. I think that is asking far too much. If the Chinese Government are to be treated like a European Power they must behave as a European Power. We know perfectly well that they have committed the greatest outrage, and in a manner which no European Power would think of for a moment. I refer to the fact that they have absolutely ignored the sacred character of diplomatic envoys, and have, m a time of peace, allowed the Imperial forces of the Chinese Government to unite with rebels in order to bombard the envoys of friendly Powers. That is not behaving like a European Power, and it is quite impossible to treat a Government which behaves like that upon the same footing on which a European Power would naturally be treated. I think that the European Powers are well advised to exact just and due reparation for the wrong which they have sustained. If the Chinese Government expect to be treated in any other way they must behave differently. Before I sit down I might be allowed to say that I hope to lay the Papers on the Table on Monday, but they are not, as I said last night, complete. We have not had time to arrange and publish a full Paper, but I have no doubt the House will forgive that. With regard to the Anglo-German Agreement, that will be laid on the Table together with the answers of the Powers as soon as the necessary leave from the foreign Powers concerned has been obtained. That I look for in a few days.
SIR E. ASHMEAD-BAETLETT: I think the noble Lord quite misunderstands my attitude on questions of this kind. I may be mistaken in my estimate of the correctness of my own views, but perhaps I see a little further ahead sometimes than the members of the Government, and I wish to prevent them from entering on courses which may have very serious results to this country. That is my view of the Concert of Europe. I do not uphold the so-called Concert because I am opposed to other Powers protecting their own interests. Very far from it. I object to the Concert because I believe it has no real existence, because I believe it cannot exist, and never has existed, and that, as in China, it has only led us into a position of enormous peril, where we and other Powers are day by clay in danger of coming into collision. The House
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is to be congratulated on the two speeches which we have heard from the other side of the House. I wish, as a member of the Conservative party, and as one professing Imperial views, to congratulate the House on having two Radical Members able to make speeches so full of useful knowledge and intelligence as the speeches which have been delivered by the hon. Member for Barnsley and the hon. Member for East Bristol. I am sure that every hon. Member who listened to these speeches will agree with me in my estimate of them. They dealt with questions of enormous interest to this House and the country, and for my part I am very grateful to the hon. Gentlemen. I do not propose now to criticise the foreign policy of the Government in China. I am aware that we must wait for further information, but I will say this, that the Chinese question is at this moment of infinitely more importance to this country than the South African question, because the South African question is, in my opinion, practically settled. The Chinese question is of infinitely more importance than the miserable personalities on which a great part of last night and to-night have been absolutely wasted. I have never known the time of the House more wasted than it was by the speeches delivered last night, and I am sure it is of more advantage to this House and to the country that we should have subjects of real importance brought before us as we have had to-night. The noble Lord assured the House that the Government were protecting British interests, and challenged us to show any case in which the Government had failed to protect British interests. I am rather sorry that he made that challenge, because——
It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.
Whereupon, in pursuance of the Order of the House of this day, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put.
Adjourned accordingly at one minute after Twelve of the clock, till Monday next.

BARONIES OF DARCY DE KNAYTH, MEYNILL, AND FAUCONBERG.
Petition of Marcia Amelia Mary, in her own right. Baroness Convers, the wife of Charles Alfred Worsley, Earl of Yarborough, one of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and of Violet Ida Evelyn, the wife of George Charles, Earl of Powis, Her Majesty's Lieutenant for the county of Salop, the daughters and co-heirs of Sackville George, Lord Conyers Darcy and Meynill, deceased, to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty (1) to terminate in favour of the said Violet Ida Evelyn, Countess of Powis, one of Her Majesty's Petitioners, the abeyance now existing in some one of the three Baronies of Darcy de Knayth, Meynill, and Fauconberg, together with the rights, privileges, pre-eminencies, immunities, and advantages, and the place and precedence due and belonging thereto, to hold the same for her and the heirs of her body lawfully begotten, and to be begotten for ever; and (2) to terminate in favour of the said Marcia Amelia Mary,Countess of Yarborough and Baroness Conyers, the other of Her Majesty's Petitioners, the abeyances now existing in the remaining two of the said three Baronies, together with the rights, privileges, pre-eminencies, immunities, and advantages, and the places and precedences due and belonging thereto, to hold the same to her and the heirs of her body lawfully begotten, and to be begotten, for ever; together with Her Majesty's reference thereof to this House, and the report of the Attorney-General thereon, thereunto annexed: Presented (by command), read, and referred to the Committee for Privileges to consider and report.

LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNE.
Petition of Geoffrey Henry, Baron of Oranmore and Browne, in the Peerage of Ireland, claiming a right to vote at the elections of Representative Peers for Ireland; read, and referred to the Lord Chancellor to consider and report thereupon to the House.
House adjourned at Four of the clock, to Monday next, a quarter before Eleven of the clock.