Sitting of 10 February 1902

Preamble
The House met at Three of the Clock.
PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  LONDON SCHOOL BOARD (SUPERANNUATION) BILL (BY ORDER).
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. EVELYN CECILsaid he thought it was highly desirable that the House should not give a Second Reading to this Bill without thoroughly understanding the principles and circumstances involved, and therefore he thought it would be better either to move its rejection or to propose some strict Instruction to the Committee with regard to certain matters to which he proposed to draw attention. The object of the Bill was set forth in a long preamble filling eight pages. It was to the effect that from 1886 down to the present time the London School Board had been engaged in endeavouring to set upon its legs a superannuation scheme for its officers and staff. Undoubtedly the matter appeared to have been badly mismanaged by the Board. So far as the teachers were concerned, however, the Board had been relieved by the Teachers' Superannuation Act of 1898, but all the other officers were still dependent on the Board's efforts for a superannuation scheme. Up till now the Board had been unable to establish any substantial scheme, and it now came to Parliament with what was practically a Relief Bill. His contention was firstly that if any provision were enacted to enable clerks and officers of the London School Board to be superannuated, it ought to be not for the London School Board only, but it should be part of a general scheme for the whole country. Any such scheme ought to be of general application. Secondly, it was not right, without due consideration at any rate, that the House should give the London School Board powers to charge the school fund, that was to say, the London

  827
  rates, with this extra scheme of superannuation. Parliament had already decided that teachers throughout the Kingdom should be superannuated from imperial taxation, and there had been for several years before the House a Local Authorities' Officers Superannuation Bill which also proposed to charge imperial taxaton for superannuation purposes in the case of the various employees. He did not think it was right in a Bill of that kind to make an exception and to give powers to place upon the school fund a charge which was certainly not contemplated when the fund was created in 1870. His third point was that there was no statement in the Bill as to the cost to the rates of the scheme, and, if the House did decide to send the Bill to a Committee, it certainly ought, in his humble opinion, to instruct that Committee to carefully investigate the question of cost. Fourthly, he had some suspicion—perhaps it did not amount to more than suspicion—that the scheme proposed in the Bill was not acceptable to the beneficiaries whom it endeavoured to assist, and he for one would like to be assured, before the Bill was passed, that it would be acceptable. That information might be obtained by another Instruction to Committee. On these grounds he begged to move the rejection of the Bill.
  MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENsaid he desired, in the fewest possible words, to second the Amendment. He would like to assure the House that he had no general objection to the superannuation of the staff of the London School Board, and he voted gladly for the Act of 1898, which provided a superannuation allowance for the teachers. But he objected, as did his hon. friend, most strongly to the Bill, because it proposed to deal with the general question in a partial and local manner, and by a private instead of a public Act. It must be remembered that they could not deal merely with the officers of the London School Board, they must consider the claims of the whole class of Government officers, including those under Poor Law Boards, Sanitary Authorities, and Borough Councils. If School Board officers were entitled to compensation, so
  828
  also were the officers serving under other public bodies, and it was a very strong order indeed to ask the House to grant, by a private Bill to the London School Board employees, that which should be applicable to a very much wider class. Secondly, there was the question of throwing the expense on the school fund. He ventured to think there was no precedent for that. The Act of 1898 laid it down that, in cases where the teachers made a certain contribution, the Treasury might grant a further sum out of money to be provided by Parliament. But the proposition contained in this Bill was very different. It was most unfair to the ratepayers of London, who already paid very heavily for educational and other matters, that this additional charge should be put upon them, when Parliament had decided that, in the case of the teachers, it should be a national charge. It was becoming more and more recognised that education was of national rather than of local concern, and that the State should pay more towards the cost and the local authorities less. For that reason he thought it was contrary to the general drift of opinion that this additional charge should be thrown on the school fund. He was afraid the fact was that the London School Board, with excellent intentions, had thrown out certain somewhat delusive hopes to their employees which had not been fulfilled. They had been unable to carry out their proposed scheme, and they now came to Parliament to get them out of the difficulty, in a way which he thought Parliament ought not to do. Under these circumstances he had much pleasure in seconding the Amendment.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words, "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Evelyn Cecil.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  DR. MACNAMARAsaid the observations of the hon. Members who had just spoken made it necessary that he should briefly explain why the Bill was brought forward and what it proposed to do. The matter

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  was a very complicated one, but if the House would bear with him for a moment or two he would endeavour to clear it up. In 1886 the London School Board agreed that it was desirable to superannuate all its Officers—the head office staff, teachers, inspectors, superintendents, visitors, and caretakers—and it was decided that they should be subjected to a two per cent. deduction of salary, while the benefit was to be on the Civil Service scale—in other words, a retiring allowance equal to one-sixtieth of the final salary for every year of service up to forty-sixtieths. He admitted at once that that was a reckless and profligate thing to do, but they immediately commenced to pay the full Civil Service benefit, not merely on the years of which there had been a deduction of salary, but also on all the years of back service for which the retiring officers had paid nothing at all. As a consequence the younger members of the staff soon found that they were paying two per cent. of their salaries simply to secure a superannuation allowance for the older members, and before 1893 they asked the Board to let them come out of the fund, and take out their premium payments. In that year the Board resolved that all teachers who desired to leave the fund should be allowed to do so, taking out their premium payment, together with interest, and the result was that of the 7,552 teachers in the fund, 5,875 at once went out, and of the £86,000 invested at the time they carried with them £61,058. The Board was consequently compelled to revolutionise the benefits which he admitted ought never to have been offered, unless rate assistance had been secured. They agreed that the benefits for the time should not be on the Civil Service scale—which was to be suspended until such time as Parliament gave power to supplement the fund out of the rates, but on a scale which actuarial examination made from time to time should prove it was able to bear. The result was that the people who came on the fund after that revolution only got one-seventh of the scale originally promised, and to-day the fund was only able to bear about one-sixth. In 1898 the House passed a general scheme of superannuation for
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  all elementary teachers partly aided out of the Imperial Exchequer fund. A large number of the teachers, therefore, were now compelled to pay to two funds, the Government fund and the School Board fund. A general agreement had been substantially come to that those who desired to come out of the School Board fund, and to take their premium payments, without interest, should be allowed to do so, and that was the first thing that this Bill proposed to do. But they desired to do something more than they were doing at present for their other officers, who were paying into the fund and were only getting in return 17·5 per cent, of the original Scale of Civil Service pension. To-day the Board had 48 officers on the fund and the average superannuation they had been able to pay them was £8 9s. 7d. a year after an average of 20 years and 8 months service. The Board resolved to set up the scheme which was now set up by this Bill, and it was a little remarkable that at all the subsequent stages there had been absolute unanimity with regard to these proposals so far as the School Board for London was concerned. What did the Board desire to do? First of all they desired to carry on the scheme as it now stood and to continue the precise benefits that that fund could bear, both of which desires could be carried out without the aid of Parliament; but they further require to supplement the benefit, by an equivalent amount from the public rates. Beneficiaries under the fund to-day reached 17·5 per cent. of the Civil Service scale; if the Bill were passed they would get 35 per cent. The three last persons to come upon the fund had been in the service of the School Board for 18 years, 28 years and 18 years, respectively, and were in receipt of £6 8s. 4d., £11 13s. 6d. and £6 0s. 9d. a year, respectively. Those amounts were grotesque after so long a service, but if the Bill were passed they could be doubled. But the Bill asked for power to do something else. The Board was precluded from adding to the amount of the superannuation, so as to make the total receivable more than the Civil Service scale. With regard to the aggregate cost to the rates, he pointed out that if they took next year and put upon the fund every

  831
  person liable to come upon it, and took the basis of 17·5 of the Civil Service scale, the total cost to the rates would be £1,227, whilst that of the year 1914, when the largest charge that was possible would fall upon the fund, the liability of the fund itself, and consequently the cost to the ratepayers, would be £3,290 or 1/50th of a penny in the £on the rateable value of London. But even supposing that the fund by a stroke of good luck could afford to pay 50 per cent. of the Civil Service scale; although that was a prospect he found great difficulty in supposing then the cost next year to the ratepayers would only be £3,505, and in 1914 with the fund at its highest limit, the ultimate maximum charge would be £9,400 or 1/15th of a penny in the £ and if the fund ever paid more than 50 per cent. of the Civil Service scale the public of obligation would of course be reduced accordingly. He appealed to the House therefore, as the Bill was a moderate measure, although in the opinion of the staff it did not go far enough, to give it a Second Reading at any rate.
  MR. FLOWERsupported the Second Reading of the Bill for very much the same reasons that were given by the hon. Members who opposed it. In his opinion it was the best scheme that could be desired in the interest of the ratepayers. The hon. Gentleman had said due consideration ought to be given to the Bill, and he doubted whether it could receive the consideration it merited at the present time. That no doubt was so, but to summarily reject a Bill for that reason was a most arbitrary course to adopt, although he could quite understand such a ground being put forward for the Second Reading being adjourned. It was an extremely complicated question which had engaged the attention of the School Board for many years, and one which a few moments debate could not be expected to settle. The Bill was to disentangle a knot into which the School Board finances had got. The fact as to whether the scheme originated with one party or the other ought not to affect the House of Committee in their judgment on the present method of relieving the Board from the scheme. The plain fact was that, so far
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  back as 1886, the School Board for London thought of superannuation for their teachers, and they could not be blamed for having endeavoured to carry the plan out. The hon Member for Tunbridge had rather deprecated dealing in a private Bill of this kind, with a matter relating specially to London, but the London County Council under both private and public Bills had obtained similar powers, and the Poor Law Officers also enjoyed large benefits under the Act of 1896. The claim on the ratepayers would not be a heavy one, and this Bill was the best bargain the ratepayers could make to get them out of the difficulty. The details could be thrashed ont in Committee, as it was manifestly impossible to discuss them fully on a Second Reading debate. He hoped therefore that the House would not, on the very slight grounds alleged by his hon. friend, summarily refuse further progress to this Bill, but that they would give the Bill a Second Reading and send it to a Committee.
  SIR FRANCIS S. POWELLsaid he had served on a Committee on this question some years ago, but could not now enter into actual figures. Since that Committee investigated the question pensions had been given through the action of this House to teachers, and he thought they ought to rest satisfied with that provision, which referred to all teachers, board school as well as voluntary school teachers.
  MR. BARTLEYsaid that as a London Member he was very much interested in the rates, and he should like to draw attention to the extraordinary way in which the finance of small matters before the House seemed to have been managed. No thought had apparently been given as to whether the scheme was sound or not, and the officials concerned were led to believe that they would receive pensions which were impossible under the scheme. If that were a specimen of the way in which the finance of the London School Board was managed, he was not surprised that the opinion generally entertained regarding it was that it was unsatisfactory. It was a very simple matter to calculate the premiums; yet a scheme was estab-

  833
  lished without any trouble being taken in that direction, and now the unfortunate London ratepayer was called on to make good the amount.
  MR. EVELYN CECILsaid he would be willing to withdraw his Amendment on the understanding that some Instruction such as the following be agreed to—"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power (1) to consider whether it is desirable that the scheme of superannuation contained in the Bill should be extended to the non-teaching staffs of all elementary schools in the Kingdom; and (2) whether the charge involved should fall on the school fund or the Treasury."
  Mr. SPEAKER: Do I understand that the hon. Member is willing to withdraw his Amendment?
  Mr. EVELYN CECIL: Yes. Sir, if an Instruction is agreed to.
  DR. MACNAMARAsaid that the scheme before the House contained the nucleus of a fund for London, which did not exist in the rest of the country.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,)said he could not assent to the proposal of his hon. friend. The Treasury would be intimately concerned in the proposed Instruction, and he could not be a party to any bargain of the kind.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

  PRIVATE BILLS (STANDING ORDER 62 COMPLIED WITH).
  MR. SPEAKER MR. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, Standing Order No. 62 has been complied with, viz.:—
  Bromley Gas Bill.
  Commercial Gas Bill.
  East Worcestershire Water Bill.
  North British Railway (General Powers) Bill.
  North British Railway (Steam Vessels) Bill.
  Ordered, that the Bills be read a second time.

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS].
  MR. SPEAKER MR. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills That, in respect of the Bills comprised in the List reported by the Chairman of Ways and Means, as intended to originate in the House of Lords, he has certified that the Standing Orders have been complied with in the following case, viz.:—
  Wrexham District Tramways.

  BOURNEMOUTH GAS AND WATER BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  BROADSTAIRS GAS BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  EASTBOURNE CORPORATION BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  FAREHAM GAS BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  HUDDERSFIELD CORPORATION BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  LIMPSFIELD AND OXTED WATER BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  MANCHESTER CORPORATION TRAMWAYS BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  NORWICH CORPORATION (ELECTRICITY, ETC.) BILL.
  Read a second time, and committed.
  RATHMINES AND RATHGAR URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL (BY ORDER.)
  Read a second time, and committed.

  CITY AND BRIXTON RAILWAY BILL.
  "To authorise the City and Brixton Railway Company to abandon portions of their authorised undertaking; and to extend the time for the compulsory

  835
  purchase of lands; and for other purposes," read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

  HALIFAX CORPORATION.
  Petition, and Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir Savile Crossley, Mr. Charles Trevelyan, and Mr. J. H. Whitley.
PETITIONS.
  COAL MINES (EMPLOYMENT) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Woodside and Barnsley; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING BILL.
  Petition from Manchester, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES OFFICERS' SUPERANNUATION.
  Petition from Crick, for legislation; to lie upon the Table.
  MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.
  Petition from Shanklin, against; to lie upon the Table.
  MINES (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Woodside and Barnsley; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  Petition from North Cave, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  SOUTH AUSTRALIA.
  Paper [presented 7th February] to be printed. [No. 54.]

  ACETYLENE GENERATORS.
  Copy presented, of Report of the Committee appointed by the Department of His Majesty's Inspectors of Explosives to inquire as to the safety of Acetylene Generators, with a covering Report to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department, by Captain
  836
  J. H. Thomson, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Explosives [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  JUDICIAL STATISTICS (ENGLAND AND WALES).
  Copy presented, of Judicial Statistics for England and Wales for 1900, Part I. (Criminal) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  PENAL SERVITUDE ACTS (CONDITIONAL LICENSE).
  Copy presented, of License granted to Florence Elizabeth Fagg, a Convict under detention in Aylesbury Prison, permitting her to be at large on condition that she enter the London Preventive and Reformatory Institution, Euston Road, N. W. [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  MERCHANT SHIPPING (LIFE SAVING APPLIANCES)
  Copy presented, of Rules made by the Board of Trade under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  NATIONAL EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Section I. of the Appendix to the Sixty-seventh Report of the Commissioners [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACT, 1889.
  Copy presented, of Minute sanctioning the Subjects to be taught under Clause 8 of the Act for the county of Glamorgan (Eleventh Minute) [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  BARRACKS ACT, 1900.
  Account presented, showing the money raised and issued under the provisions of the Act, the securities created in respect thereof, and the amount expended for the purposes of the Act to the 31st March, 1901, with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 55.]
  SOUTH AFRICA.
  Copy presented, of further Papers relating to the Working of the Refugee Camps in South Africa [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  AFRICA (No. 2, 1902).
  Copy presented, of Instructions to Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Saddler, on appointment as His Majesty's Commissioner and Consul General in the Uganda Protectorate [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES (MISCELLANEOUS, No. 2, 1902).
  Copy presented, of Reports from His Majesty's Representatives in Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, and the United States respecting the Rules in force for preserving order in the Legislative Assemblies of those Countries [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copy presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, No. 2744 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  DIETING OF PAUPER LUNATICS.
  Copy presented, of Report on Dieting of Pauper Lunatics in Asylums and Lunatic Wards of Poorhouses in Scotland. Supplement to the Forty-third Annual; Report of the General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  ARMY.
  Copy presented, of Order relating to the Organisation and Equipment of the Imperial Yeomanry, 1900 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  NEW WRIT.
  New Writ for Down (South Down Division), in the room of Michael M'Cartan, Esquire (Chiltern Hundreds).—(Sir Thomas Esmonde).
(3.55) QUESTIONS.

  South African War—Mrs. Christian De Wet.
  MR. C. P. SCOTT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether he will ascertain in which of the concentration camps the wife of General De Wet is now confined; whether she is compulsorily detained, and, if so, on
  838
  what grounds; and whether he will undertake that special care shall be taken to secure for her the utmost possible consideration.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. BRODRICK): Mrs. De Wet is reported by Lord Kitchener to be in a concentration camp in Natal and to be quite comfortable.
  MR. DILLON: Is she at liberty to leave if she desires to do so, or is she a prisoner?
  MR. BRODRICK: I cannot say she is at liberty to leave, unless she chooses to go out of our lines and return to those who will maintain her.
  MR. DILLON: Is she at liberty to go to Holland, where I am sure she would be well received?
  MR. SPEAKER: That is not the Question on the Paper—the hon. Gentleman must put it down.
  MR. DILLON: I will put it down for tomorrow.

  Mr. Marais.
  MR. CHANNING: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether Mr. Marais, who was deported from the Paarl to Beaufort West, and imprisoned in August last on an allegation of infringement of martial law regulations, has ever been tried for this alleged offence; whether he is aware that Major General Wynne, the Commanding Officer of the Cape Colony District, made an affidavit before the Supreme Court at Cape Town, on 6th September, 1901, in which he deposed that Mr. Marais would be tried as soon as possible by a Military Court and either acquitted or detained in custody; whether Mr. Marais has been either acquitted or convicted by such a Military Court; and, if convicted, can he state what sentence has been passed on him, and where he is now imprisoned or detained.
  MR. BRODRICK: I am informed by Lord Kitchener that Marais will now be tried very shortly.
  MR. CHANNING: By a Military Court?
  MR. BRODRICK: I have communicated with Lord Kitchener, but have not yet received any reply.

  Mr. Merriman.
  MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether Mr. Merriman is now permitted by the military authorities to freely receive letters from and reply to his friends both in South Africa and England; and whether communications are allowed to pass between him and his legal advisers in this country.
  MR. BRODRICK: Yes, Sir, subject to the censor regulations obtaining in South Africa.

  Executions of Rebels—Compulsory Attendance of Relatives, etc.
  MR. BRYN ROBERTS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether the compulsory attendance of relatives and neighbours at the execution of persons sentenced to death by military courts was discontinued on the initiative of Lord Kitchener, or in consequence of representations by the Home Government.
  MR. BRODRICK: Instructions were given to discontinue compulsory attendance at executions by Lord Kitchener on his own initiative, and before attention was called to the instances in which it had taken place.
  MR. DAVID THOMAS: Were these spectacles discontinued because they were regarded as "methods of barbarism?"

  Military Employment of Natives.
  MR. C. P. SCOTT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state the number of Kaffirs and coloured persons at present employed in the military operations in South Africa in connection with the Imperial and Colonial forces respectively and the services on which they are employed.
  MR. BRODRICK: As I have told the House on several occasions, it is not
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  possible to keep any record of such employments, which are mainly local in their character.

  British Troops in India—Reduction through South African War.
  MR. LOUGH: On behalf of the hon. Member for the Camborne Division of Cornwall I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he will state the minimum to which the number of British troops of the Indian establishment has at any time been reduced during the past three years, with the period and the causes of such reduction.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Lord G. HAMILTON,)): The minimum to which the number of British troops of the Indian establishment has been reduced during the past three years is about 61,000. This occurred during the period August, 1900, to September, 1901, and was caused by the sudden military emergencies in South Africa and China.

  Censorship of Correspondence to South Africa.
  MR. M'KENNA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether the Censor in South Africa exercises any control over telegrams, letters, and newspapers entering South Africa; and, if so, whether reports of speeches which are alleged to encourage the resistance of the Boers are admitted by him.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE WAR OFFICE (Lord STANLEY,: The chief Censor in South Africa with his Staff exercises control over telegrams, letters and newspapers entering the country. He stops anything which he considers likely to prejudice the interests of the British forces. Owing to the enormous number of letters delivered by each mail, it is impossible to examine more than a percentage of the matter, and, therefore, everything prejudicial cannot be brought under the Censor's notice.
  MR. M'KENNA: Is every telegram alleged to be prejudicial examined?
  LORD STANLEY: Every single telegram is subject to censorship.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: What is the name of the gentleman who succeeded the noble Lord as Censor?
  [No answer was returned.]

  Remounts—New Committee and Military Court of Inquiry.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, seeing that it is laid down in the War Office Regulations that the Remount Department is a branch of the Department of the Quartermaster General, whose duty it is to advise the Secretary of State for War, and that responsibility for the recent disclosures in connection with the purchase of Remounts in Hungary rests under the regulations with the War Office, whether he will consent to extend the promised inquiry so that the conduct of all concerned may be investigated.
  MR. BRODRICK: As I have already stated to the House, the Military Court of Inquiry will confine itself to General Truman's personal responsibility for the effective discharge by his Department of the duties which have fallen on it in connection with the war. The present Quartermaster General is ready to accept the fullest responsibility which can properly fall upon him, but the actual working of the Remounts Department is the business of General Truman, and I am not prepared to reduce the value of the inquiry by extending it to others less directly concerned.
  MR. PIRIE: May I ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will ensure that the inquiry into the administration of the Remount Department shall have power to take evidence on their behalf and to compel the attendance of witnesses.
  MR. BRODRICK: I informed the House the other day that the inquiry would be upon oath and a Report would be presented.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: Will the evidence be published?
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I was going to ask
  842
  how much of the proceedings of the Court of Inquiry will be published, so as to make it known to the public.
  MR. BRODRICK: I have no objection to the publication of the whole of the proceedings.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider his decision, and consent to the appointment of a Committee of the House?
  MR. BRODRICK: I cannot, in any circumstances, consent to an inquiry by a Committee of this House at this stage. The whole of the officers who were engaged on this business are engaged at the present time from morning till night. I cannot call them from the War Office, nor can I put the whole Department, which has very heavy work to do at this moment, on an inquiry which would inevitably entail some failure in the public service.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Why is the Quartermaster General's Department, that is responsible for the conduct of this Remount Department, not to be inquired into?
  MR. BRODRICK: The branch of the Quartermaster General's Department which is involved is to be inquired into.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: It is all involved.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Will the Imperial Yeomanry Committee be subject to inquiry?
  [No answer was returned,]

  Purchase of Horses abroad—Instructions to Military Attachés.
  SIR JOHN COLOMB: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether, since the outbreak of war in South Africa, any general instructions were issued to our Military Attachés abroad on the subject of the supply and purchase of horses; and, if so, on what date; whether any information or suggestions as to obtaining supplies of

  843
  horses were voluntarily tendered by any of our Military Attachés abroad to the Foreign Office; and, if so, will he state by whom and when; and, if any such information or suggestions were so received, what action was taken by the Foreign Office on their receipt.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,): No general instructions have been issued to our Military Attachés abroad on the subject of the supply and purchase of horses. Suggestions as to the obtaining of supplies of horses were voluntarily tendered by certain of our Military Attachés and were at once transmitted to the War Office.

  Hungarian Horses for the Army.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, if he can state whether, towards the end of 1899, the Austrian Government sent unofficially through their military attaché in London, an offer to help in procuring horses in Hungary for our Government; and, if so, upon what grounds this offer was refused.
  MR. BRODRICK: No, Sir.

  South African Remount and Transport Systems, &.c.
  MR. M'KENNA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether, in view of the gain to Government from public criticism in Parliament and the need for authentic information on which such criticism maybe based, he will publish the Reports on the working of the remount system in South Africa, the Reports on the working of the transport system, and the particulars of the contracts for the supply of provisions and forage for the use of the Army in South Africa.
  MR. BRODRICK: I am most anxious to give the House all possible information. I have already undertaken to publish Reports on the remount system in South Africa, and I will see what Reports can be published on the working of the transport system. As regards the contracts for supply of provisions and forage, they are exceedingly numerous, and the
  844
  preparation of them would involve very great labour on an already heavily burdened Department.
  MR. M'KENNA: Will the right hon. Gentleman publish the Report before the Second Reading of the Appropriation Bill with the Supplementary Estimates?
  MR. BRODRICK: I will endeavour to do so, but I cannot be certain.

  Military Attachés Abroad—Communication with Government Departments.
  SIR JOHN COLOMB: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether it is in accordance with Foreign Office rules, or with precedent or custom, for an officer at the head of a subordinate Branch of a War Office Department, such as the Inspector General of Remounts, to communicate direct with our Military Attachés abroad on Military matters, such as the purchase or supply of horses for Military purposes in South Africa; whether he will explain the procedure by which communications between the War Office and our Military Attachés are conducted, and state whether the Foreign Office or the War Office defines the duties and controls the action of our Military Attachés abroad.
  LORD CRANBORNE: All official communications between the War Office and our Military Attachés abroad are forwarded through the Foreign Office and the head of the Mission to which the officer is attached, but it has been the custom for private and demi-official correspondence to pass between some Departments of the War Office and Military Attachés. The Military Attachés, are by the terms of their appointment, placed under the instructions of the heads of the Missions to which they are respectively attached, and address their reports to His Majesty's representative, by whom they are forwarded to the Secretary of State.

  Meat Contracts—Mr. Bergl.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office, whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the Conditions of Tender of the Meat Contract awarded to Mr. Bergl, with any agreement in

  845
  writing subsequently given by Mr. Bergl in regard to any assurance that all or any of the meat shall be procured from Australia and New Zealand; whether, in any such assurance, the words if possible are to be understood to mean if the meat can be procured in Australia and New Zealand, or if it can be procured at the same price as elsewhere; whether any estimate has been made by the War Office of the difference of the cost of meat landed in South Africa from Australia and New Zealand, and from Argentina; and, if so, will he state what this difference is estimated to be; whether he can state the exact financial condition of Mr. Bergl in regard to the contract, and whether he is or was himself a partner with the guarantors, or whether he was acting for them or others on an assurance of the payment of some fixed sum, or a commission on the contract; and can he state the price in the contract granted to Mr. Bergl of meat supplied by him.
  MR. PIRIE: At the same time, may I ask the Secretary of State for War, with reference to the Meat Contract for South Africa awarded to Mr. Bergl, whether he can now inform the House as to the result of inquiries into the circumstances attending the conviction and sentence of Mr. Bergl for selling inferior meat; is Mr. Bergl a naturalised British subject; can he state who are the guarantors the list of whose names he has received, or whether, after the War Office received information that the contract was for a company, they awarded it without ascertaining who the company were; and was the contract for the supply of meat at Aldershot from June to December, 1901, awarded to Mr. Bergl, and immediately sub-let by him; and, if so, can he state for what sum it was re-sold; and, whether the Government will cause an inquiry to be made into the antecedents of Mr. Bergl, and the circumstances connected with the Contract in question, either by the appointment of a Departmental Committee, or by some other method, with a view of informing the House on the matter.
  LORD STANLEY: Perhaps the House will pardon me if I read an exceptionally long answer. The facts of this Contract are as follows:—The Tenders were considered by a small Committee consisting
  846
  of the Quartermaster General, the Assistant Under Secretary, the Director of Army Contracts, Colonel Morgan, and myself. After investigating the various tenders, including those which were for landing of meat in South Africa, but not for distribution, and those which included both services, we found that the tenders which did not include distribution could not be worked as economically as the lowest tender which included distribution. There were three tenders for the whole contract of this character—those of Mr. Bergl, Messrs. Weil, and the old contractor, the Cold Storage Company Of these Mr. Bergl's was the lowest. As the terms of his tender have since appeared in the public Press I will give them to the House, although this is not in accordance with the usual practice. They were—for fresh meat, per 100lb., 70s. 6d., at 8·46d. per lb.; for frozen meat, per 100lb., 45s. 8., at 5·48d. per lb.
  AN HON. MEMBER: For distribution; where—beyond the railways?
  LORD STANLEY: Yes, for distribution wherever we want them, throughout all South Africa. The sum required for such a business was a large one. Mr. Bergl therefore, gave guarantors' names to show that, if given the contract, he would have sufficient financial support to enable him to carry it out. His guarantors were Messrs. Houlder, shipowners, who are associated with Mr. Bergl in owning meat works in Queensland; the Federal Steamship Company who own the Ocean-beach meat works in New Zealand, and who are associated with Birt and Company, owners of meat works at Brisbane, Queensland and Sydney; and Mr. Crart. Inquiries have been made about each of these firms. Messrs. Houlder's are a firm having a capital of £500,000. They are doing a large business, and their stability was understood to be undoubted. The only point affecting them unfavourably was a charge made against them some time back on a question of underwriting which has not yet been tried, and which did not affect their stability in regard to this contract. The Federal Steamship Company have a capital of £500,000. Mr. Crart was contractor for the supply of meat to the Natal Field force in 1899–1900.

  847
  Colonel Morgan informed the Committee that he could not speak too highly of his discharge of that contract. He will be the manager of the company in South Africa. The War Office being satisfied of the financial security of the guarantors, the contract was given to Mr Bergl conditionally upon our being satisfied of the ability of the company he intended to form to carry out our contract. He was also required to guarantee that £200,000 should be paid up, and to lodge cash or Consols in the bank to that amount, and an undertaking was given to obtain as far as possible the necessary quantities of both live and dead stock from the various British colonies. The company will be registered at Pretoria, with a board here having full powers to deal with the War Office. Mr. Bergl is one of the shareholders, and is manager in Great Britain. The names given to us in connection with the company are as follows:—Mr. Bergl, Mr Karl Meyer, Messrs Weil, Mr Tymms, representing the De Beers Company, Messrs. Houlder's, Mr Hughes, representing the Federal Steamship Company, Mr. Stroyan, M.P., Messrs. Lewis and Marks, and Mr. Joel. The company as so formed will, in the opinion of the War Office, give ample security for the efficient carrying out of the contract. With regard to the question of Mr. Bergl having been fined, he states that he was fined £10 owing to an assistant at one of his shops selling to an inspector from New Zealand some mutton as New Zealand which was really Australian. (Laughter.) He has been a good contractor for us for five years, and we saw no reason to pass him over, his tender being the lowest, and the contract was signed accordingly. The War Office had only two ends to secure—namely, to obtain the lowest price for the public during the 12 months which the contract had to run, and proper security for its fulfilment. I have now given the fullest possible answer to the Questions which have been asked, and I am not aware of any other facts relevant to the subject.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Did the original conditions of tender provide for distribution? What guarantee did the Government have that any portion of
  848
  this meat would be sent from Australia, or New Zealand, rather than from the Argentine? That was practically my Question.
  LORD STANLEY: I think I have answered that. We have the kind of contract which everybody was asked to tender for. As to obtaining the meat from Australia instead of the Argentine, we have every intention that this contract shall be kept in the spirit as well as the letter, and we have ample confidence in those whom we employ at the Cape—our officers who inspect the meat—that they will ensure that being done.
  MR. PIRIE: After the fair and straightforward answer that has been given I am unwilling to put any other Question, but I wish to ask as to two small points, Was Mr. Bergl a naturalized British subject?
  LORD STANLEY: Yes,
  MR. PIRIE: Was the tender an open one?
  LORD STANLEY: Yes.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Is there any guarantee by which the contractor will be obliged to buy any or all of the meat from Australia or New Zealand?
  LORD STANLEY: There is a written agreement with them that they will get, as far as possible, all the meat from our British possessions. That was given before we signed the contract.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Is that a guarantee dependent on their being able to get the meat at equal prices? Suppose it costs more to obtain from Australia and New Zealand than from the Argentine is there any guarantee that they will get it from Australia?
  [No answer was returned.]

  Naval and Military Pensions.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: I beg to ask the Frst Lord of the Treasury, whether he is aware that in some Continental countries soldiers joining certain branches of the Civil Service are allowed to count

  849
  the whole of their Naval or Military service towards civil pension. And, having regard to the fact that ex-postmen and other civil servants are allowed to count towards pension two-thirds of their previous service to the State upon joining the Metropolitan Police Foree, whether, with the view of attracting a desirable class of recruits for the Army, he will consider the advisability of measures being taken for extending similar privileges to ex-soldiers.
  SIR J. FERGUSSON: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers may I ask him whether he will consider the advisability of like measures in regard to Post Office servants who have served in the Army.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): The intention of the hon. Member is to ask whether, if a man transfers himself from one pensioned office to another, the pension which he has earned in the first office shall count towards a general pension. That general rule is observed in the case of those soldiers who have pensioned services; and it would be a violation of the rules to count the services of those soldiers who have not pensioned services?
  CAPTAIN NORTON: Is the portion of service given as soldier not service towards a pension?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No, Sir.

  Changes in Officer's Uniforms.
  GENERAL LAURIE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether he has made any calculation as to the cost of the proposed changes in nearly every article of uniform of the officers now serving in the Army, and whether the expense of making these changes is to be met by the public, or to be borne by the individual officer out of his private means.
  LORD STANLEY: Yes, Sir. A calculation of the cost has been made. If my hon. and gallant friend will refer to the special army order of 1st February,
  850
  he will find that the articles of uniform of officers now serving, which have to be changed are very few, and that with a few unimportant exceptions, the more expensive articles are retained until worn out or, in some cases, until the 1st January 1906. Further the immediate cost which will be borne by the officer will be more than counterbalanced by the ultimate considerable saving. As regards the cost of the introduction of the service dress will my hon. and gallant friend kindly refer to the reply to a Question put by the hon. Member for the West Division of Newington on the 27th January.†As regards young officers joining, the saving is considerable.
  GENERAL LAURIE: My Question was as to the amount. I do not quite understand what the cost is expected to be, but perhaps I may say, in reference to the calculation that the cost will be inconsiderable, that I hold in my hand an estimate of £32, which is the lowest I can obtain.
  LORD STANLEY: I have answered the Question as far as possible.

  Metropolitan Volunteers—Brigade Schemes.
  MR. THOMAS DEWAR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether he will explain why eight Metropolitan Volunteer Infantry Battalions should be brigaded under an organisation adapted for time of peace only, whereas in time of war, according to the scheme for Home defence, they are brigaded entirely differently, viz., as the 23rd and 24th Brigades of the 4th Army Corps under different Brigadiers and with Battalions not brigaded with them in peace training or organisation.
  MR. BRODRICK: Until the new system has been tested it has been thought well to maintain the existing arrangement for the eight battalions mentioned, except so far as Camp is concerned, when they will train under their Field Army Brigadier.
  †See preceding volume, p. 957.

  Volunteer Officers and Army Rank.
  MR. THOMAS DEWAR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether it is intended to grant honorary Army rank to those Officers of the Volunteer Service Companies on being absorbed into their Volunteer units on return from active service, following the precedent of the rank bestowed upon Officers of the Imperial Yeomanry and City Imperial Volunteers.
  MR. BRODRICK: Yes Sir. The House was so informed last June.

  Volunteer Sergeant Instructors.
  MR. PRICE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether he will explain why sergeant-instructors of Volunteers are never able to rise above the rank of colour-sergeant, and that so-called sergeants-major of Volunteers, some of whom have held the rank of colour-sergeants for over 21 years, cannot be promoted under any circumstances even to the rank of quarter-master-sergeant, though they are not pensioners but serving on Army engagement.
  MR. BRODRICK: Proposals to raise the rank of these non-commissioned officers have frequently been considered and again recently, but it has not been thought desirable to grant any higher rank. Warrant rank is confined to the Regular Army and Militia, who are liable to be embodied for long periods.

  Development of Indian Industries.
  MR. DAVID THOMAS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India to what extent, if any, he proposes to apply the surpluses, which there may be, of the Indian Exchequer to the development of Indian industries, and whether he will consider the desirability of their application to the remission of taxation.
  LORD G. HAMILTON: The financial arrangements for India for 1902–03 are now being carefully considered, but I cannot anticipate in any way the statement which will be made in India by the Finance Minister in the usual way towards the end of next month.

  Regulation of Indian Coal Mine Labour.
  MR. DAVID THOMAS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether he will consider the advisability of assimilating the law in respect to Indian coal mines to the mining legislation of this country in so far as the different circumstances are applicable, and particularly will he advise the prohibition of the employment of women and young children underground in India.
  LORD G. HAMILTON: By the Indian Mines Act of 1901 the law of India in respect of coal and other mines has been assimilated to the law of this country as far as, in my judgment, the different circumstances of India render such assimilation feasible. Under the conditions of labour prevailing in India, the safeguards provided by the Act, in respect of the employment of women and children, are sufficient, and I am not prepared to advise the adoption of further restrictions.

  Ameer of Afghanistan's Subsidy.
  MR. JAMES O'KELLY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Ameer of Cabul still receives an annual subsidy of 18 lakhs of rupees from the Government of India; and, if so, what service he renders in return; whether trade between India and Afghanistan is encouraged; and whether, in view of the threatened famine, the Government of India will withdraw the subsidy, if any, and apply it to the relief of distress.
  LORD G. HAMILTON: The subsidy paid to the late Ameer has not been modified. It formed part of a general agreement between the Government of India and H. H. Abdur Rahman, under which various mutual advantages were obtained that cannot be set forth within the limits of an answer to a question; but I may refer the hon. Member to the agreement of 12th November, 1893, which was printed as a Command Paper in 1896. My answer to the last clause of the Question is in the negative, and I should add that there are, quite independent of the subsidy, ample funds for any distress that may occur in any part of India.

  Samoan Arbitration.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any steps have been taken, in accord with the terms of the Convention relating to the settlement of certain claims in Samoa for the submission of these claims to the arbitration of the King of Sweden and Norway; whether the Foreign Office is in possession of any information concerning the approximate date of the issue of the arbitrator's award; and whether the United States and German Governments were willing to include Samoan native claims; and whether His Majesty's Government dissented; and, if so, on what grounds.
  LORD CRANBORNE: The British, German, and American cases are now before the King of Sweden. The counter-cases, which must be handed in before the 1st of March, are in course of preparation. In these circumstances His Majesty's Government are necessarily unable to state at what date the award will be issued. It does not appear that any proposal was made either by the German or by the United States Governments to include in the scope of the arbitration the claims of Samoan natives.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: Has the attention of the noble Lord been called to the statement by Count Von Bülow; on this subject?
  LORD CRANBORNE: I will inquire into that.

  Wei-Hai-Wei.
  MR. DALZIEL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether any decision has been arrived at by the Government in favour of with drawing the troops at present stationed at Wei Hai-Wei; can he state the number of troops at present stationed at that port; and is it intended to proceed with the proposed fortifications.
  MR. BRODRICK: It has been decided to withdraw the troops at present stationed at Wei-Hai-Wei and not to proceed further with the fortifications. The troops at present stationed at Wei-Hai-
  854
  Wei consist of the Chinese Regiment and a detachment of Royal Engineers, in all about 1,100.
  MR. DALZIEL: Has any date been fixed for the withdrawal, and is Wei-Hai-Wei to be retained as a commercial port?
  [No answer was returned.]
  MR. M'KENNA: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he can state the total expenditure incurred in respect of the lease and occupation of Wei-Hai-Wei.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EX, CHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH-): I cannot give final figures, but the approximate expenditure to the end of the present financial year is estimated to be as follows:

  1. Capital Expenditure £71,454, by the War Office, and £44,334 by the Admiralty, making together £115,788.

  2. The Total of the Annual Military Ex. penditure has amounted to £142,000 spread over three years.

  3. The Grant in aid for the current year on the Colonial Office Vote for Civil Expenditure is £11,250.

  Proposed Sale of Afghan "Relics"
  MR. NORMAN: I beg to ask the Home Secretary, whether his attention has been called to the announcement that some bones of British officers and men, killed while making a stand during the Afghan War of 1842, will be sold by auction at a London saleroom tomorrow; and whether he has power to prevent this indecent sale.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. RITCHIE,): Even assuming that these relics are genuine, which, I think, is a somewhat large assumption to make, I am advised that no breach of the law has been, or will be, committed if they are sold, and that, therefore, it is a matter in which I have no power of interference. But I may say that, if such a sale is to take place, such a course seems to me highly improper.
  MR. NORMAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman convey that expression of opinion to the auctioneer, whose name I have privately given to the right hon. Gentleman?
  Mr. RITCHIE: I will take care that a copy of the Question and of my answer goes to the auctioneer.

  H.M.S. "Egeria" and H.M.S. "Condor."
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, whether the Admiralty have received any news, in confirmation, or otherwise, of the disaster which is reported to have happened to the "Egeria," which went out to search for the "Condor."
  THE CIVIL LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. PRETYMAN, Suffolk,): No, Sir, the Admiralty have no reason to suppose in any way that anything has happened to the "Egeria." She has been sent to search for the "Condor" and is not expected to be heard of for two or three weeks.

  Vaccination—Government Supplies of Lymph.
  MR. BARTLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether, seeing the importance of all persons being vaccinated and re-vaccinated with vaccine lymph of guaranteed quality made in this country, and not obtained from abroad or from other sources which are not so guaranteed, he will take steps to provide with the least possible delay an adequate supply of Goverment lymph, so that every qualified medical practitioner shall be able to purchase such Government lymph in such quantities as he may require, and at a price just sufficient to pay the cost of its production.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG,): Having regard to the interest felt in all matters connected with smallpox at the present time, perhaps I may be allowed to make a short statement in answer to this question. The duty undertaken by the Government in 1898 was to provide lymph for primary vaccination by Public Vaccinators, and this duty I may say has been completely fulfilled. It has also been the desire of the Government, as far as possible, to provide Public Vaccinators with lymph for re-vaccinations, and this has been done to the
  856
  utmost extent practicable. In ordinary times it has been found sufficient to issue from 8,000 to 10,000 charges of lymph weekly. Since, however, the epidemic of smallpox began, this output has been largely increased, and the establishment is now producing some 50,000 charges a week. I may explain that there are several difficulties in connection with the manufacture of glycerinated lymph. In the first place it is not possible to store it to any large extent because the period for which it will keep is uncertain, and I may state that when the demand, in consequence of the outbreak of smallpox, began to increase, there was in reserve the full amount which it was thought practicable to retain. Further, the lymph takes some weeks to mature, especially as it is of importance that all practicable means should be used to test its efficiency and purity before it is issued. Moreover there is great fluctuation in the demand, owing to the habit of so many persons to defer vaccination until smallpox is imminent. Thus in a single fortnight recently the applications for lymph from Public Vaccinators, which had previously risen to four times the normal demand, suddenly more than doubled. From the inquiries which I have caused to be made, I understand that an ample supply of glycerinated calf lymyh can be obtained from unofficial sources, and that there is no reason to doubt that it is satisfactory in quality. It would, I think, be unfortunate at this moment to enter into competition with private enterprise in this matter. Looking to the considerations I have mentioned, I do not see my way at the present time to accede to the suggestion of my hon. friend.
  MR. BARTLEY: Is there any guarantee of the unofficial lymph, that it is really efficient?
  MR. WALTER LONG: There is no guarantee either of the official or of the unofficial lymph. Two years ago there was an independent inquiry by the Lancet of the lymph generally supplied, and they found considerable fault with the lymph supplied by the Local Government Board, and placed it fifth on the list. It is impossible to guarantee

  857
  lymph. What the Local Government Board does is to secure that the utmost care is taken in its preparation, in the hope that it will prove efficacious. The lymph provided privately for commercial purposes is of excellent quality, and is at present as good as much of that supplied by ourselves.
  MR. JOSEPH A. PEASEasked whether it was the fact that a large quantity of lymph had recently been obtained from the French Government owing to an insufficient supply being obtainable from His Majesty's Government.
  MR. WALTER LONG: No, Sir, certainly not. I am not aware that any lymph was supplied by the French Government. There is a considerable manufacture of lymph in France, and so far as we know it is of a very satisfactory character; but the supply of lymph from France through merchants in this country has nothing to do with the Government having a home supply.

  Housing of the Working Classes—Select Committee.
  DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether he can now say when he will ask the House to appoint the Select Committee to consider certain matters in connection with the Housing of the Working Classes.
  MR. WALTER LONG: I cannot at present state when I shall be in a position to move for the appointment of the Select Committee to inquire into the period for the repayment of loans raised by Local Authorities, but due notice will be given of the Motion. I do not propose that the Committee should be asked to inquire into other matters in connection with the Housing of the Working Classes.

  Suspected Beer Poisoning Cases at Halifax.
  SIR CUTHBERT QUILTER: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, whether his attention has been called to the recent cases of suspected beer poisoning in the borough of Halifax; whether any
  858
  investigation by his Department, or by any local authority, has taken place; and, if so, with what result.
  MR. WALTER LONG: My attention has been called to the cases referred to in the Question, and I have ascertained that local investigations are now being made by the Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Arsenical Poisoning as well as by the Medical Officer of Health for the Borough.

  A Maiden Assizes in South Wales.
  MR. LLOYD MORGAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he is aware of the fact that, during the assizes just concluded for five counties in South Wales, there was in three of the counties no work for the common jury, and that at least 144 men were summoned to serve on the common jury for those three counties when there was no civil or criminal cases for them to try; whether, seeing that the high sheriff for a county or borough is not empowered, where there is no case to be tried, two days before the date fixed for the holding of the assizes, to give the jurors summoned notice that they need not attend, he will consider the question of amending the law to enable high sheriffs to do so; whether, having regard to the circumstances of the class to which jurors often belong, he will consider the question of introducing legislation to provide for the payment of their expenses.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (MR. RITCHIE,): I have no information with regard to the statements made in the first paragraph. I am aware of the inconvenience sometimes caused to jurors by their being summoned when no occasion arises for their services, and the question of the payment of their expenses has also been under consideration, but I do not see my way to introduce legislation to deal with these matters.

  Welsh Sunday Closing Act—Bona Fide Travellers.
  MR. GEORGE KENYON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for

  859
  the Home Department, if his attention has been called to a series of cases recently tried before the justices at petty sessions at Llangollen for offences against the Sunday Closing Act (Wales), and to the complaints made in court as to the difficulties which surround the enforcement of the bona fide Traveller's Clauses in that Act; and whether he will consider the possibility of including in his Bill of this year some clearer definition of these clauses, and if necessary an extension of the present three-mile radius at present in force.
  Mr. RITCHIE: I have seen reports of several cases of the nature referred to. I find that in spite of the difficulties complained of a number of convictions were obtained. Without saying that the existing law is all that can be desired I cannot but think that any amendment of the bona fide traveller provision contains very grave difficulties, and as regards the extension of the three-mile limit I have reason to doubt whether it would, on the whole, be beneficial.

  Bethnal Green Disused Burial Ground.
  MR. FORDE RIDLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has received any complaints with reference to the desecration of a disused burial ground situate in Gibraltar Walk and Princes Court, Bethnal Green; and will he cause inquiry to be made, with a view to the future protection of the ground and of the remains interred therein.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. JESSE COLLINGS,): A letter on this subject was received from the Bethnal Green Borough Council just a week ago, and the matter is under consideration.

  Acquirement of Steam Vessels by Railway Companies.
  MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Furness, and Midland Railway Companies are
  860
  seeking Parliamentary powers to purchase and acquire steam vessels employed in connection with their lines under conditions which will enable them to give preference; whether the Railway Department of the Board of Trade will examine those Bills, and through him report to the House in the public interest.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): Yes, Sir, my attention has been directed to this matter, and I replied to a similar Question on Thursday last.†If the hon. Member will refer to Standing Order 156 he will find it bears upon the subject, and is, I think, quite sufficient to meet his point.

  Intermediate Education in Wales—County Exhibition Examinations.
  MR DAVID THOMAS: I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education if his attention has been called to the Regulations of the Central Welsh Board of intermediate Education in respect to County Exhibition awards; and if he is aware that in a recent examination in Carmarthenshire, A. B. Thomas, who came out third in the list, would have stood first had he failed in Mathematics instead of attaining the honours standard, while he would have remained third if he had had the combined qualifications of the two successful candidates in addition to his own; and, if if is within the scope of his functions, will he call the attention of the Central Board to the effect of these Regulations on the awards.
  THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL ON EDUCATION (Sir J. GORST,): The Board of Education have no right to interfere with the Regulations of the Central Welsh Board in respect to County Exhibition awards, nor are these binding on any County Governing body which does not wish to make use of them.

  Charing Cross Postal and Telegraph Offices.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the
  †See preceding volume, p. 528.

  861
  Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether his attention has been called to the inconvenience of the post and telegraph offices at Charing Cross not being in one building; and, whether he will take steps to have a post and telegraph office erected at Charing Cross suitable to the central position and importance of the locality.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): There is a certain amount of inconvenience in the fact that the Postal business and Telegraph business at Charing Cross are done in separate buildings, but the inconvenience is probably small as the arrangement is well known. Having regard to the extreme costliness of property in that locality, the Postmaster General is not prepared at present to take steps for the erection of a combined Office; but if a suitable opportunity occurs of obtaining a site at a reasonable cost, he would be ready to consider the matter.

  Labourers' Cottages in Ireland.
  MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether the £40,000 from the Exchequer contribution to Ireland available for labourers' cottages has, during the last financial year, been arpropriated and spent upon such cottages; and, if not, how much of it has been so expended; and can he state where the balance is, and what is to be done with it.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): The following payments have been made out of the Exchequer Contribution, in respect of the financial year. 1900–1:—£20,750 2s. 6d. to County Councils, on behalf of Rural Districts, in which cottages have been provided since August, 1891. £4,860 19s. 0d. to the Board of Works in reduction of loans advanced to Rural District Councils, in respect of of cottages. £3,159 6s. 11d. to the six Municipal County Boroughs. The balance, together with any balances remaining after previous distributions, is lying to the credit of the Local Taxation Account for further distribution
  862
  hereafter, if the money is required for labourers' cottages in districts where the Acts have not yet been put into operation, and if found not to be so required, will be distributable amongst the Counties concerned as Probate Duty Grant.
  MR. LOUGH: Is not this money earmarked for labourers' cottages, and can it be applied to any other purpose?
  MR. WYNDHAM: The Regulations under which the money is distributed are dated, 1st December, 1899. I will give a copy to the hon. Member, and if he will study it it may do away with the necessity for further Questions.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: Do unions in which no cottages are built still continue to receive a share of the grant?
  MR. WYNDHAM: That is covered by my reply. The balance is kept for an undetermined period, and if it is found that no application is likely to be made for it for cottage schemes, then it will he applied in some other way.
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the desirabillty of transferring such money to unions while he carried out the Labourers Act?
  MR. WYNDHAM: I think all contingencies are met by the existing regulation, but I will consider the point.

  Limerick and Kerry Railway.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that the Commissioner of Valuation has refused to re-value the line of railway known as the Limerick and Kerry Railway, although the Kerry County Council have asked for this valuation on the grounds of its being undervalued; and whether, considering the rates paid by the ratepayers of Kerry for railway guarantees, he will instruct the Commissioner of Valuation to comply with the demand of the Kerry County Council to re-value this line.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The Limerick and Kerry Railway forms portion of the

  863
  Great Southern and Western Railway, and cannot be re-valued except as part of, and in connection with, the entire system. The Commissioner of Valuation will be prepared to re-value the whole system at the next annual revision, provided application for a re-valuation be made by the rating bodies interested.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: Was the application made and refused?
  MR. WYNDHAM: I am not aware of that.

  Glashabeg (Kerry) Road Loan.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he can explain why it is that the Local Government Board for Ireland have delayed the granting of a loan to the Dingle Rural District Council, Co. Kerry, for the making of a road in Glashabeg, especially seeing that the Congested Districts Board are giving one-half of the whole amount required, and that the County Council have sanctioned the work; and whether he will urge on the Local Government Board to consider this matter immediately.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The hon. Member is, no doubt, basing his Question on information now obsolete. The loan was sanctioned by the Local Government Board a month ago.

  Ballymote Police.
  MR. O'DOWD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that some members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, at present stationed in the district of Ballymote, Co. Sligo, are in the habit of purchasing hay and other commodities from the farmers of the locality, ostensibly for their own use, and afterwards reselling the same to persons unconnected with the force; and, whether this action of theirs has the sanction of the police authorities.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The hon. Member has been misinformed. There is no foundation whatever for the statements in this Question.

  Lord Ely's Estate.
  MR. FFRENCH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether his attention has been called to the fact that Lord Ely's Estate is in the English Court of Chancery and cannot be sold without the consent of that Court; and, whether he can hold out any hope that the Irish Land Purchase Acts will be so amended as to provide for the sale of Irish estates that are in the English Court of Chancery.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Yes, Sir. But I cannot anticipate discussion on the contents of the forthcoming Bill.
  MR. FFRENCH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that the tenants of Lord Ely's South Wexford estate recently held a meeting for the purpose of considering the advisability of making their landlord an offer for the purchase of their holdings, and that the public advertisement calling the meeting stated that the tenants' solicitor would be present to tender to the tenants any legal assistance they require; whether the police have instructions to watch tenants who meet to discuss the question of purchasing their holdings; and, if not, will he say who was responsible for the attendance of 15 policemen at the meeting, and what was their object.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The police have no instructions to watch tenants who attend meetings for the purpose stated. They were present on this occasion because a large concourse of people was expected, and with the sole object of maintaining the peace. They were sent on the requisition of the Local Authorities responsible for the preservation of the peace.

  Irish Language in the Newtownards Schools.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland have refused to allow an evening class for the study of the Irish language to be held in the Ann Street Schools, Newtownards, Co. Down; and will he state on what grounds has this refusal been based.
  MR. WYNDHAM: No application has been made to the Commissioners for permission to hold an evening class for the study of Irish in these Schools.

  Artisans Dwellings in Irish Towns.
  MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for a Return giving the names of the urban authorities in Ireland which have erected artisans dwellings under the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act, and to state the number of cottages built by each authority and the amount of loans sanctioned in respect of same.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The Hon. Member presumably refers to the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, and the similar Acts previously in force. The Commissioners of Public Works at page 31 of their last Annual Report, publish a Table showing the number and amount of loans sanctioned, and the number of families accommodated, each year since 1866. The preparation of a Return in the form indicated in the question would occupy a very considerable time, as it would necessitate correspondence with the local bodies concerned. Perhaps the hon. Member would examine the statistics I have indicated before pressing for the further information desired by him.

  Prison Treatment of Mr. Conor O'Kelly, M.P.
  MR. M'HUGH: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he can explain why Mr. Conor O'Kelly, M.P. for South Mayo, now a prisoner in Castlebar Gaol, has been obliged to sleep on a plank, and was confined to his cell for 22 hours out of 24 each day: What is the diet supplied to him; in what way does his prison treatment differ, in regard to reading and writing materials and visits, from that of an ordinary convict in the same gaol; and is he allowed to write to his friends and to receive letters from them.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Mr. Conor O'Kelly, who was committed to Castlebar Prison on December 18th 1901, under sentence of two calendar months imprisonment for unlawful assembly, was liable under
  866
  Rule 24 of Local Prison Rules for the first month of his sentence to sleep on a plank bed. He slept, however, on the plank bed for only three nights after his committal, being then supplied with a mattress by order of the medical officer. He has been confined in his cell for 22 hours out of the 24, getting the usual period of two hours exercise in the open air as required by subsection 9, section 109, of 7 Geo. IV., cap. 74. The medical officer has not ordered him any further period of exercise on the ground of health. The diet prescribed by rule for prisoners sentenced to imprisonment without hard labour for two months is class 2 (b) diet for one month and class 3 (b) diet for the remainder of the sentence. These approved dietaries are prescribed under the General Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1877. The medical officer during the first month of Mr. O'Kelly's sentence made the following changes of diet:—Tea in lieu of cocoa for breakfast, 8oz. of bread in lieu of potatoes for dinner, and 8oz. of bread extra daily. During the second month of his sentence the medical officer directed that the class 2 diet should be continued instead of class 3, and that the extras already mentioned should be continued with the addition of one pint of milk extra daily. The governor reports that when Mr. O'Kelly became entitled to third-class diet he requested the medical officer to allow him to continue on second-class diet with the extras, as he said that diet agreed with him, and his request was granted. There are no "convicts"—i.e., prisoners sentenced to penal servitude—in Castlebar Prison. Mr. O'Kelly is subject to the same rules in respect of reading and writing materials, visits, and letters, as other local prisoners. He is entitled to the use of books from the prison library and a slate, but not to newspapers, nor is he entitled to visits or letters during the term of his imprisonment. He has, however, by permission of Government, received one visit from a solicitor on the 6th instant. The governor further reports that, had the prisoner desired to write a letter on business or family affairs of an urgent nature, he would (under the authority vested in him in such cases) have allowed the prisoner to do so, but that the prisoner did not express any such desire. Mr. O'Kelly, a few days after his committal, applied to

  867
  the Prisons Board for permission to procure certain educational works not in the Castlebar Prison Library, with a view of continuing his University studies. The Board, in order that educated prisoners should not be at a disadvantage by being in a small prison with a limited library, directed that a supply of educational works (mathematics and classics), containing several of the books applied for, should be sent from a larger prison to Castlebar Prison. Mr. O'Kelly has been exempted from the obligation of wearing prison clothing, having been permitted under Rule 28 of the prison rules to wear his own clothing. Mr. O'Kelly, having availed himself of the provisions of section 16 of the Act 19 and 20 Vict., cap. 68, was exempted from labour. Had the prisoner not chosen to avail himself of this exemption he would have been employed five or six hours daily at out-door labour. Mr. O'Kelly, while being treated as the law requires, has applied for and has been accorded every concession allowed by the law.
  MR. DILLON: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether his attention has been directed to the fact that when Major Jameson and his confederates were sentenced—
  Mr. SPEAKER: Order, Order! That has nothing to do with the question on the Paper.
  MR. DILLON: Then I will put it down on the Paper for to-morrow.

  Payment of Substitutes for Dispensary Medical Officers.
  MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, having regard to the fact that, although Medical Officers, summoned by subpœna to give evidence in criminal cases, are paid their fees at professional rates, in the cases of dispensary officers absent on such duties the ratepayers are called upon to pay a locum tenens, whether he will consider the advisability of ordering in future that such doctors must provide their own substitute.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The Local Government Board have been advised that a medical officer compelled by subpœna to be absent from his district is temporarily
  868
  incapacitated from performing his duties within the meaning of the Relief Act and Orders, and the Board of Guardians were bound, therefore, to make provision for the care of the sick poor during his absence by employing and paying a temporary substitute. It is a matter of very rare occurrence for a Board of Guardians to have to incur expenses such as these.
  MR. J. P. FARRELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman prepare a Return showing how much this has cost to the ratepayers?
  MR. WYNDHAM: I am informed there are very few cases. I will look into the matter and see if the Return is justified.

  Irish Railway Clearing House.
  MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, seeing that the Chairman of the Board of Works in Ireland is entitled to attend the Irish Railway Clearing House, whether he can obtain the through rates, viâ Dublin, which the Great Southern and Western Company have omitted to furnish.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The Board of Works is not represented on the Committee of the Irish Railway Clearing House by the Chairman, but by one of the Commissioners. The arrangement of through rates is a matter for the companies concerned, and any information obtainable by a member of the Committee is confidential and could not be made public.

  Cattle Transit—Through Consignment Notes.
  MR. FIELD: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he received a Resolution from the Irish Cattle Traders and Stockowners' Association protesting against the terms of the through consignment note enforced by carrying companies in Ireland, and asking the Government to modify those conditions having regard to the decision respecting them by a majority of the King's Bench; and whether the Department of Agriculture in Ireland intend to take measures to protect consignors.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The Resolution has been received. I understand that an appeal against the decision of the King's

  869
  Bench Division has been, or is about to be lodged. If this be so, it would be premature to discuss the question whether action should be taken by the Department.

  Irish Blind.
  MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he can give the total number of blind in Ireland according to the last census, the number of blind of each sex, and the number of blind of each sex in Irish workhouses and other institutions.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The General Report on the recent census has not yet been completed, but so far as can at present be ascertained there were 4,241 persons totally blind in Ireland on the 31st March—2,106 males and 2,135 females—a reduction of 1,100 as compared with the year 1891;320 males and 447 females were inmates of workhouses, and 134 males and 220 females were inmates of institutions for the blind.

  Albert Institution, Dublin.
  MR. J. P.O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, if he will explain why the prospectus issued by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Education in Ireland for 1902 makes no provision for free places in the Albert Institution in Dublin; whether he is aware that the prospectus issued by the Department for 1901 provided for Free Resident Students; whether he has read the Memorandum issued by the President of the Board, in July, 1901, addressed to "The Irish Farmer and his Friends," which states (pages 17 and 18), that for every rural district scholarships or bursaries shall be provided which will enable boys leaving the primary schools to obtain their training in the secondary school free, and for the extension of that system for the education of exceptional boys up to the Royal College of Science and the University. And, having regard to the fact that the prospectus of the Department for this year demands fees amounting to £27 for the Summer and Winter Sessions at the Albert Institute; whether he will provide that boys who have qualified for admission to the Institute trusting to
  870
  the regulations of the President of the Department shall not be deprived of the priority of their labour by the original prospectus being departed from.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The prospectus for 1902 already issued is a preliminary prospectus only. A supplementary prospectus dealing with the new arrangements as to scholarships is about to be issued. The reply to the second paragraph is in the affirmative. The main feature of the new Scheme will be the substitution of County Scholarships aided partly by funds of the Department and of the County Councils, for the 25 free places hitherto provided. The number of places, free so far as the student is concerned, will, it is expected, be considerably larger under the new arrangements than under the old system.

  Cork Post Office.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that the business now transacted at the Cork Post Office is greater than it was 50 years ago, when the old post office was built. Whether he will grant a Return showing the relative number of transactions in that post office for a given period of three months in the year 1901, as compared with those of a similar period in 1851, in respect to the amount of correspondence, number of telegrams, money orders, and postal orders, and number of savings banks customers. And, whether, in view of the increase in all post office business, the postal authorities adhere to the proposed plans of the new building which show a reduction from 70 feet to 40 feet in the counter space available for public business.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The desired Return of the business at the Cork Post Office for the year 1851 cannot be given; but the present business is of course very much larger. The plans for the enlargement of the building were prepared to meet the increase of business. The difference in the counter space is not really so great as is suggested, for the available space at the present counters is

  871
  about 60 feet only, and much of that is of little use to the public; while the new office will have 54 feet of counter, including the separate parcels counter, at the whole of which the public can be served, so that it will be possible to attend to more persons at one time than at present,
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: Does the right hon Gentleman think the smaller counter space will be sufficient for the greater amount of business now done?
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The available counter space will be larger, not smaller.
  MR. FLYNN: As there is a difference of opinion on this matter between the architect of the Board of Works and the local architects, will the right hon. Gentleman send down an architect from Dublin to confer with the local architects?
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think any useful purpose would be served by any further inquiry. A complete inquiry had been made and I have had the advantage of seeing the alternative plans suggested.
  MR. FLYNN: I say that local opinion in this matter is being entirely ignored.

  Letterkenny Postal Arrangements.
  MR. MCFADDEN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, if he is aware that the inhabitants of the townlands of Cork, Ballystrang, Lananlea, and part of Kirkneedy, in the Letterkenny, County Donegal, postal district, at present receive only a bi-weekly delivery of letters, whilst those in the neighbouring townlands of the Tann district, and that of Stranorlar, receive a daily delivery; and whether, seeing that there are fifty families residing in the said townlands who have correspondence with relatives at service in different parts of the country, and residing in Scotland and America, steps will be taken to give the townlands named a daily delivery the same as in the neighbouring townlands.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The Postmaster General will have inquiry
  872
  made on the question of affording a more frequent delivery of letters at the townlands in the Letterkenny district to which the hon. Member refers, and the result shall be communicated to him as soon as possible.

  Donegal Pier Tolls—Income Tax Assessment.
  MR. MCFADDEN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, if he is aware that the Surveyor of Taxes at Londonderry has assessed the County Council of the county of Donegal with income tax on the tolls received by them from the piers in the county, and has, notwithstanding the protest of the Council, refused to deduct from such assessments the amount of the annual instalments paid by the Council to the Board of Works, in respect of the outstanding loans borrowed for the erection of the piers; and whether, seeing that all the piers in the County Donegal, with one exception, are situate in congested districts, and the revenues derived from them are placed by the Council in aid of the rates of the districts in which the piers are situate, directions will be given to the surveyor to remit the assessments or give credit in the assessments for the amounts of the instalments paid by the Council to the Board of Works.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The facts appear to be as stated, and instructions have been given for the assessment to be reduced by such an amount as represents the interest paid to the Board of Works.

  Committee on the Presentation of Local Records.
  MR. BULL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether he can state when the Final Report of the Treasury Committee, appointed in 1900 to consider the preservation of local records, may be expected, having regard to his answer to a similar inquiry made on the 20th May last.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I can add nothing as far as I know to the answer given by my hon. friend the Secretary to the Treasury on January 30th, which was to the effect that the Report of the Committee is in course of preparation, but it is impossible to say when it will be presented.

  New Procedure Rules.
  Sir JOSEPH LEESE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether, if the new Standing Order, "Priority of Business," is passed, Bills put down for the third and fourth Wednesdays after Whit Sunday will be transferred to the third and fourth Fridays after Whit Sunday, and will receive the same priority as if the said Standing Order had not been passed.
  GENERAL LAURIE: May I also ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether, if the new Standing Orders as proposed are brought into effect, any arrangement will be made by which the Public Bills introduced by unofficial Members and placed on the Order Papers for Wednesdays throughout the session will be transferred to Fridays in the same order as now standing on the Order Paper.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Of course, if the House consents, as I hope it will, to substitute Friday for Wednesday, we should take care that no Member with a Bill down for Wednesday should suffer by the change. It will be a change, not only in the day, but in all the business set down for that day.
  GENERAL LAURIE: Do I understand that all the orders set down for Wednesday will be transferred to Friday?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Of course, the change will be en bloc. The whole thing will be transferred from Wednesday to Friday.
  MR. CLANCY: I wish to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, whether each rule will come into operation immediately after it is passed, or whether all will come into operation together when all have been passed.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think I answered a question of somewhat similar tenor a few days ago. Every rule as soon as it is passed becomes a Sessional Order, unless the House passes some Resolution suspending its operation. To make it a Standing Order requires in the case of a new rule a separate Motion. I do not propose that any of the rules—I think
  874
  they are numbered 3 to 10, but I must not be taken as giving the precise figures—that block of rules which deals with the arrangement of our time, should come into operation until all are passed. The other rules, which stand on their own basis, will come into operation, at any rate as Sessional Orders, as soon as they are passed.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: How does that effect the case of an already existing Standing Order being amended?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: A Standing Order which is amended will remain a Standing Order.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: In its amended form?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, it will remain an amended Standing Order. A new Order will remain a Sessional Order until a special Resolution is passed making it a Standing Order.

  Presentation of Supplementary Estimates.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will explain why the Civil Service Supplementary Estimates have, without notice being given to the House, been again presented in a form which will allow of but one question being put from the Chair, when last session he based the change then for the first time made on the ground that it was an emergency operation, and an emergency operation alone, the circumstances being altogether special. May I explain that I understand the Secretary to the Treasury gave some sort of notice late at night, but not the sort of notice I have in my mind.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Gentleman complains of the notice. It was public notice given in the ordinary way by my right hon. friend in my absence and at my request. I agreed not to make the change without notice; but the notice has been given in a perfectly public and unexceptionable manner. The reason for the change is simple. It was made last year as an emergency measure, but the Government think that it is the most con-

  875
  venient way of dealing with Supplementary Estimates. We do not put the Supplementary Estimates, like the Ordinary Estimates of the year, in fixed compartments. As they have to be passed by March 31, it is best to put them in a form which will prevent an emergency arising similar to that from which we suffered last year.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: It is an arrangement convenient to the Government, no doubt, but the question is whether it is convenient to the financial control of this House. I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether or not a practice of this kind is not a great encouragement to the increase of Supplementary Estimates, and a discouragement to the Government to place on the Original Estimates the true expenditure.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I will try to answer a somewhat argumentative question. I entirely concur with the right hon. Gentleman that the Government should, as far as possible, restrict putting any of their expenditure in the form of Supplementary Estimates, and, as a matter of fact, the Supplementary Estimates this year are on a much smaller scale than those which it was our duty and misfortune to present last year. Of course, when I used the word convenient, I meant to apply it in its widest sense, and to speak of the convenience not of the Government alone, but of the progress of public business.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether last year, when this practice was adopted for the first time in the whole history of Parliament, the right hon, Gentleman did not defend it on the ground that, it then being the 18th of March, and Supply being in a backward condition, it was essential to take this course to fulfil the law, and whether he did not on that occasion give the House a pledge, repeated two or three times in the course of the debate, that this was not to be taken as a precedent.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am basing myself now on the convenience of the House. I promised that notice should be given, and it has been given. The fact that a thing has been done once is surely
  876
  not a reason for not doing it again, though it may be a reason for doing it again.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered my question. Did he not last year give a pledge to the House that the adoption of the practice last year was not to be taken as a precedent for the future?
  MR. A. J, BALFOUR: I do not take it as a precedent.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: This is a most important matter. If the right hon. Gentleman is, without discussion, allowed to establish this practice, he will have passed a new rule without any discussion at all, at the very time we are debating, the proposed new Rules of Procedure. Under those circumstances I shall ask leave to move the adjournment in order that this matter may be discussed.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must wait till Questions are over.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Will the right Hon. Gentleman undertake, before making any further change in the presentation of the Estimates, to submit any such change to the Public Accounts' Committee?
  Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order! That is an altogether different Question.

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES (PRESENTATION.)

  MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND, Member for Waterford, rose in his place, and asked leave to move the adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, viz.—"The presentation of a Supplementary Estimate for Civil Service in one sum covering various Departments contrary to the custom of the House"; but the pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. Speaker called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and not less than 40 Members having accordingly risen.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: One of the objects the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the House stated he had in view in moving the new rules was that there should be some certainty in the minds of hon. Members as to the business to be taken. I venture to submit that in making this Motion I am not in any way departing from that idea. The First Lord of the Treasury had in his mind that we should come down to the House today with the object of discussing the new rules, and the Motion I make raises a discussion on a new rule which the right hon. Gentleman is putting forward, and which he apparently desires to have sanctioned as a settled rule at present without any discussion at all; although in truth it may be said that the rule which the right hon. Gentleman is endeavouring to pass in this way is one of the most far-reaching importance. I suppose the right hon. Gentleman thoroughly understands the principle, but yet it may be no harm for me to state what the point is, just in two sentences. The ordinary Estimates of the year are put before the House in a series of separate sums for every Department, so that every hon. Member who desires may move an Amendment with reference to a specific Department, and have a discussion and an Amendment on it. And the uniform practice of the House has been followed, and the same rule has been applied, with respect to the Supplementary Estimates. That is to say, if it is found at the commencement of a session that the Estimates passed in the previous session were defective, and that more money was required for certain services and Supplementary Estimates for this additional money are put before the House, they should be put as separate sums for separate Departments, in order that any hon. Member who chooses may find fault with the acts of any Department. That has been the immemorial practice of the House until last year; now it is proposed to entirely alter the whole rule of Supplementary Estimates.
  What has happened? There are in this Estimate a number of different items, under different heads and for different classes, and if any hon. Member chooses to move an Amendment on, say, the last item on the list, that would preclude the possibility of any other hon. Member
  878
  from raising a discussion on any item higher up on the list. In that way the possibility of discussing the items might be completely destroyed, and the whole amount would be put from the Chair in one sum. The right hon. Gentleman says that this is a small Supplementary Estimate. I remember that last year it was about a million. This year it is only for a quarter of a million; but the question at issue, is exactly the same, and if the House sanctions this practice, then, I think, we may not be very far from the day when a Minister may come down and propose the original Estimates in one sum, and thereby prevent any adequate discussion, or any control by the House of Commons of the national expenditure, What took place last year is now taking place, and ought, I think, to be a warning to the House of Commons of how careful they ought to be in allowing the Ministry to deviate from the settled practice of the House. Well, what took place last year? I am not one of those who place any efficacy in the use of mere hard words; but I must be allowed to say that anything more scandalous than this issue of these Supplementary Estimates in this form, after what took place in the House last year, it is impossible to conceive. Up to last year, even when obstruction was most rampant, it never suggested itself to any Minister to attempt to introduce this practice, and then it was done without notice to the House. The Vote had to come on for discussion on a Monday, and on the Saturday previous a private notice was sent to the Leader of the Opposition; but so far as the House of Commons was concerned, there was no notice at all; and but for the vehemence of some private Members, the Estimate would have been passed through without discussion. But owing to the vigilance of some Irish Members this, what I venture to call Parliamentary trick, was discovered and a discussion did take place. Then the First Lord of the Treasury came down and made a strong plea to the House, which even to me, who was bitterly opposed to the procedure, seemed a plausible plea. The right hon. Gentleman said—
  "We are now at the 18th March, these Estimates must be carried by a certain day in March in order to fulfil the law. The time of the House is so limited and the days at our

  879
  disposal are so few that unless we adopt this device it is impossible for us to fulfil the law."
  And in reply to private Members on both sides of the House—for this was not made a Party matter—the right hon. Gentleman repeatedly stated that he only proposed this alteration in procedure because he was pressed for time, and that it should not be taken as a precedent for the future.
  Now, I submit respectfully that this is a most serious matter, that the First Lord of the Treasury obtained the sanction of this House to this rule last year under that plea that it was an emergency rule and would not constitute a precedent; and yet he comes down now and proposes to make it a permanent Rule of the House. There are several quotations I should like to make from the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman on 18th March last. The first is an answer to the hon. Member for Poplar, in which the First Lord of the Treasury said—
  "I should hope that after my explanation there will not be any great desire on the part of the House to discuss the innovation—
  which was an explanation that there were no other means of getting the Estimate passed.
  "The circumstances are altogether special, and special means must be taken to meet them."
  That was the first statement of the right hon. Gentleman. The second was in answer to the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Somersetshire—an hon. Member who has always been, if I may be allowed to say so, jealous of interference with the old habits of the House and the rights of private Members—when he said—
  "It would be some alleviation if his right hon. friend could give them an assurance that this proposal was only made in view of the exceptional circumstances of the present occasion, and was not intended to be made a precedent. He could not conceive, if it were intended to be a precedent, that it should be done in this manner."
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, Hear.
  Mr. HOBHOUSE said he understood, then, that it was not intended to be a precedent, but was only made in view of the very exceptional circumstances. But even if that were the object he thought it might have been done in a somewhat different manner, and he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman that some proper consideration might be given to the subject by a Committee selected from all sections of the House. A Select Committee
  880
  was the only means by which they might come to anything like an agreement as to the procedure on important questions of Supply."
  When the First Lord came to make a speech himself on the matter, he dealt with the question of establishing a new precedent and altering the rules of the House. He said—
  "There is no danger in the course we have adopted, because it is a course obviously and avowedly adopted in an emergency. The hon. Member for East Somersetshire wished to get a specific pledge or declaration from me. I thought I gave a specific pledge or declaration in reply to a question earlier in the evening. But if the hon. Member desires such a pledge—I should have thought it unnecessary—I will give it in the most unreserved fashion. The only reason this course has been adopted is that we found ourselves driven off from day to day by the length of the discussion on the Civil Service and other Estimates, until it was perfectly obvious that if we were to fulfil the law it would be only by the goodwill of those who have not shown up to the present any great anxiety that we should be able to fulfil it."
  Then the right hon. Gentleman was interrupted by the hon. Member for East Clare, who asked—
  "Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly say what is the pledge he has unreservedly given?"
  Mr. Balfour replied—
  "The statement I made was that this is an emergency operation alone. The House in dealing with a practical question ought to show itself a practical Assembly."
  I might make further quotations from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but I think I have cited enough. I have shown that this is an entirely new practice, that up till last year it was absolutely without precedent, and had never been done before in the whole history of the House of Commons, that when challenged the right hon. Gentleman said he had only done it because it was necessary to fulfil the law, and that it was not to be taken as a precedent, and he gave a specific pledge that it was not to be taken as a precedent, that it was only an emergency operation alone. There is no emergency this year. We are only now at 10th February, last year we were at 18th March, and no claim therefore can be made that an emergency has arisen. Yet the right hon. Gentleman comes down, and in violation of

  881
  what I do not hesitate to say was a very specific and solemn pledge, asks the House of Commons to sanction this alteration in the procedure of the House of Commons without discussion—had I not moved the adjournment of the House. I say this proceeding is not a creditable one to the right hon. Gentleman; and if the House of Commons permits its rights in matters of Supply to be filched away in this manner and new precedents established, the day is possibly near—as I have already said—whena Chancellor of the Exchequer will propose to take the whole Civil Service Estimates in one sum without discussion. I put the point clearly, and I leave it to the House of Commons to decide for itself whether it will agree to this violation of the pledge given last year by the First Lord of the Treasury that a new precedent of a far-reaching character would not be established and so destroy the safeguards which have always been regarded as imperatively necessary for the full and free discussion of Supply by this House.
  Motion made and Question proposed ''That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. John Redmond).
  Mr. GIBSON BOWLES: This is not the first time that the House has been indebted to Irish Members for raising matters of very great importance. Unfortunately I myself was absent at the time this precedent was carried last year—not as a week ender, but on public service—and therefore I was unable to take part in the discussion. But I can only say that when I heard what had taken place I felt a shock, which was all the greater that it had been done by my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Treasury. I felt perfectly certain in my; own mind that, though this had been done in a case of emergency, when there were very few days left to enable the Government to comply with the law, what had been done in an emergency would be repeated again. I only want to made a small contribution to the debate. I, however, happen to be a member of the Public Accounts Committee of this House, whose recommendations are, I believe, always attended by the House. I wish to call the particular attention of the First Lord of the Treasury to a
  882
  Treasury Minute in January, 1889, in which it was stated that the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee would always receive the earnest consideration of the Treasury. That was in relation to a proposed change in the form of the Estimates, which was comparatively unimportant contrasted with a proposal which lumps whole Estimates in one sum. In the First Report of the Public Accounts Committee of 1890 it says—
  "The first of these letters, dated the 21st of February, informs your Committee that the Treasury have found it desirable in preparing the Estimates for the Civil Services for 1890–91 to effect some re-arrangements of the Votes resulting in a reduction of their number."
  That was a comparatively lenient offence, and nothing in comparison with what is proposed in this case. The Committee go on to say—
  "Your Committee cannot, therefore, but regret that the Admiralty did not propose, and that the Treasury did not insist upon, a postponement of the adoption of the new form of Estimates until the House of Commons or your Committee had been given an opportunity of expressing their opinion upon it."
  I think that is a most exceptionable statement. The Public Accounts Committee is a most competent Committee to consider the form of this business. When there has been hitherto any change in the form of the Estimates, they have been submitted repeatedly to the Public Accounts Committee. The Report goes on to say—
  "Moreover if the changes of form were held to require the judgment of your Committee, it seems only reasonable that they should have been submitted to your Committee before they were adopted, in accordance with the precedents of 1867, when the plans of Messrs. Foster and Vine for the classification of the Civil Service Estimates were submitted to and approved by the Public Accounts Committee of that year, and of 1884, when the scheme for dealing with Army and Navy Extra Receipts was submitted and approved in like manner."
  Thus in 1867 and 1881, when changes of a very small character were made these changes were previously submitted to the Public Accounts Committee and approved by them. Now I think I will read only one other paragraph from this Report of 1890 in which they proceed to say—
  "Your Committee concur with the opinions expressed in the foregoing extracts from the Report of 1888. They therefore hold that proposals to alter the form of the Estimates and

  883
  the number of the Votes, similar to those now brought before your Committee, should, in the first instance, be laid before the House, so as to enable the House to examine them, and if it should think fit, to refer them to the Public Accounts Committee before an important change is adopted."
  Is the Public Accounts Committee to be treated with this contempt and with this disregard? There is no suggestion made to refer the matter to the Public Accounts Committee. Nobody is consulted, and still less is the House consulted. It is all done in the dark, and the Estimates are lumped together in one sum without the slightest approach to an emergency. I cannot but believe that this change has been due to some forgetfulness or some misunderstanding, and I earnestly hope that the First Lord of the Treasury will re-consider his decision and withdraw these Estimates, and before he makes these extremely important constitutional changes now put before us, I hope that he will not only submit them to the Public Accounts Committee for their opinion—which I am sure they will be ready to give—but that he will also submit his proposals to the House before any such alteration is made.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I am not going to discuss the merits of this change, because I think it is quite clear to all who heard the debate last year that the right hon. Gentleman not only meant his proposal to be temporary, but he stated also that an emergency had arisen and therefore he had to have recourse to emergency measures. But he went further, and I should like to call his attention to this; he said that while we would probably have to agree to it under the circumstances, if this particular form of procedure which was before us was to become permanent, it ought to be referred to a Committee. The words of the right hon. Gentleman in the debate last year confirm what has fallen from the hon. Member for King's Lynn, for he stated that the Committee on Public Accounts have most strongly urged that no change of this sort ought to be adopted without being considered by a Committee of the House.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: And should not be adopted without being first submitted to the House itself.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: If you send a proposal up to a Committee it would come before the House from that Committee. I wish to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to the concluding words of his remarks last year in discussing these matters. My hon. and learned friend the Member for Waterford has pointed out the definite pledges which the right hon. Gentleman gave. In column 292 in Hansard of March 18th, the First Lord of the Treasury said—
  "I do venture to think that, whether the House regards the Government as to blame or not for having met on the 14th of February, we are all agreed that there is but one way to get our Votes through by the legal day."
  That is to say, these particular Votes on that particular occasion, when the Government argued that they had four or six days only for the Army and Navy Estimates. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to say—
  "And that is the way the Government has adopted. If the House take that view, as I think they must, they must defer to a more convenient season the broad question of the procedure in Supply, and if they desire that it should be considered by a Committee upstairs or elsewhere, I shall give any such desire my heartiest support."
  As far as I am concerned, I heard the whole of this debate, and to a certain extent I initiated it, and I know that there was an impression left on my mind, and I think on the minds of hon. Members on both sides of the House—because I remember that the hon. Member for East Somersetshire withdrew his objection—that there was an emergency which had to be met, and the House agreed to it. It was not, however, to be taken in any sense as a precedent, and it was not to be made into a permanent arrangement without further consideration of the matter, and to see whether it would be a good or a bad thing. Under these circumstances, if the right hon. Gentleman will re-read his speech, and recall to his recollection what happened last year, I cannot think that he can possibly press this Amendment without further consideration by the Committee upstairs or by the House itself. I think we all recognise that as Leader of the House when the right hon. Gentleman gives a pledge he sticks to it, and we have never yet had any occasion to reproach him in that respect. Therefore,

  885
  even though he himself may think that he has not broken his pledge, all I can say is that the impression of a very large majority who heard that debate is that the right hon. Gentleman has not entirely carried out the promise he gave last year. Under these circumstances, and with due regard to the feelings which we all desire to have towards him, I trust the right hon. Gentleman will reconsider the question. There is one other point to which I wish to draw attention. I asked the right Hon. Gentleman just now why no notice had been given of this proposal, and he replied that notice had been given by the Secretary to the Treasury. I was not in the House when notice was given of this enormous change by the hon. Gentleman at 12 o'clock, just at the interruption of the business on Friday, when the right hon. Gentleman cannot keep his followers together to keep a House. I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he did give notice to the House. I understand that he gave notice that there would be a Supplementary Estimate placed on the Table and that he said nothing further.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): I think the hon. and learned Member for Waterford will bear me out when I say that I said that I had that day laid on the Table Supplementary Estimates, but they would not be circulated until the latter part of next week, and that when they were circulated they would be in the form adopted last year. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford asked me whether I meant that they would appear under one Resolution, and I said "Yes." I made that statement in moving the adjournment of the House, which is the usual opportunity for giving notice of proposals of this kind.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: Then I withdraw any argument founded upon the statement that the Government did not give notice, but in the debate of last year, in my opinion, the notice was totally inadequate. If the right hon. Gentleman was really going to turn a temporary emergency into a precedent for a permanent alteration, he should
  886
  give proper notice to the House, and give hon. Members an opportunity of expressing their opinion upon it. I do not quite understand what is meant by his argument, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell us when is a precedent not a precedent? This, however, is not the question. The point is that an impression was left upon the House in one direction last session, and apart from the merits of this particular case, it is of the utmost importance that any impression left on the House with regard to a pledge by the Leader of the House should be fulfilled to the letter and not be broken.
  MR. BLAKEsaid that the position the First Lord of the Treasury had taken up was simply to blot out as irrelevant what he had done in the House last session. On this assumption, then, there was admittedly no precedent whatever for what he was doing now. Thus he was making a precedent. The invariable practice pursued in this House had been to give the House the opportunity of debating and dividing upon the particular Vote for each Department embraced in this Estimate, and this practice was now to be departed from in the face of a suggestion made by the Standing Committee of this House, appointed to advise the House upon such subjects that no change in the form of Estimates should be made without reference to it. Thus a diminution in the power of the House to express its opinion definitely with references to Votes for each Department was now to take place, and it was a diminution unprecedented under the circumstances, and unheard of before. But the House was not to be asked to decide as to the change. He submitted that was not treating the House with respect. That was not the proper course by which to guard the privileges and the practice of the House. In an important matter of this kind affecting that of which the House in better days was so jealous—its effective control over the Supply of public money—the duty of the right hon. Gentleman, if he thought a change ought to be made, was to propound the change to the House and give Members an opportunity of expressing their opinion on it. Was

  887
  it to be said that it was only what was written that was law? A large part of the law of this country, civil and criminal, was the common and unwritten law. There was also a common law of Parliament—the usage of unbroken tradition—which was just as powerful as any law laid down by Standing Order. An innovation of the kind proposed ought to be preceded by an opportunity given to the House of considering and dealing with the question. The House was asked to accept the ipse dixit of the right hon. Gentleman that it was convenient to vote the Estimate en bloc, and if it had not been for the Motion made by the hon. Member for Waterford, they would not have been able to express, even by this indirect and inconvenient process, an opinion the merits of what was intended. So far on the ground which the First Lord had taken as to the effect of last session's action. But that action made the case stronger still. When a similar proposal was made by the right hon. Gentleman last session he defended it by stating that it was a matter of urgency and necessity. That was an acknowledgment that it was in principle an objectionable transaction, only to be allowed because the condition of public business and time rendered it necessary. Therefore, it was incumbent on him now, when no such conditions existed, to invite the House by Motion to consider and divide as to the advisability of making this innovation. He hoped that those who were interested in the preservation inviolate of the unbroken practice of the House with respect to control over public finance would by voting for the adjournment express their disapproval of what was now proposed.
  Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT: I do not think that a question of graver constitutional importance has been introduced, or ever could be suggested to the House of Commons, than that which arises on this Motion. I should be the last person to suggest that there is any desire to escape from the pledges or to break faith with the House on the part of the right hon. Gentleman. I can only account for the course that has been taken by the absolute escape from his memory of everything he did and of everything he
  888
  said last year. I am quite sure that that is the secret of the position in which he finds himself and in which we find ourselves. What was said by my hon friend who has just spoken is perfectly true. The allegation of emergency last year implied disapproval of the proposal on its own merits. Why has an emergency arisen at all? Why should you not have come down and said there are particular reasons this year of convenience, and that is the way we ought to adopt in future. The right hon. Gentleman seems to think, in reference to the treatment of the House of Commons and the traditions of Parliament, that everything is convenient that suits the temporary condition in which the Government find themselves. Now that is not and cannot be regarded as a safe rule of conduct in this House. We are embarked, as unfortunately we know, in enormous expenditure. There never was a time when it was more necessary for the House of Commons to maintain its control of the expenditure of this country than at the present moment. It is of the very essence of public economy that the House should have adequate opportunity of expressing its opinion upon those heads of expenditure. But of all Estimates the Supplementary Estimates are those which ought to be most carefully examined. The fundamental principle of economy in this country is to call upon the Government at the beginning of every session to lay before the House as accurate estimates of the expenditure of that year as can be made, and if you encourage or permit facilities for multiplying Supplementary Estimates you will lose all control over the original Estimate. Therefore, Supplementary Estimates must be watched carefully.
  Let me illustrate what might happen if this practice were allowed. We have had questions raised of remounts, contracts for meat, and so forth. If what is now proposed can be done with regard to the Civil Service Estimate it can be done also with regard to the War Office Estimates, and whenever the Government have got estimates that they have a difficulty about they have only got to slump them all together so that we cannot separate them and we cannot get an issue upon them. I do not know what has happened at the Treasury since my time, but I confess I

  889
  would as soon have expected an eruption of Vesuvius in the Treasury as expect that a proposal of this kind would be brought forward in a light manner to revolutionise the whole economic principles of the country. I venture to observe that some of the Rules of Procedure weaken the control of the House as a body. I am not speaking for one side of the House or the other, I do contend that there are two powers in the House of Commons—there is the power of the Executive Government to initiate and practically to design the policy and the expenditure of the country, but behind that there is the power of the House of Commons to question the whole matter. It is for that purpose that the estimates have been framed, and have been maintained for generations, at all events, for a very long period, in the form in which they at present stand. If you once relax that, the whole power of control and restraint upon reckless expenditure is gone.
  What is the position in which the right hon. Gentleman stands in reference to this matter? Last year, in an emergency, owing to the particular pressure of the war at that time you relaxed the rules, All rules must be relaxed in emergency, but the more you relax rules in emergency the more carefully you ought to maintain them when the emergency passes, otherwise the whole of your security is gone. Now, the language which was held by the right hon. Gentleman last session pointed to this. He said that in the House of Commons—
  "No man in his senses would believe that this is a proposal I should make except in an emergency."
  But then, suddenly, he gives notice. All I can say is that it is worthless to give notice almost sub silentio on a Friday night, which will never come before the great mass of the House until Monday. That is the sort of notice in which there is a complete revolution made in the whole economic system of the House of Commons. It is an absolute destruction of the control of the House of Commons. But then the right hon. Gentleman says it is for the convenience of the House. Well, the notion the right hon. Gentleman seems to have formed of the convenience of the House is that nobody should have any trouble, and, least of all,
  890
  His Majesty's Government. But we have something else to consider. We have to consider the security of the country against useless and reckless expenditure. What was it the right hon. Gentleman said in finishing his statement last year? He said—
  "If the House take that view, as I think they must, they must defer to a more convenient session the broad question of their Procedure in Supply, and if they desire that it should be considered by a Committee upstairs or elsewhere, I shall give any such desire my hearty support."
  There is a pledge as distinct as anything can be that if this question was to be raised under the general question of our convenience it should not be done without consultation with the House and a Committee upstairs. Well, that is what we are entitled to ask from the right hon. Gentleman, and I cannot help feeling, as we all know, that it is his disposition to fulfil to the letter any undertaking that he has held out, and that he will not attempt to press this Procedure which he has stated ought to be done by consultation with the House.
  "They must defer to a more convenient season the broad question of the Procedure in Supply."
  Well, this is the broad question of the Procedure in Supply. That is the desire of both sides, that if this change is to be made it should be made after due consideration by the House. If that desire exists, and I think it does, the right hon. Gentleman to-night will doubtless give it his hearty support; he has promised that he will. If he has made that promise I have no doubt he will adhere to it. I believe I express the general feeling of the House when I say that, if the change is to be made, it ought to be carefully examined, and if it should be proved to be convenient and safe let it be adopted, but if it is proved otherwise let it be withdrawn. I think that is a reasonable view to take of the case, and it is one entirely consistent with the statement of the right hon. Gentleman.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): It is my misfortune in this debate to have to differ from nearly all the speakers who have taken part in it. I will take them one by one. My hon. friend the Member for King's Lynn

  891
  complains that by this procedure we are slighting the Committee on Public Accounts, whose business it is, in his view, to make themselves responsible for the Estimates. I do not so read the responsibility of that Committee. So far as I understand their functions, as laid down by the Standing Orders—and I recognise I am not so great an authority on the point as my hon. friend—it is to see that the work of appropriation has been properly carried out. If anything that we proposed by this change would in the smallest degree hamper or impede the Committee on Public Accounts in safeguarding the appropriation of public money, I think the hon. Member would be right in saying that before the Government made any such change that Committee should have been consulted. But I venture to point out to the House that there is nothing in this change which touches the appropriation of money at all. Money is appropriated in precisely the old form; it is in the old form that it comes before the Committee on Public Accounts; for that reason I venture to say both to the House and to the Committee on Public Accounts that I do not think that they can properly regard themselves as being slighted by the action we have taken.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESwas understood to say the matter should have been referred to the Committee.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: My hon. friend will observe that there have been on many previous occasions changes made in the Estimates, which were never referred to this House, but were referred to the Committee on Public Accounts.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: They affected only the classification, not the appropriation.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: But the classification does affect the appropriation. I will not argue the point further with my hon. friend. I have no doubt whatever I am right in the statement I made to the House. When such changes have been made in the Estimates on previous occasions, by which Votes were amalgamated or made to coalesce, and did affect the appropriation, no doubt it
  892
  was proper that the Public Accounts Committee should be consulted. This does not affect the question of the amalgamation of Votes, and the question of appropriation is not concerned. So much for my hon. friend and the Committee on Public Accounts.
  Now I come to the actual merits and advantages of the change, and to what I admit is a question of great importance—the course taken by myself last year, and the pledges I gave to the House. I entirely deny that anything which fell from me last year can by any fair process of interpretation be taken to invalidate the procedure we have adopted this year. ["Oh, oh."] That is my opinion. Last year we carried out the change under the stress of a great public emergency at a few hours notice towards the end of the financial year. I was then asked whether that was to be regarded as a precedent. I said distinctly that it was not. But did anybody asking me for that pledge seriously mean that if, on a survey of the whole circumstances of the case, the Government thought that was a convenient method of doing public business, we were precluded because of that emergency from adopting it at a time when no emergency existed? ["Oh."] Would any Government in their senses give such a pledge? How could they? I remember the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouthshire asking Mr. Speaker a Question, and, if I recollect aright, Mr. Speaker said that no doubt if such a thing were done again notice would have to be given. Well, I was careful to give notice. What notice? A notice which did not pass sub silentio, which was the subject of cross-examination at the time by the leaders of the Irish party. Therefore the whole Irish Party have been aware of it for ten days. ["No."] Well, the Leader of the Irish Party was aware of it.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: The statement made by the Secretary to the Treasury just now was absolutely accurate. The House was just adjourning; I do not think there were two dozen Members in the House; they were scurrying out through the doors. So disordered were the proceedings that I

  893
  happened to be sitting there (pointing to Front Opposition Bench), and I noticed the hon. Gentleman was saying something. In the most informal way I said "What?" and he spoke across the House to me. I am perfectly certain that not another Member in the House heard or understood what the hon. Gentleman said.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Everybody in the House must have understood it, after the cross-examination which the right hon. Gentleman carried on.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: "Cross-examination" is really not fair. It consisted of my asking, without rising from my seat, "Do you mean merely the same as last year?" and the hon. Gentleman said "Yes."
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: One Resolution.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: Yes; there was no cross-examination. There was not a word in the Press.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I regret that, from no fault of my own, I was not present; but let me point out that it is really ludicrous—it is playing with the House—to say that, when the Leader of the Irish Party—which is not the least active section of the Opposition—was fully seised ten days ago of the purport of the change, the Government have attempted to carry the change sub silentio. Such a statement really will not hold water for a moment.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: Ten days?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, ten days ago—Friday week. I am sorry that by an oversight I did not myself give notice on the Friday afternoon, as I had intended, but I requested my hon. friend to do it in my absence. He did so apparently under circumstances which, at all events, gave notice to a very important section of the Opposition, and I should have thought there was sufficient intercommunication between the different parts of the House to prevent it being suggested for a
  894
  moment that the thing was done sub silentio. ["Oh!"]
  Now I come to the question of the merits of the case, and the convenience of the House. Let the House recall in what position the Government were at the beginning of this year. When we had to survey the whole question of the rules and of our procedure, we had behind us the lessons of last year, Those lessons, as far as we could judge, were twofold. One was that there were a certain number of Gentlemen in this House who, if they got the chance of running the Government against the law on March 31st, would not hesitate to do so, and that there were also a certain number of Gentlemen in this House who apparently would have been glad, so far as we could judge by their conduct with regard to the Estimates, so to carry on the discussion of those Estimates as to multiply the number of divisions which would have to be taken under the old system on the ultimate and penultimate days of Supply. Those were the two facts the Government had to consider in asking the House to reform its procedure. We did consider them, and hon. Gentlemen will see, so far as the second of those points is concerned, we did embody another remedy in the rules now before the House. They will see in the Supply rule now before the House that, on the ultimate and penultimate days of Supply, the Estimates will be put in the form upon which the House determined in August last—in an emergency. We propose that that should be part of the permanent procedure of the House.
  Then the question arose of how we were to deal with Supplementary Estimates. A great many friends of mine, with whom I discussed this question, thought it might be desirable to have a rule dealing with Supplementary Estimates before March 31st on the same fixed system as that for dealing with the ordinary Estimates of the year. But I was of opinion then, and I am still of opinion, that that is too rigid a way of dealing with Supplementary Estimates, that if a certain number of days were allotted before March 31st for dealing with Supplementary Estimates there might be too many if the Government brought in very few Supplementary

  895
  Estimates, and, on the other hand, there might be too few if the Government brought in a great many Supplementary Estimates. Therefore, on that ground, I rejected the plan. The only other plan which suggested itself to me, as a part of our general system, is that which no doubt was adopted in an emergency last year, and which I thought then and still think gives the House sufficient power of scrutinising Supplementary Estimates, and at the same time, makes it impossible for any section of Members, by prolonging the discussion, to force the House to break the law.
  AN HON. MEMBERsaid the right hon. Gentleman promised that the matter should be considered by a Committee.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I was careful not to promise that.
  SIR WILLIAM. HARCOURT: Read your speech.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That is not what I promised; I will return to that directly. I say that, in my judgment and in that of my colleagues, this is a proper system for dealing with Supplementary Estimates before March 31st, while the more fixed and rigid limitation laid down by the Supply Rule is the proper method of dealing with Estimates after March 31st. That being the broad view of the conveniences of the operation, let me for a moment dwell on the alleged inconvenience. The alleged inconvenience I understand to be this—that, as it is possible for all these items to be under one head, it is possible that one item, which may be of great importance, will not be discussed at all in consequence of the closure being moved before all the items have been dealt with in turn. I would point out that the Chairman of Committees, by the practice of this House, takes care that no earlier item should be shut out by the discussion of a later item. The same privileges of discussing the Estimates will be given to the House as are given under the old system, but if there be a deliberate plan to drive the Estimates over March 31st, that plan can be defeated. I was amazed at the statement which fell from the right hon. Gentleman who
  896
  has just sat down. He said that the next thing would be that we should do the same thing in regard to the Army and the Navy Estimates. Why, we do it now in the Army Estimates and in the Navy Estimates, and we have done it from time immemorial. The Navy and Army Supplementary Estimates are blocked precisely in this fashion. In the ordinary Estimates for the various Departments for the year they are put down as separate Votes, but in the Supplementary Estimates they are all taken under one head. I cannot understand why that which is proper and convenient for the Army and Navy, should not be proper for the Civil Service Votes. It is not, as has been suggested, a question of the accounting officer. What concerns us is the proper and adequate discussion of Supply, and I venture to say that a system which is found, and has for many years been found, fittingly proper when dealing with the Army and the Navy is not unfitting when you are dealing with the Civil Service. But it may be urged that the Questions under the Army and Navy Votes are all cognate, while the Civil Service Estimates relate each to a different question.
  But is not that rather a technical objection? Is it seriously maintained that a Vote for the Astronomer Royal at the Cape is closely allied to the question of water tube boilers? Those are two matters with regard to which a Supplementary Estimate would come under one head. Why should we adopt absolutely different principles when dealing with Supplementary Estimates of one kind than those which we think are absolutely adequate when dealing with Supplementary Estimates of quite a different kind. We have occasionally to deal with excess Votes, not in the present financial year, but coming from the last financial year. Are they treated under separate heads? Not at all, for they are massed and blocked precisely in the shape and form that we propose the ordinary Supplementary Estimates of the Government. I venture to say that so far from this practice being a novelty, which the House ought to look at with the gravest suspicion, it is, I believe, a convenient method of dealing with the Civil Service Estimates which has the sanction of practice behind it, of practice in regard

  897
  to excess Votes and also in regard to our Army and Navy Votes.
  There is another point to be considered. It is not wise to make it too difficult for the Departments to bring forward Supplementary Estimates. I agree that the practice may be abused, and that great masses of Supplementary Estimates are an inconvenience and even a financial danger. But if it were made difficult for the Departments to bring forward their Supplementary Estimates, they would be compelled to ask, in the first instance, for larger sums than might be required in order to cover any possibility of excess. That would be a most serious matter. A speech of mine made last year has been quoted. What it came to is that the House ought to look to the whole of the broad question of the consideration of the Estimates.
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: You spoke of these particular Supplementary Estimates.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I beg your pardon, that is exactly what I did not do. Let me quote to the House the exact words. The words I used were—
  "The House must defer to a more convenient season the broad Question of procedure in Supply, and whenever that is taken into account we ought to have a Committee."
  I indicated in my opening speech on the new rules that the whole question of the control of Supply by the House ought to be considered by a Committee. There are points that cannot be discussed without the preliminary assistance of a Committee. The present procedure of the House is in many respects very wasteful of the public time, but it gives the House a very full and ample control over general questions of policy. In the present day, Committee of Supply is perfectly useless as a check on the expenditure of the Government. Constantly the discussions are used as a lever to encourage the increase of expenditure, but they are not an instrument for producing economy. Constantly we get speeches followed by a suggestion that we should increase the vote, and from which the obvious conclusion and the intended inference is that the expenditure of the Government is niggardly for that particular vote, and
  898
  that a more liberal use of money would redound greatly to the public advantage. Therefore, I do not believe that any hon. Member in this House in his heart supposes that the Committee of Supply is an instrument to produce such economy as the right hon. Gentleman has spoken of. Committee of Supply serves the greater purpose of acting as a check on the policy of the Government and as a means of criticising the policy of the Government, not from the point of view of pounds, shillings, and pence, but from the point of view of Imperial policy and efficient administration. That is the point of view taken in all really interesting debates in Supply, whether it be from water-tube boilers, a sufficiency of cruisers, or prison arrangements, or whatever it be, it is not economy, but it is efficiency or general policy which comes under the criticism of the House. I believe that I indicated in the speech which I made at the beginning of the session with regard to these new Rules that not only will the Government support a proposal for referring the whole broad question of Supply to a Committee, but it will probably be the duty of the Government to propose such a Committee. Whether they will be able to hit upon some plan for meeting this great difficulty I do not know, but until they do certainly whatever we may hope to get from our arrangements in Supply, and from the constant discussion in Supply of this or that question, until they do hit upon some such plan I fear that the control of this House, while complete and efficient as regards policy, must remain weak and inefficient as regards the details of expenditure. I hope I have made clear our intentions, and certainly we have no desire to spring anything as a surprise upon the House. I hope I have made clear the general motive which influenced us, and do not let us be criticised in this matter for want of good faith.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman towards the close of his speech has given us a long disquisition upon the general question of the utility of Committee of Supply, and stated his view of the intention of the Government with regard to it. That was exceedingly

  899
  interesting and valuable, but, although technically relevant no doubt to the subject now before us, really was, to a large extent, outside the immediate purpose for which the Motion before the House has been moved. That Motion was raised to deal with three questions. First of all there is the question whether the methods the Government are adopting to deal with the Civil Service Supplementary Estimates is a right method; the second question is whether what is being proposed is being carried out in the proper way; and the third question refers to the obligations that we think were laid upon the Government in this matter in consequence of the discussion of last year. I venture to think that for the purpose of this immediate Motion I have named these three questions in the inverse order of their importance, but the most important and primary matter we have to consider is how we ought to view the proposal of the Government in the light of what passed last year. There is one word in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman last year which seems to throw more light than anything else on the matter. It was the word "danger." He said—
  "There is no danger in the course which we have adopted, because it is a course obviously and avowedly adopted in an emergency."
  There is no danger! Danger of what?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It was done with 24 hours notice.
  Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: That does not constitute a danger. What is the danger which the House saw, and apparently the right hon. Gentleman recognised the fact. The House did detect some danger in what was being done, and the right hon. Gentleman soothed the susceptibilities and calmed the fears of the House by saying that after all there is no danger, because it is obviously and avowedly adopted in an emergency, therefore it is a course which will not be repeated and which the House need not look upon with much jealousy and suspicion, and yet the very first year that comes round after these words we find identically the same course proposed. I do not think that is dealing fairly by the House. Whether the right hon. Gentleman had the better or the
  900
  worse of the argument last year does not matter. He was, at all events, perfectly cognisant of the fact that the House did regard this course with suspicion, and that he soothed the House by practically a promise and pledge that it would not be repeated. He now says that from an examination of the case itself for this change he has come to the conclusion that it is for the convenience of all parties in the House—not only for the Government but for those who take an interest in the smooth conduct of public affairs, and he brings it forward.
  Now I come to my second point. Knowing as he did what occurred last year, and feeling of the House regarding it if he was going to bring it forward it ought to have been brought forward not only with a sufficient degree of publicity to swear by, but in the most public and straightforward way he found it possible to adopt. The House ought to have had the fullest notice of what was going to happen after what occurred last year. A mere notice coming at the close of business, unreported in any newspaper, when 99 in 100 of the Members of the House were not present, was certainly not sufficient notice. The right hon. Gentleman thinks he did enough because the hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Irish Party knew of it. I remember last year I was the unfortunate victim of his excuses because on a Saturday late at night he sent to me individually notice of what he was going to do on Monday. The Notice Paper of the House of Commons was changed suddenly after being issued. The right hon. Gentleman with his invariable courtesy sent me notice with the view, no doubt, that I might prepare not only myself but my friends for what was going to happen. Unfortunately I was ill in bed, which many of us are at this time of year, and therefore, I was unable to take advantage of his kindness. Now it is the Leader of the Irish Party he has communicated with, and he thinks that is enough.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: There was a communication made across the floor of the House. It was not a private communication, but I had the misfortune not to be reported. The communication was made in this House to the Members.
  Sir. H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: It was made across the floor of the House, but across nothing else. If I may say so, there was too much floor and too little House for the purpose of giving this public intimation. But I would repeat what I have said that after all the circumstances of last year the Government were fully warned of the disposition of the House towards this proposal, and they ought to have brought it forward in the most formal and public manner possible. Then another circumstance comes in. The right hon. Gentleman is engaged in reforming and altering the rules of procedure of the House. That furnishes an opportunity for altering in some way the rules governing the procedure in Vote of Supply. That is not what is done. No hint is given except this midnight intimation of the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. I think the House has good reason to complain in this matter apart from the merits of the case. Let me say a word or two on the merits of the case. We claim that there was a pledge by the right hon. Gentleman when he said that his desire was that the matter should be referred to a Committee. He claims that it was a larger matter that was included than this point.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The broader question.
  Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Well, then, by all means let us have the broader question, but until the broader question has come before the Committee let the status quo be maintained. If the right hon. Gentleman is going to have a Committee to consider all the circumstances in which the House deals with Supply, well and good. I am very glad to hear of it. But in that case let us not make a great change like this which takes away the rights which immemorially belonged to the Committee of the House of Commons. Let the Government not do that at the very time when they are going to appoint a Committee. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken about the difference between the Army Estimates, the Navy Estimates, and the Civil Service Estimates in this respect. Surely there is a very obvious difference between them. The Army Estimates and
  902
  the Navy Estimates deal with one order of things, each with one Department, but the Civil Service Estimates deal with a number of heterogeneous, disparate subjects, controlled by different Departments. There are obviously the best reasons for treating them with separateness which may not be necessary in the case of the Army and Navy Estimates. I maintain that no alteration ought to have been made if there is any expectation of a Committee being appointed. Then the right hon. Gentleman says that, after all, the action of the House in supply in the interest of economy is very slight, that it is hardly of any value whatever, and that it affords no check upon expenditure. No check upon expenditure! Will the right hon. Gentleman conceive what the position would be for the Minister at the head of a Department if there was no examination in the House of Commons in Committee of Supply. He would be helpless in the hands of his expert and professional advisers who would insist on increasing all sorts of heads of expenditure which now he is able to keep within moderation because of the knowledge that they must all come before the House of Commons and must be considered there.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There is the Treasury.
  Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The Treasury! The right hon. Gentleman really astounds me. The Treasury has its sins to answer for and it has its advantages and blessings to the public as well. But after all the great controller—the great ultimate controller—of public expenditure is the House of Commons. and not the Treasury. Although it is quite true that with the system of party majorities to which we are accustomed, a reduction is very seldom carried in the House of Commons, yet the fact that everything has to be put in the Estimates and must be brought before the public examination and consideration of the House of Commons, is a very material factor in checking expenditure. As I said when I began, this is rather beside the question. I do not care at all about the doctrine laid down by the right hon. Gentleman. The question before us is a simple one. Is this the proper time to

  903
  introduce a change in the form of submitting these Estimates, a change which the House rejected last year, and which the House only accepted last year because of extraordinary urgency, and a change which can be perfectly well considered by the Committee which is proposed to be set up? On all these grounds I submit that the Government would be better advised if they would withdraw the proposal and introduce the Estimates in the old form; and then consider, or invite a Committee of the House to consider, what improvements, if any, are required in our system. The necessity of such a Committee I do not dispute, and I trust that its deliberations will be of advantage, but when it is on the eve of being appointed, surely it is better to adhere to the old and well-established form rather than to accept a form which was rejected last year and which was only accepted because of the extraordinary urgency of the case, and which is a departure from the immemorial practice of Parliament.
  MR. JAMES LOWTHER: I hope I am not too sanguine in expressing the hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be disposed to listen on this occasion to what I believe to be the general feeling of the House. My right hon. friend rode off on a side issue, that he gets uncommonly little support from the House in the direction of economy. But the point we have to decide is whether so important a departure in Parliamentary practice is to be made without the House having a legitimate, opportunity presented to it of considering the change. This opportunity is due to the initiative of a private Member who has availed himself of one of the few remaining forms of the House for the ventilation of important public questions—a form which is about to be practically taken away from us. Why, under the proposed new rules, the Motion of the hon. Gentleman would have been relegated to the wastepaper basket of the dinner-hour or to the dust bin of midnight. The House of Commons would not have had the opportunity of considering a question vitally affecting one of the fundamental functions of the House. The right hon. Gentleman last year appealed to the House with perfect candour and courtesy
  904
  for allowance to be made for what was regarded as an irregularity, and stated that the case was one of emergency. But there is no question of emergency this year, for it is more than six weeks to the end of the financial year. I think it is very much to be regretted that after only a casual intimation across the floor of the House when the House was nearly empty—an intimation which also was not reported—such a vast change in our constitutional arrangements should be made without adequate discussion.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: I do not make any excuse for intervening in this debate, because I think I am the first Member on the back Opposition Benches who has taken the opportunity of putting his view of the case to the House. I do not know what opinion hon. Gentlemen who sit on that side of the House have formed of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, the First Lord of the Treasury, but I confess that we on this side heard it with absolute astonishment. If ever a fair pledge has been given to the House it was that employed by the First Lord of the Treasury last year when the Supplementary Estimates came up, and I think the tone of the right hon. Gentleman in his speech to-night must have considerably diminished the respect which those who sit on this side of the House have felt for the right hon. Gentleman. [Cries of "Oh, oh," and "Divide."] The pledge given by the right hon. Gentleman in such distinct terms last year should be adhered to, if we are to accept in future pledges of that sort. Not a single argument on the ground of emergency which was the plea in favour of the proposal last year, has been adduced on that side of the House. Seven weeks must elapse before the conclusion of the financial year; and the legislative proposals of the Government are not of such a nature as to exclude the full consideration of the Supplementary Estimates. The First Lord of the Treasury has constantly said in the House, and he repeated again tonight, that the minute consideration of the Estimates is the opportunity of the private Member for the discussion of Imperial affairs. In this very Supplementary Estimate which he has pre-

  905
  sented to the House, large questions of Imperial policy are raised in connection with the war in South Africa and the position in the Far East, on which there is no other opportunity of raising debate, and on which private Members can speak; and, therefore, I do think it is very unfair of the right hon. Gentleman to say, that just as all matters connected with the Army and Navy are cognate subjects, and therefore may sometimes be taken under one head and only one question can be raised, so also should be the case with the Civil Service Supplementary Estimates. These are subjects that ought not to be lumped together and on which only one debate on one class, and one speech can be made. [Cries of "Divide."] I can understand that hon. Gentlemen opposite want to get to the end of this debate, but not one single argument has been adduced in favour of the right hon. Gentleman's proposal. The only two gentlemen who have risen from the Government Benches to address have directed their arguments against the present proposals and I do not understand why a private Member on this side of the House is not to be allowed to speak. I want to put a plain question to the First Lord of the Treasury. He told us that this was not to be taken as a precedent; and last year he said it was not to be taken as a precedent.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: What does the hon. Gentleman mean?
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: I am asking a question and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give me an answer. How many times is this Motion to be moved in this House before it is to be counted a precedent?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It is a precedent this year, of course.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: Then, this is a precedent for allowing the Civil Service Supplementary Estimates to be put down in one block and only allowing the House to discuss one subject. Very well, we have got an admission.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: What does the hon. Member call "getting an admission"?
  906
  I distinctly said, if he has done me the honour of listening to my speech, that we had to consider at the beginning of the year how we could arrange the Estimates for the convenience of the House, and I said part of our plan was embodied in the proposed Standing Order and another part of our plan was embodied in this proposal. Of course it is a precedent.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: What was not to become a precedent last year is to be a precedent this year.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Hear, hear!
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: Now we know exactly where we are. While we were promised that the proposal last year was not to form a precedent, now that it has been proposed a second time it is to be a precedent for all time. Well, that does limit the power of Parliament over the Estimates in a way which is very detrimental to the control of this House over expenditure. It is useless for the right hon. Gentleman to take credit for extending the opportunities of discussing ordinary Supply to 15 or 20 days, if on the other hand he limits the opportunities of discussing the Supplementary Estimates which are essential to the good conduct of the affairs of the Departments. The right hon. Gentleman's argument was not a serious one, and was only meant to blind the House to the real nature of his proposal. I confess that this debate shows how very carefully we ought to watch the Rule, for putting off Motions for the adjournment of the House, proposed to be embodied in the new Rules, because had these new Rules been in force we could not have had this most interesting and instructive debate, but it would have been shelved as inconvenient to the Government.
  MR. BARTLEY: I should like to say a word or two on this matter. This is a very important alteration in the Rules. To establish a precedent simply at the will of the Executive is a principle we should be rather shy of accepting. There was a Treasury Minute on 12th January, 1889, in which the Treasury stated that they agreed to no extensive or important

  907
  change in the form of the Estimates should in future be adopted before being submitted to the Committee on Public Accounts. If that was true in regard to the form of the Estimates, it was still more true in regard to the alteration of the form of the Estimates without the House being consulted. I am not going to inquire whether this is a good plan or not, but it is somewhat strange that it required the right hon. Gentleman three quarters of an hour to explain away what had happened. To my mind it is a very serious matter to slump together all the various items in these Estimates. They contain items of every variety relating to the Foreign Office, Africa, the Colonial Office, Prisons, Diplomacy, Inland Revenue, Post Office, etc. Why could not the five millions voted the other day have been thrown in as well? I protest against this change being made, in spite of the Treasury Minute, without the House being consulted. It is parting with one of the most important checks which the House possessed. If the matter is of importance, it is strange, inasmuch as we are altering the Rules of procedure that it is not to be considered. If the House thought proper to alter the Rule, nothing could be said against it, but I do protest most strongly against this great change being made simply on the ipse dixit of the Government.
  Sir ROBERT REID: I took part in the debate on this matter last session, and I certainly relied on the impression conveyed by the speech of the First Lord of the Treasury, that the course then pursued would not be repeated. The Supplementary Estimates for the Army and Navy have been treated, from time immemorial, in the way in which it is now proposed to treat the Civil Service Supplementary Estimates, which have always been exempt from the method of treatment. Obviously, there is some reason for the distinction. I myself believe it is because that in the Army and Navy Estimates you can shift money from one item to another within limits; whereas, in the Civil Service Estimates, the appropriation of the money is strictly and rigidly confined to the express item from which it was voted. Now the Government propose to alter that method which is part
  908
  of what is rightly called the old common law of Parliament, without consulting the House of Commons, or without bringing it before the Public Accounts Committee. I think that may have very serious results. In the first place, I am not at all certain, when you assimilate the form of the Civil Service Estimates to the form of the army and Navy Estimates, that the corresponding change should not be possible, and that you will be entitled to shift money appropriated from one item to another. There was a disclaimer last session with regard to that, but there has been no disclaimer so far in the present discussion. In addition you will have this consequence—that instead of a separate series of discussions, each attached to a particular Vote, and therefore confined to it, you will have a confused, blurred, indistinct discussion, ranging over all the items and leaping from one to another, so that you cannot fix the Government to any particular point. That would be very inconvenient. Why this old custom should be taken from us I do not know. I myself have never been in the habit of appealing to the wisdom of our ancestors, though I am now more inclined in that direction than I was before. I leave the question of merits entirely out; it is in the possession of the House, and the House can deal with it, but I have this further to say on the subject. I am not going to suggest that the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury would for a moment consciously depart from any pledge he had given, but he will acknowledge that the impression produced on the minds of hon. Members by his speech last session was not quite the impression which he presented to us to-night. Last year the right hon. Gentleman gave us as a reason why this change should be made, that an emergency existed. He suggested no other reason. He had one simple excuse, if his present position is accurate. He might have said that the change was for the convenience of the House and that it was right. But he did not do that. He explained that it was owing to an emergency, and that time was limited as there was only a very few days left, and it was on that ground and that ground alone that he based his action. That certainly conveyed to my mind exactly the same impression that it

  909
  conveyed to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Thanet division, and no one listening to that debate would believe that the right hon. Gentleman conceived himself at liberty to put forward the very next year the same proposal which he had defended on that very limited ground. Such an alteration embodied on the ancient practice of the House of Commons is a defiance and violation of our ancient practice. I am sorry to say it is not the first nor will it be the last that will be made, unless hon. Members opposite will see that it is to their interest as well as to that of other Members to prevent such things being done.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, in which he appeared as the defender of the wisdom of our ancestors and as an upholder of the traditions of Parliamentary practice, is one that would indeed have astonished me, if earlier in the debate the Leader of the Opposition had not made himself a defender of the week-ender who goes away before business is finished on Friday.
  Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I did not defend that,
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The right hon. Gentleman says he did not defend that, but he complained that a statement made in this House on Friday evening—
  Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Not because it was Friday, but because it was evening.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The right hon. Gentleman's statement is even wider than I supposed. Not only does he justify hon. Members going away before business is finished, but he justifies them going away at any time before the rising of the House; and he made complaint that a statement publicly made before the House adjourned was as good as no statement at all. After all, I do not think that the case on the one side or the other can be rested on the amount of notice that was given. Not only was notice given in the House,
  910
  but for several days past hon. Members have had the Estimates in their hands. I wish, however, to draw the attention of the House to the argument of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and also to the change which we propose to actually make, because his speech seems to disclose some very considerable misconception as to the nature of the change, and as to our present position. The hon. Gentleman argued that at the present time, under the Army and Navy Votes, an excess on one Vote might, with Treasury sanction, be met by a saving on another Vote, but that as regards sub-heads of the Civil Service Estimates no alteration could be made without the sanction of Parliament. [Several hon. Members dissented.] If hon. Gentlemen will allow me to proceed, they will find, I think, that the hon. Gentleman will bear me out in saying that he used the word "sub-head."
  SIR ROBERT REID: No, Sir, I did not.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I accept the hon, Gentleman's correction at once; but the House will understand that, within the scope of the Vote, an excess on one sub-head may be met by a saving on another sub-head, with the consent of the Treasury. I merely mention that because I understood the hon. Gentleman to speak specifically of sub-heads, and I wish to show that the appropriation must proceed in exactly the same way. I wish to explain in the clearest possible manner that there can be no difference whatever in the appropriation of the money or in the accounting for it. The same officers will be responsible, and will have to account for it as if each sum were passed as a separate Vote, and when we come to the Appropriation Act it will be made exactly in the same way as if the Votes were taken separately. I wish to make it perfectly clear that there will be no change in the responsibility of the accounting officers or in the appropriation of the money. If the hon. Gentlemen will look at the Appropriation Act of last session they will see how the appropriation of the different items was preserved according to the

  911
  Votes for which they were required, and it will be done exactly in the same way this year. The hon. Gentleman went on to argue that the difference in the power of appropriating money between different Votes as regards the Army and Navy from that which obtained under the Civil Service Estimates, was due to the fact that the Army and Navy Votes were cognate Votes.
  SIR ROBERT REID: I never said anything of the kind. On the contrary, what I said was that it was a pity that there had been such a very wide difference in practice, from time immemorial, between the Army and Navy Votes on the one side and the Civil Service Votes on the other, and I stated that the difference probably corresponded with the power of shifting money in one case and not in the other.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: What I want to point out to the House is this. As a matter of fact the Army and Navy Votes raise questions as wide apart from anything that can be included in the Supplementary Estimates as the poles. Last year the Army Supplementary Estimates took money for military purposes in South Africa, and for military purposes in China; two sets of operations, having nothing to do with one another, which did not arise out of the same set of facts, and which could not be guided by the same conditions So for the life of me I cannot understand why proposals uniformly acted upon with regard to the Army and Navy Estimates should in the case of Civil Service Estimates raise such antagonism in the minds of hon. Members.
  MR. DILLON: The main question is whether the First Lord of the Treasury when the discussion took place last year gave a pledge to the House of Commons, and if so what that pledge was. I have listened with absolute astonishment to the attitude taken up by the First Lord of the Treasury in this matter. Let me read the House a brief quotation from the debate of last year on this subject. The right hon. Gentleman then said:
  "The hon. Member for East Somersetshire wishes to get a specific pledge or declaration
  912
  from me. I thought I gave a specific pledge or declaration in reply to a Question earlier in the evening. But if the hon. Member desires such a pledge—I should have thought it unnecessary—I will give it in the most unreserved fashion."
  Now what was the pledge, was there any meaning in these words or was there not? If there was any meaning at all, what meaning could be conveyed to the House unless it was this; that if any alteration was carried out it would not be completed without giving the House an opportunity to discuss the matter. To make the thing more clear the hon. Member for East Clare intervened and asked:
  "What is the pledge he has unreservedly given."
  And the First Lord's answer is—
  "The statement I made was that this is an emergency operation, and an emergency operation alone."
  I want to know whether those words had any meaning or were meant to have any meaning, and if so what the meaning was. Surely they could only have one meaning and that was this—that the First Lord of the Treasury would not avail himself of the change then made to create a precedent the next year without giving the House an opportunity of discussing the matter. That is made clear when we turn back to the complaint which had been made by the hon. Member for Waterford when originating the discussion.
  That was the complaint on which the whole of the debate last year originated; that the Government proposed to make a great fundamental alteration in the method of submitting Civil Service Estimates without giving the House an opportunity for discussing it, and the pledge the right hon. Gentleman gave us was that he would not avail himself of his action on that particular occasion, which he described as being forced upon him by the emergency in which he was placed, to repeat the operation next year. Now I want to know the meaning of—
  "Not treating the proceedings as a precedent."
  I say that phrase has only one meaning, which is that you will not repeat the operation without giving the assembly in which that operation took place an

  913
  opportunity of discussing the matter. What is the extraordinary position taken up by the right hon. Gentleman? When reminded of the pledge he said—
  "In ever gave such a promise. How could a Member of a Government give such a promise to bind a Government for all time to come?"
  That was not the pledge. The pledge was that he would give the opportunity to the House. Nobody would have complained of his embodying this change in his new rules, because then we should have had the opportunity we desire. The complaint is that he should make this great alteration on his own authority and that of the Treasury without affording this opportunity to the House.
  There is one point which has not been alluded to in this discussion, and that is that in the present instance it is much worse than it was last year, because last year 10 out of the 29 of the Supplementary Votes had already been taken under the ordinary rule, and two or three nights given to the discussion of them, and it was only when the Government found themselves in such a position that they had to appeal to the necessities of the case that they took the other 19 Votes; but this year they come down to the House, and, without any plea of emergency, they ask us to adopt this radical and important departure from the settled practice of the House as regards Supplementary Estimates, and not, as last year, in regard to a portion of them that had not been passed under the ordinary rule. That being the case, I think there is a great deal more implied and involved in this proceeding than appears on the surface, and there is no difference in the principle if the Government were to take the ordinary Civil Service Estimates in the same way. It might be a greater thing, but there is nothing more in it, so far as the principle is concerned, and no greater departure from the settled practice of the House, if they came and planked down the whole of the Estimates in a lump sum and asked us to vote the whole lot. I think it will be apparent to the House that this is a serious proceeding. Look at the position. The First Lord of the Treasury, having passed lightly over the main points on which this Motion
  914
  for the adjournment was moved tonight, entered into an eloquent and interesting disquisition on the whole question of Supply, and announced that it was the intention of the Government to appoint a Select Committee to consider the whole question of dealing with Supply in the House of Commons. If that is so, why not leave this Supplementary Estimate until the Committee has dealt with the matter? We are going presently to discuss a new set of rules, and we are going to have a great discussion as to procedure, and two Committees are to sit, one to consider private business, and one to consider the question of Supply, and yet the Government will not relegate the whole question of procedure to a strong Committee. We are getting into a tangle, and it seems to me that it would be far better for the Government to let the procedure of the House alone until we had a Report of a strong Committee which we could consider at our leisure. But as regards the present discussion, I am clearly of opinion that the whole question we have to consider is this, that the Leader of the House, whether he intended or not, left the House under a distinct pledge, and the whole of this procedure appears to be at variance with the pledge given by him.
  MR. SEELY: I hope the First Lord of the Treasury will reconsider his position. I think the most important thing in the management of the rules of this House is that hon. Gentlemen, who sit on one side of the House should feel absolutely confident that any arrangement made with them, or any understanding, should be strictly carried out. Now I think the First Lord of the Treasury knows that we have such a high opinion of him that we can discuss this matter without imputing to him any blame whatsoever, and we can say that the very high standard with regard to this question which exists in this House has been distinctly raised by him. Now I do not think that any one who has listened to this debate can doubt that hon. Members who sit opposite did undoubtedly consider, when the debate on this question ended a year ago, that nothing of this kind would be done so recently as the following year after that discussion. Certainly, speaking for my-

  915
  self, that was my impression and I think it was the impression of a large number of hon. Members on this side of the House. It is not a very large question, the number of Votes is not very great and it does not perhaps come to much but I do think it would be a pity that we should let there be any feeling on the other side of the House that the whole of our arrangements have not been carried out as they have been during the period of the right hon. Gentleman's leadership and will be carried out hereafter: and I appeal with him to reconsider this question and adopt his own suggestion, which would meet the case, and refer the whole of this matter to a Committee.
  MR. A. J BALFOURwas understood to dissent.
  Mr. SEELY: I understood that that was his proposal last year. I do not think it is necessary to go as far as the Leader of the Opposition suggested and withdraw the Vote, because the questions involved are so small that really there will be no harm done this year by putting it in the the form proposed. If, however, it is referred to a Committee, the principle of the matter will be settled and done with, and if the First Lord of the Treasury could see his way to do that, I think he would please both sides of the House.
  Mr. LOUGH: This is the most extraordinary debate to which during my ten years experience of the House I have listened. A subject has been suddenly sprung upon us, every one admits it is rather a grave emergency, but not a single Member in any part of the House has supported the proposal made by the First Lord of the Treasury. There have been as many speakers on the Government as on the Opposition side of the House, and all have made the same appeal. If the First Lord gives an intimation that he will listen to that appeal, I will not say another word. It seems to me that we are engaged in one of the most serious pieces of business we have had in the House for many years. Two things have happened since this matter of Supply was dealt with about
  916
  six years ago. In the first place, the expenditure of the country has doubled, and in the second place, a constantly growing amount of the expenditure has been withdrawn from the control of this House. The First Lord has suggested that the Committee of Supply has never effected any economy when dealing with the Estimates. If he will only refer to last session, I think he will find many examples in which the discussions in this House bore fruit. My object in rising was to give the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity of deferring to the opinion which has been expressed in every part of the House, and I hope he will respond to that appeal.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have listened with a certain amount of pain to some of the speeches which have been made. I think expressions used last year, in regard to what was at that time undoubtedly purely an emergency resolution, have been twisted into a sense which, under the circumstances, is hardly fair. Of course, I may speak only by the leave of the House. I admit that by an accident, for which I certainly do not feel myself to be responsible, the change in the form of the Estimates this year has been unexpected or unforeseen by a large number of Gentlemen in the House. I had intended, in the course of my general speech on the rules, to advert to this as one of the features in the changes we proposed to make. I had it on my notes, but unfortunately it slipped my notice, as does sometimes happen in the course of a very long and complicated statement. Then, I had intended to give notice of the matter on Friday week. By the doctor's orders I was not allowed to be in the House that night, and I asked my hon. friend the Secretary to the Treasury to do so for me. There is no person more competent to do anything lucidly, but possibly if I had done it myself it would have been reported in the newspapers and so have come to the notice of every hon. Member, at all events, not later than last Saturday week. I did not know until this afternoon that it was not reported. Although what passed is perfectly well known to the Leader of the Irish Party, he is not

  917
  responsible for spreading information throughout all the ranks of the House, but such a statement can hardly be described as a parliamentary secret. Still, it is no doubt true that it would have been desirable to bring the matter more clearly before the notice of the House, so that the House would have been seised of the facts—as, until to-night, I thought they were—ten days ago. Then if there had been any desire for a debate, that desire would have been conveyed to me, and, of course, such a demand would not have been resisted. I do not know whether the House thinks the discussion we have already had sufficiently long, but I am so anxious that it should not appear as if it was being pushed down the throats of Members, or brought into force by any secret procedure, that I am perfectly ready to find some other occasion on which we can discuss what the Government propose as a permanent change in our method of presenting Supplementary Estimates. This is quite deliberately proposed by the Government as an improvement. After what has taken place to-day I will consider whether I might not move an Amendment to the new rules, which would raise the question in a specific form. I cannot promise to do that, because one must consider how it could be drafted, and there are other questions on which it is difficult to pronounce without careful consideration. If I am unable to find a sufficient opportunity in that way, I will try to find one in some other way. Of course, that is if there is a desire for further discussion. I have very little more to say on the matter myself; I do not think I can add anything to the strong statement of the case in its favour; but, in order to avoid the smallest appearance of taking the House by surprise, I will engage that some opportunity is given for a discussion on the matter.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: By permission of the House, may I say a word or two? In substance the right hon. Gentleman has dealt very fairly with the complaint that was made. He has undertaken that before this practice is regarded as approved by the House of Commons, and becomes a part of its permanent un-
  918
  written laws, there should bean adequate opportunity for its discussion. I take it for granted that the right hon. Gentleman will withdraw this Estimate. ["No"] The right hon. Gentleman has said that he does not think he ought to take advantage of this new form until it has been discussed by the House. I would ask him to consider this point. The right hon. Gentleman has made a concession, which is the substance, and he will not lose anything by adding a little grace to it by withdrawing the Estimate in its present form and introducing it in the regular way. The Estimate itself is not, as it was last year, a question of millions, or covering a great many Departments. It is, by comparison with last year, a small one, and it is one which cannot be made the subject of very prolonged or improper discussion. The right hon. Gentleman has promised a day for the discussion, but we may not be able to have the discussion before the Estimate is considered, because that will have to be discussed very soon. If the right hon. Gentleman simply says, "I will give an opportunity for the discussion of this matter, but I will insist on going on with the Estimate, and take advantage of what I have done," his concession will certainly be robbed of its grace. I would ask him, under these circumstances, not only to give us this opportunity for discussion, but to withdraw the present Estimate, and introduce one in the ordinary way.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I think it is possible we might have the discussion before the Estimate comes on for consideration. That, obviously, would be the best plan. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will ask me a question on the subject tomorrow, and I will consider between now and then the course we ought to adopt. Of course, I should take it for granted—I may speak quite frankly—that if the Estimate in its present form were withdrawn, there would be no attempt to prolong the discussion on the Estimate, or anything of that sort.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: I have already said that from the nature of the Estimate itself no such difficulty could possibly arise. I may add to that that there

  919
  would be no such desire if the right hon. Gentleman would withdraw the Estimate. I will leave the matter as it now stands and put a question, to the right hon. Gentleman tomorrow.
  Mr. SPEAKER: Does the hon. Member desire to withdraw his Motion?
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: Yes, Sir, I desire, by leave of the House, to withdraw.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

  PATENT LAW AMENDMENT.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,), in asking leave to bring in a Bill to amend the law with reference to applications for Patents and Compulsory Licenses and other matters connected therewith, said the Bill was based on the recommendations of a Committee appointed by the Board of Trade in 1900 to inquire into the working of the Patent Act respecting a great variety of questions. The recommendations of the Committee with reference to one matter were carried out by a Bill passed last session. The other recommendations had reference to matters of somewhat greater difficulty and complexity. One of these was the question of examining the specifications of letters patent previously granted in the United Kingdom. The other was that of granting compulsory licences. He did not think that it was necessary for him at this stage of the proceedings to explain or justify the provisions of the measure further than to say that they followed very closely the recommendations of the Committee, which were unusually detailed and precise, and that the Bill he was asking leave to introduce was a translation of those recommendations into the language of an Act of Parliament. He was aware that public opinion with respect to the recommendations was not absolutely unanimous, but he had thought it better that the Bill should follow closely the lines of them. It would be well to allow a considerable interval to elapse between the First and Second Reading of the Bill, in order to give those interested in the question an
  920
  opportunity of studying the provisions. He would undertake on his part to consider most carefully and with an open mind any considerations that might be made to him.
  MR. HEBERT LEWIS: I am glad to know that the Government intend to introduce a Bill upon this important subject. It is, of course, too early a stage to pronounce anything in the way of a definite opinion upon the Bill which the Government now ask leave to introduce. I am glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman proposes to follow the recommendations of the Committee which sat to consider this matter, and I am still better pleased to hear that the Government propose to allow a considerable interval between the First and Second Reading of the Bill in order that the opinion of the commercial community may be obtained with regard to it. There is no doubt that the present law is in great need of amendment. There are few subjects in which the commercial world is more interested than in the inferiority of the patent system of the United Kingdom as compared with other countries, and more particularly as compared with the United States. I am sure that we shall all look forward with the greatest interest to the provisions of the Bill, and I again desire to thank the right hon. Gentleman for his promise to allow a long interval between the First and Second Reading. I trust that interval will not be too long, and I hope that the Government will be able to carry through this measure during the present session in a form that will be acceptable to the commercial world at large.

  PATENT LAW AMENDMENT.
  Bill to amend the law with reference to applications for Patents and Compulsory Licences, and other matters connected therewith, ordered to be brought in by Mr. Gerald Balfour, Mr. Attorney General, and Mr. Solicitor General.

PATENT LAW AMENDMENT BILL.
"To amend the Law with reference to applications for Patents and Compulsory Licenses, and other matters connected therewith" presented accordingly and

921
read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday, 10th March, and to be printed. [Bill 87.]

NEW PROCEDURE RULES.
[First Day's Debate.]

OFFICE OF SPEAKER.
Standing Order No. 83 [20th July, 1855] read, as followeth†:—
That whenever the House shall be informed by the Clerk at the Table of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means do perform the duties and exercise the authority of Speaker in relation to all proceedings of this House, as Deputy Speaker, until the next meeting of the House, and so on from day to day, on the like information being given to the House, until the House shall otherwise order: Provided that if the House shall adjourn for more than Twenty-four hours the Deputy Speaker shall continue to perform the duties and exercise the authority of Speaker for Twenty-four hours only after such adjournment:—
Amendment proposed at the end of the Standing Order to add the words—
"At the commencement of every Parliament or from time to time, as necessity may arise, the House may appoint a Deputy Chairman, who shall, whenever the House is informed of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means, be entitled to exercise all the powers vested in the Chairman of Ways and Means, including his powers as Deputy Speaker":—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)
Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
SIR SAMUEL HOAREsaid that of all the Amendments which the Leader of the House had put before them there was none of greater importance than the one which they were now considering. While it might be right and very desirable to alter their Rules of Procedure in order to facilitate business, it was of still greater importance that they should make provision that under any con-
†Throughout these debates, the Standing Order proposed to be amended, or the proposed new Standing Order, will be first stated at length; at the close of the discussion, the Order, as it eventually emerges, will be printed in italic type.
922
tingency the work of the House should not be suspended owing to the illness either of Mr. Speaker or the Chairman of Ways and Means. It was somewhat interesting to note that this Motion should be made within a week of the House having experienced circumstances which might have led to considerable inconvenience and even to the suspension of the sittings of the House. Only last week, to the great regret of the House, Mr. Speaker, through indisposition, was unable to be in his place, and his position was occupied by the Chairman of Ways and Means. Within twenty-four hours of this incident the Chairman of Ways and Means was taken ill, and he felt sure that he was expressing the general feeling of the House when he expressed the hope that the right hon. Gentleman would soon be restored to health. Under those circumstances Mr. Speaker took the Chair at a time when he ought to have taken one or two day's rest, instead of taking the Chair as he did, and the House greatly appreciated what Mr. Speaker did. Therefore, he felt that they ought not to wait till an emergency came, and they should be prepared with an assistant Deputy Chairman able to carry out the duties either in Committee or in the unfortunate absence of Mr. Speaker.
It was unnecessary for him to labour the importance of having some hon. Member who was prepared to undertake those duties. He quite realised that every session Mr. Speaker nominated five Gentlemen to act as Deputy Chairman, and he would be the first to acknowledge that those hon. Gentlemen when called upon from time to time had fulfilled their duties most ably. He hoped, therefore, that the plan which had hitherto existed of appointing five Deputy Chairmen would always be continued. They had, however, to remember that it was not merely within this House that difficulties arose through the absence of Mr. Speaker or the Chairman of Ways and Means. He thought hon. Members scarcely realised the amount of work which was placed upon the Chairman of Ways and Means, and it was especially with reference to that work that he wished to impress upon the Leader of the House the importance of facing the upstairs work as well as the

923
work in the House by the appointment of a permanent Deputy Chairman. Anyone who looked at the Standing Orders would at once see the immense amount of duties which were placed upon the Chairman of Ways and Means. There was a great deal of work to be done outside the House, and as long ago as the year 1888 it was clearly put forward that the Chairman of Ways and Means had really more work to do than it was possible for him to undertake. Other evidence which had been taken upon this subject pointed in the same direction. He thought it was only right that the House should realise the great amount of work that had been placed upon the Chairman of Ways and Means, in order that they might express their appreciation of the manner in which that work had been done in the past as well as by the present holder of the office. The Chairman of Ways and Means had a great many other duties which involved his attendance in the House both morning and afternoon at different hours. He had often to see the promoters of Bills and consider with them certain points. He had also to see the opponents of Bills and had to confer with the Speaker's Counsel. When it was remembered that this session there were 187 private Bills down for consideration, it would be understood that the Chairman had a great deal of work to do. He wished for a moment to consider what would be the position of affairs with reference to private Bills if the Chairman of Ways and Means was laid up by illness for any considerable time. Hon. Members reading the Standing Orders would see that according to the procedure laid down notice had to be given to the Chairman of Ways and Means two or three days before the various stages of a Bill could be taken. The Amendments had to be put down, and the Chairman of Ways and Means was responsible to see that they were in order. He had himself known cases where the parties interested in a Bill had been prevented from seeing the Chairman of Ways and Means on account of his illness, and the result was that there was difficulty. This would be solved if only there was in future a Deputy Chairman who could undertake a great portion of the work now placed upon the
924
Chairman. The Chairman of Ways and Means was sometimes up to a very late hour indeed, and next morning he was expected to be present to assist various people with respect to their private Bills. The hon. Member believed it had always been the custom of the Chairman of Ways and Means and those with whom he acted, as well as Committees who were responsible for investigating private Bills to try, as far as possible, when they believed a Bill was good, to see that that Bill should be passed through. This often meant a good deal of compromise on the part of those interested in the Bill, but he thought it was right, after the parties had gone to great expense, that if arrangements could be made, either in the Committee-room or on the advice of the Chairman, or Mr. Speaker's Counsel, they should report to the House that the preamble was proved. That was what the House desired should be done. Some hon. Members might suppose that the Chairman of Committee on unopposed Bills might mean little or nothing. But it should be remembered that the Chairman of Ways and Means had to read these Bills and, when he thought the circumstances necessitated it, to make an unopposed an opposed Bill. Sometimes they had a Bill opposed in Committee, and then it went back to the Committee as an unopposed Bill. He thought from his own experience that a great deal of care was required with Bills which went through that course. He expressed the hope that the Leader of the House would be able to assure them that this officer of the House was not to be appointed as emergency arose, but that he was to be appointed as regularly as the Chairman of Ways and Means—that he should be, practically, always in the House, watching the business and ready to help. He had put down an Amendment to insert after "Deputy Chairman" the words "At a salary of £1,500 per annum," but he understood that would be out of order. He trusted, however, that if they appointed an officer able to cope with the business he would receive an adequate salary for his services. He did not think they were justified in asking any Member to give up the time that was necessary for the work, which would be heavy, unless they properly remunerated him for his services. He believed it would be

925
to the advantage of private Bill business if they had a Deputy Chairman thoroughly acquainted with the various stages and with the circumstances of Bills. He was one of those who were anxious to see business go through as smoothly as possible. Splendidly as the Chairman of Ways and Means had done his work in the past, it was not fair that they should impose more on him than he could do. Nor was it fair that either Mr. Speaker or the Chairman of Ways and Means should be obliged when indisposed to come to undertake their duties in order to prevent the business of the country from coming to a standstill. He expressed the hope that his right hon. friend would consider these views in the spirit in which they were offered, and, if possible, give effect to them in the way he thought best.
MR. MELLORsaid the proposed Rule as it appeared on the Paper would not carry out the object intended. If they were going to make an alteration in the present practice of the House there ought to be an officer of the House appointed and not merely a casual Member to act in an emergency for one, two, or three days in the course of the year. They should have an officer who would learn the work of the House, and who would be competent to take the Chair either for the Speaker or the Chairman in the case of unavoidable absence. With regard to private business, he could only say that the Chairman of Ways and Means had to do a great deal more work than any Member who had not investigated the matter could possibly imagine. He had to sit as Chairman in the Court of Referees, and that was a Court of considerable importance to the House. It was one of the most important Standing Committees, its object being to determine all questions of locus standi. The Chairman of Ways and Means got a certain amount of assistance, but at times it was necessary for him to take the Chair there. He had to take the Chair at the meetings of the Unopposed Bills Committee. That sounded unimportant, but it was really a very important matter. That Committee dealt with all Bills in respect of which petitions had been withdrawn.
926
The Chairman of Ways and Means had to sit with Mr. Speaker's Counsel, and probably another Member, and go into all the circumstances connected with the Bill. The Home Office and the Local Government Board and other Departments of the Government had to make reports to the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and his first duty was to see that the reports were complied with. People often came to the Chairman of Ways and Means to ask questions and to ascertain whether he could help them to settle matters of opposition, and to see whether he could arrange for the future progress of Bills. Having seen these people, he came into the House at 3 o'clock, and he was expected to give to the House the knowledge he had gained of the various Bills which had been brought before him. It was a much greater labour than appeared. If the 12 o'clock Rule was unhappily suspended, he had to go on sitting into the night. The hon. Member remembered, when the Home Rule Bill was before the House, Amendments were brought to the Chairman in bundles, and it was his duty to make up his mind whether they were in order or not, and then to see that those which were in order were properly dealt with. It took a great deal of time, and caused a great deal of anxiety to the Chairman, because before sitting on such a Bill he had to prepare himself by looking at the Amendments on the Paper, and looking at the authorities and rulings of former Speakers and Chairmen to see whether the Amendments were in order or not. In addition to that, if the Speaker was ill, then the Chairman of Ways and Means, as Deputy Speaker had to take the Chair, and he would have the same difficulties to encounter as the Speaker. The First Lord of the Treasury was, he understood, acting in this matter as Leader of the House, and was willing to listen not only to the discussion of these rules, but to make Amendments on them if these were reasonable. He trusted sincerely that the First Lord would accept the suggestion, and for this reason; that if any ordinary Member of the House was put into the Speaker's Chair temporarily, the effect would be that he would have the powers of the Speaker, but

927
not the Speaker's authority. There was a great difference in that respect. The position of the Speaker was great, and one of very high authority, and thus it was that the Speaker was able to control the deliberation of the House, and to keep order under all circumstances. He hoped that the Government would listen to this suggestion, and that they would appoint a permanent officer of the House, who would be able to take his fair share of the duties of Chairman of Ways and Means in regard to private business.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: There is no Amendment before the House, but a suggestion. Both my hon. friend who started this debate and the right hon. Gentleman opposite spoke with authority as to the labours, responsibility, and duties of the Chairman of Committees. I certainly have no knowledge of my own respecting the details of the work that responsible officer has to deal with, nor can I compare them with others, but I fully accept their general statements. The proposal that we should have a highly-paid Assistant Chairman of Committees is, I think, well worthy of consideration, but it is outside the scope of the actual proposal of the Government. There is a good deal to be thought of before we make a new paid officer in this House, and I should certainly not like to make the proposal on my own volition until I knew more about it. It is sufficient, I think, that in this rule we deal with a specific danger which this House has run, I was going to say for centuries, but which, so far as I know, has never produced any great public catastrophe, though it might have brought us to the verge of a great Parliamentary difficulty. The Rule, as it stands, provides a way out of that difficulty, and I would venture to suggest that the House would be well advised in taking the rule as the Government has proposed it. It would not be a barrier to the proposals of my hon. friend and the right hon. Gentleman, which might well come under the consideration of any Committee appointed to consider Private Bill Legislation. I understand that there is no opposition to the rule; and that the actual suggestion we have made need raise no great controversy.
Sir. H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman was never more mistaken.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Had I known the right hon. Gentleman had any objection to the rule—he might have communicated with me.
Sir CHARLES DILKEsaid that many of them thought, rightly or wrongly, that the right hon. Gentleman was going to accept the proposal that a salary should be paid to the new Deputy Chairman, because that was the way to maintain the control of Parliament. That was the reason why the right hon. Gentleman had heard nothing in opposition to the Rule. Many of them thought there was enormous danger in trusting the next rule to a casual Chairman over whom they had no control, and he would offer the fiercest opposition to this Rule unless a promise of payment was made.
Sir J. FERGUSSONsaid he was probably the only Member of the House who remembered the first time the Chairman of Ways and Means took the Chair in the room of the Speaker. That was in 1855, owing to the indisposition of the Speaker, and in pursuance of a Standing Order passed after the Report of the Select Committee in 1853. His right hon. friend had said that they had got on very well for centuries without the necessity of an additional officer, and that brought to his mind how it became necessary that the Chairman of Committees should be made Deputy Speaker. In previous times, when, unhappily for any reason, the Speaker was unable to take the Chair, business was not so pressing, and, by arrangement, a House was not made. It so happened that within a month of the occasion to which he referred, the Speaker, having met with a slight accident, was prevented from performing his duty, and for two nights running a House was not made. It was then that the new rule was taken advantage of. The fact was that the business of the House was now so much heavier, and the time of Parliament was so much more valuable, that it would be impossible to get through the session if, from time to time, they had to pass over a sitting. It was quite evident that anyone entrusted with the authority of the Speaker, or the Chairman of ways and

929
Means, should be a man in whom the House had complete confidence; and he was quite sure that there were many Members of the House in whom the necessary qualities might be found. Members from all parts of the House had taken the Chair occasionally, though without full powers, and they had shewn their ability to conduct the business of the House. He had only risen to point out that they could not afford, in these times, when the business of the House had so much increased, to run the risk of not having some one to take the Chair upon such an emergency as a few days ago might easily have taken taken place, and in the interests of the House the proposal of the Government was, he considered, highly expedient. (8.15.)
MR. LODERsaid that until he heard the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean, he was under the impression that, whatever might be said about the proposed new rules as a whole, the one dealing with the appointment of a Deputy Chairman would, at any rate, be received with a chorus of approval and satisfaction by the House. By the Amendment he was about to move he did not intend in any way to delay the progress of the new rule, but simply to elicit from the Government the exact intention of the proposal. The House was under the impression that a rule was to be established that in future a Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means should be appointed to take the place of the Chairman or the Speaker when one or both were indisposed. But the wording of the proposed addition to the Standing Order left it optional for the Government of the day to make such an appointment or not, as they thought fit. The general feeling of the House, he believed, was that the Standing Order should be mandatory and obligatory, and the object of his Amendment was that that intention should be expressed in so many words. In the course of an examination of the Standing Orders, he had found only three out of 98 that were permissible in their wording. If it was intended that the Standing Order should be obligatory, why not say so? The House had been told sometimes by the
930
Attorney General, or the Solicitor General, that in certain cases "may" meant "shall," but it was desirable above all things that a Standing Order should be clear and unmistakable in its intention, and therefore in order to avoid all possibility of doubt, he moved to substitute the word "shall" for the word "may."
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment—
"In line 2, to leave out the second word "may," and insert the word "shall."—(Mr. Loder.)
Question proposed, "That the word 'may' stand part of the proposed Amendment."
MR. M'KENNAthought the change from "may" to "shall" was not one that the House should be recommended to adopt. The functions of the Deputy Chairman were very uncertain, and it would be better to leave the proposal in its present vague form until some definite statement as to the duties of the office had been made. If the suggestion of the hon. Member for Norwich had been accepted, and it had been decided that the Deputy-Chairman's duties should include some of the duties at present discharged by the Chairman in regard to private Bills, and that a salary should attach to the office, it might have been better that the appointment should be made obligatory. But as the Deputy Chairman was, apparently, to come into existence only in the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means, it was preferable that the proposal should remain in its present form.
MR. BLAKEfelt a great difficulty as to this appointment, having regard to the powers the new official would be called upon to exercise. The security the House expected and received in the exercise of the great powers of the Speaker, all of which were to be vested in this Deputy Chairman, was not after all so much dependent on his official and salaried position, as on the extraordinary and happy circumstances of the tenure of the appointment. The Speaker, by the understanding of the House, was the embodiment of the will of the House at large. When appointed, he abandoned

931
all party connections in that House, and understood that he would, being worthy, receive the support and confidence of both sides of the House; that, although political fortunes might change, and those who had secured his election might become the minority, he would receive from the new House a renewal of confidence. That was the essential feature of the Speakership, and it made for the security, dignity, order and efficiency of the proceedings of the British House of Commons more than did any other element in its constitution. But the appointment of an official to fill the Chair only casually and for short intervals, and not under the venerable and valuable traditions to which he had referred, was a very different business. The office of Chairman of Committee of Ways and Means was not a very old one, and the question of the succession to the Speakership had not arisen in any acute form, as it might do. But perhaps there might exist in the hope of that succession, some restraining and elevating motive affecting the Chairman. But the lower one went down in the official hierarchy, from the Speaker to the Deputy Speaker, and from the Deputy Speaker to the Vice-Deputy Speaker, so to speak, the less these considerations weighed. The opportunities of occupying the Chair would be comparatively rare; the general atmosphere in which such a Member would dwell and the work he would do would still be that of a party politician. Thus many things concurred to render it difficult for him to reconcile himself to the exercise of the great powers proposed to be conferred on the new officer by this new rule. While, however, he was indisposed to agree to making the appointment obligatory, he did not think any hon. Member need be alarmed because the word was "may" and not "shall." The appointment did not require even the initiative of the Government. Under the rule, at the commencement of a Parliament, it might be competent for any Member to make such a proposition, and if the majority of the House favoured it, the appointment would be made; while it was rather absurd to suppose that, if the House was unfavourable, it should be forced to appoint. He had long thought, however, and he hoped that all would agree that, in the interests of the efficient conduct of business
932
and of humanity towards the two principal officials of the House, some provision should be made by which the usual occupant of the Chair might obtain relief much more frequently than was at present the case. One slightly redeeming feature of the new rule was that it would enable some such provision to be made. His own view, perhaps coloured somewhat by experiences elsewhere, was that some method should be arranged by which it would be quite in accordant with etiquette, as well as within the range of possibility, for the occupant of the Chair to obtain frequently and easily a short relief from sitting in the Chair. In another Legislature of which he had had experience, a system had been adopted whereby the Speaker was able to call to the Chair, from time to time, any Member of the House, and was thus enabled to take advantage of some other posture than that of sitting—a posture that was both uncomfortable and detrimental to health if too long enforced. The rule would therefore be improved if it was not confined to cases in which an announcement was made of the unavoidable absence of the Speaker, and the impossibility of his taking the Chair. Such a provision as he had suggested would conduce to the comfort and health of the Speaker, and the comfort and health of the Speaker were in no unimportant sense also for the comfort and smooth conduct of the House.
THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GRANT LAWSON,)said he was very glad to be able to agree with a great deal that had been said by the hon. Member who had just sat down, who had had great experience in regard to this question. He thought if the House was ever likely to adopt this view, the weighty reasons which had just been given by the hon. Member would persuade the House at once to appoint such an officer. He hoped, however, that the hon. Member would not press his Amendment, because it was not usual for the House to give a mandatory instruction to itself that it should appoint a Deputy Chairman. If the proposal were agreed to, he did not see how they were going to enforce such

933
an instruction against the wishes of the House, for they could not get a mandamus from a judge. For his part he could not conceive of a Government which had the opportunity of conferring an additional honour and responsibility upon an hon. Member of the House refusing to do so, when the whole House were anxious that such an appointment should be conferred.
MR. LODERasked leave to withdraw his Amendment. [Opposition cries of "No, no."]
Question, "That the word 'may' stand part of the proposed Amendment," put, and agreed to.
MR. M'KENNAsaid that the effect of the Amendment he now proposed would be to leave the question open. Even the Colonial Secretary had stated that it would probably be necessary to consider the whole question of private business. One of the subjects for the consideration of any Committee that might be appointed ought to be the duties of that Deputy Chairman, and if the Government accepted this Amendment they could either adhere to their present attitude of not paying the Deputy Speaker, or if they wished it they might make him an official of the House. The objection to the proposal as it stood at present was that it bound the Government not to appoint a Deputy Speaker to be paid. If the First Lord of the Treasury adhered to that attitude it would cause considerable difficulty in dealing with some of the proposals later on. He questioned whether it was wise to give such powers to an hon. Member appointed casually to this position. He thought it was advisable that the Government should now leave the matter open, and be guided in their future decision by whatever conclusions the Committee might come to.
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, in line 3, to leave out the words—
"Whenever the House is informed of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means."—(Mr. M'Kenna.)
Question proposed, "That the words 'whenever the House is informed' stand part of the proposed Amendment."
MR. GRANT LAWSONsaid he could not accept the Amendment, and pointed out that to leave out these words would aggrandise the position and power of the new official by making it possible for him to take the chair at other times than in the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means.
MR. BARTLEYthought they should stick to the old idea that the Speaker and the Chairman of Ways and Means should be the officers, and that the Deputy Chairman should only act in one of those sad events when both Mr. Speaker and the Chairman were struck down by illness, and when they could not carry on their business. He trusted they would not make this another salaried appointment. If this were made a valuable appointment it might be filled in a way which some of them would not like. He did not think that in these days of enormously increasing expenditure they ought to make any more lucrative appointments in the House of Commons.
Mr. SPEAKER: I think the question of whether he should be a paid Deputy Chairman or not does not arise on this Amendment.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he thought the hon. Member who had moved this Amendment was under a little misapprehension. He pointed out that the rule as it stood on the Paper empowered the Deputy Chairman to take the chair when the Chairman of Ways and Means was absent.
MR. M'KENNA: The words are "whenever the House is informed."
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Quite so. "Whenever the House is informed." There was a new phraseology introduced into these rules. He did not know in the least what the "Chairman of Ways and Means" was. He knew what "Chairman of Committee of Ways and Means" meant, but the expression "Chairman of Ways and Means" had

935
no more meaning than "Chairman of Hopes and Fears." He only mentioned that to show that the phraseology was a little slipshod. Again, the Amendment entitled the Deputy Chairman to exercise all the powers of the Chairman of Ways and Means, including his powers as Deputy Speaker. These latter words were surplusage.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Not at all.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Does not "all" mean "all"? He submitted, however, that the words the hon. Member proposed to omit were very necessary, because they limited the occasions on which the new officer could act. He was not inclined to multiply indefinitely the occasions when this new official was to play the part of Speaker. He would have enormous powers. He would have the power of suspending anyone, and of requiring an apology from any one of them. [An Hon. Member: A sincere apology.] He would have the entirely new power of suspending the sitting of the House. Then there was the closure.
Mr. SPEAKER: The only question now before the House is whether the words "Whenever the House is informed of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means" should be omitted.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid it was extremely advisable from his point of view to limit the powers of the Deputy Chairman as much as possible. They were having created a new officer, and they did not know whether he was to be paid or unpaid. The only expression he had heard on the subject was in the shape of an Amendment which was ruled out of order. But whether paid or unpaid, they did know it was proposed that he should have very extensive powers. He was therefore of opinion that the words proposed to be omitted should be retained.
MR. M'KENNAasked leave to with draw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment amended, by inserting in line 3, after the word "informed," the words "by the Clerk at the Table."
Mr. GIBSON BOWLESin moving to leave out the words "including his powers as Deputy Speaker," said he thought the House really must have some respect to the real meaning of words. The Amendment invested the new officer with all the powers of the Chairman of Ways and Means. "All" must mean "all," and the powers as Deputy Speaker would be included.
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, as amended—
"In line 5, after the word 'Means,' to leave out the words 'including his powers as Deputy Speaker.'"—(Mr. Gibson Bowles.)
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the proposed Amendment, as amended."
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I would advise my hon. friend not to press the Amendment. I entirely agree that "all" does mean "all," even in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons; but it is convenient to make us all familiar with the Standing Orders of the House, so that any one glancing at the rule will see at once what is the most important power included in the word "all." It is only on that ground that I defend the Amendment as drawn, though I admit it is not grammatical or logical.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Very well, Sir, with that deference I always endeavour to show the right hon. Gentleman, although I confess he has not convinced me, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment to the proposed Amendment, as amended, by leave, withdrawn.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: moved to add at the end of the Amendment, "Provided always that no holder of a directorship in a public company shall be eligible for appointment to the position of Deputy Chairman." This was by no means a laughing matter. All the enormous powers of the Speaker were to be granted to the new Deputy Chairman—the power to stop the order of debate, to adjourn the House, to order any one out of the House, and other powers little short of despotic; but he was not to be in reality a paid

937
official of the House. Now, if the gentleman were a paid official, no matter how great his powers, as long as his salary was on the Votes, so long would they have their grip upon him, and so long would he be obedient to the great moral sanction and public opinion of the House. The right hon. Gentleman proposed as Deputy Chairman was an amphibious creature, who might be a partisan as much as he was. He maintained that the Chairman of Committees should be removed as far as possible from all suspicion of the trail of finance. The head of this House should not be a company director, above all, the Gentleman exercising the position of Chairman of Committees, and for this reason: that day after day matters came up in Committee connected with company law-and company promotion. Let them, for God's sake, provide that even the most prejudiced Member of the House should feel convinced that the order he heard from the Chair was not the grunt of a guinea-pig. The honour of the position was such that the occupant of the Chair ought to be a man imbued with the traditions of this House, that he should give his entire thought and services to the public good, and should not be in the slightest degree subject to the suspicion that he must be affected by the financial transactions of any company. It was well known that a Judge on the Bench, no matter how highly placed, would not be allowed to sit in judgment on a case in which he had the slightest interest. He threw no imputation on the present Government of all the talents and all the virtues the world had ever seen, but he could imagine the extreme length to which this rule could be carried by an unscrupulous Government, determined, as far as they could, to abridge the privileges of the House of Commons, and the rights of free speech. He could imagine such a Government putting into that Chair another Bludgeon Hardacres who would, at will, order Members out of the House of Commons. The Deputy Chairman should be, like Cæsar's wife, above suspicion; and should have nothing to do with those financial relations which seemed to dog, in some mysterious way, the steps of the present Government. He begged to give notice
938
that if the Gentleman to be proposed for the position of Deputy Chairman had any connection whatever with company promoting he would expose his financial arrangements to the House.
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, as amended in line 6, at the end, to add the words—
"Provided always, that no holder of a Directorship in a Public Company shall be eligible for appointment as Deputy Chairman."—(Mr. Swift MacNeill.)
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be added to the proposed Amendment, as amended, be there added."
Mr A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Gentleman has got directors on the brain. He says that the Deputy Chairman should be, like Cæsar's wife, above suspicion. By that he means, apparently, that he should not hold a directorship. If Cæsar's wife had the misfortune of living in the days of the hon. Gentleman she would not have been above suspicion.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I never said anything against the lady in my life.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: At any rate the hon. Gentleman must remember that to pass this regulation with regard to the Deputy Chairman alone would be very invidious. You must extend it to the other officers of the House. Again, the arguments he has advanced would prevent any man being either Speaker or Chairman of Committees or Deputy Chairman who holds any property either in land, or Consols, or in any foreign stocks such as Egyptian or African stocks, which are influenced by action in this House. I have never been asked myself to be a director of a company, and I rather suspect that the hon. Gentleman has never been asked either.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I have been asked, but I refused.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Then the hon. Gentleman has the advantage of me. But we must remember that in the conditions of modern industry all great

939
commercial works are carried on by companies. It is most important that those companies should be directed by the best men; and, though I and the hon. Gentleman have not the good fortune to be included among these best men, it is desirable that no discouragement should be thrown in the way of their employment. Of course, I quite agree there are persons who may be called professional directors, who are supposed to give little but their names to the companies with which they are connected. I should be sorry to see a person in that capacity exercising a very responsible position in this House. But it would be improper for us to apply to one officer a general regulation which we did not apply to all; and I, therefore, hope the hon. Gentleman will on reflection withdraw his Amendment.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I claim the same disqualification as the right hon. Gentleman. I have never been a director of any public company, and I confess I do not think it is a special qualification for a Member of this House. I think there is a great deal too much of it. It is an evil that is growing every day. I believe it exercises an influence in this House which is not beneficial to its action and which detracts from the reputation of the House outside. I feel that extremely strongly. I do not agree that it is possible to put it in the form of an Amendment, but, in my opinion, it ought to be the governing principle with those who have the appointment of men to positions of responsibility in this House, especially to such positions as exercise overwhelming influence on the conduct of Private Bills. This professional directorship is, in my opinion, an infinite social evil which is working immense mischief in all classes of society; and I regret to say I trace its evil influence in this House. Therefore, whatever we may do in the way of express legislation, I am extremely glad there should be an open declaration of opinion in this House, that it should be looked upon as a disqualification with regard to positions in the House. I am glad that my hon. friend has introduced the subject. I do not think he can carry it in an Amendment in this form; I should rather wish that the public opinion of this House should be against positions
940
of this kind being given to men who accumulate directorships in businesses to which they cannot attend, and which, if they did attend to them, would be a disqualification for their doing the business of this House. Therefore, I think we should have, not a self-denying ordinance, but a self-qualifying ordinance, by which men who claim to take a part in the public affairs of this country should give their time, their energies, and their character to the public service.
MR. VICARY GIBBSsaid that why such a qualification as was sought to be imposed by the Amendment should apply to the Deputy Chairman any more than to Mr. Speaker or the Chairman of Committees or any other officer of the House, he was at a loss to understand. If there was any rule of the House which made it obligatory, of course he was quite ready to accept it.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: There is an unwritten law that the Speaker of this House should not be what is called a guinea pig.
MR. VICARY GIBBSsaw no reason for the interposition of such an expression as guinea pig. Such a thing was a monstrous attack on a respectable and useful class of the community. To refer to the whole class of directors as guinea pigs because some people abused their position and took money for work which they did not do, was most in just. The right hon. Gentleman had no right to assume that all directors were dishonest and unfit for office in this House. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Amendment had spoken very strongly with regard to directors and said they were all tarred with the financial brush, or that the trail of finance was over them all, or something of that kind. He seemed to think they were all dishonest.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon, I said nothing of the kind. What I said was, that such a person was unfit for a public position in this House.
MR. VICARY GIBBSsaid it came to this, that so long as a person was a

941
member of a private firm he was a fit and proper person to fill a public office in this House, but directly his business was turned into a limited company and when he became a director he became unfit. He hoped they would not be led away in this matter. No doubt the position of director had in some cases been abused, but the position of a director qua director was no more discreditable to a man, than the position of a trader who was the head of his own firm; and so long as a man conducted himself properly in this House his business outside was no concern of anybody's.
MR. FIELDsaid the hon. Member who had just spoken had entirely misinterpreted the spirit of the Amendment. Every hon. Member must be aware of the fact that there were directors in this House of public companies of various kinds who came into contact with the Government, and who undoubtedly did influence a large number of hon. Members to a large extent. He had had a great deal to do with opposing Railway Bills, and he asked what would become of those Bills if the Deputy Speaker happened to be a director of the company that promoted them. There could be no question about it, there was a large public danger in having a director of a public company placed in a judicial position in the House, and he trusted the hon. Member would press this matter to a division. Mr. Gladstone discouraged entirely the idea of having as Cabinet Ministers men who were directors of public companies. Such discouragement however, was not a strong feature of the present Government, and the result was that when a Railway Bill came before the House those who wished to criticise the measure seldom got a chance, because the directors of the companies brought such strong pressure to bear upon the Government. In the majority of the Parliaments of Europe there was a rule which prohibited members of the Government sitting as directors of public companies. Such a rule was a great safeguard, and there was no doubt that public opinion recognised the fact that financiers and directors of public companies ought not to occupy prominent
942
positions in this House. Officials of this House ought to be above suspicion. If a division was pressed, he would certainly be found in the lobby with his hon. friend.
MR. JAMES LOWTHER, said he held strongly that no person occupying a position in the Government or an office in this House itself ought to be connected with a public company. But he hoped the hon. Gentleman would not press his Amendment, because it did not make the point quite clear. If only the Deputy Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means were precluded by express resolution from occupying the position of a director, that would imply that the members of the Government and, other officers of the House, were not precluded. Mr. Disraeli compelled every member of his Governments, high and low, to resign their connection as directors of public companies. There had not been any abuse of the practice, he thought, in the present Government, but he thought the general principle ought to be enforced, and his objection to the Amendment was that it did not enforce it in its entirety.
MR. JOHN BURNSsaid the attitude taken up by the right hon. Gentleman who had just addressed the House had secured the warm approval of Members on all sides of the House who did not agree with him in general matters, but he had suggested no way out of the difficulty. It was because he thought the Amendment provided a way out that he wished to give one or two reasons why he supported it. It was not the fault of the hon. Member for South Donegal that in moving his Amendment he could not make it apply to other officers, because not for a generation had there been an opportunity of discussing this principle in connection with a post of this kind. It had never been raised in connection with the high post which Mr. Speaker had with such dignity and probity filled. This was the only opportunity which had been given for 30 years. He earnestly trusted that the Amendment would be pressed to a division, and that whenever an opportunity occurred for revising the terms

943
and conditions under which all the offices of the House were filled, the Amendment of the hon. Member for South Donegal would be taken as a precedent. The House need not go to Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone for precedent in matters of this sort. All that was necessary was to read the daily prayers of the House, and to apply the spirit and letter of those prayers to this matter. In Committees that was done, because Members could not sit on a Private Bill Commiteee unless they took an oath that neither they nor their constituency had any interest in the Bills with which they were to deal, The British Judiciary had earned universal respect because of the feeling which prevailed that our Judges were free from the taint of financial interest or company promoting. The Home Secretary in his Clubs Registration Bill had provided that a clerk to a bench of magistrates should not be interested in any licence, and if the argument was good enough in that case as well as in that of our Civil servants, it was good enough to apply to the new Deputy Chairman. Commercial interests were becoming gradually crystallised in this country; capital was aggregating in fewer hands; limited liability was taking the place of old private ownership; and where before a private employer was frequently compelled by virtue of his personal responsibility to "tread the narrow path that leads to righteous-
ness," and to do that which he did not want to do because it was right, he was now able to take other action as a company director. He asked the House to take the case of a private Railway Bill, with housing clauses and schemes for contracting out of friendly societies. It was asking too much of a Deputy Chairman to sit in the chair and deal with a Bill in which his own company might probably be interested. Prevention was better than cure, and for that reason he supported the Amendment. When there was such a tendency on the part of our newspapers and our commercial men to slavishly imitate American customs, we should not forget that in some of the American States Parliaments a rule like this had been rendered absolutely necessary by reason of the pressure that had been brought to bear on men holding public positions. He should go into the lobby with the hon. Member for South Donegal, who he thought deserved the thanks of the country and of Parliament for his efforts in trying to raise every officer in Parliament above the breath of suspicion, and to prevent any abuses which might arise in this direction.
(10.8.) Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes, 120; Noes' 207. (Division List No. 19).

AYES.

Abraham, W. (Cork, N. E.)

Cogan, Denis J.

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Condon, Thomas Joseph

Haldane, Richard Burdon

Ambrose, Robert

Crean, Eugene

Hammond, John

Asher, Alexander

Cremer, William Randal

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir W.

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Cullinan, J.

Harwood, George

Atherley-Jones, L

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

Hayden, John Patrick

Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

Delany, William

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. C. H.

Bayley, T. (Derbyshire)

Dewar, J. A. (Inverness-sh.

Hobhouse, C. E. H. (Bristol, E.

Bell, Richard

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Holland, William Henry

Blake, Edward

Dillon, John

Jordan, Jeremiah

Boland, John

Doogan, P. C.

Joyce, Michael

Brigg, John

Edwards, Frank

Kinloch, Sir John G. S.

Broadhurst, Henry

Emmott, Alfred

Kitson, Sir James

Burns, John

Farrell, James Patrick

Labouchere, Henry

Caine, William Sproston

Fenwick, Charles

Langley, Batty

Caldwell, James

Ffrench, Peter

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Cameron, Robert

Field, William

Levy, Maurice

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Flynn, James Christopher

Lewis, John Herbert

Cautley, Henry Strother

Foster, Sir W. (Derby Co.)

Lloyd George, David

Cawley, Frederick

Gilhooly, James

Lough, Thomas

Channing, Francis Allston

Goddard, Daniel Ford

Lundon, W.

Clancy, John Joseph

Grant, Corrie

MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

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

Sinclair John (Forfarshire)

MacNeill, John Gordon S.

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Soares, Ernest J.

M'Fadden, Edward

O'Donnell, J. (Mayo, S.)

Sullivan, Donal

M'Hugh, Patrick A.

O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)

Thomas, David A. (Merthyr)

M'Kenna, Reginald

O'Dowd, John

Thomas, J. A. (Glamorgan, G.

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

O'Kelly, J. (Roscommon, N.)

Tomkinson, James

Mooney, John J.

O'Malley, William

Trevelyan, Charles Philip

Morgan, J. L. (Carmarthen)

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Wallace, Robert

Morton, E. J. C. (Devonport)

O'Shee, James John

Walton, J. L. (Leeds, S.)

Moss, Samuel

Power, Patrick Joseph

Wason, E. (Clackmannan)

Murphy, John

Price, Robert John

White, Luke (York, E. R.)

Nannetti, Joseph P.

Reddy, M.

White, P. (Meath, North)

Newnes, Sir George

Redmond, J. E. (Waterford)

Williams, O. (Merioneth)

Nolan, Col. J. P. (Galway, N.)

Roberts, J. H. (Denbighs)

Yoxall, James Henry

Nolan, J. (Louth, South)

Robson, William Snowdon

Norman, Henry

Roche, John

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

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

Runciman, Walter

Sir Thomas Osmonde and

O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid.)

Saunderson, Rt. Hn. Col. E. J.

Captain Donelan.

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Schwann, Charles E.

O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)

Sheehan, Daniel D.

NOES.

Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir A. F.

Dickson, Charles Scott

Helder, Augustus

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Digby, J. K. D. Wingfield-

Hoare, Sir Samuel

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Hogg, Lindsay

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Dorington, Sir John Edward

Hope, J. F. (S'ffeld, Brightside

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Doughty, George

Hornby, Sir William Henry

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Houldsworth, Sir W. H.

Austin, Sir John

Duke, Henry Edward

Hoult, Joseph

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Durning-Lawrence, Sir E.

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Bain, Col. James Robert

Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir W. H.

Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

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

Faber, E. B. (Hants, W.)

Jessel, Capt. Herbert Merton

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

Fardell, Sir T. George

Johnston, William (Belfast)

Banbury, Frederick George

Fellowes, Rt. Hon. A. E.

Joicey, Sir James

Barry, Sir F. T. (Windsor)

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

Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H.

Beach, Rt. Hon. Sir M. H.

Fielden, Edward B.

Kenyon, Hon. G. T. (Denbigh

Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

Finch, George H.

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop

Bignold, Arthur

Finlay, Sir Robert B.

Keswick, William

Blundell, Col. Henry

Fisher, William Hayes

Knowles, Lees

Bond, Edward

FitzGerald, Sir Robert P.

Lawson, John Grant

Bowles, T. G. (King's Lynn)

Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Brookfield, Col. Montagu

Fietcher, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Leveson-Gower, F. N. S.

Brymer, William Ernest

Flower, Ernest

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Bull, William James

Foster, Sir M. (Lond. Univ.)

Long, Rt. Hon. W. (Bristol, S.

Bullard, Sir Harry

Foster, P. S. (Warwick, S. W.)

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Butcher, John George

Galloway, William Johnson

Lowe, Francis William

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir E. H.

Gardner, Ernest

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

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

Garfit, William

Lucas, Col. F. (Lowestoft)

Cavendish, V. C. W. (Dy'shire)

Gibbs, Hon. V. (St. Albans)

Lucas, R. J. (Portsmouth)

Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm.

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

Macartney, Rt. Hon. W. G. E.

Chamberlain, J. A. (Worc'r)

Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

MacIver, David (Liverpool)

Chapman, Edward

Gore, Hon. S. F. O. (Linc.)

M'Calmont, Cl. H. L. B. (Cambs.

Churchill, Winston Spencer

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

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

Clare, Octavius Leigh

Goulding, Edward Alfred

M'Iver, Sir L. (Edinburgh, W.)

Cochrane, Hon. T. H. A. E.

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Majendie, James A. H.

Cohen, Benjamin Lewis

Green, W. D. (Wednesbury)

Manners, Lord Cecil

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Greene, Sir E. W. (B'rySEd'mds

Martin, Richard Biddulph

Colomb, Sir John C. R.

Gretton, John

Maxwell, W. J. H. (Dumfries-sh.

Colston, Chas. E. H. A.

Halsey, Thomas Frederick

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Corbett, A. C. (Glasgow)

Hamilton, Rt. Hn Lord G. (Mid'x

Milvain, Thomas

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Hardy, L. (Kent, Ashford)

Mitchell, William

Cranborne, Viscount

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Molesworth, Sir Lewis

Cross, H. S. (Bolton)

Harris, Frederick Leverton

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Cubitt, Hon. Henry

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire)

Dalkeith, Earl of

Hatch, Ernest Frederick G.

Morgan, David J. (Walthamst'w

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Morrison, James Archibald

Davies, M. V. (Cardigan)

Heath, Arthur H. (Hanley)

Morton, A. H. A. (Deptford)

Denny, Colonel

Heath, J. (Staffords, N. W.)

Moulton, John Fletcher

946

947

Muntz, Philip A.

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel W.

Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

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

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Valentia, Viscount

Nicholson, William Graham

Russell, T. W.

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Rutherford, John

Walker, Col. William Hall

Parker, Gilbert

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Peel, Hon. Wm. Robt. Wellesley

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Percy, Earl

Seely, C. H. (Lincoln)

Wason, J. Cathcart (Orkney)

Pilkington, Lieut.-Col. Richard

Seely, Capt. J. E. B (Isle of Wi'ht.

Webb, Col. William George

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon.

Plummer, Walter R.

Simeon, Sir Barrington

Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Skewes-Cox, Thomas

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Pretyman, Ernest George

Smith, Jas. Parker (Lanarks.)

Wilson, F. W. (Norfolk, Mid.)

Pryce-Jones, Lieut.-Col. Edwd.

Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwich

Wilson, John (Glasgow)

Pym, C. Guy

Stanley, Hon. A. (Ormskirk)

Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks.

Rankin, Sir James

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

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

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

Stewart, Sir M. J. M'Taggart

Wylie, Alexander

Rattigan, Sir William Henry

Stock, James Henry

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Reid, James (Greenock)

Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Renshaw, Charles Bine

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Ridley, S. F. (Bethnal Green)

Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'dUni.)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. C. Thomson

Thorburn, Sir Walter

Sir William Walrond and

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Tollemache, Henry James

Mr. Anstruther.

Robertson, Herbt. (Hackney)

Tomlinson, Wm. Edwd. Murray

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

Tritton, Charles Ernest

MR. DILLONsaid that if he had been present at an earlier stage he should strongly have supported the proposal that the Deputy Chairman should be a salaried official of the House. For many years he had held the view that the Chairman of Committees was far too hard-worked a man, and that there ought to be an Assistant Chairman. He altogether objected, however, to taking a Member from the rank and file of a Party, and from time to time putting him in the Chair, without any position as an official of the House. When any Member was appointed an official of the House he undoubtedly did, to a certain extent, divest his mind of Party bias, and assumed a new relation towards the House. He ought to be bound, and, he believed, generally was bound, by the principle of impartiality in his conduct in the Chair. But how could they expect a man taken suddenly from the rank and file of the Party majority and put into the Chair, with all the great powers that were proposed to be conferred upon him, at once, and for the time being, to divest himself of all Party feeling, to forget he was a supporter of the Ministry, and to act in the spirit in which a man invested with such powers ought to act? It was an impossibility, and such a provision would be a gross injustice to the House as a whole, and especially to the Members of the Op-
948
position. He had always held that it was most desirable that the Chairman of Committees, who was now invested with all the powers of the Chair, and had as great judicial functions as the Speaker himself, should occupy the same position as the Speaker. It was a bad survival that the Chairman of Committees was at present, to some extent, still a Party man. It would be a great improvement if the Chairman was elected in the same way as the Speaker, with the same solemn formalities, and retained his position no matter how political Parties might alter. Such a procedure would increase the confidence of the House in his rulings, and increase his authority in every way. The same ought to be the case also with the Deputy Chairman. The feeling in favour of making the Chairman of Committees a permanent official of the House, had enormously increased since the advent of the rule conferring on him the power of granting the closure and of inflicting punishment. No ordinary Member of the House ought to have the power to punish his fellow Members. In that contention he had all the authority of past experience behind him, because, when the Punishment Rule was introduced, and on the two or three occasions when its stringency had been increased, and also when the Closure Rules were brought in, it was specially ordained by the House

949
that no temporary Chairman should be invested with these extraordinary powers. He therefore proposed to move the addition of the words—
"Except the power of granting the closure or naming a Member of the House for disregarding the ruling of the Chair."
The Deputy Chairman would still have all the powers necessary to secure the House against being obliged to suspend its sittings in the event of the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker being ill at the same time. It might be argued that by the Amendment, a good deal of the usefulness of the Assistant Chairman would be taken away. His answer to that objection was that if the First Lord of the Treasury would agree to make the Assistant Chairman a permanent official of the House, he would at once withdraw the Amendment. But if the right hon. Gentleman intended to appoint as Deputy Chairman an ordinary Member of the working majority, with no standing as an official, who would occupy the Chair only on very rare occasion, he had no right to ask for these extraordinary powers. The question should be approached in a broader and more comprehensive manner. There should be an Assistant Chairman of Committees, with a salary, and both the Chairman and his Assistant should be permanent officials of the House. He was strongly in favour of the suggestion made by the hon. Member for South Longford. It was a cruelty on the part of the House to keep Mr. Speaker in the Chair for seven or eight or more hours a day. No man's health could stand it, and there was no reason why, regularly, every evening, Mr. Speaker should not call on the Chairman or Deputy Chairman to take the Chair for an hour or an hour and a half, to enable him to break the horrible and disastrous monotony of sitting in the Chair. There was nothing to prevent Mr. Speaker asking this Deputy to take the Chair when he required an hour or two to rest. He wished the First Lord of the Treasury to give his careful attention to this proposal, otherwise he should have to divide the House upon it.
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, as amended—
"In line 6, at the end, to add the words except the power of granting the closure or
950
naming a Member of the House for disregarding the ruling of the Chair.' "—(Mr. Dillon.)
Question proposed. "That those words be there added."
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It appears to me that we could not very properly accept the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman. It may be desirable to have a third official capable of taking the place of Chairman of Committees in the event of Mr. Speaker and the Chairman being ill. If, after an investigation of the work thrown upon the Chairman of Committees under the new system, we find that he is an over-worked official, then it will be desirable that such a proposal should be adopted. We had an Amendment the other night with regard to sending these rules to a Committee, and I replied to that proposal by saying that there were several questions upon which we did not feel the same confidence in suggesting alterations, and this question was one of them. I do not think that we ought rashly and without investigation to add to the number of paid officials of the Government.
MR. DILLON: Of the House.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Let us really look at facts as they are. Each Party always nominates the Chairman of Committees, and the proposal of the hon. Member is to add another to the number of persons in places of emolument coming in and going out with the Government. As to the suggestion that the power of naming a Member should be withheld from the third person in the hierarchy of those presiding over the debates of the House, I desire to point out that the power exists already, and that the hon. Member's proposal is not to refuse to add to the powers of that official, but to take away from those which he already possesses. Five temporary Chairmen have the power of naming a Member, and that practice has existed for many years without the smallest abuse or prejudice. I think it is proper to add to those powers the power of applying the closure. Let the

951
House in these rules deal with the situation with which we are thoroughly competent to deal, and reserve the special investigations of the Committee for the more complicated aspects of the question. Under these circumstances I am not able to accept the proposal which the hon. Member has made.
SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: The subject of paying this Deputy Chairman is a matter deserving very careful consideration. In regard to the use of the closure I hold a very strong opinion. When the closure was first introduced we believed it was a necessary power which would not be very frequently used. That was the expectation at the time when the closure was introduced, but that expectation has not been fulfilled. The use of the closure has been multiplied every year, and, in my opinion, the closure is one of the means and one of the principal causes of obstruction. The closure creates a spirit of irritation and of resistance which is extremely injurious to the progress of business. For this reason I do not desire to multiply the opportunities for applying the closure, for nothing but mischief will result from giving these great and dangerous powers to those who are not accustomed to the use of them. Therefore, for my own part, if the hon. Member goes to a division upon the question of excluding the closure in the case of the Deputy Chairman I shall support him. I think it is an extremely dangerous power to give, and therefore I shall vote for its exclusion.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid that this proposal would not only give the Deputy Chairman the power of naming hon. Members which was already enjoyed by five other Chairmen, and also the power of using the closure, but it would also give him the power, at his own will, of suspending the debate.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member must confine his remarks to the power of granting the closure and of naming. [Ironical Ministerial cheers.]
MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he did not know what was arousing the enthusiasm of his hon. friends behind him. He submitted that it was important to glance at the other powers which the proposal gave to this Deputy Chairman, but he would confine himself to the closure. The closure was the very marrow of this rule. Why was this rule required? It was only required upon the extraordinary and rare occasion upon which Mr. Speaker and the Chairman of Ways and Means were incapable of serving. He had looked carefully through the journals of this House, and he had found occasions when the Speaker was unable to serve, and when the House had to cease sitting. That, however, had only been for a few days and was there any great evil in that? That state of things could be met by making the session so many days longer. Last year they sat only 118 days.
Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order! The House is now discussing the propriety of excepting from the powers of the Deputy Chairman the power of granting the closure or of naming an hon. Member of the House for disregarding the ruling of the Chair. Therefore the only question which it is competent for the hon. Members to discuss is the closure and naming. [Ironical Ministerial cheers and derisive laughter.]
MR. GIBSON BOWLESsaid he was much obliged to hon. Members, for he recognised amongst some of those behind him who laughed those who rarely attended the House. One contingency for which this rule was required was the contingency of applying the closure when the Chairman of Ways and Means was absent. Last session the closure was moved 82 times, which was a larger number than upon any previous occasion except in the year 1896. In 1900 the closure was moved only 26 times, and in 1899 only 33 times. Therefore, the absence of the Chairman of Committees did not preclude His Majesty's Government from using the closure very freely. He hoped that this power of the closure was one which would be most sparingly used. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman

953
the Member for West Monmouthshire when he said that the closure was to a great extent the cause of obstruction. [Ministerial cheers.] Undoubtedly he recognised in those cheers hon. Members who did not attend this House at the time the closure was moved.
Colonel SAUNDERSONrose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put;" but Mr. Speaker withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES(resuming) said this was a dangerous power to give to a Gentleman of whom at present they did not know anything. They did not even know whether he was to have a salary, and he was very jealous of placing the power of the closure in the hands of any Gentleman who might be appointed. Although he did not like to vote for an Amendment against the Government, still he must confess that his desire was that the Government would devise some means whereby the objections he had pointed out could be avoided.
MR. DALZIELsaid he wished to point out that the proposal was to give really more power to the new Deputy Chairman than the present Chairman had. If the Chairman named a Member in Committee he immediately reported to the House, the Speaker being sent for; but under the new Rule, if the Speaker and the Chairman of Committees were both indisposed, the Deputy Chairman would exercise the full powers of the Speaker. They were asked to give this new power to an unknown person. It was a power which no occupant of the Chair except the Speaker had ever had before, and he was doubtful whether that power ought to be given. In the present circumstances the Deputy Chairman represented both sides of the House, but that would not be so under the proposed new arrangement. He would be appointed by the Government, and would probably be an arduous supporter of the Government. That would be one of his
954
principal qualifications for the post. The new Deputy Chairman was to be a Party man, and it was because of that that the House ought to move with the greatest caution before equipping him with the power that belonged to the Speaker. They were discussing this question with a limited idea of what the real intention of the Government was. It was difficult to describe the power that this new man was to have until they knew the mind of the Government as to what the position of this person was to be. If the new Deputy Chairman was going to take the Chair for a few hours in the afternoon, then undoubtedly under the Rule as proposed he would be wielding more power than he ought to have; but perhaps he was only to preside on rare occasions when the Speaker was indisposed. They were groping in the dark, because the Government did not seem to have made up their mind as to what they really desired. They were going to have a Committee to settle this question. Surely then, the question might very easily be deferred until that Committee had reported. The odds were a thousand to one against the chance of both the Speaker and the Chairman being indisposed at the same time, pending the presentation of the Committee's Report. Why should they anticipate the decision the Committee would arrive at by adopting the proposal now before the House? He submitted that a case had not been made out for such a premature decision on this point, and that they ought to have the Report of the Committee before deciding in favour of the proposal of the Government.
MR. CHAPLIN: Whatever else may be said, whether its merits be good or bad, no one will deny that the Amendment is thoroughly consistent with the statement made on Friday night in the closing words of the First Lord of the Treasury. What is the closure? The closure is the great instrument for preventing obstruction in the House, and almost at the end of his speech, to my great regret, and my still greater surprise, my right hon.

955
friend who leads this House made this statement—
"These rules were not brought forward with the purpose of diminishing obstruction. I have never claimed for them that they would diminish obstruction…. and then he went on, I do not believe that they will have that effect."
That statement gave rise in my mind to a variety of considerations upon which we shall have other and more legitimate opportunities before the debates are closed of expressing our opinion, but if these rules are not intended to prevent or diminish obstruction, it may be asked why, in the opinion of the man who has no intention of this kind, must this proposal be opposed. When I heard his opening statement about these rules I was fully prepared to give them a friendly and even a cordial consideration. But I must frankly state both to the House and to my right hon. friend that in the face of the statement he has made, unless it is capable of some explanation I am not aware of, the main object in my mind of this great change in the rules now submitted to Parliament practically disappears, and it is difficult for me to understand why opposition should be offered to the Amendment by Gentlemen holding the view that these rules are not intended to diminish obstruction, and that it has never been believed they will have that effect. So far as I am concerned, I do desire to get rid of, or to diminish as far as possible by any new rules, that obstruction to the business of the House which year by year has been growing steadily greater, and which has inflicted such injury on the reputation of the House. That is the thing I desire above all to see altered myself, and I believe the only way to accomplish it is by devising rules which are intended to and will diminish obstruction. So far as I am concerned therefore I shall with perfect consistency support this Amendment.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I very strongly sympathise with the view taken by my hon. friend the Member for the Kirkcaldy Burghs in that part of his observations where he said that we had some reason to complain of the position in which we find ourselves, in respect that
956
we do not know the view of the Government. I do not come to any conclusion on that point at this moment. We are but vaguely aware of what the nature of this appointment is to be, and of the whole question of what power should be given to the occupant of that position. The whole question turns upon the nature of his position. Now, there are two or three different theories. First of all, there is the idea, which I confess at first I gathered from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, that this was to be a Member of the House who was to be authorised, in the case of the necessary absence of the Chairman, to take his place, and to be authorised further if the Speaker also was absent to fill the chair and act as Deputy Speaker. That would be a contingency that would very rarely occur. It has I believe never happened, at least for many years, that the Speaker and Chairman have been disabled at the same time, but if this is a contingency which might occur—and we see that we have been perilously near it—it is right to provide for it. Another theory is that he is to be a new officer of the House, who may interchange duties as he likes, or as may be arranged between them, either with the Speaker or the Chairman. That is a much more formidable position.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: In the unavoidable absence of the Chairman.
Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: In the unavoidable absence of the Chairman! Then the first theory is the right one; it has been opposed in the House in one or two speeches. There is the third idea that he is to bean absolute duplicate of the Chairman of Ways and Means, and is to take a large part in the private business of the House which is transacted in the earlier part of the day. In the first case I think he ought to be a paid official, just as the Chairman of Ways and Means, and in that case also it would be less objectionable to endow him with the extreme powers of the Speaker or the Chairman of Ways and Means. I think there would be great objection to give

957
the full power sought to be conferred upon that officer of the House if he is not paid. The fact of being a salaried official of the House alters the position entirely. But then the hon. Gentleman says that if he is to be this duplicate Chairman of Ways and Means, and if he is to take his full share of the private business of the House, that is not a step we ought to take without full inquiry. We are to appoint for the eighth or ninth time a Committee on Private Business. Private Business is the particular business of the House which has been inquired into again and again, and I should have thought that at this time of day it was not necessary to have another Committee; but if we are to have that Committee its Report of course would determine the question whether the new assistant Chairman of Ways and Means was to have a salary, and was to have the full powers of which I have spoken. The House is quite unaware of what is to be the ultimate reading of this rule. When we come to the point now before us, whether the new official ought to have the power of granting the closure or of naming Members, it is difficult to say what answer we would give, because the answer would depend on the different solutions to which I have referred. My right hon. friend the Member for West Monmouthshire holds a strong opinion against the closure, founded largely on his own experience. Although I cannot go his full length, I have considerable sympathy with what he said. My right hon. friend passed the most intricate Budget of this generation without once using it, and there must be something amiable and prepossessing in the character of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, because the present Chancellor of the Exchequer was able last year to perform precisely the same feat. No doubt that fact colours the view of my right hon. friend, but I agree with him as to the extraordinary lengths to which the closure has been carried in recent years. Last session the closure came almost to be a necessary precursor of every division. There was first the closure, and immediately on it the main Question, and the voting on the closure does not in the least turn on whether the closure was rightly or wrongly applied, but was a
958
mere anticipation—I will not say a repetition—of the division on the main Question. I think that this was never intended, nor was it a creditable or useful employment of this weapon. But it is evident that if the House is to have a Deputy Chairman to sit in the chair he must have the power of the closure, and, still more, have the power of naming Members already possessed by occasional Chairmen. The whole question turns upon the precise nature of the appointment with which the House is dealing, and as to this I confess that I am entirely in the dark at the present moment.
MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid he thought that these rules should have been a little more thought out than had been apparent from the statement of the First Lord of the Treasury. He asked whether the Government had considered how these rules would work if there was a different Party in power than at present. He himself found the rules rather ambiguous. As he understood the speech of the First Lord, this particular rule was intended to meet the case where both the Speaker and the Chairman of Ways and Means were ill at the same time. At present when it was reported that the Speaker and the Chairman cannot be in their places, a Member out of a panel of four or five was put in the place of the Chairman of Ways and Means. That arrangement had some drawbacks but also some virtues. The panel was taken from all parts of the House, and all sections were represented on it. That was an arrangement which was quite in accordance with the practice of all the legislatures on the Continent and in America. But what did the First Lord of the Treasury propose to substitute for that panel? The new Deputy Chairman was to be chosen by the Government itself, and, according to the precedent hitherto followed, the Party in power would nominate and elect a Member of their own party, who would go out of office when his Party also went out of office. In other words, the new Deputy Chairman was to be drawn from one Party in the House alone, and was to be a political partisan. He put it to the House whether it was not most dangerous to in trust to a political partisan the

959
power of closure and of naming and of suspending Members. It was quite true that some inconvenience had arisen from the Chairman, under the panel system, not having the power of closure, but the corresponding advantage of having a panel drawn from all sections of the House outweighed the inconvenience. He thought that an abundant case had been made out against arming this casual Chairman, this political partisan, with all the powers of the Speaker and of the Chairman of Ways and Means; and he
warned hon. Gentlemen opposite that if this rule were carried, as proposed by the First Lord, they would find some day those powers would be used very much to their disadvantage.
(11.12.) Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes, 122; Noes, 242. (Division List, No. 20.)

AYES.

Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)

Hammond, John

O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

Ambrose, Robert

Harwood, George

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Hayden, John Patrick

O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

Atherley-Jones, L.

Hayter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)

Austin, Sir John

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

O'Dowd, John

Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

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

O'Kelly, Jas. (Roscommon, N.)

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Joicey, Sir James

O'Malley, William

Bell, Richard

Jones, Dav. Brynmor (Swansea)

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Blake, Edward

Jordan, Jeremiah

O'Shee, James John

Boland, John

Joyce, Michael

Pirie, Duncan V.

Brigg, John

Kearley, Hudson E.

Power, Patrick Joseph

Broadhurst, Henry

Kinloch, Sir John Geo. Smyth

Price, Robert John

Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

Kitson, Sir James

Reddy, M.

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

Labouchere, Henry

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Burns, John

Langley, Batty

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Caine, William Sproston

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Robson, William Snowdon

Caldwell, James

Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)

Roche, John

Cameron, Robert

Levy, Maurice

Runciman, Walter

Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton

Lewis, John Herbert

Russell, T. W.

Cawley, Frederick

Lloyd-George, David

Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

Channing, Francis Allston

Lough, Thomas

Schwann, Charles E.

Clancy, John Joseph

Lundon, W.

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Cogan, Denis J.

MacDonnell, Dr. Mark A.

Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

Condon, Thomas Joseph

MacNamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Soares, Ernest J.

Crean, Eugene

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Sullivan, Donal

Cremer, William Randal

M'Fadden, Edward

Thomas, J A (Glam'rgan, G'wer)

Cullinan, J.

M'Hugh, Patrick A.

Tomkinson, James

Dalziel, James Henry

McKenna, Reginald

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

Delany, William

Mooney, John J.

White, Luke (York, E. R.)

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Morley, Charles (Breconshire)

White, Patrick (Meath, North)

Dillon, John

Morton, Edwd. J. C. (D'vonport)

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Doogan, P. C.

Moss, Samuel

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Edwards, Frank

Murphy, John

Wilson, Fred. W (Norf'lk, Mid.)

Farrell, James Patrick

Nannetti, Joseph P.

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

Ffrench, Peter

Nolan, Col. John P.(Galway, N.)

Woodhouse, Sir J T (Hu'dersf'd.)

Field, William

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

Yoxall, James Henry

Flynn, James Christopher

Norton, Capt. Cecil William

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

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

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

Gilhooly, James

O'Brien, Kendal(Ti'per'ryMid.)

Sir Thomas Esmonde and

Goddard, Daniel Ford

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Captain Donelan.

NOES.

Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir A. F.

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Asher, Alexander

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H.

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Maxwell, Rt Hn Sir H. E. (Wigt'n

Bain, Col. James Robert

Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

Maxwell, W. J. H. (Dumfriesh.

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

Flower, Ernest

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

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

Foster, Sir M. (Lond. Univ.)

Milner, Rt. Hon. Sir F. G.

Banbury, Frederick George

Foster, P. S. (Warwick, S. W.)

Milvain, Thomas

Barry, Sir F. T. (Windsor)

Galloway, William Johnson

Mitchell, William

Bartley, George C. T.

Gardner, Ernest

Molesworth, Sir Lewis

Beach, Rt. Hon. Sir M. H.

Garfit, William

More, R. J. (Shropshire)

Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

Gibbs, Hon. V. (St. Albans)

Morgan, D. J. (Walthamstow

Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. H. J.

Morrison, James Archibald

Bignold, Arthur

Godson, Sir Augustus F.

Moreton, A. H. A. (Deptford)

Bigwood, James

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

Moulton, John Fletcher

Blundell, Col. Henry

Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

Muntz, Philip A.

Bond, Edward

Gordon, Maj. E.) T'r Hamlets

Murray, Rt. Hon. A. G. (Bute

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

Gore, Hon. S. F. O. (Linc.)

Newnes, Sir George

Bousfield, William Robert

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir J. E.

Nicholson, William Graham

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Brymer, William Ernest

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

Bull, William James

Green, W. D. (Wednesbury)

Paulton, James Mellor

Bullard, Sir Harry

Greene, Sir E W. (B'rySt Edm'ds

Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

Butcher, John George

Gretton, John

Peel, Hn. Wm. Robt. Wellesley

Carlile, William Walter

Grey, Sir E. (Berwick)

Penn, John

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir E. H.

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Percy, Earl

Cautley, Henry Strother

Guthrie, Walter Murray

Pilkington, Lieut,. Col. Richard

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

Halsey, Thomas Frederick

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Cavendish, V. C. W. (Dby'shire

Hamilton, Rt Hn. Lord G. (Mid'x

Plummer, Walter R.

Cecil, Evelyn (Ashton Manor)

Hamilton, Marq. of(L'nd'derry

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Cecil, Lord H. (Greenwich)

Hardy, L. (Kent, Ashford)

Pretyman, Ernest George

Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. (Birm.

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Chamberlain, J. A (Worc'r)

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

Pyme, C. Guy

Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Rankin, Sir James

Chapman, Edward

Heath, A. H. (Hanley)

Rasch, Major Frederic Carne

Churchill, Winston Spencer

Heath, J. (Staffords, N. W.

Renshaw, Charles Bine

Clare, Octavius Leigh

Helder, Augustus

Ridley, S. F. (Bethnal Green)

Cochrane, Hon. T. H. A. E.

Henderson, Alexander

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. C. Thomson

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Hoare, Sir Samuel

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Hogg, Lindsay

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Colomb, Sir John C. R.

Holland, William Henry

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

Colston, C. E. H. A.

Hope, J. F. (S'field, Brightside

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel W.

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Hornby, Sir William Henry

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Corbett, A. C. (Glasgow)

Houldsworth, Sir W. H.

Rutherford, John

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Hoult, Joseph

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

Cranborne, Viscount

Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Cross, S. H. (Bolton)

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Saunderson, Rt. Hon. Col. E. J.

Crossley, Sir Savile

Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

Cubitt, Hon. Henry

Jessel, Capt. Herbert M.

Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln)

Dalkeith, Earl of

Johnston, William (Belfast)

Seely, Capt. J. E. B. (I. of Wight

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H.

Seton-Karr, Henry

Davies, M. V. (Cardigan)

Kenyon, Hon. G. T. (Denbigh)

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Denny, Colonel

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.

Shaw Stewart, M. H. (Renfrew

Dewar, J. A. (Inverness-sh.)

Keswick, William

Simeon, Sir Barrington

Dickinson, Robert Edmund

Knowles, Less

Skewes-Cox, Thomas

Dickson, Charles Scott

Lawrence, W. F. (Liverpool)

Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

Digby, J. K. D. Wingfield

Lawson, John Grant

Smith, James Parker (Lanarks.

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Lee, A. H. (Hants., Fareham

Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk

Dorington, Sir John Edward

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

Doughty, George

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Stewart, Sir M. J. M'Taggart

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Leveson-Gower, F. N. S.

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

Duke, Henry Edward

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Stock, James Henry

Durning-Lawrence, Sir E.

Loder, Gerald W. E.

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

Long, Col. C. W. (Evesham)

Sturt, Hon. Humphrey Napier

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph D.

Long, Rt. Hon. W. (Bristol, S.

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Emmott, Alfred

Lonsdale, John Browlee

Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Uni.)

Faber, E. B. (Hants, W.)

Lowe, Francis William

Thomas, David Alf. (Merthyr)

Fardell, Sir T. George

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Thorburn, Sir Walter

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn E.

Lucas, Col. F. (Lowestoft)

Tollemache, Henry James

Ferguson, R. C. M. (Leith)

Lucas, R. J. (Portsmonth)

Tomlinson, Wm. Edwd. Murray

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

Macartney, Rt. Hon. W. G. E.

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Fielden, Edward B.

Macdona, John Cumming

Valentia, Viscount

Finch, George H.

McCalmont, Col. H. L. B. (Cambs

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Finlay, Sir Robert B.

McCalmont, Col. J. (Antrim, E.

Walker, Col. William Hall

Fisher, William Hayes

Majendie, James A. H.

Wallace, Robert

EitzGerald, Sir Robert P.

Manners, Lord Cecil

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.

Martin, Richard Biddulph

Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney

962

963

Webb, Col. William George

Wilson-Todd, Wm. H. (Yorks)

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon-

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

Whitley, H (Ashton-und-Lyne

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

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Wilson, A. Stanley (Yourk, E. R.)

Wylie, Alexander

Sir William Walrond and

Wilson, John (Glasgow)

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Mr. Anstruther.

MR. SWIFT MACNEILLsaid he desired to move at the end of the Amendment of the First Lord of the Treasury an Amendment which he thought the right hon. Gentleman would accept. It was—
"Provided always that all Motions specifically framed for the purpose of impugning the decisions of the Deputy Chairman in the Conduct and discharge of the duties of his office as Deputy Chairman shall take precedence of the Orders of the day."
The right hon. Gentleman would see that he had exercised some discretion in framing the Amendment. If he had framed the Amendment on the Rule as constituted at present, he would have said that all Motions impugning the conduct of the Deputy Chairman should be matters of privilege. He could not do that, as the right hon. Gentleman had taken privilege into his power and made them all dependent on his will and pleasure. He said that the right hon. Gentleman was the enemy of privilege, quite unconciously though it might be. He had the greatest possible admiration for the right hon. Gentleman, and therefore he would appeal to him without the smallest difficulty. There were certain matters absolutely taken out of the cognisance of the House. For instance, the rule was distinct and decisive that hon. Members could not I review a decision of the Speaker or of the Chairman of Committees except by specific Motion. The Rule was framed with the idea of giving the high officials of the House due notice, and it was provided that in such cases a specific Motion should be made and placed before the House. When the Rule was made it was never even dreamt of that when an hon. Member proposed such a Motion he would be obstructed by the Government. But hon. Members did not now get the opportunity, as the Government took all the time of the House. Therefore when a new official, without Mr. Speaker's power, responsibility and great weight, a mere puppet
964
of the Ministry, was to be appointed, he would ask the First Lord of the Treasury when the conduct of that official was impugned that they should have an opportunity of bringing it before the House. If that pledge were not given, disorder was certain to occur. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, that hon. Members should be asked to submit calmly to the decisions of a mere puppet of the Ministry. He wished to direct the attention of the House to a matter on which he confessessed he felt very strongly at the time. It had reference to a decision of a Deputy Chairman. It gave him very great pain, but he was convinced he was right and that the Deputy Chairman was wrong. He did not impugn his motives, but he was as certain as he was of his own existence that the decision was wrong. On the 26th of July, 1901, he asked Mr. Speaker the following question:—
"I desire to put a question to you Mr Speaker as bearing upon the protection of the rights and privileges of Members. I am aware that you are unable to take cognizance of what takes place in Committee of Supply, but will you say if there is any method of challenging a ruling of the Deputy Chairman given last night, and which appears to have been contrary to practice and calculated to unduly shield ministers from criticism. Could or should a ruling be challenged in any other way than by motion?"
Mr. Speaker: "I am not aware of any other method." Then I said "I beg to give notice of a Motion in the following terms:—That this House disagrees in the ruling of Mr Stuart Wortley as Deputy Chairman man on Thursday that criticism of the manner and method of response by the Secretary of State for War to questions addressed to him in reference to matters in his department are out of order in discussion in Committee of Supply on a motion for the reduction on Secretary of States's salary is as much as it is subversive of free discussion, contrary to practice and a grave infringement of the rights of members."
It was a scandal to allow a Motion of that kind to remain on the Paper without either ordering it to be discharged, or giving him an opportunity of proving

965
it. He adhered to every word he had said. He only wished to show the House and the country what might happen in the case of a Deputy Chairman against whose decision there could be no appeal, however perverse his ruling might be.
Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not entitled to speak of the ruling to which he refers as perverse.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILLsaid he would not persist in it. He recollected very well reading a passage in one of Burke's speeches in which he criticised the decision of a Chairman in such terms as he would not apply for a moment to any Chairman for whom he had a shadow of respect. The rule which prevented the conduct of the Speaker or Chairman being impugned, except in a specified way, was never passed in order that it should be administered as the right hon. Gentleman now proposed to administer it, and having regard to the curious and anomalous powers to be conferred on the Deputy Chairman, he would press his Motion to a division. He would ask the right hon. Gentleman to have some respect for the privileges of Parliament, and not to enable a partisan of his own to occupy a position of absolutely despotic power.
Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment, as amended—
"In line 6, at the end, to add the words,—'Provided always that all Motions specifically framed for the purpose of impugning the decisions of the Deputy Chairman or his conduct in the discharge of his duties as Deputy Chairman shall take precedence of the Orders of the Day' "—(Mr. Swift MacNeill.)
Question proposed "That those words be there added."
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am sure the hon. Gentleman, in spite of his persuasive tongue, does not anticipate that I will agree with him. My right hon. friend the Member for the Sleaford Division accused me a few minutes ago of having used a phrase which led him to suppose that I
966
had no desire by these rules to check undue obstruction. I do not say I am altogether innocent of having used some such expression; but if I assented to the hon. Gentleman's Amendment I should simply be encouraging the House, every time the Deputy Chairman was in the Chair, to spend hours the next day in discussing, not the business on the Order Paper, but the merits or demerits of the rulings of this official. I cannot think that would be desirable. I see no reason why he should be treated differently from Mr. Speaker and the Chairman; and when we give the same powers we ought also to give him the same immunity.
MR. FLYNNsaid no one could contend that Motions would be brought forward day after day, after the Deputy Chairman had been in the Chair. To his mind the Amendment was a rational and most obvious precaution, which the House ought to take for its own protection against the possible ignorance and inexperience of the Deputy Chairman. Were they to assume that the nomination of the Government conferred on an unknown and possibly untried Member of the House great experience and great knowledge of detail with regard to the proceedings of the House and the conduct of business? They knew that any Member, no matter how great his capacity might be, who was put to a set of duties in which he had no previous experience was liable to make great mistakes indeed, and if some such protection as that afforded by the Amendment were not given, they might have a state of things in which one Member would be presiding over Members much more experienced than he was. He had often himself seen Chairmen of Committees sorely puzzled as to how to decide questions of order. Mr. Speaker gave a close study to the Rules, the Standing Orders and the general Procedure of the House, and was an acknowledged authority. The present Chairman of Committees had also long experience and knew how to conduct the business of the House Questions of a difficult and complicated

967
character frequently arose in Committee of Supply, and they required a man of great experience, much knowledge, and considerable tact to deal with them. He had known a Chairman, simply because he lacked that tact, to embark the House on a scene of turmoil and disorder. It was impossible for a man suddenly to divest himself of all Party prejudice and political feeling, and therefore he hoped that the Government, if they could not accept his hon. friend's Amendment, would at any rate bring forward some form of words that would give protection to ordinary Members of the House.
MR. DALZIELdid not believe there was any advantage to be obtained, as a rule, from reviewing decisions given in Committee. Every Chairman of Committees was liable to make mistakes, and, probably, in the heat of party debate did make mistakes. He desired to support the Amendment for an entirely different reason. The House was bound to stand by the Chairman of Committees, but there was this difference with regard to the question under discussion. Powers were to be given to a gentleman about whose particular office the House were entirely in the dark. They were to have a Committee to define those powers. Until he knew exactly the power this gentleman was to have he should do all he could to limit the authority conferred upon him by the House. This gentleman would not be a permanent official of the House; he would be a keen party man, at the call of the Government. Suppose a Radical Government came into office with a big majority, and they brought forward a far-reaching measure of reform, such as hon. Gentlemen on the other side would call a Revolutionary Measure.
968
That Government would desire to carry their Bill, and they would say they had been returned by the country to place it on the Statute Book. What sort of man would they look out for? A stalwart, of course; he would be a keen Party man. He assumed that no man would be appointed to the post whose conduct had not been characterised by fairness and impartiality, but circumstances might very easily arise in which it would be said that that gentleman had given decisions contrary to the rules of the House, and he had shortened debate, or denied the full opportunity to Members of coming to a rational decision. What sort of appeal would the Conservative Opposition have against such decisions? None at all. They would have to ballot for a Motion, and then, if they were successful, the Radical Government would probably take the day they had secured. The Deputy Chairman was on an altogether different plane from the Speaker and the Chairman of Ways and Means. The appointment was purely an experiment, and, until the experiment had been tried and a Committee had given the House the benefit of its investigations and knowledge, the Gentleman should be, as it were, on his trial. He hid not think the power proposed by the Amendment would be abused, but, in the event of its being accepted, he should move a further Amendment, making it necessary for such a Motion to be supported by a certain number of Members before it could be brought forward.
11.53.) Question put.
The House divided—Ayes 72; Noes, 250. (Division List, No. 21),

AYES.

Abraham, Wm. (Cork, N. E.)

Hammond, John

O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

Ambrose, Robert

Hayden, John Patrick

O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.)

Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

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

O'Dowd, John

Bell, Richard

Jordan, Jeremiah

O'Kelly, Jas. (Roscommon, N.)

Blake, Edward

Joyce, Michael

O'Malley, William

Boland, John

Levy, Maurice

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

Lewis, John Herbert

O'Shee, James John

Caine, William Sproston

Lundon, W.

Power, Patrick Joseph

Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton

MacDonnell, Dr Mark A.

Reddy, M.

Clancy, John Joseph

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Cogan, Denis J.

M'Fadden, Edward

Roche, John

Condon, Thomas Joseph

M'Hugh, Patrick A.

Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

Crean, Eugene

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Cremer, William Randal

Mooney, John J.

Sullivan, Donal

Culliuan, J.

Morton, Edwd. J. C. (D'vonport)

Thomas, J A.(Gl'm'rg'n, Gower)

Delany, William

Moss, Samuel

Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

Dillon, John

Murphy, John

White, George (Norfolk)

Doogan, P. C.

Nannetti, Joseph P.

White, Patrick (Meath, North)

Edwards, Frank

Nolan, Col. John P.(Galway, N.)

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Esmonde, Sir Thomas

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

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

Farrell, James Patrick

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

Ffrench, Peter

O'Brien, Kend. (Ti'per'ry, Mid.)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

Field, William

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Mr Dalziel and Captain Donelan.

Flynn, James Christopher

O'Brien, P. J. (Tipperary, N.)

Gilhooly, James

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

Goddard, Daniel Ford

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

NOES.

Acland-Hood, Capt. Sir Alex. F.

Cawley, Frederick

Fardell, Sir T. George

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

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

Allan, William (Gateshead)

Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. (Birm.)

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Archdale, Edward Mervyn

Chamberlain, J. Aust'n (Worc'r.

Finch, George H.

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Channing, Francis Allston

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Asher, Alexander

Chapman, Edward

Fisher, William Hayes

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Churchill, Winston Spencer

FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose-

Bailey, James (Walworth)

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

Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

Bain, Colonel James Robert

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (Manch'r.)

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Foster, Phil. S. (Warwick, S. W.)

Balfour, Rt. Hon. Ger. W(Leeds)

Colomb, Sir John Chas. Ready

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

Banbury, Frederick George

Compton, Lord Alwyne

Galloway, William Johnson

Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor)

Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

Gardner, Ernest

Bartley, George C. T.

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Garfit, William

Beach, Rt. Hon. Sir Mich. Hicks

Craig, Robert Hunter

Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans)

Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

Cranborne, Viscount

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herb. John

Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

Cross, Herb. Shepherd (Bolton)

Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

Bignold, Arthur

Crossley, Sir Savile

Gordon, Hon. J. E. (Elgin&Nairn

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Cubitt, Hon. Henry

Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.)

Bond, Edward

Dalkeith, Earl of

Gordon, Maj. Evans-(T'rH'ml'ts

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith-

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Gore, Hon. S. F. Ormsby-(Linc.)

Bousfield, William Robert

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

Brigg, John

Denny, Colonel

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St John

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.)

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

Dickson, Charles Scott

Green, Walf'rdD. (Wednesbury

Brymer, William Ernest

Digby, John K. D. Wingfield-

Greene, Sir E. W (B'ry SEdm'nds

Bull, William James

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Gretton, John

Bullard, Sir Harry

Dorington, Sir John Edward

Greville, Hon. Ronald

Butcher, John George

Doughty, George

Grey, Sir Edward (Berwick)

Caldwell, James

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Carlile, William Walter

Duke, Henry Edward

Guthrie, Walter Murray

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edwd. H.

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

Halsey, Thomas Frederick

Cautley, Henry Struther

Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

Hamilton, Rt Hon Lord G(Mid'x

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

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

Hamilton, Marq. of(L'nd'nde'ry

Cavendish, V. C. W (Derbyshire)

Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.)

Hardy, Laur'nce (Kent, Ashford

970

971

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Martin, Richard Biddulph

Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W.F.

Saunderson, Rt. Hon. Col. E. J.

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Maxwell, Rt Hn Sir H. E. (Wit's

Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

Heath, Arthur Howard(Hanley

Maxwell, W.J.H. (Dumfriesh.)

Seely, Chas. Hilton (Lincoln)

Heath, James (Staffords. N. W.)

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Seely, Capt. J. E. B. (I. of Wight

Helder, Augustus

Milner, Rt. Hon. Sir Fredk. G.

Seton-Karr, Henry

Hoare, Sir Samuel

Milvain, Thomas

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Hogg, Lindsay

Mitchell, William

Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

Holland, William Henry

Molesworth, Sir Lewis

Smith, H. C. (North'mbTynesi'e

Hope, J. F (Sheffield, Brightside

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Smith, Jas. Parker (Lanarks.)

Hornby, Sir William Henry

More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire

Soares, Ernest J.

Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

Morgan, D. J. (Walthamstow)

Stanley, Hon. Arth. (Ormskirk

Hoult, Joseph

Morley, Chas. (Breconshire)

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

Howard, Jno. (Kent, F'versham)

Morrison, James Archibald

Stewart, Sir M. J. M'Taggart

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Moulton, John Fletcher

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

Jeffreys, Arthur Frederick

Muntz, Philip A.

Stock, James Henry

Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton

Murray, Rt. Hon. A. G. (Bute

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Johnston, William (Belfast)

Nicholson, William Graham

Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier

Joicey, Sir James

Nicol, Donald Ninian

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Kearley, Hudson E.

Palmer, Walter (Salisbnry)

Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Uni.)

Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T.(Denbigh)

Paulton, James Mellor

Thomas, David Alf. (Merthyr)

Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W. (Salop.)

Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

Tollemache, Henry James

Keswick, William

Peel, Hon. W. R. W.

Tomkinson, James

Knowles, Lees

Penn, John

Tomlinson, Wm. Edwd. Murray

Lawrence, Joseph (Monmouth)

Percy, Earl

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

Pilkington, Lt.-Col. Richard

Valentia, Viscount

Lawson, John Grant

Pirie, Duncan V.

Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Walker, Col. William Hall

Lee, Arth. H.(Hants., Fareham)

Plummer, Walter R.

Warr, Augustus Frederick

Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Pretyman, Ernest George

Webb, Col. William George

Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Wentworth, Bruce C. Vernon-

Leveson-Gower, Frederick N. S.

Pym, C. Guy

White, Luke (York E. R.)

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. A. R.

Rankin, Sir James

Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Rasch, Major F. C.

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham)

Renshaw, Charles Bine

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Long, Rt. Hon. Walt'r (Bristol,S

Ridley, S. F. (Bethnal Green

Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. C. T.

Wilson, Fred. W. (Norfolk, Mid.

Lowe, Francis William

Roberts, John H. (Denbigh)

Wilson, John (Glasgow)

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Woodhouse, Sir J. T (Hu'dersf'd.

Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

Robertson, H. (Hackney)

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

Lucas, Reginald J.(Portsmouth

Robson, William Snowdon

Wylie, Alexander

Macartney, Rt. Hon. W. G. E.

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Macdona, John Cumming

Rothschild, Hon. Lionel W.

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Maconochie, A. W.

Runciman, Walter

M'Calmont, Cl. H. L. B. (Cambs.

Russell, T. W.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

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

Rutherford, John

Sir William Walrond and

Majendie, James A. H.

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford-

Mr. Anstruther.

Manners, Lord Cecil

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Question proposed, "That the words 'At the commencement of every Parliament or from time to time, as necessity may arise, the House may appoint a Deputy Chairman, who shall, whenever the House is informed by the Clerk at the Table of the unavoidable absence of the Chairman of Ways and Means, be entitled to exercise all the powers vested in the Chairman of Ways and Means, including his powers as Deputy Speaker' be added at the end of the Standing Order:"
Debate arising; and, it being after Midnight, and objection being taken to further proceeding, the Debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed To-morrow.
Adjourned at ten minutes after Twelve o'clock.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:
SCOTTISH EQUITABLE LIFE
  ASSURANCE SOCIETY [H.L.]

    BARRY RAILWAY [H.L.]
    RENFREW HARBOUR [H. L.]
    The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

CHARING CROSS, HAMMERSMITH, AND DISTRICT ELECTRIC RAILWAY (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
To be read 2a on Friday next.
MANCHESTER DISTRICT TELEPHONE BOARD BILL [H.L.]
To be read 2aon Monday, the 20th instant.
BRISTOL CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
KING'S ROAD RAILWAY (PUTNEY EXTENSION) BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
MARGATE CORPORATION WATER BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
WHITSTABLE IMPROVEMENT BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
CHARING CROSS, EUSTON, AND HAMPSTEAD RAILWAY (No. 3) BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
CENTRAL LONDON RAILWAY (NEW LINES) BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
GREAT NORTHERN AND CITY RAILWAY BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
RICKMANSWORTH GAS BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
WEST HAMPSHIRE WATER BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.
CATERHAM AND DISTRICT GAS BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a.

HAMILTON GAS PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL [H.L.]
A Bill to confirm a Provisional Order under the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act,
794
1892, relating to Hamilton—Was presented by the Lord Balfour; read 1a, to be printed; and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee. (No. 14.)

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.

  ARMY.
  1. (Imperial Yeomanry). Organisation and equipment.
  2. (Estimates). Memorandum of the Secretary of State relating to the Army Estimates for 1902–1903.

  SOUTH AFRICA.
  Further papers relating to the working of the refugee camps in South Africa (in continuation of [Cd. 902], January 1902).
  AFRICA, No. 2 (1902).
  Instructions to Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Sadler on appointment as His Majesty's Commissioner and Consul-General in the Uganda Protectorate.
  TRADE REPORTS—1. ANNUAL SERIES.
  No. 2744. Italy (Naples).

  TRADE REPORTS—2. MISCELLANEOUS.
  No. 2. (1902). Reports from His Majesty's representatives in Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, and Spain, respecting the conditions under which property is held by religious orders in those countries.
  No. 3. (1902). Reports from His Majesty's representatives in Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States, respecting the rules in force for preserving order in the legislative assemblies of those countries (in continuation of Miscellaneous No. 1 (1901) [Cd. 907].

  NATIONAL EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Appendix, Section I., to the Annual Report of the Commissioners, for the year 1900.

  ACETYLENE GENERATORS.
  Report of the Committee appointed by the Department of His Majesty's Inspectors of Explosives, to inquire as to

  795
  the safety of acetylene generators, with a covering report to the right hon. the Secretary of State for the Home Department, by Captain J. H. Thomson, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Explosives.
  Presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  JUDICIAL STATISTICS (ENGLAND AND WALES), 1900. (PART I. CRIMINAL STATISTICS.)
  Statistics relating to criminal proceedings, police, coroners, prisons, reformatory and industrial schools, and criminal lunatics, for the year 1900.
  Presented (by Command and pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  BOARD OF EDUCATION.
  Draft Order in Council for providing the manner in which a register of teachers shall be formed and kept.
  MERCHANT SHIPPING (LIFE-SAVING APPLIANCES).
  Rules made by the Board of Trade under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894.
  PENAL SERVITUDE ACTS, 1853 TO 1891.
  Licence granted by His Majesty to Florence Elizabeth Fagg, a convict under detention in Aylesbury Prison, permitting the said Florence Elizabeth Fagg to be at large on condition that she enter the London Preventive and Reformatory Institution, Euston Road, N. W.

  TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION ACTS.
  Minute by the Board of Education sanctioning the subjects to be taught under Clause 8 of the Technical Instruction Act, 1889,for the county of Glamorgan (11th minute).
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

PETITIONS.
  LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILWAYS.
  Petition for re-appointment of Joint Committee of both Houses, to inquire and report on the subject of London underground railways of Mayor, etc. of Kensington.
  PUBLIC HOUSES HOURS OF CLOSING (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
  Petitions in favour of; of Temperance Committee of the United Free Church of Scotland; Inhabitants of Greenock; Directors of Edinburgh and Leith Licensed Grocers Association; Paisly United Free Church Presbytery; Corporation of City of Glasgow; Claremount Street, Glasgow, Wesleyan Methodist Gospel Temperance Society; and Meeting, of Temperance Societies in Glasgow:
NEW BILLS.
  MARINE INSURANCE, BILL [H.L.] (No. 15.)
  A Bill for codifying the law relating to Marine Insurance: and—

  NAVAL PRIZE BILL [H.L.] (No. 16.)
  A Bill to consolidate, with amendments, the enactments relating to naval prize of war.
  Were presented by the Lord Chancellor; read 1a, and to be printed.

  SOLICITORS BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend certain provisions of the Solicitors Acts, 1839 to 1894: Was presented by the Lord Alverstone; read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 17.)

  LONDON UNDERGROUND RAILWAYS.
  LORD GLENESK: My Lords, I have to present to your Lordships to-day a Motion of some importance. Parliament is being besieged with Bills for tube railways, which are being proposed in every direction, but there is no central authority to control the presentation of these demands. There is no authority to lay down what is desirable in the public interests, no mapping out of districts nor arranging for connections. Each company comes forward and claims what it likes. In one instance I have just laid a Petition on the Table from the Royal Borough of Kensington, where five companies are seeking power to run tubes under the High-street, which is a physical impossibility. The Kensingtonians are panting for a tube, but who are going to decide what scheme is to be adopted? Take the Fulham Road. That thoroughfare is threatened with a connection all along the line of hospitals, the Consump-

  797
  tion Hospital, the Cancer Hospital, the Hospital for Women, and others, and such a tube may materially effect these hospitals by vibration and otherwise. The laying down of these tubes has the effect of producing a drainage of the soil in their neighbourhood and a shrinkage of the clay, and this in turn causes cracks, which become dangerous. There is no guarantee in the schemes now being applied for that there will be any cross lines; they are all longitudinal, seeking to connect the City with the various parts of the West of London. My third ground for referring these schemes to the Joint Committee may seem superfluous, but it is not. Although the original Twopenny Tube obtained at first the credit of being well-ventilated, complaints are very numerous now, and a great deal of care is required to find out by what means the atmosphere of these tubes can be purified. The Motion which I propose is meant to to encourage the development of tube railways, but to do that in a systematic and not in a haphazard way. I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
  Moved, to resolve, That it is desirable that the Joint Select Committee on London Underground Railways appointed last Session be re-appointed to consider and report—(1) Whether any of the lines of route for Underground Railways in and near London proposed by the Bills which have been introduced during the last and present session afford adequate facilities for present and probable future traffic; (2) whether any extensions or alterations of route are required for the purpose of providing cheap and rapid travelling communication throughout London and the outskirts, and whether the making of such extensions or alterations should be a condition of the grant of powers to make any proposed railways; (3) what is the best method of constructing, working, and ventilating such railways, having regard to the safety, health, and convenience of persons travelling by them?—(Lord Glenesk).
  THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (The Earl of MORLEY): My Lords, the question which my noble friend has brought before the House is one of very great importance to London, and at the same time it is one of so intricate and
  798
  difficult a character that I think it well deserves the consideration of your Lordships. I thought it well to intervene immediately after my noble friend's speech, so that I could place the House in possession of the facts of the case as they at present stand. My noble friend justly said that these projects for tube railways are increasing every year. The present position with regard to these Bills is this. There are at present in London eight authorized lines of railways. Of those, two are in actual operation, and two in course of construction; and there are four in connection with which no works have as yet been executed. Last year eleven Bills were introduced into Parliament, seven of which dealt with entirely new schemes, and four had reference to extensions of the authorized railways to which I have already referred. The Bills were referred to a Joint Committee, the reappointment of which my noble friend now moves. The reference to that Committee was, briefly, to consider (1) The general lines of route for underground railways; (2) what special provision should be made for the protection of owners of property adjacent to the railways; (3) the conditions as to construction and working; and (4) whether any, and which, of the eleven Bills to which I have referred should be allowed to proceed during that session. At that time a Committee was appointed, under the Chairmanship of Lord Rayleigh, to consider the question of how far the vibration caused by existing railways was affecting adjacent properties, but they had not reported, and therefore my noble friend Lord Windsor's Committee had to deal with that question in a hypothetical manner. On all the other points the Committee presented to the House a very able and interesting Report, and suggested that seven of the eleven Bills which were before them should be allowed to proceed in the ordinary course. As regards four of the Bills—those with which my noble friend is particularly interested, namely, the lines which it is proposed should run under the main thoroughfare between Putney and Hammersmith and the City—the Committee strongly reported that it was desirable that there should be a continuous line between Hammersmith and the City.

  799
  The sitting of the Committee lasted practically the whole session, with the result that it was impossible for the Bills which had been referred to them to proceed. Following precedents that have been set in former years in the case of Bills which have been delayed by the direct action of Parliament, these Bills were allowed as a matter of privilege to be suspended and to be brought up in the present session at the point at which they were left last session. Nine out of the Bills have survived their period of suspended animation, and are now again before the House for consideration. In addition to those nine Bills, fifteen other Bills are now before the House dealing with tube railways. Of these, two deal with an extention of time in regard to railways already authorized, nine with extensions of works of authorized railways or of railways that had Bills in the last session of Parliament, and only four may be called new schemes. Of the twenty-four Bills now before Parliament I think I may say that, if you deduct the double Bills that have been introduced by these Companies, you reduce the schemes to seventeen, and if you further deduct the two Bills which merely ask for an extension of time, and the two which are very small additions to authorized railways, you bring the schemes down to thirteen. The whole of these Bills, except the four new ones to which I have referred, were before the Joint Committee last year. The only Bills that were not before them were the London United Railways Bill, which is a scheme new this year, following the route to which my noble friend has referred, from Hammersmith to the City; the Central London Railway Bill which is an entirely new scheme occupying the same route; a Bill for a small railway called the Edgware and Hampstead Railways, which may be regarded entirely in connection with the Euston-square and Hampstead Railway; and, finally, the Crystal Palace and City Railway.
  So your Lordships will see that, with the addition of the Crystal Palace and City Railway, there are the Bills which existed last year and two addition 1 schemes competing for the very important thoroughfare from Hammersmith to the City. Last year, as I have
  800
  already said, the Joint Committee so far approved of all the schemes except the four competing for that route as to say they might go to a Committee in the ordinary course. My noble friend now proposes that the schemes of this year should be referred to the same Joint Committee. So far as I read his notice, the ground he now takes was completely, or almost completely, covered by the Committee of last year. He asks in the first and second paragraphs that the lines of route should be considered, and in the third paragraph that the best method of constructing, working and ventilating the railways should be reported upon. The Committee of last year considered the lines of route and the methods of constructing and working the railways, though the word ventilation was not directly incorporated in their instructions. The effect of carrying my noble friend's motion would undoubtedly be that the Bills now before Parliament would be delayed for another year.
  LORD GLENESK: Not if the Committee had the power of passing them.
  THE EARL OF MORLEY: The noble Lord is now suggesting quite another matter and one with which his Motion does not deal. The Motion of my noble friend is for a Joint Committee to sit as the Joint Committee did last year to consider certain principles. The Bills would then have to go as competing Bills before separate Committees. I have no doubt that if the Joint Committee which sat last year had to go over the whole ground again, with the addition of the Bills that have been recently introduced, the inquiry would last a very large part of the session if not the whole of it. At any rate, there would not be sufficient time left to enable substantial progress to be made with the Bills. I do not say that the question of delay, where matters of such great importance are dealt with, is an insuperable objection, but it is a very serious matter. When I tell your Lordships that the Bills of last year asked for the authorization of a capital of something like £30,000,000, and that the Bills of this year ask for between £20,000,000 and £30,000,000

  801
  more, you will see that it is a very serious matter for the promoters. A very large sum has been deposited in respect of the Bills of last year, which is lying idle. I agree with what my noble friend would probably say, that the interest of the promoters is not the most important thing we have to consider. We have to consider also the interest of the public, and there again the delay seems to be most inexpedient. Every day the traffic in our streets is becoming more and more conjested, and it is daily becoming more important that we should have railways constructed from the centre to the suburbs. This is also an important matter in connection with the problem of housing the working classes, and I earnestly deprecate delay in regard to these schemes unless any great object is to be gained thereby. I think I have shown to the House that there is really nothing new in the schemes of this year which has not been considered very carefully by the Joint Committee of last year. I think the House may safely leave to an ordinary Committee the relative merits of the different competitors for the important thoroughfare to which the noble Lord referred. On the ground, then, that delay should be avoided, if possible and that the Committee of last year had before them everything that they would have this year, with very few modifications, I do not think it is desirable to lengthen the proceedings by reappointing the Committee.
  Perhaps I may be allowed before sitting down, to give some indication as to the mode in which I think it is desirable these Bills should be dealt with. The suggestion of my noble friend that the whole of the Bills should be referred to a Joint Committee, not merely to consider the principle of them, but to pass them has been made before. I had the advantage of a communication with my right hon. friend the Chairman of Ways and Means in the other House, before his extremely regrettable illness, and I have also been in communication with the Board of Trade on the subject, and though there is a good deal to be said in favour of that course, it is one almost without precedent. In fact there are only two precedents—the Irish Amalgamation Bills and a
  802
  certain Bill relating to Dublin; but those Bills had been the subject of a very acute Parliamentary fight in the previous session, and there were other circumstances connected with them which took them out of the ordinary category. I do not think that in the present circumstances it is desirable to adopt that course, and I am rather inclined to think that the ordinary method of procedure has a very considerable advantage in this particular case over the Joint Committee, The advantage is this, that a second hearing may be required to put right any oversight that may occur in the first House. I admit that it is extremely difficult to know how to group these Bills. It would undoubtedly be well to place them under a single Committee, but I am afraid that to do that would be to place a great tax on the noble Lords who would sit on that Committee; and, moreover, the proceedings would last such a considerable time that the prospect of passing the Bills in the present session might be jeopardized. I am endeavouring, in conjunction with the President of the Board of Trade and the officials there, to devise some means by which these Bills could be grouped and dealt with as far as possible by two or more Committees, who would, of course, be guided to a large extent in general principles by the valuable Report of the Joint Committee of last year.
  With regard to the recommendations in that Report, there are only three to which I think I need draw the attention of the House. In the sixth paragraph the Committee strongly recommend that the County Council and the City Corporation should be granted a locus standi in all cases of extension of time. There seems to have been some difficulty with this matter, and I venture to think this a valuable suggestion. Rules with regard to locus standi in this House are very elastic, and are dealt with by the Committee before whom the Bill is being discussed. I feel perfectly certain that, after this suggestion, the Committee will liberally interpret any precedents governing the giving of a locus standi to the County Councils of London and the adjoining counties into which the railways may extend, not merely with regard to an extension of

  803
  time in the case of existing railways, but with regard to lines of route generally. The second clause I wish to draw attention to is clause 19, in which the Committee recommend—and I have great sympathy with the recommendation—that there should be some central body to control the general scheme for these different lines of railway. They suggest a public Department such as the Board of Trade, or the Light Railway Commissioners, or a Joint Committee of both Houses; but I think I am right in assuming that Parliament would be very jealous indeed of giving up any powers which it possesses over these railways, and would prefer to retain the control of them and the scheme regulating them.
  In Clause 20 the Committee suggest that, having regard to the inflation of capital and other matters, power should be given to the City Corporation and the County Council, as in the case of light railways, to construct, or to assist in constructing, these tube railways. I am not going to argue whether or not it is desirable to give this power, but I do not hesitate to say that personally I think it is of very doubtful expediency. It is an entirely new departure in the principles of municipal government, these tubes being absolutely different from light railways and tramways, which are comparatively small matters. They do not affect the surface of the streets in which the local authorities are directly and especially interested, and are schemes of enormous cost. But this is the suggestion of the Joint Committee. The point has never been discussed by the House, and I doubt if many of your Lordships are aware that it has been introduced into this Report. I am placed in this difficulty that in consequence of this paragraph, clauses have been introduced in many of the Bills this year giving the County Councils power to advance money for the purpose for which the Joint Committee recommend. It seems to me that that power should not be given unless Parliament has deliberately, after full discussion, come to the conclusion that it ought to be given. I do not think it would be right to sanction so large a development of the power of municipalities by a clause in a private Act. I gather that the House will support me in what I propose
  804
  to do on this occasion. I propose to strike that Clause out of every Bill in which it occurs before it goes to a Committee. I do so—and I wish it to be distinctly understood—not because it is my duty to express any opinion upon the policy of such a course, but because I think the principle ought not to be adopted without the distinct and deliberate assent of Parliament. For the reasons I have given in the earlier part of my speech, I do not favour the proposal of my noble friend to re-appoint this Joint Committee. At the same time, I wish to acknowledge most heartily the services which the Committee have rendered. They sat for a great number of days, took some very valuable evidence, and their Report is a most useful document, and will be of immense value in enabling the Committees, to which these Bills will eventually be referred, to come to a wise conclusion.
  VISCOUNT KNUTSFORD: My Lords, as a member of the Joint Committee which sat last year, and whose services the noble Earl, the Chairman of Committees, has so pleasantly referred to in the course of his very clear statement, I would remind the House that the recommendation that County Councils should be empowered to advance money for these tubes, was carried in that Committee by a majority of one only. I think my noble friend has come to a wise decision in resolving to cut out this Clause from the Bills before the House this year. I oppose the Motion to re-appoint the Joint Committee, on the ground that they would be asked to do exactly what they did last year. Moreover, if the Motion is carried, all these Bills will be suspended again, and great expense will be unjustly thrown on the promoters, who had every reason to believe that their Bills would be properly discussed this year, and either passed or rejected. In the interests, also, of the working classes, to whom these tube railways will be of the greatest advantage, I hope the Motion will not be carried. Paragraph 1 of the Motion is almost exactly the same in terms as the reference to the Joint Committee of last year, and upon which we took evidence and reported very

  805
  fully. General principles were distinctly laid down to guide the Private Bill Committees upon these tube Bills, and no more could be done by a re-appointed Joint Committee. The third paragraph in the Motion raises important engineering questions, and to properly inquire into and report upon them, it would be necessary for the Committee to sit, not for one session, but for several sessions. The questions, moreover, are more suitable to a Royal Commission, with expert engineers upon it, than to a Joint Committee of this description.
  EARL SPENCER: My Lords, I feel I ought to say a few words on the important discussion which has just taken place. In the first place I wish to thank the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees for the very clear and able statement he has made on this subject, which is one of very great importance to the Metropolis. I entirely share the views he has expressed with regard to the Motion of the noble Lord opposite. As far as I understand from the observations of the noble Earl and the noble Lord who sat on this Committee last year, nearly all the points in the Motion before the House was fully discussed, and it would therefore be a great waste of time to go over the ground again. It would be a very serious thing if the enormous amount of capital involved in these schemes were to be hung up for another year. I would urge on the noble Earl the importance of these schemes for tube railways being regulated, if possible, by one body. I quite admit that it would take a considerable time if all these numerous schemes had to be submitted to one Committee, but I think we ought to ask that Committee, in the interests of the Metropolis, to undertake a greater duty than falls to most Committees of your Lordships' House in order to secure a systematic scheme with regard to these railways. I fully admit that the arguments of the noble Earl as to the importance of two Committees, one in each House, the second Committee to overhaul the work of the first and to remedy any mistakes or omissions, cannot be overlooked. With regard to the recommendations of the Committee, I believe your Lordship will support the noble Earl in the decision he has come to
  806
  with regard to the third and probably the most important recommendation. In my opinion the principle should be fully discussed in Parliament before local authorities are given power to contribute to these gigantic schemes. I do not know what may be said about it when the point is thrashed out, but I think the House will support the noble Earl in what I consider to be the wise decision to which he has arrived. I hope the noble Lord will not press for the re-appointment of the Joint Committee, and that the Chairman of Committees will take care that all these schemes are referred, if possible, to one Committee, or, if that is impossible, that some uniform principle is laid down for the guidance of the Committees who will have to deal with this exceedingly important subject.
  LORD GLENESK: In withdrawing my Motion, which has not met with a too warm reception, I think it well that the public should be warned of the heavy price which one of these days it will have to pay for these undertakings being acquired by any public authority, if they are permitted to spring up indiscriminately all over the Metropolis.
  Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn.

  WEI-HAI-WEI.
  EARL SPENCER: My Lords, in accordance with the notice standing in my name on the paper, I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies what are the intentions of His Majesty's Government with regard to Wei-Hai-Wei.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (The Earl of ONSLOW): My Lords, I do not think I need trouble you with the early history of Wei-Hai-Wei, because it is probably well known to you. But I may say that the Government have held a careful inquiry into the advantages of the place as a military and naval station, and they have decided that the idea which was at one time entertained of fortifying it and keeping there a large garrison has been abandoned. There is at present there a Chinese regiment. That regiment will be gradually disbanded or withdrawn; and in future the administration of the colony will be

  807
  undertaken by police, which will be raised by the Administration of the colony itself. The position has been found to be one which could only be fortified at very great expense; but it is an extremely useful place for small-arms practice and for gunnery practice for the Navy as the bay is large and the water is shallow. It is also an extremely healthy station, and it is believed that in the course of a very short time a number of persons will utilise it as a sanatorium for Hong Kong and Shanghai and other places on the coast of China. It will also be used as a sanatorium for our military and naval forces. It has been taken over by the Colonial Office from 1st January, and the new Administrator will be Mr. Lockhart, who has had many years official experience at Hong Kong. It is hoped that in his hands the place will be made to yield a much larger revenue than that at present, which is something like £2,000 a year. The inhabitants are mostly fishermen and agriculturists who are not rich nor very prosperous, but there are capabilities about the colony which lead us to hope that before very long it will yeild a much greater revenue than at present. Your Lordships will recollect that Hong Kong was in very much the same position as Wei-Hai-Wei is to-day. It has no custom duties, no railway communication with the interior, and yet it has proved to be a very important commercial port, and Wei-Hai-Wai has the advantage of being on the highway from the Gulf of Pechili to northern China. It has an excellent harbour, labour is cheap, and there is therefore every reason to believe that it will continue to be a useful and valuable possession. At any rate the rumour that there is an intention on the part of His Majesty's Government to give it up, either returning it to China or handing it over to any other Power, is entirely without foundation. His Majesty's Government have no intention of abandoning the place, which they believe to be a very valuable possession.
  The EARL OF ROSEBERY: I am sure your Lordships must have listened to the statement which has just been made with the same mingled feelings
  808
  with which I have heard it. I was in no degree prepared for the declaration just made by the noble Earl, or I should have refreshed my memory by reference to the statements which were made at the time when Wei-Hai-Wei was first occupied. I do not know whether I correctly pronounce the name of this place, but after the declaration made on behalf of the Government by the noble Earl it seems hardly worth while troubling to ascertain. I recollect that the acquisition of the place was announced with a flourish of trumpets, and now apparently all that is thought of it is that it is an important watering place. Am I to understand that the inquiry as to its naval and military value was held subsequent to its occupation by the Government? If so, some of the statements which were made at the time of its acquisition would appear to have been put forward with more rashness than was becoming in the case of a Government taking over an important port in an empire like China.
  The EARL OF ONSLOW: The inquiries were made subsequent to the lease.
  The EARL OF ROSEBERY: Wei-Hai-Wei is no longer a naval base. It is no longer a place of arms; no longer a protection for our commerce or our fleets. It has become a sort of second-rate watering place. We are encouraged to hope that its salubrious climate will induce people to come and spend what is known as the unhealthy season there. I have no doubt that, if your lordships consult the original authorities, you will find that the statements made by the Government when this place was occupied, compare somewhat strangely with the very piano announcement we have just listened to from the Under Secretary for the colonies.
  VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: My Lords, I shall certainly refresh my memory with regard to the declarations of the Government on the occasion of the taking over of Wei-Hai-Wei. I am not at all sure that I did not myself point out some of its advantages; and as one who held a responsible position at the Admiralty when Wei-Hai-Wei was acquired, I have listened with a certain amount of sur-

  809
  prise to some of the statements of the Under Secretary for the Colonies. I do not think he conveyed the impression which the noble Earl opposite seems to have derived from his statement that it is only lately that any inquiry has been made with reference to the stratagic and international position of Wei-Hai-Wei I can assure your Lordships that long ago the most exhaustive inquiries were made into the capacities of Wei-Hai-Wai in various respects. The question of the number of guns requisite for its fortification was carefully examined; and the subject of a breakwater was likewise considered. In fact, dredgers had been sent out to deepen the water. The number of battleships which could find anchorage within the bay was also fully inquired into. There was no lack of information originally; but I am disposed to think that on review His Majesty's Government have come to the conclusion on fresh information acquired that the first opinions as to the value of Wei-Hai-Wei as a naval and military base cannot be sustained. I have no doubt that the Government have consulted the best naval and military authorities on the subject. There can be no doubt at the same time that Wei-Hai-Wei occupies a most important position in the Gulf of Pechili; and any Power holding it possesses a strategical advantage. I am sure His Majesty's Government will be prepared to give your Lordships far more information with reference to the change of policy which has been considered advisable than has been afforded to-day. I hope the Government will state whether the decision not to fortify Wei-Hai-Wei is based on financial or stragetical considerations. I am glad to hear that if Wei-Hai-Wei is not to be fortified, there is no intention of handing it over to another Power or of returning it to China. Even if we do not fortify Wei-Hai-Wei, it would be very inconvenient for the whole of our naval operations in the China seas if it were held by any other Power. I feel that your Lordships have not sufficient information before you to enable you adequately to debate the the change of policy on the part of Government. As to the proposed disbandment of the Chinese regiment, I had always understood that the regiment
  810
  had been a very successful experiment. but if there are any international reasons against making a fuller statement as to why it is to be disbanded, I shall be perfectly satisfied with the explanation of the Government.
  THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH: My Lords, when I saw the Question of the noble Earl on the Paper, I referred to the speeches which were made in both Houses of Parliament by the responsible advisers of the Crown at the time of the occupation of Wei-Hai-Wei. The First Lord of the Treasury stated in the other House, when this matter was being conisdered, that—
  "If any British subject is foolish enough to go to Wei-Hai-Wai for commercial purposes he will have every facility."
  It seems perfectly clear, therefore, that for commercial purposes Wei-Hai-Wei is not held in very high estimation by the Leader of the House of Commons. Within a very short time after that statement was made, the noble Marquess at the head of the Government stated in this House that—
  "It is necessary that we should have a coaling station and a naval station in that region, and Wei-Hai-Wei will answer that purpose. I have no doubt that in commercial advantages it will amply secure us, and will more than compensate us for any expenditure which may be incurred upon it."
  If the statement of the noble Earl the Under-Secretary today means anything, it means that the Government are not going to spend any money upon Wei-Hai-Wei. If Wei-Hai-Wei is not to be fortified and no money spent upon it, I maintain that the place will not be a strength but a menace to us, and that, therefore, if we are not to take the necessary precautions to strengthen our position there, we had much better retire. I cannot help being impressed by a sense of the extraordinarily flippant and careless way in which the matter has been dealt with on the part of the Government.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (The Earl of SELBORNE): My Lords, I shall be prepared to go into this question at length on any occasion on which any one of your Lordships brings it again before the notice of the House,

  811
  and I think perhaps later on we shall be in a better position to discuss it in the fullest detail. But I have now and at once to say that the decision of this question has not been financial. It has been purely strategical, and that strategy was purely naval. Lord Rosebery spoke of Wei-Hai-Wei as a possible protection to British commerce. I think on reflection the noble Earl would not repeat that. The only protection to British commerce in Chinese seas is the Navy, and the value and importance of Wei-Hai-Wei is purely relative to the Navy. Naval opinion as to the proper method of utilising Wei-Hai-Wei has differed, and does differ; but speaking as one who has closely studied this question for more than a year, perhaps I may say that the balance of naval opinion is very decidedly in favour of the course which the Government has adopted. There are, roughly speaking, two alternatives. One is to make Wei-Hai-Wei a fortress like Hong Kong, the other is to use it as a peace base, and not to commit ourselves to the custody of a fortress. The naval opinion has been pronounced, and I thoroughly concur with it, in favour of the latter course as against the former. While that decision has been taken, and while naval opinion has pronounced itself in the degree I have mentioned in favour of this course, naval opinion is unanimous as to the value—the very great value—of this base to the Navy, its value to the efficiency of the Navy, and its value to the health of the Navy; and while I should oppose personally any attempt to turn Wei-Hai-Wei into a fortress like Hong Kong, I should also determinedly oppose any idea of surrendering it.
  EARL SPENCER: The speech of the noble Earl the First Lord of the Admiralty shows that since the lease of Wei-Hai-Wei there has been a complete change of policy on the part of His Majesty's Government. I wish to know whether it is the intention of the Government to produce Papers and Reports on the subject, in order that your Lordships may judge how far the action of the Government can be justified.
  THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I am sure the noble Earl will recognise that some of the Papers are confidential and cannot be published.
  EARL SPENCER: Yes, but there must be some that can be presented.

  PLUMBERS' REGISTRATION BILL [H.L.]
  [SECOND READING.]
  Order of the day for the Second Reading read.
  LORD GLENESK: My Lords, the object of their Bill is to establish a system under which plumbers can, if they please, be registered. I have every reason to believe that the measure has the approval of plumbers and sanitary authorities throughout the country. It will enable a plumber who has properly qualified himself, to be registered under such conditions that he may thereafter be regarded as an absolutely efficient public servant. Registration, while it will give the plumber an additional privilege, will give the public the knowledge that they have before them a man who neither from haste, greed, nor ignorance, will endanger the lives of themselves or their children, and, perhaps, the sanitary condition of the whole neighbourhood. Plumbing requires special training, and a great deal of knowledge on the part of those who act as plumbers. It seems a very easy thing to conduct water into or out of a house, but a great amount of technical knowledge is required to make a plumber a first-class craftsman. I trust that the Bill will receive the approval of your Lordships.
  Bill read 2a (according to order), and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

  GOVERNMENT MEAT CONTRACTS.
  EARL CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War—(1) What was the contract price per lb. in the Government contract with the South African Supply and Cold Storage Company, who made a million profit on the transaction; (2) What is the contract price under the present arrangement with Messrs. Bergl and Company; (3) Was the undertaking

  813
  given in writing by the contractors that "Colonial meat should as far as possible be imported into South Africa" in the original contract with Mr. Bergl, or was it inserted after the protests of Messrs. Seddon and See.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Lord RAGLAN):My Lords, the noble Earl is, no doubt, aware that it is not usual to give the prices of these contracts, but on this occasion I am able to give the information. The price of the new contract made by Messrs. Bergl and Company is for fresh meat—that is to say live meat—about 8½d. per lb., and for frozen meat about 5½d per lb., which is about 1½d. per lb. cheaper than the former contract of the Cold Storage Company. I have no information as to the profits made by the Cold Storage Company, but I would point out to the noble Earl that they have a large civilian business in addition to their contracts for the Army. With regard to the third question, the actual undertaking was not signed until after the receipt of the telegrams from Mr. Seddon and Mr. See, but a distinct and definite undertaking had been given in the presence of witnesses more than a fortnight before.
  EARL CARRINGTON: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord for the information he has been good enough to give me on this subject, which is one of great public interest. I would point out that the Cold Storage Company made a profit of a million, and a return of 140 per cent. on their money. Their contract was, I understand, 10d. per lb. for fresh meat?
  LORD RAGLAN: Yes.
  EARL CARRINGTON: Tenpence per lb. seems to me an enormous contract price for meat. Noble Lords probably know that the primest cut of the primest meat of this country—say the baron of beef supplied at the Royal Table at Winsor Castle—would not come to more than 11d. per lb.
  LORD RAGLAN: I wish to correct a misapprehension. The contract price is not only for the supply of the meat; it includes also its distribution. When
  814
  the former contracts were made the work of distribution in South Africa was more difficult than now.
  EARL CARRINGTON: I do not complain of the noble Lord interrupting me. Information by interruption is quite as valuable as in any other form. It is well known that frozen meat can be supplied at Cape Town from Australia and New Zealand—a supply ten times more than would be required to feed a quarter of a million of troops—at from 3½d. to 4½d. per lb. The noble Lord defended the contract on account of the cost of distribution. If the railways in South Africa were like, say, the Great Northern Railway here, who charge a prohibitive tariff which prevents farmers being able to sell their meat at a profit in London, I should say nothing, but noble Lords should remember that the South African railway is a miserable single line. I am informed, on good authority, that there was no expense whatever, either in sending men, amnunition, meat, or hospital comforts; and, therefore, I respectfully submit that the argument of the noble Lord breaks down. I wish it to be distinctly understood that, in bringing this matter before the House, I am not advocating any stinting of the brave troops who, for the last two and a half years have been fighting the battles of their country in South Africa. There is a great division of opinion on the Liberal side of the House as to the origin and conduct of the war, but on one thing we are all agreed—every responsible member of the Liberal Party is agreed—namely, that everything possible should be done in the interests of the soldiers at the front. I have brought the matter forward, in order to show that the original contract must have been entered into in a slipshod manner when the company were able to make a million sterling profit.
  We have been told by Ministers in another place that there is to be a saving of £700,000 on the fresh contract. It is pleasant to hear this, though it seems to me to be a curious contract. We are told that the lowest tender was that of Mr. Bergl, who, in tendering, said he did so on behalf of a syndicate, who wanted to form a company. Naturally, some backers were required. The sum of £200,000 was deposited and a com-

  815
  pany with a capital of £650,000 formed, and the company has been registered, not in London, but in Pretoria. Mr. Bergl is a gentleman of Polish and Hebrew nationality, and, as Lord Stanley admitted in another place last week, was fined £10 for putting a false label and description on meat exposed for sale, the magistrate making some very strong remarks on the transaction. I am told, and the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong, that the principal backers behind Mr. Bergl are gentlemen called Houlder, the proprietors of the Houlder Line of steamers, and Burt, Potter, and Hughes of the Federal Line, trading direct with Argentina. Behind these backers, I believe it is an open secret in the City, are certain gentlemen named, Samuel Weil, Benjamin Weil, David Harris, Carl Meyer, Carl Hanan, John Stroyal. Isaac Lewis, Agar Beit—better known, I believe, as Alfred Beit—and Solly Joel, "Solly" being, I am informed, an abbreviation for Solomon. Lord Stanley, when asked a Question in another place, said he was not aware whether Mr. Bergl had resold his entire interest to Messrs. Wernher, Beit, Leiss, and Marks for £100,000. But in today's Daily Chronicle there is a statement that in a paper called Cold Storage, Messrs. Wernher, Beit & Co. state that they are not interested in any meat contract. So that if Mr. Agar Beit is interested in this contract he must be interested solely as a private individual.
  So that, as the matter stands now, the Argentine Shipping Companies are the carriers, Solly Joel and Company are the distributors, and Bergl and Company are the providers. No wonder, therefore, we have a protest from Australia and New Zealand, from which countries meat can be supplied at Cape Town at the identical cost of meat from Argentine, owing to the difference in the cost for coal. I think there is something in the uneasiness that is felt in Australia and New Zealand as to their meat—their staple product—being rather unfairly treated, and an undue preference given to Argentine meat; and it seems to me that the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for War was rather drawing the long bow when he described this syndicate, which certainly does not sug-
  816
  gest Antipodean or Australian names, as one having close and intimate relations with Australia and New Zealand. Mr. Bergl, no doubt, has a very warm corner in his heart for Australian meat, because he got into trouble by describing meat which was not New Zealand as "prime Canterbury lamb." I think we may fairly say that there is some justification for the strong and spirited protests of Mr. See and Mr. Seddon, the Prime Ministers of New South Wales and New Zealand. Mr. Seddon, in the course of a very patriotic speech at Wellington on February 4th of this year, when the last contingent was being despatched to South Africa, referred to the grave injustice done to Australia and New Zealand by the taking of a large quantity of meat from Argentine for the use of the troops in South Africa. He went on to say—
  "This action had caused widespread irritation, and the feeling about it was becoming intensely bitter. Every Chamber of Commerce had passed resolutions against this action. He was informed that already a large steamer had been withdrawn from Australia in order to proceed to the Argentine for meat."
  Mr. Seddon concluded by saying that no reply to his protest had yet been received from the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The House ought to be informed distinctly whether Mr. Berg had any opportunity of amending his contract after the tenders were sent in and before the completion of the contract, and why the Government let the contract without ascertaining who the Company were and who were to execute it? When this question was asked in another place—it was not answered—the Secretary of State for the Colonies was reported to have interpolated the remark—
  "What does that matter."
  That seems to me to go to the root of the whole question. What does it matter? The Government appear to be so secure in their three to one majority in the other House, and in their twelve to one majority in this House, that their motto seems to be, "Nothing matters." But I venture to think this question does matter, and it should be probed to the bottom. I am so dissatisfied with the manner in which these contracts have been made by His Majesty's Government that on an early date I shall move for Papers relating to

  817
  the whole of the Meat Contracts to be laid on the Table of your Lordships' House, and if these are refused I shall most certainly take the sense of the House upon the matter.
  LORD RAGLAN: I can assure the noble Earl that the work of distribution was not such an easy matter as he seems to imagine. It involved distribution over the entire surface of British South Africa, and the meat had to be delivered how, when, and where, and in what proportions of fresh and frozen the officer commanding the troops desired. The noble Earl has accused me, somewhat unfairly, of drawing the long bow with regard to Mr. Bergl's backers. I am not in the habit of doing that either in private or official life, and when I make a statement in this House I make it to the best of my belief and according to the information at my disposal. Messrs. Houlder, one of Mr. Bergl's guarantors, are partners with him in owning large meat works in Queens land. The other guarantors, the Federal Steamship Company, own meat works in New Zealand, and in Brisbane and Sydney. Therefore, I think I was hardly wrong in describing the guarantors of Mr. Bergl as gentlemen with very large financial interests, in the meat line especially, in Australia and New Zealand. The noble Earl also read out a long list of gentlemen who, he had been informed, had shares in this company. That list was practically correct, and it appeared to me that many of the names were those of gentlemen of considerable financial stability.
  EARL CARRINGTON: I desire to express my regret if anything I have said has caused the noble Lord any annoyance. My reference was in no way personal. All I meant to convey was that the noble Lord was the official mouthpiece of the Government; but if any word I have used has given him pain, I most unhesitatingly withdraw it, and express my regret for having used it.

  THE MERCANTILE MARINE.
  LORD MUSKERRY: My Lords, I rise to call the attention of the House to the composition of the Committee appointed to inquire into offences against discipline and other matters in the Mercantile Marine. On 13th January last a Com-
  818
  mittee was appointed by the President of the Board of Trade to inquire into and report upon the following matters:—(1) the causes that have led to the employment of a large and increasing proportion of lascars and foreigners in the British Merchant Service and the effect of such employment upon the reserve of seamen of British nationality available for naval purposes in time of peace or war; (2) the sufficiency or otherwise of the existing law and practice for securing proper food, accommodation, medical attention, and reasonable conditions of comfort and well-being for seamen of British merchant ships; (3) the prevalence of desertion and other offences against discipline in the Mercantile Marine, and to make such recommendations with regard to these matters as they may think fit. Now, with regard to the gentlemen appointed on this Committee. The first is Sir Francis Jeune, the Chairman. To this appointment no exception can be taken, as the learned Judge very worthily and ably represents the legal element of the Committee. The second member is Mr. Anderson, a shipowner, and I agree that the shipowners have a right to, and should, be represented on a Committee of this description. The third member is Captain Blake, an Elder Brother of the Trinity House, who, I presume, is supposed to represent ship-captains. But, as I understand, he does not do so, as you will see by this extract from a letter addressed to the Board of Trade by the Merchant Service Guild—
  "The only nominal representative of the cloth—Captain H. Acton Blake, whose personal ability and integrity are unquestioned—holds, unfortunately, opinions which are entirely dissented from by the members of the Guild, and of other bodies. I am to refer you to his Paper, 'Seafaring as a Vocation,' as read before the London Shipmasters' Society, on the 26th October, 1900. The great majority of members of the profession differed from his opinions expressed in the Paper. The Secretary of the Society characterised it as applicable, not to what a sea life really is, but, rather, to what it ought or might be. Two captains who were present, utterly dissented from the views set forth in the Paper, whilst another member stated that the experience of the majority was dead against the contentions of Captain Blake, and that he appeared to regard the Mercantile Marine from the point of view of one who sat in the sunshine and preached to those in the

  819
  cold shade of neglect. Therefore, being in the possession of the pronounced views of Captain Acton Blake, there is much cause for alarm in the knowledge that the evils which are certain to be brought before the Committee, may be viewed from the optimistic stand point of his Paper."
  The fourth member of the Committee is Mr. Thomas Burt, M. P., who, I understand, was a miner and is now a miners' representative. I have heard nothing but what is good about this gentleman, but, however worthy he may be, I cannot conceive why he was placed on this Committee, or what possible knowledge he can have of purely maritime matters. The fifth member of the Committee is Captain Chalmers, the sole and only professional member of the Board of Trade, but as such, and as a paid Government official, the profession cannot in any way regard him as a representative. The sixth member of the Committee is Colonel Denny, a shipbuilder. He is a very necessary member of the Committee, when you remember that one of the matters to be inquired into is accommodation. The seventh member is Mr. Walter J. Howell, the Secretary of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade. The eighth member is Vice-Admiral Lloyd. Now, if it had been an inquiry into matters concerning the Royal Navy, I could have understood this gentleman being on the Committee, but I doubt very much if the gallant Admiral has ever been much in touch with, or knows much of, the interior working of the Mercantile Marine. The ninth member is Mr. W. Milburn, a shipowner, and what I said about Mr. Anderson applies also to him. The tenth and last member is Mr. J. Havelock Wilson, who has certainly had some experience of the sea, in, I understand, the capacity of steward. I have not heard that he served in any other position. He is at present, I believe, Secretary of a Seamen and Firemen's Union, which is not registered. Whatever qualifications this gentleman might have to inquire into and report on Clauses 1and 2, I think your Lordships will agree, when you have heard what I will bring under your notice, that he is most unfit to inquire into, or report on Clause 3—the one dealing with desertion and other offences against discipline in the Mercantile Marine. Here is a copy of the circular which Mr. Wilson sent during the strike at Rotterdam,
  820
  to the seamen and firemen on British ships—
  "Fellow Seafarers:—The dock labourers and other port workers of Rotterdam, to the number of some 12,000, are now on strike, and I am informed that an effort is being made to compel the crews of British ships to work cargo, and to assist in defeating their fellow workmen in their struggle for fair conditions. I appeal to every one of you to absolutely refuse to do anything which will assist to bring about the defeat of the dock labourers. If you are on monthly boats, you are perfectly safe to refuse to touch or handle cargo. If you are on weekly boats where you may be discharged on arrival at the home port, and they insist upon your working cargoes, 'Ca' canny!'—that is to say, take it easy. There is no reason why you should overwork yourselves, and assist in injuring your fellow workmen. You may be offered extra pay. Don't accept it. Remember, every sixpence you take for such work means the starving of the wives and children of the dock labourers. Money taken for such work will never benefit you. Should this strike continue, I may find it necessary to visit Rotterdam at an early date to look after the interest of sailors and firemen.
  "Yours fraternally,
  (Signed)
  "J. Havelock Wilson.
  (General President of the National Sailors', Firemen's and Fishermen's Union of Great Britain and Ireland.")
  Your Lordships will see that he directly incited seamen and firemen to refuse to obey the orders of their captains and officers. A short time ago there was an article in The Times on this very Committee, the purport of which was that the President of the Board of Trade, having been bombarded with questions by the Irish Members on shipping matters, often of the most trivial kind, in pursuance of their compact with their friend Mr. Wilson, the President, in order to escape this worry, appointed this Committee and placed Mr. Wilson on it. The article is rather a long one, and, with the exception of a very short paragraph, I do not propose to read it. The paragraph I wish to quote is as follows—
  "The opinion is openly expressed in ship-owning circles that the Committee was demanded in the personal interests of Mr. Havelock Wilson, so that he might once more come to the front, and was conceded by Mr. Gerald Balfour in order that he might have a somewhat more comfortable time in Parliament this session than the Irish Party, acting as Mr. Havelock Wilson's representatives, would have otherwise have allowed him to have."
  I can hardly credit the statements made in this article. Surely, if any Minister

  821
  did so prostitute his position and misuse his powers as to appoint, simply to save himself some worry, an utterly unfit person to a position of great trust, that Minister would be unworthy of his post, and should be called on to resign. I understand that Mr. Wilson has several times been convicted and punished for offences against the law. He was imprisoned for six weeks at Cardiff. Yet, my Lords, he has been placed on the Local Marine Board of the Port of London—a Board appointed to administer the Merchant Shipping Act, which Mr. Wilson has constantly set at defiance. I can only describe this, in place of a stronger term, as a most extraordinary proceeding on the part of those responsible for it, and one that badly needs investigation. The ten Gentlemen whose names I have mentioned comprise the Committee who are to inquire into and report on matters that are not only of great importance to the Mercantile Marine, but to the United Kingdom and the British Empire in general. Your Lordships will observe that of that body of men who are most interested and best able to give an opinion on these matters—Imean the ship captains of the merchant service—now in active service there is not one member. Can your Lordships wonder, therefore, at the feeling that is shown in the following extract from a letter received by me from the secretary of the Merchant Service Guild?—
  "The greatest indignation is being expressed throughout the whole service at the manner in which this Committee has been formed, and at the lack of a sufficient number of practical men who would be able to guide the Committee in their dealings, and elicit from the witnesses what would be required."
  There is no excuse for the Board of Trade. They could have applied to the Merchant Service Guild, the largest body of ship captains and certified officers in the United Kingdom or in the world; or to the Mercantile Marine Service Association, the London Ship Masters' Society, or other kindred societies, and there would have been no lack of eminently practical men to aid the Committee in their enquiry. But as the Committee is at present constituted, both shipowners and the educated members of the profession regard it with distrust, and consider it a farce. I am afraid that the result of the Com-
  822
  mittee's labours will be the same as what I once heard the Prime Minister describe as the usual result of a Royal Commission—namely, nothing. I would suggest that either this Committee be dissolved and a new one appointed in its place, or that the present one be reconstructed, and those members who are not qualified for an inquiry into matters concerning the Mercantile Marine replaced by practical men fully acquainted with the subject under discussion, such as ship captains who have not retired from active service and are fully up-to-date. Then the Committee will secure that confidence on the part of the shipowners and the profession which it does not at present possess. I may say that, important as the matters are that the Committee propose to deal with, they do not embrace the interest of the Mercantile Marine as a whole, which I understood was the primary intention of the Board of Trade. Two most important subjects have not been mentioned. In view of the rapidly increasing competition of other nations, who rightly, regard their merchant navies as most important factors, both in peace and war, and encourage their shipowners in every way, the Committee should consider what encouragement and assistance could be rendered to our own shipowners to enable them to hold their own against foreign competition. Another important matter is the presence of foreign masters and officers in our own ships. In Ireland we have suffered for the past thirty years from ill-advised and unstatesmanlike legislation, but though the mischief has been very great, Ireland is but a very small portion of His Majesty's dominions, and those who have principally suffered have been the friends and supporters of the Government. As yet the mischief has not extended beyond Ireland. But if there is any truth in the allegations made in The Times article it seems that the same disastrous policy is commencing to be applied to the Mercantile Marine. Then the evil effects will no longer be confined to a small portion of the Empire but will extend far and wide, to the detriment of that service on which, under the good providence of God, second only to the Royal Navy, the wealth, strength, and safety of this Kingdom doth mainly depend.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (The Earl of DUDLEY): My Lords, I regret very much to hear that the noble Lord is not satisfied with the composition of the Committee recently appointed by the President of the Board of Trade. I am afraid, however, that it will be an absolutely impossible task to attempt to satisfy all the conflicting interests and views on the subject of the Mercantile Marine. The views expressed by my noble friend on these matters are very similar to those held by the Merchant Service Guild, who are, no doubt, distressed that no member of their body has been appointed to serve on this Committee; but without any disrespect to them I see no reason why they should have been selected any more than any other Association (there are many) to supply the Committee with a representative of the shipmasters. Captain Blake, who has been selected, has had a very long experience of the sea. He has served in sailing vessels, in steamships, in tramps, and in men-of-war, and has only recently left the sea His knowledge is, therefore, what my noble friend calls up-to-date. Captain Blake is an Elder Brother of the Trinity House, and is in every way qualified to represent the shipmasters upon this Committee. It seems to me that the noble Lord has entirely misconceived the functions of a Committee of this kind. He seems to imagine that what is wanted is a conglomeration of individuals who have already formed preconceived opinions with regard to the subjects referred to them. That is not my view of the functions of a Committee. The President of the Board of Trade no doubt sought for unprejudiced people, men of sense and judgment, who had not formed any preconceived notions with regard to the subjects that they were to be asked to consider. In this sense I hold that Captain Blake is a most worthy representative of the class he represents. My noble friend then referred to Mr. Burt. He said, I think, that Mr. Burt was a miner or had been a miner, and therefore had no practical knowledge of seafaring matters. That may be perfectly true. No one imagined that Mr. Burt was an expert on seafaring matters, but he is essentially a man of good sense and great judgment.
  824
  He is known, I think, all over the country for those characteristics, and he is, to my mind, an excellent gentleman to put, not only on this Committee, but on any Committee to consider subjects upon which information is required. Mr. Burt at one time filled an official position in the Board of Trade, and he is therefore pretty well conversant with many of the matters he will have to consider.
  I am not going to follow my noble friend into his history of Mr. Havelock Wilson, for I do not know whether it was accurate or not; but I know of nobody else who could represent so well the seamen and firemen whom it is absolutely necessary to have represented on the Committee. Although it is true that the Board of Trade warned Mr. Wilson that his position on the London Local Marine Board made his signature to what was known as the "Ca' canny" circular most improper, I do not think that the issue of that circular is sufficient ground for calling in question Mr. Wilson's appointment as a member of the Committee. Mr Wilson, as I have said, represents very largely the seamen and firemen, and we hope that he will help the Committee with regard to many of the questions which they will have to consider. Then my noble friend alluded to Captain Chalmers. Captain Chalmers is, as he says, at present an official of the Board of Trade, but he has had a very long sea experience. We have always found at the Board of Trade that his judgment upon marine matters is very accurate and very good, and I am quite sure my noble friend may feel certain that any views which Captain Chalmers may express on this Committee will not be in the least prejudiced or coloured from an official point of view. My noble friend finds fault with the reference to this Committee, and contends that we have not taken into our net sufficient subjects for inquiry. It seems to me that the task which the Committee have been asked to perform is already large. I do not admit for a moment that my noble friend or any one else has any right to criticise the reference which a Minister makes to a Committee. The reference is merely an instruction from a Minister who requires information upon certain subjects, and

  825
  it may be assumed that on the subjects left out of the reference there is already sufficient information at the Board of Trade. I am sorry that my noble friend is not satisfied, but I think that with the exception of the Merchant Service Guild and one or two other Associations of that character, whose grievances may be of a similar kind, the composition of the Committee has been received with tolerable satisfaction in the country.
  LORD PIRBRIGHT: I should like to ask whether Mr. Havelock Wilson is the gentleman who made himself somewhat notorious for many years by his opposition to shipowners, and who was regarded as a dangerous agitator?
  THE EARL OF DUDLEY: Even if that is true, it does not affect the question. This is not a Shipowners' Committee, but a Committee representative of all classes in the Mercantile Marine. We have appointed shipowners, shipmasters, and representatives of the seamen and firemen. Whether Mr. Havelock Wilson has made fiery speeches in the country or not does not affect us.

  CONTINUOUS DISCHARGES.
  LORD MUSKERRY: My Lords, I beg to ask the noble Earl how the continuous discharges have been found to work, and if they have in any way diminished what used to be rather a prevalent evil—the practice of men failing to join their ships after engaging themselves and signing the ship's articles.
  THE EARL OF DUDLEY: It is rather early yet to say definitely whether they will be a success, because they have only been in operation for a year. But, as far as we can judge, they are working satisfactorily and we have every reason to hope that if they are properly supported by both owners and masters they will prove to be a success and tend to minimise many of the evils of which my noble friend is well aware.
  House adjourned at a quarter before Seven o'clock, to Thursday next, a quarter past Four o'clock.