Sitting of 28 April 1903

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway Bill (King's consent signified), read the third time, and passed. [New Title.]
City and South London Railway Bill (Prince of Wales's consent signified), read the third time, and passed,
Sitting bourne District Gas Bill, as amended, considered; Amendments made; Bill to be read the third time.
Walker and Wallsend Union Gas Bill, as amended, considered; Amendments made; Bill to be read the third time.
Local Government Provisional Order (Housing of the Working Classes) Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill, read the third time, and passed.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill; Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill, read a second time, and committed.
London County Council (General Powers) Bill, reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

PRIVATE BILLS (GROUP C).
Sir JOHN BRUNNER reported from the Committee on Group C of Private Bills: That, for the convenience of parties, the Committee had adjourned till Wednesday, 6th May.
Report to lie upon the Table.

PRIVATE BILLS (GROUP D).
Mr. NICOL reported from the Committee on Group D of Private Bills: That the parties promoting the Nantyglo and Blaina Water Bill had stated that the evidence of Mr. Samuel Hood Cowper Coles, J.P., Land Agent, of Penmyarth, Crickhowell, Brecon, was essential to their case; and, it having been proved that his attendance could not be procured without the intervention of the House, he had been instructed to move that the said Samuel Hood Cowper Coles do attend the said Committee to-morrow, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
Ordered,: That, Mr. Samuel Hood Cowper Coles do attend the Committee
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on Group D of Private Bills to-morrow, at half past Eleven of the clock.
Coventry Electric Tramways Bill; Scarborough Gas Bill. Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

STANDING ORDERS.
Resolutions reported from the Select Committee:—

1. "That, in the case of the Grindle-ford, Baslow, and Bakewell Railway Bill, Petition for additional Provision, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to introduce their additional Provision if the Committee on the Bill think fit."

2. "That, in the case of the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (Extension of Time), Petition for Bill, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to proceed with their Bill."

3. "That, in the case of the Castle-blaney, Keady, and Armagh Railway (Extension of Time) Bill, Petition for additional Provision, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to introduce their additional Provision if the Committee on the Bill think fit."

4. "That, in the case of the Metropolitan District Railway (Various Powers) Bill, Petition for additional Provision, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with:—That the parties be permitted to introduce their additional Provision if the Committee on the Bill think fit."

Resolutions agreed to.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act for enlarging the powers of Investment of the Life Association of Scotland; and for other purposes." [Life Association of Scotland Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the Hexham Gas Company." [Hexham Gas Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to extend the objects and powers of the Lima Railways Company, Limited; and for other purposes. [Lima Railways Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act for further extending the powers of the India Rubber, Gutta Percha, and Telegraph Works Company, Limited." [India Rubber, Gutta Percha, and Telegraph Works Company Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to provide for an increase and re-arrangement of the share capital of North's Navigation Collieries (1889), Limited; and for other purposes." [North's Navigation Collieries Bill (Lords).]
Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the Faversham Gas Company; and for other purposes." [Faversham Gas Bill (Lords).]
And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the Exeter Railway Company to acquire additional lands; to revive and further extend the time for the completion of their authorised railways; to raise additional capital; and for other purposes." [Exeter Railway Bill (Lords).]
Life Association of Scotland Bill [Lords]; Hexham Gas Bill [Lords]; Lima Railways Bill [Lords]; India Rubber, Gutta Percha, and Telegraph Works Company Bill [Lords]; North's Navigation Collieries Bill [Lords]; Faversham Gas Bill [Lords]; Exeter Railway Bill [Lords], Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

PETITIONS.
  CHURCH DISCIPLINE BILL.
  Petition from Lewes, against; to lie upon the Table.

  COAL MINES REGULATION BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Park Lane; Tibshelf; B. Winning; Scholes; Cadeby Main; Kiveton Park; Edge Green; Haydock; Ashton Moss; South Normanton; Pye Hill; Shipley Woodside; Denby; Codnor; Cossall Lodge; Pentrich; Stanley Common; West Hallam; Bower (No. 1); Morton; Broxtowe; Cinder Hill; Hulton; Whitwell; Bruntcliffe; Mirfield; East Ardsley; Billinge; Chickenley Heath; Morley Main; Plumtree: Newstead; Wath Main; Kirk by; Langton;
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  Annesley; High Park; Bentinck; Moor Green; Digby; Stanton Hill; New Hucknall; New London; Brierley Hill; Portland; Bestwood; Linby; and Kearsley Collieries; to lie upon the Table.

  COUNTY COURTS JURISDICTION EXTENSION BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Faversham; New Windsor; Droitwich; Pontefract; Bodmin; Hyde; Dewsbury; Ossett; St. Ives; and Rochester; to lie upon the Table.
  DETENTION OF POOR PERSONS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Paisley; and Neilston; to lie upon the Table.
  EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN BILL.
  Petition from Paisley, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  GROCERS' LICENCES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Paisley, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING LAW (COMPENSATION FOR NON-RENEWAL) BILL.
  Petitions against: from Plymouth; Lewes (two); and Margate; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING (SCOTLAND) ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petitions for alteration: from Bal-maclellan; Dairy Galloway; Glasgow; Alexandria; Paisley; and Fen wick; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING (SCOTLAND) ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition of the National Council of the Young Men's Christian Association and Fellowship Union in Scotland, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LIQUOR TRAFFIC LOCAL VETO (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Paisley, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (SCOTLAND) ACT (1894) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Cathcart, against; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (TRANSFER OF POWERS) BILL.
  Petition from Ossett, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE' SISTER.
  Petition against: from Earl's Court; and Gravesend; to he upon the Table.
  PUBLIC HEALTH BILL.
  Petition from Halifax, against; to lie upon the Table.
  PUBLIC HOUSES (HOURS OF CLOSING) (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Edinburgh (seven); Glasgow (two); Greenock; Paisley; and Aberdeen; to lie upon the Table.
  PUBLIC LIBRARIES.
  Petitions for alteration of law: from Reading; Merthyr Tydfil; St. Helens; Salford; and Newton and Llanll wchaiarn; to lie upon the Table.
  RATING OF MACHINERY BILL.
  Petitions against: from West Ham; and Stepney; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF ADULTERATED BUTTER BILL.
  Petition from Upton Park, against; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF INTOXICATING LIQUORS ON SUNDAY BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Polegate; St. George's in the East; Erith; and Wigan; to lie upon the Table.
  SUPERANNUATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions from Cathcart, against; to lie upon the Table.

  TRADES DISPUTES BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Park Lane; Tibshelf; B. Winning; Scholes; Cadeby Main; Kiveton Park; Edge Green; Haydock; Ashton Moss; South Norman ton; Pye Hill; Shipley Woodside; Denby; Codnor; Cossall Lodge; Pent-rich; Stanley Common; West Hallam; Bowers (No. 1); Morton; Broxtowe; Cinder Hill; Hulton; Whitwell; Brunt-cliffe; Mirfield; East Ardsley; Billinge; Plumtree; Newstead; Bentinck; Wath Main; Annesley; High Park; Brierley
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  Hill; Moor Green; Dig by; New Huck-nall; Stanton Hills; New London; Kirkby; Portland; Bestwood; Linby; Kearsley; Langton; and Gars wood Hall Collieries; to lie upon the Table.

  WAGES BOARDS BILL.
  Petition from London, against; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  BURGHCLERE (HANTS) (CHARITY).
  Return ordered, "of the Correspondence between the Trustees of the Poor Allotment of Burghclere, Hants, and the Charity Commission respecting the recent proposals to sell the land comprised in that allotment."—(Mr. Chan-ning.)
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Grants in respect of Continuation Classes in Crofting Districts, 1902–3.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Lord Advocate if he will state how many schools in the Highland crofting counties received grants in respect of continuation classes during the year 1902–3, and the amount paid to these schools.
  (Answered by Mr. A. Graham Murray.) During the financial year 1902–3 the sum of £2,455 17s. 8d. was paid for continuation classes conducted in seventy-two schools in the Highland crofting counties.

  Prize-Firing of Cruiser "Pique" and Sloop "Rosario."
  MR. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state what were the number of rounds fired from the 6-inch and 4·7 guns and hits secured by the cruiser "Pique" during her recent prize-firing.
  MR. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state the number of rounds fired from the 4-inch guns and hits secured during her recent prize-firing by the sloop "Rosario."

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  (Answered by Mr. Arnold-Forster.) I have already stated in the House that the Board of Admiralty do not consider it to be in the public interest to give detailed particulars with respect to the shooting of individual ships, especially in view of the fact that similar particulars are not available in the case of any foreign Navy. The Board of Admiralty are fully aware of the necessity of obtaining a high standard of shooting in the Navy, and all necessary measures are being taken to secure the desired end. Every information as to the general progress of the Navy, as apart from the particulars of individual ships, will at all times be furnished to Parliament.

  Admiralty Expenditure on Wireless Telegraphy.
  MR. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state the present annual expenditure by the Lords of the Admiralty upon wireless telegraphy.
  (Answered by Mr. Arnold Forster.) The present average expenditure upon wireless telegraphy is about £20,000 per annum.

  Niclausse Boilers in the Navy.
  MR. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state the results of the experiments of the Admiralty with the Niclausse boiler.
  (Answered by Mr. Arnold-Forster.) The results of the experiments with the Niclausse boiler are given in Parliamentary Paper [Cd. 1380], of 1902, entitled "Report on Trials of H.M.S. 'Sheldrake,' H.M.S 'Seagull,' H.M.S. 'Espiégle,' and H.M.S.' Fantôme.'"

  Lottery at Thomastown School, Kilkenny.
  MR. MANSFIELD: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the drawing of prizes in connection with the schools and convent at Thomastown, County Kilkenny; and, if so, will he state whether he proposes to take any steps in the matter.
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  (Answered by Mr. Atkinson.) At my right hon. friend's request I will reply to this Question. It has been the settled policy and practice of the Executive in Ireland for many years not to prosecute, at the suit of the Crown, persons who conduct lotteries at bazaars held for bonâ-fide charitable objects, inasmuch as their acts, though possibly technical violations of the law, are not at all within the mischief aimed at by the several Lotteries Acts. This rule has been applied irrespective of creed and class.

  Reduction of Light Dues.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, having regard to the accumulation in the amount of the Light Dues Fund to £345,000 or thereabouts, it is intended, and, if so, when, and to what extent, to reduce the scale of light dues.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) It is proposed to reduce the scale of light dues for the current financial year, but I cannot yet say to what extent.

  St. Louis International Exhibition.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether anything, and, if so, what, has been and is being done as to British co-operation in the International Exhibition at St. Louis; whether any, and, if so, what, Commission' has been or is to be appointed; and what grant is to be made for the purposes.
  (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to approve of the appointment of a Royal Commission, with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales as President, to advise as to the organisation of the British exhibit. The appointment of the Commission is notified in the London Gazette of the 24th instant. His Majesty's Government have decided that a sum of £30,000 shall be included in the Estimates for the year 1903–4 for the purpose of the Exhibition decision as to what further amount shall be provided is deferred until it is ascertained to what extent a larger sum may

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  be required. The office of the Commission is at 47, Victoria Street, S.W.

  Superannuation Allowance of John Keane, of Galway.
  MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland if he will explain why a superannuation allowance has been refused to John Keane, who has' been for the last seventeen years in charge of the Barna Male School in the borough of Galway.
  (Answered by Mr. Arthur Elliot.) The Commissioners of National Education notified to the Teachers' Pension Office on the 30th October, 1901, that Mr. John Keane had resigned his position as teacher in Barna-National School. This was confirmed by Mr. Keane, who applied for and received on the 12th December, 1901, the repayment of his pension premiums under Pension Rule 11 (2). Two months later he wrote claiming a disablement pension, and in reply was informed that as he had been repaid his premiums he had no further claim upon the pension fund.

  Irish Land Purchase—Default of Payment.
  SIR JOHN COLOMB: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the amounts in each year from the grants-in-aid of local taxation on account of defaults in payment of instalments by tenant purchasers between 1891 and 31st March, 1903; and whether, and if so how, the Guarantee Fund has been recouped those amounts.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The amounts withdrawn from the Guarantee Fund in respect of instalments accrued due to 1st November and in arrear on 12th February in each year are as follows:—Year ended 12th February, 1893, £404 15s. 5d.; 1894, £2,289 0s. 4d.; 1895, £2,857 12s. 10d.; 1896, £2,811 11s. 10d.; 1897, £2,824 18s. 8d.; 1898,£2,210 5s.11d.;1899,£3,310 1s.11d.; l900,£4,55516s.2d.;1901,£5,930 10s.11d.; 1902,£7,85219s.9d.;1903,£8,383 18s.11d. The arrears have been reduced to £3,051 12s. 2d. at the present date, and there is every reason to expect that the
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  sums due to the fund will be repaid thereto. The arrears when recovered are repaid to the fund.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  15-Pounder Gun.
  MAJOR SEELY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the improved pattern of 15-pounder issued to the new batteries in 1899 is the same gun as the 1885 pattern, with the addition only of a spade to take recoil; and what is the number of aimed shots that can be fired per minute by the 1885, 1899, and quick-firing Ehrherdt guns respectively.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. BRODRICK, Surrey, Guildford): The 15-pounder gun of the 1899 pattern is not the same pattern as that of 1885, though it fires the same ammunition. It is not usual to give the number of aimed shots fired per minute, but the results show a steady progress in the rate of fire in accordance with the newness of the pattern.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: When the right hon. Gentleman speaks of an improved gun does he mean the same with the change suggested in the Question.
  MR. BRODRICKsaid he could not go into technicalities but parts of the gun had been improved and it fired quicker.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: Improved by the opening of the breach in the opposite direction. It is not a quick-firing gun I take it.
  MR. BRODRICK: No, it is not a quick-firing gun in the sense generally understood.

  Army Returns.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will grant the Returns respecting the Volunteers, Royal Garrison Regiments, Army Reserve, and Military Works, which appear on today's Notice Paper.
  The Returns referred to are as follows—

  Volunteers—Address for Return respecting the Volunteers, in the following form:—

  Officers.

  Men.

  Battalions.

  Number of Volunteer battalions

  Number of battalions qualified under new regulations for inclusion in Army Corps Scheme

  Number required by Scheme

  Number of efficients who have earned Capitation Grant, 1902

  Strength of Volunteers—

  1st day of January, 1903

  1902

  1901

  1900

  1899

  Shortage of Officers—

  1903

  1899

  Military Works and Stores—Address for Return respecting Military Works and Stores, in the following form:—

  Military Stores.

  Artillery.

  Fortifications.

  Barracks.

  Amount of money expended;—

  1899

  1900

  1901

  1902

  1903

  Army Reserve—Address for Return showing the state of the Army Reserve, in the following form:—

  1st Class.

  2nd Class.

  3rd Class.

  Strength, 1st day of January, 1899

  Strength, 1st day of January, 1893

  From 1st day of January, 1899, to 1st day of January, 1903—

  Killed in action

  Died

  Discharged through disease

  Discharged for misconduct

  Re-engaged to serve in India

  Re-engaged during demobilisation with units at Home

  Number who have less than two years to serve in the Reserve

  Number who will complete Army service and pass
  into the Reserve next year

  Number of Reservists required under the Army Corps Scheme on mobilisation of the Six Army Corps

  Royal Garrison Regiments.—Address for Return showing the annual cost of the Royal Garrison Regiment now stationed at Malta; the number of cases of drunkenness, of
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  courts-martial, and of diseases treated in hospital which have occurred within the last twelve months; the number of women and children borne on the strength of the Regiment; and a

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  comparison of these figures with the respective figures in any particular Regular Battalion in the same garrison; the number of Royal Garrison Regiments sanctioned by Parliament; and the number as yet formed.
  MR. BRODRICK: My hon. friend has been already told that these Returns will be granted, except in the case of that for the Army Reserve, some details of which cannot be granted. Perhaps he will be good enough to see that the form of the address is duly corrected.
  MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: Do I understand that the Return will be granted subject to this modification.
  MR. BRODRICK: Yes, Sir.

  Employment for Discharged Soldiers.
  MR. MANSFIELD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the statement of the Superintendent of Police for the Holland Division of Lincolnshire to the Standing Joint Committee of the Holland County Council that the increase in the number of cases of begging from sixty-four in 1901–2 to 103 in 1902–3 was due to the number of soldiers returning from South Africa and the scarcity of work; and, if so, whether he will consider the advisability of taking steps to find employment for discharged soldiers.
  MR. BRODRICK: My attention has not been drawn to this matter, nor have I any reason to think that the increase in begging cases was due to the number of soldiers returning from South Africa who were unable to obtain employment. The information in the hands of the War Office as regards this question is set out somewhat fully in the Report of the Inspector-General of Recruiting.

  Late Captain Mackenzie, Norfolk Regiment.
  MR. MANSFIELD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the evidence given at the inquest on the late Captain Charles Douglas M'Kenzie, of the Norfolk Regiment, to the effect that the deceased officer had been worried on account of his not having received his pay from the
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  Imperial Yeomanry; and whether he can take steps to expedite the payment of arrears of pay to officers and men of the Imperial Yeomanry.
  MR. BRODRICK: This unfortunate officer left his accounts in the hands of his pay-sergeant. These accounts, which were in a state of great confusion, have required considerable time to balance. It became apparent that a large cash credit on which Captain Mackenzie had drawn was non-existent, and two senior officers of the Pay Department went into the matter with him, and explained the position to him, as he had kept no records. No blame whatever attaches to the War Office in the matter, and the confused condition of some of these Yeomanry accounts is the main reason why some of the arrears of pay have not been issued. All possible despatch is being employed.

  The Late Sir Hector Macdonald.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state the circumstances which led Sir West Ridgway, the Governor of Ceylon, to entrust the inspection and review at the Coronation Parade to the late General Sir Hector Macdonald; will he state whether this action was taken with the sanction of the Colonial Office; and whether it was the duty of the Governor to be present at this function.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN, Birmingham, W.): The late Sir Hector Macdonald was present at the Coronation Review at Colombo, because he was at that time the General Officer commanding the troops in Ceylon. It was physically impossible for the Governor to attend, as he was at the time a royal guest at the Coronation here. In his absence the Lieutenant-Governor was present. The Colonial Office had nothing to do with the local arrangements, and was not consulted.

  British Commerce in Western Persia— The River Karun.
  MR. SCHWANN (Manchester, N.): I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can give the values and bulk, during the last

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  five years, of the total traffic on the River Karun into Western Persia; and whether any, and if so what, steps have been taken to promote the use of that route for commerce by British and Indian traders.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,: Following are the values of the imports into the Karun ports taken from the trade reports of His Majesty's Vice-Consul at Mohammerah; 1897, £26,030; 1898, £72,817; 1899, £62,971; 1900, £100,437; 1901 (Ahwaz only), £72,358. It would be impossible within the limits of a Question to deal with the statistics of bulk, but I would refer the hon. Member to the following reports in the Annual Series, Nos. 2186, 2346, 2442, 2631, 2803. The question of the best means of encouraging the use of this route by British and Indian traders has the constant attention of His Majesty's Government. Steps are being taken for the appointment of a British Vice-Consul to reside at Ahwaz on the Karun.

  Labour Recruiting for the South African Mines.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the Blantyre Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce has entered a protest against recruiting for labour for mines on the ground that the labour supply in the British East Africa Protectorate is already insufficient for local requirements; and, in view of this protest, will he consider the desirability of discouraging any attempt to obtain labour for the South African mines from this source.
  LORD CRANBORNE: A petition has been received from the British Central Africa Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce to the effect stated. The experimental recruiting of 1,000 natives from the British Central Africa Protectorate has already been authorised, and pending the result of this experiment it is not proposed to take any further steps in this direction.

  The Operations in Somaliland.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE (Bristol, E.): I wish to ask the Under Secretary
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  of State for Foreign Affairs a Question of which I have given him private notice—namely, whether it is not a fact that the whole of the territories in which General Manning's operations are taking place are outside the boundaries of British Somali-land and within the sphere of influence of either Italy or Abyssinia.
  LORD CRANBORNE: The answer shortly to the Question of the hon. Gentleman is in the affirmative, but the troops which are acting on the lines of communication under General Manning are operating within the British sphere.
  MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: Is there any precedent for the employment of British troops in territories which are outside our boundaries, without consultation with, or sanction obtained from, Parliament.
  LORD CRANBORNE: That is a matter which I shall have to inquire into.

  Medical Practice at Kobé.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that Mr. Samuel T. Knaggs, M.D., F.R.C.S.I., applied in December last to practice his profession at Kobé, Japan, but was informed by the British Consul at Kobé, that the licence could not be granted until investigation regarding the diplomas had been made in this country; and whether, seeing that Dr. Knaggs was accredited to the British Consul at Kobé by the Premier and Chief Secretary of the State of New South Wales as having held Government appointments in that State, will he ascertain why the British Consul did not take steps to satisfy the Japanese authorities as to Dr. Knaggs' bonâ fides without awaiting the result of inquiries in this country.
  LORD CRANBORNE: I have no information on this subject, but His Majesty's Consul at Kobé will be requested to report the facts.

  Fines in Belfast Factories.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been

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  called to the case of Squire, His Majesty's Inspector of Factories, v. Messrs. McBride and Williams, of Belfast, under the Truck Act of 1896, Section 2, Subsection (1), in which it was shown that two girls were fined for damaged work to an amount in excess of the wage which they could have received for the work had it been perfect, while a third, of fourteen years of age, was fined nearly a third of her weekly wage; if so, will he state whether an appeal will take place; and whether, seeing that a series of such cases has shown that the section does not fulfil the purpose of protecting the workers from fines which are disproportionate to their earnings, he will consider the advisability of proposing an amendment of the law.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. COCHRANE,: This case is engaging the careful attention of the Department, but no final decision has been arrived at. The necessary steps for an appeal have, however, been taken in case that course should be determined upon.

  Wireless Telegraphy for British Light Vessels.
  MAJOR SEELY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if the will explain why the light vessels round the coasts of the British Islands have not been fitted with the same wireless telegraphy apparatus as has been fitted to His Majesty's ships and certain mail steamers.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,: I have explained to my hon. and gallant friend that up to the present time, in spite of careful negotiation, the Board of Trade have been unable to effect arrangements for a system of wireless telegraphy from shore to ship, and ship to shore. The same difficulties have not arisen in the case of communication between ships at sea. I can assure my hon. and gallant friend that I attach great importance to this subject, which has engaged my personal attention, and that I shall do everything I can to make the necessary arrangements as soon as possible.
  MAJOR SEELY: In view of the fact that the Marconi Company says it wishes to put no obstacle in the way of this being carried out, that the failure in the matter was caused by a misunderstanding, and as the first cost would only he two or three hundred pounds per light vessel, will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider his answer.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I have said I will do everything I possibly can, I do not see how I can go beyond that.

  Scottish Harbour Grants.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will state the amount which has been granted in aid of harbours in Scotland by the Committee appointed in 1899; and how much of that sum has been allocated in aid of harbours in the Highland crofting counties.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Grants amounting to £31,500 have been promised to harbours in Scotland on the recommendation of the Committee appointed in 1899. No grant has been made in aid of any harbours in the Highland crofting counties.

  Avoch (Ross-shire) Channel Lights.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord Advocate whether arrangements have yet been made to carry out the scheme of the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners for lighting the channel off Avoch, Ross-shire.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I have directed that sanction be given to the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners to enable them to incur the necessary expenditure for this work.

  Naval Expenditure.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the desire of the Government for a general agreement amongst the Powers for the curtailment of naval expenditure has been communicated officially to the Governments of the Powers.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,: The

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  views of the Government have been publicly expressed in this House, and it has not been thought necessary to make any formal communication to the Governments of the Powers on the subject, nor, as at present advised, do we think any object would be gained by making any such communication.

  Scottish Land Laws.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Government will consider the expediency of introducing land legislation for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland similar to that now under consideration for Ireland.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No, Sir, there is no parallel between the two cases, and the House has before it the main lines of the legislative programme of the Government for the session.

  London Education Bill.
  MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education a Question of which I have given him private notice, viz., what will be the additional charge on the Exchequer of the London Education Bill and what additional burden will be thrown by it on the London ratepayers?
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir William ANSON,: I am not now prepared to give an answer. I am sorry to say I misunderstood the note of the hon. Member, but I will furnish him with the information he desires at the earliest possible opportunity.
  MR. LOUGH: I wanted it before the debate.

THE LATE MR. HANBURY.
MR. SCHWANN,who had upon the Paper two Questions addressed to the President of the Board of Agriculture, withdrew them and said he hoped he might be allowed to express his deep regret, which he was sure was shared by every Member of the House, at the unexpected and most sudden bereavement which had fallen upon the House. Having regard to the great sincerity, ability, and energy with which he always discharged
660
his official duties, he was sure the whole House had anticipated for Mr. Hanbury a successful career in statesmanship and will deeply regret his death.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR,rising at the conclusion of Questions, said—I hope the House will not think lam taking a course which is at all improper if I ask to be allowed to take this opportunity to express the sympathy which, I am sure, is deeply felt on both sides of the House, and equally on both sides of the House, for the sudden, the tragic, loss of the distinguished statesman who passed away this morning. There is no parallel for such an event during the sitting of the House in my not short experience of Parliament, but yet I feel confident I am only taking the course which the House would desire me to take. Mr Hanbury was for nearly a generation a prominent and distinguished member of this Assembly. No man, I think, had a greater love for the House of Commons; no man had a minuter or more accurate knowledge of its procedure; no man, in or out of office, was more assiduous in his attendance or more anxious to take his full share of the work which devolves upon this hard-worked Assembly. Of Mr. Hanbury as Minister for Agriculture we know much; but we do not know, I think, all he would have been able to do in that office. It was quite evident to those who watched his career that he brought to it an originality of method and a desire to adapt what is, after all, a young office to the needs of the agricultural community which have won tributes of praise and regard from all those interested in agricultural pursuits in every part of Great Britain. By his loss, not only do all the many friends which he possessed on both sides of the House and among all sections of politics greatly suffer, but the House itself loses one of its oldest and one of its most distinguished Members, and the country at large is deprived of the services of a man whom we had every reason to believe for many years to come would be able to devote his great administrative capabilities to the benefit of the country. That sadness greatly adds to the sympathy which everybody will feel for those whom he has left behind. Everybody must feel how dark is the shadow cast over our proceedings by the sudden

661
disappearance from among us of one who not a week ago was taking an active part in Cabinet and Parliamentary work.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am sure all Members of the House would wish to associate themselves with the expressions to which the Prime Minister has just given utterance. I have, indeed, nothing to add to his plain and feeling statement. Mr. Hanbury has been long a conspicuous and distinguished member of the House; he was devoted to the House of Commons, and to his work in it; he was strenuous, industrious, vigorous, frank, friendly, accessible. I do not know that any better qualities could be attributed to any member of the House of Commons. He has been taken from us—cut down in the flower of his age. There remains to us nothing but a friendly and regretful memory of him, and I think, while expressing that regret, we can only add a word of sincere sympathy with the sorrowing wife he has left behind him.
MR. JOHN REDMOND: I hope the House will allow me to add one word in order to emphasise, if it is necessary to do so, the absolute unanimity of feeling on this subject in all parts of the House. There is no portion of the House where the sentiments expressed by the First Lord of the Treasury are more universally felt than here among my colleagues on these benches. In the past it has been my fortune on more than one occasion to hold communications with the late Mr. Hanbury on Irish affairs, and I always found him a man of courageous and independent judgment, and, in addition to that, a man full of sympathy with the wants and needs of Ireland.
MR. CHAPLIN: As a member of this House who for a great number of years has been more or less connected with agriculture I hope it will not be regarded as presumption on my part if I ask leave to say how entirely I desire to associate myself with every word that has fallen from the Leader of the House. When Mr. Hanbury was appointed Minister for Agriculture it may be remembered that some criticisms were made on the
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appointment of a man who was not supposed to be directly connected with that interest. He lived to falsify every one of those apprehensions. His zeal, his energy, his activity in the interest of that great industry, which constituted almost a new departure, have never been equalled. He won the esteem and commanded the confidence of the whole agricultural interest. His work will not easily be forgotten, and his loss will be deeply deplored by the agricultural world, and by none more than by myself.
SIR WILLIAM TOMLINSON: Having sat for eighteen years as the colleague of the late Mr. Hanbury in the representation of Preston, I hope I may be allowed to add an expression of my deep sorrow for the loss we have sustained—a loss in which I have a personal share. I only wish to lay a little emphasis on his great devotion to the duties of the office he held. Only on Monday week he and I were present at a great meeting of our constituents, and although to address a mass of people is not a light thing, so desirous was he not to miss any opportunity of promoting the interests of his Department that he went to Preston specially for that purpose, and against my desire travelled back by the night mail. I assure the House that I can speak in the name of the constituency for which he sat when I say that one and all of its members, to whatever party they belong, feel his loss very deeply.

BOROUGH FUNDS BILL.
Reported from the Standing Committee on Law, etc., without Amendment.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 127.]
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 127.]
Bill to be considered upon Thursday.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (TRANSFER OF POWERS) BILL.
Reported from the Standing Committee on Law, etc., with Amendments.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 128.]
Minutes of the proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. [No. 128.]
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be considered upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 168.]

SELECTION STANDING COMMITTEES.
Mr. HALSEYreported from the Committee of Selection; That they had added to the Standing Committee on Law and Courts of Justice, and Legal Procedure the following fifteen members in respect of the Pistols Bill:—Major Kenneth Balfour, Mr. Thomas Bayley, Lord Alwyne Compton, Mr. Cameron Corbett, Mr. Cremer, Mr. Crooks, Mr. John Dewar, Mr. Duke, Mr. Helme, Mr. Batty Langley, Mr. Lowe, Sir William Rattigan, Mr. Renwick, Mr. Stuart-Wortley, and Mr. Tomkinson.
Report to lie upon the Table.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to—
Army (Annual) Bill, without Amendment.

LONDON EDUCATION BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Heading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I rise to move that the Bill be read a second time this day six months, and in doing so may I say that I am acting, I believe, on behalf of the whole Opposition. I am quite sure that I have in this matter the entire and absolute sympathy of my London colleagues; and as showing some justification for the position I am occupying, may I say that some years ago, in the dim and distant past, I had the honour for six years of being a member of the London School Board. I may therefore claim as much knowledge of the problem we have to
  664
  solve as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University has gained in his experience at the Education Department. At the outset, and before dealing with the merits of the Bill, I wish to enter a protest which I believe will have the sympathy of the whole House. We have of late got into a system of Bill by reference. This Bill affects the whole of London, with its population of five or six millions, yet there is only one comprehensible clause in it; all the other clauses are examples of legislation by reference. Therefore the hon. Gentleman in charge of it will have to excuse me if in the course of my remarks I misinterpret the measure in any particular.
  There is only one good word that I can say for the Bill, and that is that in regard to higher education the limited rate of 2d. is excluded from London, and the County Council and local authority will be able to spend such money as they desire in the furtherance of higher education. I am bound to say, however, I fear their power in that direction will be considerably curtailed in consequence of the addition to the rates which will be necessary for the relief which is to be given to the subscribers to voluntary schools. In discussing this Bill I think we shall have one advantage which we did not enjoy in the debates on last year's Bill. Last year the questions discussed turned chiefly on the religious question and the question of the non-provided schools, whereas now all we have chiefly to consider is the questions of the Authority and of the provided schools. That is due to the fact that the proportion of voluntary schools as compared with board schools is comparatively small in London, to the fact that in every case the parent has a choice of schools, and also to the way in which the London School Board has carried out its work, which has done much to alleviate the religious difficulty. I desire, however, to say that we strongly protest against rate aid being given to voluntary schools without complete public control, and shall continue to protest until we have the opportunity of reversing that policy. I am glad to think, however, that in London the matter is not such an acute one as it is in the case of those 8,000 parishes of which we heard so much in the debates of last year, in which Nonconformist parents were not only bound to support the voluntary schools, but are

  665
  also compelled to send their children to schools with the religious atmosphere of which they disagree.
  The religious question being then less acute in London than in the provinces, some of us had hoped that, in the circumstances, the Government would have dealt with the education question in London courageously and comprehensively, so as to promote national education. But we have been woefully disappointed. On the occasion of the First Reading of this Bill all of us who spoke on this side of the House condemned both its principles and details. I do not think it improves on acquaintance; the more we have looked at it the less we have liked it, and I think our criticisms on the First Reading were mild in comparison with those we shall have to direct against the measure now. The Government had an opportunity of dealing with this matter on broad general lines, and I would like to point out to the House that they could have dealt with it entirely apart from the Bill of last year, the only vital principle being the co-ordination of education under a single authority, on which we are all agreed. It cannot be pretended that any other vital principle is involved. Nor does the Bill embody the only proposal the Government had before them. It is an open secret that the Government have considered some scores of plans which they have debated, altered, or rejected until the proposals finally solidified into their present form, which is, I think, the worst of all. They cannot, therefore, at all events, plead the question of principle. Then there was no obligation on them to follow slavishly for London the policy they had laid down for the country. In regard to educational matters, London has always been treated separately from the country. I find that the largest number of children in average attendance in schools in any town in the provinces is 75,000—at both Birmingham and Manchester. But in London the number in average attendance is 750,000, and, therefore, while it may be right to municipalise our education in cases where you are dealing with 75,000 children, it may be the height of folly to do so when you are dealing with 750,000 children. It may be quite right to give the control of 75,000 children to a municipal body in the country, but at the same, time it may
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  be the height of inexpediency to give the control of 750,000 to any municipal body existing in London. Then we are not dealing with the same municipal bodies in London as in the country. The London County Council is not a County Council except in name—it is a deal more so; the Borough Councils are not Borough Councils except in name—they are a good deal less so. My hon. friend apparently does not agree with that, but I will ask him this: If the Borough Councils in London are in exactly the same position as County Borough Councils in the country, why do not the Government propose to divide London up into twenty-nine separate places, and to give to each the control of education in its district? The hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education knows that that would be impossible, and that is, shortly, my answer to his contention that the Borough Councils in London are the same as the County Borough Councils in the country.
  That being so, and the Government having, as I think, a clean slate in the matter, and having a free hand, surely it was their duty to take into consultation those primarily interested. I should have thought that when they were going to abolish a body like the London School Board and to confer these duties on the County and Borough Councils they would have taken all these into consultation. But they did nothing of the kind; and now they are trying to rush the Second Reading of the Bill, without any adequate reason, before the two great bodies concerned have had any opportunity of expressing an opinion upon it. Of course I know why they are doing so. The debate on the First Reading showed that the general sense of the House was that the Bill as it stood was ridiculous, and the Government are afraid that unless they can get the Second Reading before the County Council and the School Board have an opportunity of criticising the measure, it will be so torn to shreds that they will have to withdraw it altogether. Where are they getting support for this Bill from? I presented a petition against it from thirty-five members of the School Board, including

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  clergymen of the Church of England, Roman Catholic priests, Moderates, and others who in the ordinary way support the Government. The Parliamentary Committee of the London County Council though they have had very little time to consider the Bill, have levelled a most crushing indictment against it. Further than that, thirteen, I believe, of the Borough Councils have passed resolutions declaring that they do not desire it, and I should like to know how many of the rest have passed resolutions in favour of the Bill. Then to turn to the debate on the First Reading. The hon. Members for the Strand, for South Manchester and for one of the Divisions of Essex, all representative men, with regard to a question of this nature, spoke in the course of that debate, and absolutely condemned the principle of the Bill and the inclusion in it of the Borough Councils. Is that the kind of support which the Government are going to get from Members of this House and from Moderates outside?
  What is the problem with which the Government has to deal in this question? Its magnitude I have already mentioned. There are 750,000 children in average attendance in the Metropolis. There are some thousand schools and 20,000 teachers, so that the problem is as great as if we were dealing with the education of Scotland as a whole. We are all agreed that what is required in dealing with this matter is the coordination of all grades of education, and the placing of all education in the hands of a single authority. There were then three courses open to the Government. There was, first, the adoption of the ad hoc principle—viz., the creation of a body directly elected for the purpose of education or for some other general purpose, like the School Board or the London County Council. The second alternative was to make the London County Council the sole and supreme authority; and the third was what is commonly called a Water Board, to create a conglomeration of heterogeneous authorities, one part directly elected, and the other part created by the- process of selection and of delegation. I want to ask the hon. Gentleman why the Government passed over the ad hoc authority, and deliberately chose what I consider to
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  be the worst of the three plans. I am not going to say much about the London School Board. Everybody who has watched its course will admit that, during the thirty years it has been in existence, it has done admirable work for the citizens of London. It has had one advantage. It has been an absolutely pure body. It has had another advantage, viz., the enormous influence it has exercised in London in bringing together different sections of public men, belonging to different denominations, and inducing them to work together for the good of the children of London. It has had an additional advantage in the shape of the assistance of many talented women who have helped in its work. These women, unfortunately, have now ceased to take their proper share in the work. I admit that there have been blemishes in the work of the London School Board; but surely, in the establishment of a reformed body, it would have been a very simple matter to take steps which would cause those blemishes to disappear. The hope of some of us was, that we should have had an educational Authority efficient for all purposes, rising from the ashes of the London School Board.
  But the Government have wantonly put that alternative aside. The Secretary for the Board of Education, in dealing with the London School Board, argued that the electors take no interest in its proceedings. I do not entirely agree with him there. I deplore, as all of us who have anything to do with London government must deplore, the very great apathy that is shown by the ordinary London citizen. But it is not a remedy for that to abolish the only opportunity which the citizens now have of taking a direct interest in educational matters. Surely, the best way of dealing with such a state of things is to give greater powers and greater work to your educational authority, and thereby seek to create greater interest among the citizens of London in its work. Again, the hon. Gentleman said there was too much centralisation, that the administration of the School Board was over-centralised. I entirely agree with him in that. When I was a member of the Board, and, indeed, eversince, I have considered that this over-centralisation is a very great fault. But that is, after all, a comparatively small matter, which could have been easily remedied if the School Board had been

  669
  taken as a basis of authority. It could have been reformed in the way I have suggested.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.): I did not quite catch what reforms the hon. Member suggested.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I am sorry I did not make myself clear. What I meant to convey was, that if the School Board had been made a larger and more important body, that would necessarily have led to a very considerable amount of local decentralisation.
  The third objection which the hon. Gentleman made to the London School Board was, that the members were over-zealous, and in connection with that he referred to the Cockerton judgment. But, in regard to that matter, may I point out that their action was encouraged and endorsed by the Education Department itself? I admit that the encouragement was given at a time when there was still a spark of educational zeal left at the Education Department, but still I should have thought that was no reason for abolishing the Board. It was, on the contrary, a reason for giving it greater and better work to do. In former days, when we promoted reforms in this House, our plan was to uproot rotten trunks and to get rid of rotten branches. But the idea of reform of the hon. Gentleman to-day seems to be to cut down young and vigorous trees, instead of digging round about the roots and pruning the branches, so that they may grow more vigorously in the future than in the past.
  But the real reason why the hon. Gentleman desires to abolish the School Board is to be found in what he calls the unfortunate characteristics of direct election. [Sir WILLIAM ANSON dissented.] The hon. Gentleman said, I think, that direct election led to certain unfortunate characteristics of delegation.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANOSN,: I said direct election for one purpose only.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I do not wish to misrepresent the hon. Gentleman,
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  but I desire to remind the House that this was his most formidable objection to the London School Board. He went on to say that the elections did not turn on purely educational questions, and that the voters were swayed by political, social and local reasons. He said, further, that London electors will vote for Mr. B., whom they know and appreciate, but will not vote for Mr. A., whom they do not know, although he may be the better educational expert, and, in the opinion of the hon. Gentleman, ought to be elected rather than Mr. B. He went on to say that it would be of no use having experts on the Board if they were to be swamped by directly elected Members. Therefore, direct election is to be abolished as far as the School Board is concerned. This is the most astonishing doctrine of representative government which I have ever heard advanced in the House of Commons, and it was cheered by hon. Gentlemen opposite. The Conservative Party was once called an "organised hypocrisy," and, really, if this is the view of hon. Gentlemen opposite in regard to local representative bodies, it is curious that they should have created the London County Council, which is an ad hoc authority directly elected for municipal purposes, and Borough Councils, which are also ad hoc authorities directly elected. If hon. Gentlemen are going to be logical they must abolish these bodies, as well as the School Board. But I want to know from the Secretary to the Board of Education how he will be better off in this respect when he has abolished the London School Board, and handed its powers over to the County and Borough Councils. He has laid it down that the local educational authority should be an authority popularly elected, and directly responsible to the ratepayers. In his speech the other day, he said there would be elections for the County and Borough Councils in. which educationists can take an interest. I want to ask him this. He says when they are voting direct for an educational body the voters are swayed by local, political and social questions. When next November and next March the elections referred to by the hon. Gentleman take place, are the electors

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  going to be simply influenced by educa-cational matters, or are they not likely to be swayed by political, social and local reasons as well as, I trust, by municipal reasons? I think under those circumstances the hon. Gentleman's favourite, Mr. A., will have a good deal less chance of securing election to one of these bodies than if he were standing for a purely educational authority.
  No, Sir, the only logical outcome of the hon. Gentleman's position is this. That he himself and the Education Department should select every representative on the education authority; and a more eminently unfit body to carry on a democratic work like education than that would be, I cannot possibly conceive. I want to put one further question to the hon. Gentleman in regard to this question of election, and that is, how far the electors will have an opportunity of expressing their opinions in regard to educational matters? I venture to say that some of us will be placed in a difficult position at future elections. This position may arise and will arise. I will take two candidates for my purpose—Mr. C, and Mr. D. Mr. C. is a good man at municipal work, but he knows as little about educational matters as the late President of the Board of Education—he may not even know what a pupil teacher is. Mr. D. has great knowledge of educational natters, but is very hazy in the matter of drains. Now, I want both good education and good drains, but if I vote for Mr. C. I get good drains and bad education, while if I vote for Mr. D. I shall get good education and shall probably die from typhoid fever. That is the sort of quandary in which many of us will be placed. It is no exaggeration at all, and I venture to say that the more elections turn on municipal matters the worse it will be for education, while the more they turn on educational matters the worse it will be for municipal work. There is another point I must put to the hon. Gentleman, and I can assure him that all these are practical and not mere debating points. He says that the se bodies are to be popularly elected and directly responsible to the ratepayers. It is of no use their being directly responsible, unless the ratepayers have an opportunity, not only of expressing their views, but of giving effect to them by, if necessary, changing the personnel of
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  the bodies. What I want to know is this. He says that the electors, under his proposal, are to have practical means of bringing home to the bodies which they elect the particular educational views and policy which they desire to see pursued. But how are you going to secure that in the body he proposes to create? It is divided into three sections, one elected by one set of ratepayers to the London County Council, another elected by another set of ratepayers to the Borough Councils, and a third not elected by any ratepayers at all. How are the ratepayers as a whole going to express their views in regard to grave educational matters which may have to be dealt with by this body? There are 118 elected members of the London County Council. At the outside only thirty-five of these can, by any possibility, have any direct power over educational matters. In the case of the Borough Councils it will be only one member out of forty or fifty who will have a direct voice in educational matters. We are thus brought to this position. Unless the election of the whole 118 members of the London County Council is to turn on educational matters the ratepayers will have no control over these questions. And, speaking as a ratepayer, I assert that the chances are forty to one against a particular ratepayer even having an opportunity of giving a vote which will influence the Borough Councils in educational matters, while it will be a four to one chance in the I case of the London County Council.: It is, therefore, a farce for the hon. Gentleman to say that there will be complete electoral control over the election. This all comes from the abolition of direct election in the body which is to govern London education.
  But supposing an ad hoc authority be out of the question, what is the alternative the Government suggests to put in its place? The hon. Gentleman has submitted a Board which he suggests will be better constituted and better fitted to perform the work there is for it to do. What is this better designed Board? It is a sort of hotch-potch of authorities, including representatives of the London County Council, the Borough Councils, the Board of Education, the experts and the managers. Do we get the co-ordination which we all desire in

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  this matter? As far as I can understand the Bill, higher education will be carried out on a different system to elementary. You will have different sets of managers, there will be one set for the elementary schools, and another set for the evening schools; and I also understand that the provided schools will be dealt with in a different way to the non-provided schools. Is that co-ordination? Shall we in that way get the on authority which we all desire? No, on the contrary, we shall have five authorities. Shall we get that complete control by a central authority responsible to the ratepayers which we all desire? No, we shall not, because the central authority is put in a statutory minority on the body which it is supposed to control. There is no such thing as co-ordination under one authority, neither is there complete control in the scheme of the hon. Gentleman.
  In his speech on the First Reading the hon. Gentleman said that this was not a Water Board. No, Sir, it is not. It is much worse than a Water Board. In his scheme the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board gave the sole control of all its duties and revenues to one body, and did not pitchfork a lot of experts on to that body, neither did he give the Borough Councils double authority on the Water Board. Last Autumn we in London were groaning under the yoke of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. But I am bound to say that it he chastised us with whips the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education is now chastising us with scorpions, and if I had to choose between the Jeroboam of the Local Government Board and the Rehoboam of the Board of Education, I should prefer the Jeroboam of the Water Board to the Rehoboam of the Education Authority.
  MR. TALBOT: If the hon. Gentleman will refer to his authority he will find that the comparison is not between Jeroboam and Rehoboam, but between Solomon and Rehoboam.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: My recollection is nothing of the sort. However, I do not wish to unduly prolong my speech by introducing this new religious element into the debate. If the right
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  hon. Gentleman will refer to the text he will see that the comparison was as between the old man and the young man. The one recommended a more severe punishment than the other. However, I do not mind, I am quite willing to accept the right hon. Gentleman's description of the President of the Local Government Board as Solomon, but I say I should prefer to be chastised with his whip rather than with the scorpions of the Board of Education.
  If we are not to have an ad hoc authority then we must have a very different authority to that proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. If education in London is to be municipalised, it must surely be done in the way it has been accomplished in the counties, viz., by giving complete and full control to the County Council. The hon. Gentleman will say that I am forcing an open door. For what did he say in regard to this matter on the First Reading? He said he was putting the London County Council on the same footing as the other County Councils, who had been made the educational authority with full control, and with a clear majority on the Board. I think he must have forgotten what was in the Act of last year, which he was so instrumental in passing. As regards the position of County Councils, they were to have at least a majority of their own members on the Education Committees; they need only appoint outsiders, if they thought it desirable, and, in so far as they appointed outsiders, they were to have complete power as regards nomination and appointment. Further, they were to nominate no less than four out of the six local managers for the provident schools; and they were to have complete control over the appointment and dismissal of teachers. Contrast that with the Bill now before the House. The London County Council were not to have a majority on the education authority. At the very best, they would be in a minority of thirty-six to ninety-seven. In the selection and election of thirty-one other members they would have no voice at all; and in the selection and election of the remaining thirty members their powers would be greatly circumscribed. They would have to delegate enormous powers to this large committee which they would have no means of resuming. They could not control it.

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  The statutory managers would be totally independent of them, and would have in their hands the appointment of the teachers, the selection of the sites, and the custody of the buildings, and an appeal from the education authority to the Education Department. It seems to me that it is idle to say that that would be putting the London County Council in the same position as other County Councils. I do not think that this scheme can possibly work; and it seems to me monstrous that the largest municipal body in the whole kingdom should be treated in a way in which none of the smaller County Councils have been treated by the Government. The London County Council are to be hampered and checked at every turn. They will be prevented from having full control over matters which affect them; and the electors are to be prevented from having a voice in regard to education. It seems to me that if we are not to have an ad hoc authority the County Council must be absolute masters in their own house. They must have a majority on the committee, and they must have the nomination of other members; the committee must not contain any statutory persons at all. The Council must be allowed to have the full power of appointing managers, and they must retain the appointment and dismissal of teachers. This is the only way in which you can hope to have a harmonious dealing with this question, and the only way in which we can have educational progress under the London County Council.
  There is one question in connection with the Council on which I wish to say a word. Assuming that the County Council is adopted as the education authority in place of the School Board, can they undertake the work? As far as we can see their work, they are ready and willing to undertake anything that may be legitimately put upon them. Surely, it is not we who have argued that the County Council are incapable of undertaking further work; but it is surprising to find right hon. Gentlemen opposite, who have refused to put on the shoulder of the County Council municipal duties such as water and docks, putting on them matters which are in no way municipal. I look with some doubt to putting this extra enormous burden on the County Council, for I am afraid it may relax, to a certain extent, their efforts elsewhere.
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  But I say emphatically that if we are not to have an ad hoc authority, the work must be given, not only to the County Council, but to the County Council pure and simple. The County Council must be the sole and supreme authority. I apologise to the House for detaining it so long, and I only wish to say a few words with regard to another matter, to which I have not yet specifically referred. I mean the double representation of the Borough Councils, first on the Education Committee, and secondly as the statutory managers in their own districts. I do not think I need trouble the House by saying much as to the position of the Borough Councils on the Education Committee. I think it is common knowledge that that part of the Bill has already gone; and that before the Bill is through Committee we shall see the County Council given a majority on the Statutory Committee. That can only be done by leaving out the Borough Councils. I saw that London Conservative Members passed a Resolution yesterday in which they proposed to give the County Council a majority on the Statutory Committee, without eliminating the representatives of the Borough Councils. Of course, that was in order to meet the two views held on the other side of the House; but I think any one who looks into the matter will find that that is quite impossible. Already the number proposed by the Government is too unwieldy. It is as unwieldy as the Water Board, which already is almost breaking down through sheer weight of numbers. The only way in which the proposal of hon. Gentlemen opposite can be carried out is by adding to the Committee some ten or twenty more members from the County Council, which would not only make the Committee unwieldy, but would not leave a sufficient number of members on the County Council for other work. While that part of the Bill will go, I am afraid that the other double representation of the Borough Councils will still remain. They are to be put in the position of statutory managers, without any power being given to the County Council to revise or control their proceedings, and they are to be given the enormous influence and power of selecting and dismissing teachers, which, in my opinion, will make them quite independent of the education authority in the general

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  direction and management of the schools. I think this is a very, serious blot on the Bill I cannot conceive anything worse for education in London than that the question of the appointment and dismissal of teachers should be in the hands of the local authorities rather than in the hands of the central authority. We want, in this respect, a uniform standard of excellence and a wide field, of selection, and we want the selection to be in the hands of the central body, who will insist that the best teachers shall be sent to certain schools, and who will let teachers rise by merits, take the rough with the smooth. That is the only way, in my opinion, to prevent jobbery and undue pressure being brought to hear on the appointments. When the Bill is in Committee we will, no doubt, have some Amendments to suggest; but, in my opinion, whatever Amendments are adopted will not make the Bill of any use educationally to London. Whether as regards an ad hoe authority, or the London County Council as the sole education authority, I do not believe that this Bill is capable of carrying out either contention; and therefore I shall oppose it, even if the Government endeavours to amend it. It is grotesque to start with; and will lead to endless confusion between different authorities. It is a retrogressive Bill, and is a great blow to municipal democratic government in London. It is depriving the citizens, as is the policy of the President of the Local Government Board, of all control over their own affairs, with the result that they will have' no voice no control, no interest in their affairs. I cannot conceive anything more disastrous to the good government of London, or to the citizenship of the inhabitants of London. I believe this Bill will be a fatal blow to educational progress and to municipal progress also. On those grounds I certainly have great pleasure in moving its rejection at the present moment, and shall oppose it at every subsequent stage.
  DR. MACNAMARA: I desire to second the Motion; and I desire to say, first of all, that I am surprised that the Prime Minister should have rushed the Second Reading of this Bill without giving the School Board or the County Council any opportunity of discussing it. Both bodies had risen for
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  the Easter recess before the Bill was issued, and have not yet met; and we are now engaged on the Second Reading of this Bill before they have had an opportunity of discussing it. That is not what we ought to expect in the way of consideration and courtesy from the Prime Minister. There are a number of very controversial educational questions involved in this Bill, but I do not intend to refer to them now. I propose only to deal with a fundamental and acute issue, namely, the question of the constitution of the local education authority in London. I want to confine myself absolutely and entirely to that particular question. What is the policy of the Government with regard to the local control of education. I think I shall put it fairly when I say that the Government policy is to hand over the local control of education to Municipal Councils. When the First Lord of the Treasury enunciated that policy last year I said that there was nothing necessarily antidemocratic in it. Take the case of a town of 10,000 inhabitants. There, you could very easily make the Town Council the education authority, and you need have no second authority in that case; but when we come to the great urban areas, the great county boroughs, there you are confronted with an education problem so minute and detailed, but so vast in its bulk, that you cannot safely municipalise the control of education. If you do, you will find that you are compelled to call in a very large number of outsiders, who are not responsible to the ratepayers, to carry on the work; and I am bound to say that while I pleaded last year, again and again, for the continuation of the great urban School Boards in a perfected form, capable of controlling higher education, I feel that we shall be confronted at a very early date with appeals from these great urban centres, asking us, not in any partisan spirit, but from the point of view of pure educationists, to do one or two things—either to revive the ad hoc principle or to secure an enlarged membership for City Councils, in order that the work shall remain in the hands of the representatives of the ratepayers.
  When I come to the case of London the physical impossibility of municipalisation

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  seems to me to be overwhelming. To put the problem of London education in a sentence, in the work of the School Board, the voluntary schools, and of higher education, there is involved the supervision of 2,000 separate educational institutions, the control of 20,000 public servants, the education of 1,000,000 pupils and students, and the expenditure of £4,000,000 of public money. The hon. Member for Poplar said that that was a piece of work as big as the education of all Scotland. That is correct, and he might have gone on to say that the education of Scotland has called for the creation of 972 School Boards and thirty-nine Secondary Education Committees. He might also have said that it is a piece of work three times as great as the education of Wales, which up to the present has called for the creation of 350 School Boards, twelve County Education Committees, three County Borough Committees, and the great Welsh Central Education Board. But I will not rest my case upon a comparison with Scotch or Welsh education. After examining it with the most painstaking care, I say that the education of London represents a piece of work far more minute in its details and just as large in bulk as the whole of the work of the London County Council. That is the comparison upon which I rest my case. Take the School Board work alone—excluding altogether the work of voluntary schools and higher education. Here is the diary issued to members of the School Board for the present week: Monday, 10.30 a.m. special Sub-committee of the School Management Committee on special subjects of instruction; noon, Teaching Staff Sub-committee of the School Management Committee. At that one meeting there were 141 teachers to be seen, considered for promotion, or in extreme cases, for criticism in consequence of default of duty. Also at noon, Sub-committee of Pupil Teachers' Committee on preliminary selection of assistants for Stockwell and Marylebone pupil teachers' centres; at one o'clock, Sub-committee of Works Committee on Contracts; at two o'clock, they met for ordinary business; also at two o'clock, special Sub-committee of General Purposes Committee on solicitors' charges in litigation cases; at 2.30,
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  General Purposes Committee; at 3 o'clock Sites and Finance Sub-committee of Works Committee; also at 3 o'clock, the Evening Continuation Schools Committee (at the meeting of which there are frequently a hundred teachers to be considered, appointed or transferred). That was yesterday. What is the diary of today? At 10.30, Sub-committee of the Finance Committee on Accounts; 10.30, Finance Rota; 11 o'clock, Finance Committee; 2 o'clock, Subcommittee of Works Committee on repairs.
  AN HON. MEMBER: How many members do these Committees and Subcommittees comprise?
  DR. MACNAMARA: There would be seven or eight members on the Subcommittee on Accounts, from fifteen to twenty on the Finance Committee, and four on the Finance Rota.
  MR. EVELYN CECIL: Will they attend?
  DR. MACNAMARA: Are they going to attend under this Bill? Under an ad hoc scheme those who elect can ask members why they do not attend. Under this scheme out of ninety-seven persons you can tackle only thirty-six—the County Councillors. To go on with the diary. It will be the same thing to-morrow. On Thursday the Board will meet for four or five hours public session; on Friday there is a meeting of a big and onerous Committee—the School Management Committee; and I take it that Saturday and Sunday will be spent in reading up the agendas for next week. But Members will say, "Oh, you can devolve a lot of this work. "When I went to the School Board I was as keenly for devolution as the hon. Member for Poplar. There are some matters you could devolve, but they are not very substantial, and you could not devolve even those with safety. There is scarcely anything that could be devolved, and those who say that devolution is the remedy do not mean good administration. If hon. Members would like to know what the School Board members were engaged upon yesterday, I have

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  here the agendas, twelve in number, and very voluminous, for Monday alone. What is the Government scheme for dealing with all this stupendous work? On the First Reading of the Bill the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education said—
  "The Government lay down the principle that education should be linked with municipal government, and the object of this Bill is to place the London County Council to a great extent in the position in which the County Councils are placed by the Act of 1902. The cardinal principle of the Bill is to make education a part of our municipal institutions. The London County Council will be the local education authority for London."
  That is nominally the scheme. The Council will work through a Committee of whom thirty-six are members of the County Council, thirty-one members of the Borough Councils, with thirty others added. That is the present arrangement, but there is no finality in that proposal. I believe that this scheme will be modified out of recognition, but I may say at once that it will not satisfy me even then; I want something totally different. Look at the constitution of the Committee. The thirty-six County Councillors will be there by direct election. They will be substantially elected ad hoc though not exclusively for educational purposes. Thirty-one persons will be there by secondary election, chosen from the Borough Councils. Not one of those sixty-seven Members can be a woman. As a colleague of nine women members of the School Board I can speak of the admirable work and devoted service they have given to the public. I do not know whether the Government intend by reference to effect a complete revolution of the Local Government Act, 1888, and the London Government Act, 1899; otherwise, as I have said, not one of these members can be a woman. Of the remaining thirty members, of whom some may be women, not one will be elected on behalf of the ratepayers either directly or secondarily; they will be selected by the County Council. I have only one comment to make on that scheme. We need not bother about it; it was killed at its birth. I have no doubt that at a very early stage in the debate the Government will tell us that these proportions are to be altered. When the Local
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  Government Act, 1888, was before the House, the Prime Minister said—
  "Certain representations have been made to the Government to create the London County Council by secondary election from the existing vestries and district boards of works."
  That is, exactly as it is now proposed to constitute the education authority for London. The Prime Minister dismissed the suggestion with a wave of the hand, and said—
  "Apart from the point of view which I shall come to directly, it would be a revival to a certain extent of the principle adopted, tried, and finally rejected in the case of the Metropolitan Board of Works. It would introduce into the London County Council the element of secondary election, and although I think there are many eases in which secondary election works extremely well, still it has not a very good record behind it in the case of the Metropolitan Board of Works."
  I apply that comment of the Prime Minister to the scheme before us. But it is an abortion, and we need not discuss it further. The situation we have to face is quite a different one. I propose to face what I understand to be the critical situation at the present moment. Practically all sides are saying, "You stated that the County Council was to be the authority." The words are—
  "The London County Council will be the local education authority for London."
  If you mean that, make the London County Council genuinely the authority. Take out the Borough Council representation and let the County Council have a clear majority. When we go into the Committee stage I understand that something of this sort is going to happen. The borough councillors must come right out, or, if they remain in, then County Council representation must be so increased as to give the county councillors a distinct majority on the Central Committee. I want to examine the situation which would be then created. Take the first alternative. Take the Borough Councils out and that would leave thirty-six county councillors and thirty outside persons. Does anybody suppose that in that event the thirty-six county councillors would be able to attend to this work? The mere taking out of the borough councillors and leaving in the thirty-six county councillors would, in my opinion, make the Bill worse, for the work would not be so likely to be carried on by

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  representatives of the ratepayers. with the borough councillors you have sixty-seven out of ninety-seven elected persons. But take away the thirty-one and then you have only thirty-Six elected persons. A Bill upon those lines would make matters worse than they are now, and I should oppose it. That is not the proposal of the London Unionist Members, who wish to leave the Borough Councils in, and to so enlarge the County Council representation as to secure that they have a distinct majority over the thirty-one borough councillors and outsiders. I do ask hon. Members to consider whether the County Council can spare the men for that work, whether they would be able to do it, and whether it is not a fact that the work would not fall into the hands of the co-opted persons and officials. When I hear hon. Gentlemen making this proposal, I cannot help remembering that, year after year, we had it from right hon. Gentlemen on the Government Benches that the County Council already had too much to do. I remember Lord Salisbury went to the Albert Hall in November, 1897, and charged the County Council with being smitten with megalomania, and he said—
  "You will see, if you watch the proceedings of the London County Council, that they are overborne by the labour which they have to go through."
  The creation of the Borough Councils has not allowed any devolution of County Council work, for they have had more to do. The Duke of Devonshire in 1898 said—
  "The London County Council has quite sufficient business, and quite sufficient important business, to occupy its whole and undivided attention."
  The Colonial Secretary said in February, 1895, at Stepney, that the London County Councillors had too much to do. He said—
  "It is not their fault, because the task which they have undertaken is an absolutely impossible task. If they were archangels from heaven they could not do the work cast upon them."
  Those things are more true to-day than they were then. The London County Council last year had to keep sixty-eight committees and sub-committees going, and it called 1,313 meetings. If you are going to double the work, it will be
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  holding 2,626 meetings, and 136 committees and sub-committees, and how can it do that with its present membership? Since these statements were made, what has been done? Fourteen members have been detached for the Water Board, eight have been elected for the Port of London, six for the Thames Conservancy Committee, two for the Lea Conservancy, and now you are proposing to take thirty-six for the Board of Education, in a way which will take them away from all County Council work. You are proposing to take more than half the elected members of the County Council for other purposes, and I cannot help thinking that in this determination to destroy the School Board for London, there is a general endeavour on the part of someone or other to wreck the County Council. If the education work is to be done properly, you are bound to wreck the County Council. I know that some hon. Members opposite do not want to do that, and it is to them that I appeal. This Bill cannot be amended on the lines I have suggested except on one condition, and that is that you must be prepared to face the issue and increase the membership of the London County Council, so that you will then have enough members to carry on this work. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] I hope hon. Members opposite who cheer will press that point upon the Government, who do not love the London County Council. Here is an example of the impossibility of the County Council taking over this work. At the present time the London County Council controls a very small fringe of the educational area. It has got a Technical Education Board which has not got one-fiftieth part to do of what is involved in this Bill. Look at the constitution of the Technical Education Board. The Government scheme will make this a sort of glorified Technical Education Board. On this Board at present there are twenty county councillors and fifteen outsiders. Take the Higher Education Committee of that Board. It consists of five county councillors and seven outsiders. Is that municipalisation? Is that giving the work to the representatives of the ratepayers? Take the Scholarship Committee, which consists of five county councillors and nine outsiders. Then there is the Science and Art Committee, consisting of seven

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  county councillors and eight outsiders; and lastly, there is the Secondary Schools Committee, with five county councillors and eleven- outsiders. That may be a good scheme but it is not municipalisation. If you are going to put on a Committee a majority of people who are not directly responsible to the ratepayers it is not municipalisation. If a Technical Education Committee dealing only with a small corner of the whole area gets more co opted than elected persons, then I say that is a spurious and impossible form of municipalisation which we cannot accept on this side of the House. I consider this scheme is radically bad, and you cannot amend it along the lines suggested. In the words of Mrs. Poyser—
  "You have got to hatch this over again and you have got to hatch it different."
  I have only one other point, and it is in regard to what I have to propose as an alternative. So far as London is concerned there are only two alternatives which I would commend to the Prime Minister. They constitute in some form a modification of the ad hoc principle. My belief is that we shall come eventually to some modification of that principle. The Government may say, "We destroyed the ad hoc principle for the provinces, and it would look like an abandonment of that policy to retain it in London." The Government scarcely need be so squeamish about that. I believe that the case of London is so unique that you could very well, without loss of dignity, apply a different principle to the rest of the country, and you could very well agree that there is nothing for London but the ad hoc principle. What is the ostensible reason given for shutting the door upon the ad hoc principle? Upon the introduction of this Bill the Secretary to the Board of Education said—
  "At the last London School Board election only 18 per cent. of the electors went to the poll (Ministerial cheers)."
  I do not know what the cheers were for. To me the matter is one to be deplored. The hon. Member went on to say—
  "The figures of the School Board elections go a long wav to condemn a directly elected authority for London; therefore I do not propose to recommend a directly elected authority, and, in consequence, the object of this Bill will be to abolish the School Board for London."
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  The figures given by the hon. Member are eloquent of the unconcern and apathy of the Londoner at the School Board election, and I am not here to defend them. If the electors of London had been less apathetic this Bill would have been impossible. Three weeks ago to-day. we were told frankly and openly in this House by a Minister of the Crown that—
  "The object of this Bill will be to abolish the School Board for London."
  For thirty-two years men and women have gone down to the School Board offices on the Embankment and have silently and obscurely toiled day by day, with no public approbation, but quite the reverse in many cases, as I know to my cost. They have worked there for no personal advancement, but in order that London's citizens of to-morrow may be the better stewards of the national heritage to which they are the heirs. Three weeks ago Londoners were told that this beneficent institution was to be destroyed. Lord Lawrence, Sir Charles Reed, Dr. Angus, Canon Cromwell, Dr. Gladstone, Professor Huxley, Samuel Morley, Dr. Rigg, W. H. Smith, Archdeacon Sinclair, Bishop Thorold, Sir Richard Temple, and Miss Devonport Hill—these have carried for ward the great work in order that the condition of the London child may be benefited. Every other citizen whom you meet in London to-day is an old London School Board pupil. We are to-day asked to pass the Second Reading of the Bill which is to destroy the School Board. That fact, and not the figures of the last election, is to me the most bitter testimony of the unconcern of the London people. I believe they will wake up in this matter, and when they rub their eyes I believe they will get out of bed and make it hot for some of the purposes of this scheme if it is persisted in in any form. That statement about the 18 per cent. was a most misleading one to make. I do not believe that the Secretary to the Board of Education made it intentionally for the purpose of misleading, but what are the facts First of all, it was the lowest poll since 1894.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,: I have a distinct recollection of my speech. I have a strong impression that I stated that the average poll was 26 per cent.
  DR. MACNAMARA: I confess that I have overlooked that point, but 26 per cent. would not be very much more correct than 18 per cent. I will explain what I mean. At the poll the hon. Member refers to 832,071 went to the poll. In 1894 1,597,330 people went to the poll—that is twice as many people on a smaller register. It is 40 per cent. of the people. With regard to the 18 per cent. I agree that it is deplorable, but there are one or two good reasons for it which I would put forward. Why was the poll so small in 1900? Well, in October we had a General Election, and the people were inflamed with certain issues which left education in an obscuration, and people took no interest in it. On the 1st of November we had the first elections for the new Borough Councils, and 45 per cent. went to the poll. On the 29th of November we had the School Board election. There were, therefore, three elections in the course of two months, and the Londoner was a little bit tired of them. But the 18 per cent. was still more misleading Does the Parliamentary Secretary know that the rate book is the register in this case and that the areas are very large? I know people who are on the rate book over and over again for one School Board division, but they can only vote once in that division. A man of my own acquaintance is on the rate book six times; he goes to the poll once and he is held up as regards five-sixths of him as five apathetic persons. I am quite sure that the hon. Gentleman did not quite know the facts about the 18 per. cent. There is one other reason why the poll was so small, and that is because the areas are cumbrous. My own division—West Lambeth—has an area of 24 square miles, it contains 660,000 people, and it is represented by six members. How can you expect electors, however intelligent, to take an active interest in an election in an area of that sort? Of course the unconcern of the people is a very important matter. Let me explain what I think the Government ought to have done. I hope it may still do it. There are two alterations and two only. The Government might have said "These School Board areas are too large, we will simplify them to the Parliamentary areas, and we will elect one ad hoc
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  member for education—man or woman for each Parliamentary area. If you complain of too many elections on different franchises we will have the elections on the same day as the County Council, and on the same voting paper if you like. If you say that by electing one person only for each area you destroy the cumulative vote in which the de-nominationalists have an interest, very good, we will allow the people to elect an ad hoc authority and give it the statutory right of co-optation." That is one scheme. The other is equally simple and equally practicable, and is going to come to pass one of these days. You believe in municipalisation. I do not quarrel with you for that, if it is physically possible. Instead of electing two county councillors, elect three for each of the fifty-nine areas, and then let the County Council tell off fifty-nine of its members as an education committee to go on with the work of education. The scheme would secure that the work should be done by the representatives of the ratepayers, and that it would not fall into hands, as in this case, of outsiders and paid officials. I hope the Government will accept either of these schemes. I have no particular choice, but I would point out that in regard to the latter you would have to repeal certain provisions of the Local Government Act of 1888, otherwise women would not be eligible for a seat. I say deliberately that London, wherever it has declared itself, is in favour of one or other of these schemes. Take the Borough Councils. You are offering them aggrandisement and new powers. What is their answer? Battersea, Camberwell, Finsbury, Fulham, Lambeth, Lewisham, Poplar, Southwark, Wandsworth, Woolwich, Bethnal Green, and Shoreditch all declared in favour of some form of ad hoc and popularly elected authority for London. These boroughs represent more than half of the population of London. Hackney and Paddington have resolutions of a similar character under discussion. Bermondsey, the solitary ewe lamb of the Government, is not in favour of an ad hoc authority. But there is not one in favour of the Bill as it stands. The County Council to-day is passing a resolution which amounts to a preference for an ad hoc body.
  MR. BURDETT-COUTTS: May I ask the hon. Member what are the words in the County Council resolution on which he relies for his statement that their first preference is for an ad hoc body.
  DR. MACNAMARA: They refer to "the creation of a body directly elected. "They themselves are already in existence and do not require to be elected. Then the School Board for London has, by a vote of two to one, passed a resolution in favour of my scheme. Here is a significant fact. On Thursday when the Board meets, Mr. Sharp, the late leader of the Moderate Party on the Board, a life-long Churchman and Conservative, will move a resolution declaring—
  "That the London Education Bill fails to provide for the efficient administration and advancement of education in London, and, in the opinion of the School Board for London, no Amendment of the Bill can make it a satisfactory measure."
  That is a perfectly deliberate statement. At a special meeting of the County Council to-day the following resolution will be proposed—
  "That, having considered the provisions of the London Education Bill, this Council expresses its deep regret that the Bill fails to provide either for the efficient management of education or for popular control, and will introduce confusion and conflict into the local government of London.
  The Council is strongly opposed to the scheme proposed by the Bill, and would prefer either the maintenance of the present system—that is the School Board, which is an ad hoc body—or the creation of one directly elected as the education authority, which should have complete control over all grades of education,
  MR. PEEL: There is an Amendment.
  DR. MACNAMARA: Mr. Beechcroft has given notice of an Amendment in favour of the Bill. I do not know whether the hon. Member is a betting man, but I would like to know his opinion as to whether the Amendment will be carried. I am sorry to have kept the House so long. I speak feelingly on this matter. I have beer immersed in this education business in London for the last ten years, ant I cannot see this great institution go down without a protest against it
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  for all I am worth. I appeal to hon. Members opposite because many of them have told me—and I believe what they say—that all that they want is a good educational authority. I take them at their word, and I ask them to accept either of the two alternatives I have submitted to the House. Either, an ad hoc authority or genuine municipalisation; but as the second alternative shuts out women who have done so much good work for education, I prefer the ad hoc principle. I am as deeply and profoundly convinced as ever I was of anything in my life, that if you want to have wise administration and sound economy in finance, it is only by the ad hoc principle that you could get this in London. I beg to second the Motion.
  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. Sydney Buxton.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.): I confess I am rather surprised at the degree opposition which the hon. Gentleman and his friends have declared to this measure. For, after all, this measure is a measure of machinery. The Bill is intended, and solely intended, to apply the principles of the Bill already on the Statute-book to the metropolitan area I and I should have thought that, being a purely machinery Bill, it would have had the good fortune to have excited some milder feeling of opposition than that offered to the measure which was so hardly fought over for many months last year. I cannot quite understand the feeling of the hon. Gentleman. It per hap arises from an idea—an entirely mistaken idea—that the framers of this Bill have some special animus against the great body of which he is a distinguished I member, the London School Board
  DR. MACNAMARA: I did not say that.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No; but I thought that the manner in which the hon. Gentleman quoted a phrase of the

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  Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education on the First Reading of the Bill, and his own impassioned defence of the work of the London School Board, that he rather imagined that this Bill was intended as a slap in the face to the School Board——
  DR. MACNAMARA: It is going to kill it.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As an indication that the Board had not done its work. Now if that is the case, is not a slap in the face better than total destruction, which the Bill undoubtedly contemplates? I can assure the hon. Member that no such insult is intended to the body of which he is a member. Everybody recognises not only the self-devotion and ardour with which the School Board has attended to its duties, but recognises the fact that very great work has been done for London by the London School Board. The question is not really now whether the London School Board has or has not been an efficient body for the administration of education in London, but how best we are to administer education as the problem now presents itself in London, after the Act of last year, and how we are to adapt it to the special needs of the metropolitan area. Now, it is admitted on all hands that London is exceptional in this country and amongst all countries. There is no area in the civilised world where the same difficulties present themselves to the legislature as present themselves whenever we attempt to deal with an area like London. In point of population it is larger than many important European states, but London has yet to be managed on principles, which, in their general scope, are not essentially different from the municipal principles which govern other municipal areas throughout the country. How does this peculiarity of London affect the way in which we can contrive the machinery either for education or anything else? If we could cut up London into separate rating areas for education, I think a great deal could be said for the plan of dividing London educationally. There are difficulties and obvious objections to that, but I do not see how they are much greater than those which apply
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  to dividing Manchester and Salford, which contrive to manage their education very excellently. Indeed anyone would have difficulty in knowing when he crosses the boundary between Manchester and Salford. That is a principle well worth consideration, but for one circumstance, familiar to all who have endeavoured to deal with this problem. But what is that circumstance of London? You must have one education rate for London, and since you cannot divide the rate it is absolutely necessary and inevitable that you must have a single authority to deal with that rate. Therefore, it is clear that we cannot well do that which we would otherwise do—treat these great London boroughs as they deserve to be treated from their population and wealth, as self-sufficing, and autonomous units within the metropolitan area. But it is impossible to do it for the reasons I have described, and the cogency of which has been admitted by the House. Therefore, you cannot deal with London as you can deal with Scotland and Switzerland. You must have one central authority to deal with the whole situation. Can that authority deal not merely with the broad problems presented by the education of a population of 5,000,000 persons or of 1,000,000 children? Can it also deal with the details of the education of 1,000,000 children? I say that it cannot. You must give it the assistance of some kind of delegation, and if I wanted to prove that conclusively I must point to the speech of the hon. Member. He represents an ad hoc authority. He told us what the School Board did on every day of the week. He told us what they did on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and even on Saturday and Sunday. It was a long tale of difficult, laborious, and probably, in some respects, ungrateful work, I do not know whether patiently accomplished, but, at all events, ardently grappled with. To the work of that body the hon. Gentleman proposes to add all technical education and all the work connected with the voluntary or non-provided schools which will now fall to the future education authority. I cannot believe that either the present London School Board, augment it as you may, or the London County Council, or any other

  693
  central authority, can deal with the details of every educational problem.
  Observe the point to which we have got. We are all agreed that there must be a central authority, and that this central authority must delegate part of their work to other authorities. Having reached these two principles we look round to see how to carry them out, what machinery there is at hand, and what machinery we can wisely create which will enable us to have a central authority and some degree of delegation. Is it not obvious that the London County Council should be the central authority, and that the Borough Councils should be the authorities to which the delegation should be made? It is by that simple and, I think, unanswerable train of reasoning that the Government have come to the conclusion, in the first place, that the London County Council should be the central authority, and, inasmuch as delegation is desirable, the other necessity is that that delegation should be made to the Borough Councils. As to the actual manner in which the delegation is to be carried out—whether the precise methods by which the statutory position given to the Borough Councils on the London County Council ought or ought not to remain part of the Bill or ought to be modified—these are important but subordinate questions. The only point on which we are concerned on the Second Reading of the Bill is whether we do or do not accept these two broad fundamental principles. That is the Government Bill, and I do not think it deserves any of the violent epithets which have been applied to it in the very moderate speeches to which we have listened.
  What are the chief objections which the hon. Member for Poplar felt to making the London County Council, elected for general municipal purposes, deal with education as the central authority? He drew a melancholy picture of himself in the capacity of an elector having to decide between the rival claims of a candidate who knew something about drains and another candidate who knew something about education. That is the precise position which he, and every other London elector, holds in regard to technical higher education; and yet the hon. Gentleman says "I do not think the Government ought to bring in a Bill which would put me in that painful
  694
  position." It is only within the last few months, when it began to be suspected that the Government were going to make the London County Council the educational authority, that there has been some diminution to the chorus of praise which used to pour forth from Gentlemen on all sides of the House, and most of all from Gentlemen opposite with regard to the excellent work done by the London County Council as the authority for technical education. The hon. Gentleman never before discovered that a knowledge of drains and of education were incompatible accomplishments. I would go further and would say, if his arguments were to be applied generally to the representative institutions of this country, you would not only destroy every Borough Council and every County Council in the whole country, but you would destroy this House itself. What would happen to us? We have got to decide matters connected with the Army, the Navy, Education, Foreign Policy, and every species of domestic legislation, and every kind of problem. I suppose the democratic principle of the future is that there must be a classification of all the questions on which the electors are interested, and that there should be in each case a separate election of an ad hoc body, and a separate election of experts to deal with each. That would be a very agreeable state of things I am sure that these innumerable bodies so elected would deal very ingeniously and adequately with the topics with which they were entrusted. But do you think that we should have good government of the country? Would we all desire to see the management of naval affairs entirely given up to naval experts, would we all desire to see military matters given up to military experts, and educational affairs given up to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Poplar, and so on, and so on? The whole principle of popular education is that you do not elect people for their simple and single qualification for one subject, but you recognise the fundamental fact that the interests of the community are so interlinked with one another, and especially so interlinked with finance that you must submit to some amateur system for dealing with these questions in order to have that community of administration without which

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  the administration itself becomes hopelessly confused, and, above all, hopelessly extravagant. I am clearly of opinion that it is a most retrograde policy to go in for this principle of ad hoc election to deal with particular subjects authoritatively, and with power to draw on the rates. Of course you must give them power of dealing with the rates. The educational authority, whatever it is to be, whether it is the County Council or an ad hoc body, must have the power of drawing on the rates, because the body which does draw on the rates will always be the authority whatever its constitution, and that really is the answer to a great many criticisms which have been passed upon this Bill. We have been told the educational authority, meaning a Committee, does not represent the people. The Education Committee does not, of course, directly represent the people in the sense that some of them are especially selected, and some of them are net elected by the people for that purpose. But that is true of all Committees—of all Borough Committees—however you contrive. A man is not sent to the Town Council of Manchester to serve on a Committee, though he is asked to serve. He is sent to the Town Council of Manchester because he is supposed to be qualified to deal with matters municipal, of which serving on a Committee is one. In the same way, if this Bill is carried in its present form the representatives of the Borough Councils will be sent to join in this Committee as belonging to bodies which are competent to send representatives, and they will be elected directly by the people. It is all the greater fallacy from the fact that the Committee is not the education authority—the education authority, not only in name but in reality, is the rating authority, and that is in the main the County Council.
  The. hon. Gentleman opposite says the County Council cannot possibly do the work—that we are throwing upon the County Council too much. That is a new argument for hon. Gentlemen opposite, and I do not know how far they mean to carry it, or whether they mean to have an ad hoc body for every duty which may have to be fulfilled within the Metropolitan area. [Cries of "No, no."] If they do not mean that I do not understand their argument.
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  Your argument now is that the County Council are absolutely full up to the eyes and that they cannot do anything more. That being so you must have an ad hoc body to do anything outside their existing duties. Then there will be an ad hoc authority whenever you want to have a new duty performed, and London will be covered with a series of ad hoc, bodies, all of them, I suppose, having independent powers. The London ratepayer is not a very happy person at present, and what his condition will be under such circumstances I leave it to hon. Gentlemen opposite to imagine. "But," said the hon. Gentleman, "the County Council could do the work if you increase their numbers." It may be necessary to increase their numbers at some time or other. That has nothing to do with the principles of this Bill. I have no abstract objection to it and I am not going to pronounce upon it until the matter is brought up especially and in connection with the general work of the County Council. If any Council in the country, whether the London County Council or any other County Council says "We cannot do the work with our present numbers," of course that demand would receive the most careful attention from any Government that might be in office at the time, and it would be folly to lay down any broad principle which would prevent a request of that kind being complied with. Therefore what I would ask the House to do at present, is to read a second time this Bill, which lays down a perfectly defensible machinery of principles for the local government of London. I do beg it to reject what the hon. Member desires, which is an ad hoc authority. If the House does reject it then I am convinced they will be driven back either to the actual plan of the Government or to some modification of that plan which does not interfere with its general principles. Those general principles simply consist of saying that the authority for London shall be the County Council, and inasmuch as decentralisation is an absolute necessity of the situation, decentralisation shall take place by statute, and that the bodies through whom the decentralisation is to be effected, and to whom the powers are to be delegated shall be those great Borough Councils

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  which we have already brought into existence. Within the broad limits of those two great principles I see no reason why, if we think fit, we should not modify the Measure. But on the only point I can see which the House has to decide on the Second Reading viz., whether they will have the County Council as the authority or whether they will create an ad hoc authority, I earnestly press the House to utter no uncertain sound, and that in the interest of every recognised principle of government, in the interest of the principles we have already adopted for every other part of the country, we shall declare that education is not a function which ought to be divorced from the other great local duties which we throw upon our municipal bodies; and that London, which ought to take the lead in all matters of this kind, is not to be differentiated from the rest of the country to the great disadvantage of London itself.
  COLONEL LOCKWOOD: I make no excuse for speaking on this important subject of the education of London, although I represent an agricultural constituency. It is a subject which will certainly be followed with interest by the counties which adjoin London. In passing the Act of last session the Government passed the greatest Reform Act of education which has been passed for thirty years. The great question before the House on the Second Reading of this Bill was clearly stated by the Prime Minister. Is the Government right in following the Act of 1902 and abolishing the ad hoc system? I think the Act of 1902 was right because it made possible, first of all, in elementary education, the equalisation of advantages of education amongst the children, that is to say, as regards the voluntary and board schools. Secondly, it gave power to the children—to anybody's child—to rise through the various grades of education from elementary to University education, and, thirdly, it concentrated and augmented the general interest felt in education by the country at large. The Act of 1902 assured the interests of education by setting up a local authority, not one single authority, but by making the duty of looking
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  after education one of the duties of the local authority. That is to say, the Government, finding after thirty years experience of the Education Act that only one third of the area of England was covered by board schools and only one half of the children were contained in those schools, and that the educational opportunities were not becoming more, but less, uniform, abolished, not the board schools, but the School Board, in order that these great irregularities might be redressed by making it compulsory on some authority in each area in England to undertake a duty which up to that time had only been undertaken by one third. The Government left over the question of London, and I think we are all agreed that they acted in accordance with the views of Members on both sides of this House in treating London as a separate entity. In the King's Speech the Government promised to extend to London the principles of the Act of last session. So far as the Government carries out these promises, I am entirely with them, and am perfectly ready and anxious to support the Bill before the House, and to leave Amendments to be dealt with in Committee.
  The principles which the Government apply to this Bill for London are two, viz.: (1) the abolition of the ad hoc authority and the subsequent consequences of that abolition; and (2) the suzerainty of the London County Council. Now I confess that, as far as absolute suzerainty of the London County Council goes, this Bill does not entirely meet all that I wish- But let me begin by arguing against the principle so strongly and eloquently put forward by the hon. Member for Camberwell—the ad hoc system. Educationally speaking, it seems simple to say "one object, one body;" but when that object is education, it is not so simple or so single as it would appear. It will not be possible, in this way, to represent higher or secondary education; therefore, when it comes to that, you will find that you must necessarily sacrifice that kind of education for elementary education. As regards elementary education, I think this country is not only equal to, but in advance of, other countries; but when it comes to higher or secondary

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  education, it is behind the times. These committees are constituted under a scheme drawn up by the County Council, and approved by the Board of Education; and this is the method which is also largely adopted in this Bill. I contend that this power should be extended to the Borough Committees also, on whom will devolve the linking up of elementary schools with other institutions. Financially the ad hoc principle is indefensible; you give it a I specific duty to discharge, together with an unlimited call on the county rates much a body is not responsible to its constituents for expenditure, as that is shifted to another body altogether; and when both bodies have schools to manage, overlapping, waste, and extravagance are inevitable. Constitutionally, I believe the ad hoc authority is wrong; and on this subject I should like to quote the remarks of a gentleman of Liberal opinions—I mean Canon Barnett. He says:—
  "An ad hoc body cannot be as representative as a body generally elected, It is unsound administratively; it tends to become an administering, rather than a directing body; there is not enough direction to occupy the thought or energy of the members; there are not sufficient subjects for their consideration, so they try to do themselves what officials could do better under their direction. The authority is expensive without being efficient."
  That is the opinion of a man of great experience and of Liberal leanings, whose I authority will be recognised by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House, Let me take the ad hoc authority in its electioneering aspect. Why do certain bodies object to an ad hoc authority being replaced by a Committee of the London County Council, elected, not for a single purpose, but for general municipal purposes. I will take a concrete case. An elementary teacher came from the North to London, and, fired, by civic ambition, he stood as a candidate for the London School Board, and he was supported by all the efforts, all the ingenuity, and all the power of a well-known body connected with the teachers. Despite his ignorance of the conditions of London education, and of being almost a total stranger to the Metropolis, he was elected by a poll of nearly 19,000 in November, 1897. He sat for three years on the London School
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  Board, and worked hard; but he fell out with the powerful body who had helped to ensure his return, and, I believe, had a lawsuit with them. At all events, considerable friction arose. He stood again for the London School Board in 1900, but, instead of getting 19,000 votes, he only got 405 votes, which hardly shows great popular interest in this ad hoc authority. The Government has then decided against an ad hoc authority, and proposes to extend to London the main principles of the Act of 1902; making the London County Council the supreme education authority. You will then have in London what you have in every other county—concurrent jurisdiction over education. You will have the County Council itself and the Committee appointed under the first Schedule; the London County Council being the ultimate authority through the power of the purse.
  It is perfectly true that concurrent jurisdiction contains in itself certain elements of friction, but this has been provided against in the counties by a method which the first Schedule in the Bill renders impossible in London. Other County Councils have settled for themselves, with the approval of the Board of Education, the proportion of Councillors and non-Councillors on the Education Committee. In Essex and Berkshire two-thirds are County Councillors; in Lancashire and Leicestershire three-fourths are County Councillors, and in Cumberland the proportion is four-fifths. The advantage of this preponderance of Councillors is that the Council will not come into direct opposition with the Committee, and need not revise its decisions. The Parliamentary Committee of the County Council, in a statement they have issued, point out that under the Bill, as it stands, if the County Council find themselves out of harmony with a Committee nominally subordinate to them, they must do one of two things. They must either climb down and allow the Committee to pursue its own policy, or else they must burden themselves with the details of administering education without availing themselves of their power of delegation. That seems to me to be an absolutely fair and true criticism of the Bill as it stands; for the Schedule takes away from the County

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  Council the possibility of the Council having that preponderance on the Committee which other County Councils possess. In London, instead of a majority of two-thirds being possible, the Councillors would be only little more than one-third of the whole, namely, thirty six out of ninety-seven. To make this Bill workable, you must, to my mind, drop out the twenty-seven representatives of the boroughs. I would leave in the representatives of Westminster and of the City of London, because they suffer more under the equalisation of rates than the others. You would then have seventy members on which the County Council would possess an absolute majority. I understand that the Government are not wedded to the absolute letter of this Bill; and I would ask them to reconsider the representation and power of the Borough Councils. At present the Bill seems to be a mixture of the County Council and the Water Board, and is quite unworkable. You cannot cut a piece out of a system of suzerainty, and another piece out of a system of decentralisation, and piece them together and say, "Here is a perfect system of education." There is no medium between making the County Council in name and in fact the supreme authority, or giving the County Council the go-bye altogether, and setting up an ad hoc authority. We know that the Government are opposed to an ad hoc authority, and, therefore, I maintain they will have to make the County Council absolutely supreme.
  It has been suggested that the County Council should have more members created for educational purposes only. If the County Council ask for more members, by all means let their number be increased; but do not let the additional members be ear-marked for one purpose only. Let them be created for all the purposes of the County Council. I have never been a warm friend of the London County Council, perhaps because of their political bias; but on this occasion the Government have deliberately chosen them as the authority, and therefore their authority should be a real one. I would ask the Government not to ride their best hunter until they get to the big fence. If the Borough Councils are not to be directly represented on the Central Committee, they should certainly be given a large and
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  honourable share of the work that would be delegated by the Central Committee. To get the work done well you must centralise; to get it done at all you must decentralise; by which I mean that the power of the purse must rest on the central body, but that the management of education should be delegated as far as possible. This delegation the Bill proposes; but I object to those powers being specified by statute, instead of by scheme; nor do I agree with two particular powers which are specified, namely, the choice of sites, and the appointment of teachers. The London County Council should hand over to the Borough Councils such powers and duties of management over elementary education as may be determined by a scheme drawn up by the local education authority, and approved by the Board of Education. Such a scheme should arrange for the grouping of provided schools in each borough area; and should assign to the managers of each group, subject to the veto of the Borough Council, the appointment and dismissal of teachers. Such a scheme could be varied from time to time with the consent of the bodies concerned, and the House of Commons need not be troubled with matters of detail. Such a method would prove elastic and workable, and would be clear that the London County Council would be responsible for the whole educational policy and educational expenditure of London and the means of carrying both into effect. I will vote with pleasure for the Second Reading of this Bill, because I believe it will be possible and easy to make is a satisfactory solution of the difficulties involved. But in doing so, I would urge on the Government to amend the Bill in Committee in the following particulars; first, to omit Borough Councillors from the first Schedule, and secondly, to determine by scheme, and not by statute, the powers to be devolved on the Borough Councils, and to require the Borough Councils to act through composite Committees also constituted by scheme. This, I believe, will make the Bill easy and workable, and I hope the Government may see their way to accept the recommendations I have endeavoured to explain.
  MR. HALDANE: Although not a London Member I make no apology for taking part in this debate. London is the metropolis of the Empire; it is the greatest city in the world; and it is the place in this country to which we ought to be able to look for educational light and leading. Now, I have listened to the speech of my hon. and gallant friend who has just sat down, and at first I thought I was listening to a speech in support of this Bill. Then there came a point at which my hon. and gallant friend began to show, towards the end of his speech, that there was a sting in it so far as this Bill was concerned, and finally he made a speech not in favour of this Bill but of quite another, an ideal Bill, the lines of which he sketched out, and in regard to which in my opinion there is a great deal to be said. But we must take the proposition of the Government as it stands. I listened to the speech of the Prime Minister, and at the beginning of that speech it carried my mind back to last year. The right hon. Gentleman said he was surprised that we were making such a fuss over what, after all, was largely a matter of machinery, because the principle had been accepted last year. The Prime Minister then embodied a principle in his Bill, of which I was and am now a warm supporter, the principle of taking the greatest of the representative local bodies, except Parliament itself, and devolving on them work which Parliament cannot do, imposing on them the making and the collection of the local rate and the responsibility for the education of the people. There are difficulties in the way of that principle in whichever way we may-apply it. I said last year there were difficulties, and it might be injustices, in the Bill that became law. But so important was it to make a start in this direction that I was prepared, as I am now, to see that principle carried through in its integrity, leaving it to the future to correct what is in point of detail unfairly worked out. But is this Bill a mere machinery Bill to give effect to the principle? Last year the right hon. Gentleman would have had an easy way out of his difficulty; by the alteration of three words in a clause and the introduction of another clause, and that not a very long one, he could have made his Bill apply to London, and all grief and tears on the part of his own supporters, as well as of the Opposi-
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  tion, would have been to a great extent assuaged. The Prime Minister, however, has not chosen that course. He has brought in a Bill on the principle of recognising two authorities. I confess I have at times been puzzled for the motive of this. It did occur to me that there might be something Machiavellian in the reason for bringing these Borough Councils in in the way the Government had brought them in in this matter. It struck me that the controversy as to the Borough Councils might have been brought in to lead people's minds away from the religious controversy of which we heard so much last year, but of which we have heard so little on this occasion. I thought the Borough Councils were introduced to draw the enemy's fire, as it were, and that they were then to be withdrawn to leave a quiet passage to the Bill. But that was too far-fetched an idea. There is a famous picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds in which he has represented Garrick as being torn between tragedy and comedy. "Tragedy" has a somewhat striking face; there is something austere, somewhat of the Nonconformist conscience, in her lofty and ideal face, and Garrick is uneasy about not following her. But on the other hand there is the jovial and rollicking form of "Comedy" which is soliciting him to take the downward path. When I saw the President of the Local Government Board sitting by the side of the representative of the Education Department when this Bill was introduced I could not help feeling, when I thought of the Borough Council provisions of the Bill, that the President of the Local Government Board must be taken, in an educational and Pick-wickian sense, to represent "Comedy," because the provisions of the Bill which we have before us are pure comedy.
  The actual provisions of the Bill before us are to carry out the lines of that great principle of devolution to the County Council which is the basis of the Government Act of last year. I wish to make some observations on the proposals of this Bill, but before I can do so I must endeavour to define the standard by which these ought to be tested. London is not merely a great city, it is the metropolis of the Empire, and as such it has many miscellaneous educational interests which

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  other cities have not. To my mind, important as it is, elementary education is the simplest and the easiest problem of those with which we have to cope. In London, since 1870, you have had a system, established and laid down on certain definite lines, which has been gradually worked up, and the business of handling the system is mainly a matter of administration. The business of elementary education is not the only, or even the33 most difficult, work with which this new authority will be concerned. Anybody who takes the trouble to read that remarkable Report on the Industries of London, published by the Technical Education Board of the London County Council last year, showing the decay of industries which used to flourish in London, and the failure of others to keep pace with the times, must have been struck by what the Report declares to be the cause—the want of more scientific forms of education in London. We do not possess here what is possessed in Vienna and Berlin, and even in the great American cities, because we have not interested ourselves in education in the large spirit that they have In this country we cannot look to the State as they can in Germany. In Berlin they have a magnificent educational equipment with which we in London have nothing to compare. Why is it? Because there is a great and powerful authority which single-mindedly gives its attention to these matters. In Berlin that authority is, in the main, the Government, which exercises a direct control even over the local authority. In England we have nothing of the sort. We look to the local authority, and the local authority must be left to undertake the task. Therefore, if you are going to look to the local authority in London as you do in Liverpool, Manchester, and other great cities, you must put the local authority in the strongest possible position; you must show that you trust them; you must not hamper or hinder them. If you adopt that principle, be in earnest, and carry it out to the fullest extent. Consider the work the educational authority in London will have to do. It is not merely the great and important business of elementary education. In 1898 this House passed a Bill creating a
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  great teaching University for London. That University is in its infancy, but it is growing and making rapid progress. It is engaged in the work, not merely of coordinating education of a University type in London, but also of exercising influence on the secondary schools of the Metropolis. That was one of the functions for which Parliament designed the new educational instrument, and the new educational authority will have to deal with that. The general lines of our policy in this country forbid us to look to any great extent to the State. The bodies which have grown up under the auspices of the local authority in London, and those to which assistance has been given—such as King's College, University College, the London School of Economics, and others—without distinction of creed, show that we are at length making real and substantial progress in the work of developing higher education in London. But education of the highest type is not the only function of such an authority. Secondary education exists in London to a very large extent, but it is scattered, and lacks a pattern by which the schools might work one into another's hands and co-operate in their labours. Hampered as it has been, the Technical Education Board has done valuable work in assisting and co-ordinating secondary education, but the work has been only begun, and needs to be developed to a vast extent before the field can be said to be covered. I therefore come to the conclusion, without difficulty or hesitation, that the authority you require for London education must be an authority with a power and importance which you cannot have if you show want of confidence in the body to which you delegate the work, by hampering its proceedings by the introduction of other authorities. That being so, what is the existing position?
  The existing position is, that yon have a body which since 1893 has done a great deal of that part of the work of which I have been speaking. You have the London School Board and the Technical Education Board. I agree with much that fell from the Prime Minister as to the impossibility—the work having attained such dimensions—of doing these things in the way described by the hon. Member for Camberwell. All ere lit to the London School Board for having been able to do the enormous amount of

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  personal and practical work that they have done, but the task is attaining a magnitude which makes it essential that you should resort more than they do to the system of employing the expert, controlling him carefully, laying down the principles which are to guide him, but at the same time leaving him to work out the details, which can be worked out by a country School Board or by a small authority with a small range of functions, but which cannot possibly be worked out when the problem is so vast as in London. Under these conditions, I am no more afraid of the London County Council not being able to do this business, in point of numbers, than I should be afraid of that body of less than twenty members—the present Cabinet—beingun-able to discharge the business of governing the Empire. It is only a question of creating the machinery by which to delegate the work. It must be extremely well-considered; control must be retained over the officials who give effect to your purposes; but we want the expert in education more at present than in any other stage, and I shall be glad to see, not only in regard to secondary and intermediate education, but also in regard to elementary education, the work of the expert brought even more into the plan than is the case at present. Therefore I am not troubled by the notion that you would require a body of enormous dimensions to do this great work. But I do think it is desirable, in making this fresh start, that you should not interfere, or that you should interfere as little as possible, with the continuity of the work. You have the business of elementary education going more or less, but the business of technical education and education of the University type is only in its infancy. In 1893 the London County Council's Committee became the technical education authority for London, and since that time it has done a marvellous amount of work. It has set going a machine with the operation of which I believe few Members of the House would wish to interfere. It comprises workers of every sort of opinion. It has working with it experts from the School Board and other sources, who carry on the work in such a spirit that no offence is given to any of the denominations, and the vested interests have been conciliated and brought into line. You have, therefore a very
  708
  valuable body here. But you have to deal with elementary education, which this body, except indirectly, does not touch; you have also to deal with secondary schools, polytechnics (which provide technical education), and with University education, to which I attach great importance. I, for one, shall never be satisfied until I see students from the distant parts of the Empire flocking to the Universities in this country, and especially in London, for that higher education, that post-graduate training, in search of which they now go to the Continent or the United States. It is little short of a scandal that we should be able to provide so little education of that rank in the great Empire of which London is the Metropolis.
  What is the work at present done by the Technical Education Board? It aids or conducts four schools for University training; it aids substantially eight polytechnics; it directs six London schools of arts and crafts; it assists eleven technical institutes; eleven schools of art, and a number of minor institutions, including forty-eight secondary schools; it maintains nearly 3,000 scholars who get their education where-ever is most desirable; and it expends in so doing over £170,000 a year. There you have a body with the confidence of nearly every section of the community as far as its work goes. A body like that is not adequate to take up the enormous task you are now creating, but I say that it is extremely desirable that you should have a modern up-to-date organisation of that kind, that you should not destroy its life, but that you should preserve the continuity and develop that life as far as possible. At present that body consists of twenty directly-elected members of the County Councils, and fifteen co-opted members. For that body the Bill proposes to substitute a huge heterogeneous aggregation, of which thirty-six members are to come from the County Council, thirty-one from the Borough Councils, and twenty-five from outside. Those twenty-five ought to represent experts—just those people who cannot get in by popular election—women, representatives of tertiary education, representatives of the University, people who, in the ordinary course, would not be likely to desire, even if they were fitted, to run the racket of popular election. Nobody is more strongly convinced than

  709
  I am that the democratic principle is far freer from evils than any other principle, but I say that popular election cannot give you a body which contains these different, selected, and co-ordinated elements. It can give a body representing the sense of the community, which is generally the very best body through which to pick the experts, but direct popular election is not the way by which to bring the expert element into any body. The man of science, the specialist in the organisation of the University system, may not have the experience or capacity to appeal to the public, and men may be selected on account of special gifts which do not in themselves make them desirable representatives on such a body. Therefore I regard this principle of co-option as valuable. The London County Council is to be the rating authority. But the rating authority can be a really powerful authority, one with confidence in its Committee, only if it has a majority by which to dominate the general policy of that Committee. But, with the proportions here proposed, the central authority which you are going to trust, of which the Prime Minister spoke as being the pivot of the whole matter, is no longer in a position of supremacy. Look at the evil consequences of that. Twenty-five more members are to be chosen. They ought to be chosen to supplement the deficiencies which you will inevitably find if you trust to the chance of popular election. They ought to include the experts and specialists to whom I have referred; but the Council will be forced, if it is to maintain its majority in the new authority, the majority that will be essential for the maintenance of its position, to elect people who will be its own partisans. The biggest blot in the Bill is that you should impose on the County Council the necessity, if it is to maintain control over its own money, of prostituting the special trust you are giving it in the power of co-option for its own, though legitimate, partisan purposes. It cannot carry out its policy in any other way.
  I was a cordial supporter of the principle embodied in the Act of last year. I am thankful that this session we meet in more of an educational and less of a sectarian atmosphere. That is a great blessing. One good
  710
  result of the Act of last year is, that there has been excited in education an interest such as the British people have not had for many a long day, if ever before, and I would like to take advantage of that fact. London gives an almost unrivalled opportunity of showing what we can do, of showing that this Parliament is really capable of producing an educational machinery on a level with that which exists in other countries. If you must pick out the central body in London—which is the rating authority, and which it would be extravagant to replace by a new rating authority—if you must pick out that authority, and trust it, why in the name of heaven bring in the e twenty-five people to be diverted from the purposes for which they are introduced in the Bill by the necessity of the central body preserving the continuity and the dominion of its own policy? I do not see how that part of the Bill can possibly stand. There is another strong objection to the introduction of the members of Borough Councils in the way they are here introduced. Do not think that I am against the Borough Councils taking a great and prominent part in education. There is a great deal of work for them to do, but you must co-ordinate their work. Their work should be made to fit in with the work of the central authority, so as to leave as little room as possible for friction. But that aim is made very difficult of achievement if thirty-one members are to be set against thirty-six to fight for these other twenty-five. You cannot have the continuity in carrying on the policy of the Education Board which you could have if you simply trusted the County Council with this duty. In London I believe we are on the eve of great developments in education. If they are not made by Parliament or the County Council they will be made from private sources by public opinion. It is above all things necessary that your machinery should be of a kind to assist these great developments. You must have a body which will command respect for its educational efficiency because of its knowledge of these things, but the balancing of the thirty-six by the thirty-one in this unfortunate fashion seems to destroy the possibility of getting that smoothly-working authority which will possess

  711
  the confidence of the educational public as the Technical Education Board does. Do not think I am saying you should take the Technical Education Board as it stands. You will have to modify and develop it, because of the very magnitude of the work and the far-reaching nature of the spirit in which you wish that work to be done in the future, but surely it can be worked out somewhat on the lines I have suggested.
  I will venture to make a suggestion. I should like the Government to take the County Council, to give it the power of co-option, to eliminate at this stage the Borough Councils, and to regulate the co-option by the Council if they think it necessary to guard the public. I should like the co-opted members to include experts and women. Suppose you take twenty-five. I should like to see three representing the University. There is going to be an enormous amount of work done here in London by the University. If it was only in the training of teachers the University has a great function to discharge. I am not talking of the skeleton organisation at South Kensington, but of the whole of the education of the University type which is being co-ordinated. Above all things the training of teachers requires to be put on a proper footing. I yield to nobody in my respect for the splendid work the elementary teachers as a body have done, but they are suffering from something which is not due to fault of their own, but which has been imposed upon them by Providence or the late Mr. Lowe—I mean the effect of system of payment by results, which has turned the elementary teacher into a too business-like person, with contemplations which are too exclusively from the point of view of the elementary teacher. There are brilliant exceptions; there are no better examples than the three representatives of that body of teachers in this House. If our education is to be what it should, the elementary teachers must be trained from the University point of view as well as that which has obtained up to the present. I should like to see at least three members from the Universities upon that Committee. I should also like to see the City and Guilds of London and the City Parochial Foundations represented, for they have done an enormous amount of educa-
  712
  tional work. I should like to see the teachers specially represented, and schools, whether Roman Catholic, Jewish, Church of England, or Nonconformist, ought to have their representatives. There-should also be some representatives specially representing secondary education. These, together with the women, are the elements which you ought to introduce into a body of this kind, but the essence of the scheme is that your rating authority should be supreme. I want to say a word or two about the management of local schools. According to Clause 3 the management is to be in the hands of the Borough Councils, and they are to manage the schools within their own areas. This is another great blot on the Bill. At the present time the schools in the East End of London will be in this difficulty; that they could not be managed by the local authorities in such a way as you manage them, by bringing in public-spirited people who come from other parts of London such as the West End. In Bethnal Green the school management is largely recruited from the West End, and hon. Members who are acquainted with the working of the London scheme know that the most valuable element in the management are strangers to the localities where they give their services. Your Bill destroys all that.
  SIR WILLIAM ANSON: The words-of the Clause provide that the Borough Councils have direct power to add persons who are not members of the Borough Councils.
  MR. HALDANE: But have we any security that the Councils will do this?
  SIR WILLIAM ANSON: What security have you now?
  MR. HALDANE: You want to secure continuity in the management and I should like to see the present local management preserved as far as possible. I do think it will be a very serious thing if we have a breach in the management of the elementary schools as it exists at the present time. I think it is essential that the Government should take some step in order that we may preserve that valuable element which you cannot replace in various parts of London. I am desirous to awaken interest in education in every part of London political society,

  713
  and I would gladly bring the Borough Councils into this work. I am not the enemy of the Borough Councils; on the contrary, I wish to make the very best of them and get them to play a part in education. But do not give them the unsuitable part which is proposed in this Bill; you must have the courage of your own opinions. The Government is now at the parting of the ways; it can choose the path of virtue or the path of vice, the path of tragedy or comedy; it can go in the direction which has been urged by one distinguished minister, or in the direction in which it is being urged by the best public opinion and the majority of opinion in this House. Let the Government make up its mind and act according to the best light it can get; and if it goes boldly forward keeping education steadily in front of it, then I do not think it need be afraid of its policy for education in London.
  SIR JOHN GORST: With most of what the hon. and learned Member has said in the course of his speech I agree, but he made one observation with which I do not agree. He said that in discussing this Bill we must take it as it stands. Had this been the Third Reading it would be right to take it as it stands, and accept or reject the Bill with all its virtues and all its vices; but on the Second Reading of a Bill, our duty is to look into the principle of the measure to see what that principle is, and whether it is one for the improvement of the education of the people. We can then trust to the Committee stage for removing the blemishes, and for adding other provisions which may be necessary to make it a more perfect Measure. The hon. Members who moved the rejection were perfectly right in their Motion. The hon. Member for Poplar said justly that there were three courses. First of all there is the ad hoc authority, specially elected for dealing with education in the Metropolis; secondly, you might take the London County Council; and thirdly, the principle of the composite body called the Water Board, composed of persons appointed by subordinate bodies. It really comes to this, that, practically, we have to choose between an ad hoc authority and a municipal authority without the County Council. That was the issue last year on the Education Bill, when the
  714
  question was a directly-elected authority against the municipal authority, and every argument used by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Poplar was used last year and was considered and rejected by a very large majority. I do not think he did justice to this point; I have over and over again said it is not an educational reason, but a question of local government and local finance. In this country you never will have effective local self-government until you have a single body in each district responsible to the ratepayers and solely responsible to the ratepayers for the finance. While you have municipal authorities, School Board authorities, and Boards of Guardians, each of them with rating powers, you will never be able to have economical or effective local self-government, and it is entirely on that ground, and not on any special educational ground, that the Government in the Bill of last year have preferred municipal authorities to the specially elected authorities representing the will of the ratepayers. I will not enlarge upon that point, because the House so emphatically preferred the municipal authority last year, that the arguments of the hon. Member for Poplar, excellent as they were, may be passed by.
  The hon. Member for North Camberwell brought forth an entirely new argument against the municipal authority in London. He said that the London County Council was unable to perform the duties which the Bill would cast upon it, and he accompanied that by a very simple remedy, and that was, to increase the number of the County Council. To an increase in the number of the County Council I do not see any objection in principle. It is a question for the County Council, and if that body is unable to perform the duties thrown upon it by this Bill, an application for the increase of its members would be immediately listened to by this House. But although that is the opinion of the hon. Member for North Camberwell, it is not the opinion of many of the experienced members of the London County Council; they do not think so, and I agree with the hon. Member who has just sat down, that the London County Council is quite capable of performing the duty thrown upon it by the State. Those in this House who are in favour of municipal authority as against the

  715
  specially elected authority ought, without any hesitation whatever, to vote this year as they voted last year, for a municipal as against an elected authority, and I have no doubt in giving my vote for the Second Reading of this Bill.
  Then comes the question as to the desirability and possibility of making changes in the Bill in the course of the Committee stage. This question has been referred to by the Prime Minister. The first question is the constitution of the Committee. I agree with what was said by the hon. and learned Member for Haddingtonshire, that the Committee, as at present constituted, is not a desirable one. There again the Prime Minister told the House that we can discuss this matter in Committee, and that the Government will be open to reason and argument, and will be willing to modify their scheme in accordance with the general wishes of the House. Therefore I think we may assume that the Committee as it stands in the Bill will not be insisted upon, and we are open to reconsider it. If I were able to have my own way about this matter, I would leave the London County Council absolutely free to appoint its own Committee. The London County Council has already shown immense liberality, and a great desire to get the best assistance it can for the work of higher education which has been entrusted to it. It has established a Committee which has been in existence for many years, and has given universal satisfaction. If I may go back to the reminiscences of the period of my official life, and I daresay the hon. Gentleman who has succeeded me will bear me out in this when he addresses the House, I would tell the House that, in all my relations with that Technical Instruction Committee, I formed the opinion that it was most business-like, most earnest, and a body totally free from all prejudice either political or religious. But if that is not to be, then I think the London County Council should have the same privilege which every other County Council in the kingdom was given by the Act passed last year. That is to say, that it should be allowed to submit to the Board of Education for their approval a scheme consistent with the provisions of last year's Act for the appointment of a
  716
  Committee, and that scheme, I have no doubt, would be adopted by the Board of Education. I do not suppose they would stand up against so strong a body as the London County Council in any particular, but if they did not adopt the scheme it would ultimately come before the House in a Provisional Order, and if there was any difference of opinion between the London County Council and the Board of Education we should have to determine what scheme was to be adopted. If that cannot be, and if London is so peculiar in its educational interests, I confess that I should like to see what was suggested by the hon. and learned Member for Haddingtonshire. I should like to see a scheme in the Schedule of the Bill of the kind he mentioned, giving a considerable majority to the London County Council and the rest prescribed by the House of Commons—the number of members to be appointed by the London University and the secondary schools—special care being taken that on this Board there was a proper number of women, because that was the weak point of the Bill last year, and that is the weak point of the Bill this year. It is a point that is only curable by Parliament amending the Local Government Act to make women eligible for those bodies that are entrusted with the duty of education. I do not think any restriction in the Schedule as to the number of women to be elected can be looked upon as anything, but a temporary expedient, and the real way to cure the evil which there undoubtedly would be, if women were excluded from the Education Committee, would be to amend the Local Government Act in that particular. Therefore, it is; quite clear that the House, when it gets; into Committee on this Bill, can establish an Education Committee which will be in entire accordance with the principles of the Bill of last year, and through which the London County Council will be able to carry out the powers which are conferred upon it by the Act.
  Now I come to the question of management and delegation of management. I am not an enemy of the Borough Councils. On the contrary, the Borough Council is a proper body in London to whom the powers, particularly in the management of elementary schools, I though I do not confine myself to elementary schools, within the limits of the

  717
  borough can very properly be delegated. But the borough authorities must be managers, and I think that to set up a second or double authority, so as to prevent the London County Council from having complete control over the managers, as well as over its officers, would be most detrimental to education. It is also quite essential, as stated by the right hon. and learned Gentleman in his speech, that something should be done in the Bill to preserve continuity. I think the present provisions of the Bill in that respect are very crude and would cause very great difficulty, notwithstanding the power which the Secretary to the Board of Education pointed out to secure continuity. I do not think that is enough. I think they ought to put in the Bill something that would ensure that those powers will be carried out by the Borough Councils and that they will secure continuity. May I call the attention of the House to what is the existing state of things? Perhaps hon. Members do not realise what that is. At the present momentinLondon—I am speaking of elementaryschools—there are 1,750 managers of elementary schools, of whom no less than 550 are women. The number of Managing Committees is 180, and the effect of the Bill, if carried as it stands, would be that the number would be reduced to twenty-nine, being a Committee in each borough. Now, though they have powers to appoint on the Committees other members, they would not necessarily have one of the old managers on the Committee, and there is no obligation to have one. These Committees—one for each borough—have a most unequal amount of duties to perform. In the City of London there are only two provided schools, so that there would be a Committee for these two schools. In Westminster there are not more than three or four provided schools, and the same condition of thing, prevails in Kensington, Paddington, and probably some of the other West End boroughs. On the other hand, in the Borough of Stepney, in the East End of London, there are thirty-six provided schools. There are 30,000 children and 600 teachers whom the Committee for Stepney would have to manage. Very much the same remark applies to Islington, Camber well, and a number of East End parishes. The extent of the boroughs varies enormously. The Borough of Wandsworth
  718
  is five square miles, and extends from Streatham to Clapham. The Borough of Woolwich is also five square miles, and it is separated into two parts by the River Thames, which is sometimes impassible. I think the House will see that one Committee of management for very populous or extensive boroughs would be extremely inconvenient and inefficient. I think there ought to be provision in the Statute for making this delegation, and we ought to make it, workable and reasonable. We should require that there should be one Committee to every Parliamentary constituency. That would make the Parliamentary constituencies coterminous, with the borough districts, and that would make fifty-eight instead of twenty-nine Committees. With regard to the constitution of these Committees, I think we ought to prescribe by the Bill: that a certain proportion of the members should be Borough Councillors, and that a certain proportion should be from the existing managers, of whom a certain; proportion of not less than one-half might be women. In that way you would be able to get the whole of the districts covered by the Committees to whom the elementary education powers were delegated.
  There is another thing, I think, that is not provided for in the Bill, and that is special schools for the blind, the deaf, and the weak-minded. These are not properly local schools, for they serve great districts. Clearly these schools ought to be managed by separate managers, of whom a large proportion should be women. Those schools ought to be specially provided for. There is one more thing I ought to say, and that is as to the appointment of teachers. It would be the greatest possible calamity, and it would be a calamity which the Bill as it stands would bring about, if, for the service of the whole of the districts, we had twenty-nine different services, and we ought to put something in the Bill which will secure that, as far as the teachers go, there should be only a single service for teachers for the whole of the Metropolis. I do not think that is at all irreconcilable with a considerable amount of delegation to the Borough Councils, or those Committees of the Borough Councils which I have indicated.

  719
  A similar system is now carried out by the London School Board. Although there is but one service of teachers for the whole of London, the School Board allow the appointment of assistant teachers, and especially the first appointment of teachers to be made on the recommendation of the managers, and they allow the managers to appoint head teachers from a list which is sent to them by the School Board. There is no reason why that plan should not be continued. Why should not the Committee of the Borough Councils make the first appointment of teachers, and when once they are appointed they should become members of the great London service of teachers, so that they may be placed on the list sent out and from which all districts may select teachers. My object is only to show that the great principle of municipalisation in the first place is the foundation of this Bill. In the next place this great principle of municipalisation can be carried out without any of the objections which had been raised by critics on both sides of the House. We can secure absolute supremacy and absolute control of the London County Council over the whole work of education, and at the same time secure the delegation of very important duties to the London Borough Councils; and if these duties are carried out by the Borough Councils in the spirit in which I am sure they will be, it will give them immense local interest in, and an immense local influence over, the matter of education.
  MR. YOXALL: I cannot but think that if a Member of this House had come in here for the first time and had listened to the debate during the last half hour he would have come to the conclusion that the London Education Bill had been withdrawn by the Government and that the House had resolved itself into a sort of amiable and non-partisan Committee to recommend the bases of a totally new Bill. I have not been in this House so long as many Members of it, but I have been here long enough to know that the experience this afternoon on the Second Heading of a Bill is almost unique in Parliamentary history. We are not discussing a solid and actual measure which exists upon paper, backed by the Govern-
  720
  ment and really before the House, but we are discussing something that may happen, when by the process of voting on the Second Reading an exact and specified measure is put out of the way and a new kind of measure, changed in all its details, has come before the Committee of the House. What we are now supposed to be discussing is the London Education Bill, brought in by a great Government with an immense majority, a Government which knew for more than twelve months that they must submit such a Bill to Parliament, and had had many months to prepare it. I submit that it is hardly respectful to the capacity and industry of this House that a debate of this kind should be allowed to go on. It is true that we had from the Prime Minister an intimation that on some details of the Bill there is no finality: but the Prime Minister is a man of great subtlety of mind, and carefulness of statement, and I did not gather from his words any assurance that the Bill is to be amended in Committee to the extent which my hon. friend the Member for Haddingtonshire, or even the right hon. Member for Cambridge University, supposed. What right have we to assume from what was said this afternoon on behalf of the Government, that the Borough Council element on the Education Committee of the education authority would vanish in the Committee stage? And if that assumption is unwarranted, the present debate is vitiated. There are hon. Members opposite, and at least one on the Treasury Bench, who are determined that the Borough Councils shall form a constituent part of the education authority. The brilliant suggestions of my right hon. friend the Member for Haddingtonshire and of the right hon. Member for Cambridge University are not to the purpose, and are beside the mark, because we have no assurance that the Borough Councils will be deleted from the Bill. I suggest that we should leave the discussion of an ideal measure, of an aerial measure, and return to the consideration of the concrete measure on paper which, though short, is bad all through. It is clear from the circumstances attending the introduction of the Bill, and all that has taken place between that stage and the Second Reading, that although the Government had months at their disposal for the preparation of the Bill,

  721
  it was conceived in haste and shapen in confusion. It was brought in with out due notice, and hurriedly passed its First Reading just before Easter, and too short an interval was allowed to elapse between the First and Second Reading. The London County Council and the London School Board, and many of the London Borough Councils, have had no opportunity of meeting to consider this Bill, and pronounce an opinion upon it. These circumstances are suspicious, and weaken my belief or hope that during the Committee stage the Bill will be amended into a work able and satisfactory measure. The haste in asking for the First Reading of the Bill was due to the fear that London opinion might be pronounced in away entirely adverse to the Bill, and I feel sure that the brief interval that has occurred between the First and Second Reading was due to a similar fear. The Bill was received on its introduction with universal condemnation, not only by the Liberal, but by the Unionist Press, in fact, I may say, generally, by the whole Press of London. Then followed the condemnation of many of the Borough Councils representing half the population of London; and had a greater interval been allowed, I am sure that some other Borough Councils would also have pronounced against the Bill. As for the London County Council, it is to-day, in all probability, adopting the recommendation of its Parliamentary Committee, and pronouncing against the Bill. The Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of half London—that part of the Metropolis which most requires a satisfactory Education Bill—and who was friendly to the Act of last year—has declared against the very vital principle of the Bill and has preference for a totally different kind of authority. The Prime Minister says that this is a Bill of machinery. It maybe soon paper; but it is not a matter of machinery only or mainly, but a matter of education of the children of London to the number of a million. What the Bishop of Rochester said was—
  "It is from the side of the school and the children that I am most apprehensive of the Bill."
  722
  That is the most vital condemnation that can be uttered by anybody interested in education. The side of the schools and the children! That is the side. For what does the education exist? For what is the machinery set to work? For the schools, and for the children; and if the Bishop of Rochester, who is largely responsible for last year's Act, says that from the side of the schools and the children he is most apprehensive of this Bill, then the Bill is unworthy of the support of this House, and ought not to receive a Second Reading. If it is bad for the schools, and for the children, it is bad all through. Then other persons who claim to know something about the schools and the children have declared that the Bill is bad all through. The secondary school teachers condemn the Bill, the elementary school teachers condemn it, and the school attendance officers condemn it. Those who know most about the subject, those who know most about the children and the schools and the really important phases of the whole quest on, condemn the Bill. Women who are specially interested in the children and the schools have expressed their opinion of the Bill, and what do they say? The Women's Local Government Society, after considering the measure, say—
  "The evil effect of the Bill upon the co-operation of women in the organisation and administration of education is an effect even more seriously disabling than that brought about by the Education Act of last year."
  Again, I will quote what was said by the leading organ of local government in this country—the Local Government Chronicle—an organ of municipal administration, imbued with the spirit and conversant with the letter of all the Acts of Parliament which govern our local municipal life. It says—
  "It is not in accordance with the spirit of the age that a body which is to have control over such large funds and such extensive interests should be constituted in such a heterogeneous way. It is putting the clock back to have a great and important branch of administrative work handed over to an authority resembling in many particulars that effete and corrupt institution the Metropolitan Board of Works, which the present Chancellor of the Exchequer extinguished nearly fifteen years ago."

  723
  That observation holds good to-day. We have had no pledge, and no assurance that we are not to have a Metropolitan Board of Works under another name. This Bill does not please the School Board, the Technical Education Committee, the clergy, and those who are most interested in the metropolitan schools. I have quoted what the Local Government Chronicle says of the Bill; let me quote what the Pilot, that distinguished organ of cultured Anglican opinion—says—
  "The London Education Bill has come in for almost universal condemnation. No one has a good word to say for it as it stands."
  In this House the only good word came from the Prime Minister, who himself spoke in the future tense and talked about certain principles in the Bill which were essential, and then threw the rest overboard. But the point I wish specially to bring before the House is that the Bill, as it stands, is what we are going to vote upon to-day or to-morrow—not an imaginary measure. The recommendation of the Pilot is rather comprehensive. It says—
  "That the Bill requires the excision of every section after the first, and also of the first Schedule,"
  and then you may have a reasonable measure!
  The whole position is an absurd one induced by a hasty and ill-considered Bill; a Bill not based on educational considerations and not based upon the principles of last year's Act. There is no parallel between the machinery required for London and that set up for the country in the Bill of last year, and I say you ought to depart from the Act of last year in dealing with the case of London. I submit that the most practical way would have been to create a special authority, directly elected for the purpose of education and for that purpose only. I want to know why the Government did not take that course. Rumour has it—and rumour is full of tongues, but some of them tongues of Members of this House and Members sitting on the Government side—rumour has it that the Government were balancing in their minds between two plans. One plan is embodied in the Bill before the House, and another provided that the London education authority was to be specially elected by direct election for educational purposes. Why has that
  724
  plan been rejected? It has been rejected as the result of partisan prejudices and political predilections; a preference for the Borough Councils and a dislike to the London County Council. Speaking in the names of the children and the schools I do regret that a dislike for the existing School Board, a dislike for direct election, a predilection for Borough Councils against the London County Council, or other considerations of that kind, should have caused to be brought forward a Bill like this one, which is inadequate, imperfect, unsuited to the conditions and needs of London, and can hardly be amended even by weeks in Committee. It is bound to be only temporary, and must in the long run be replaced by a measure setting up for London an authority for educational purposes alone. The present Bill contains all the objectionable features of last year's Bill, and when to all that you add for London—the capital of the Empire, that ought to set an example to all other places in the land—a thoroughly vicious and impossible plan for managing education, then I say that no one who knows anything about it can hesitate to vote sincerely and heartily against this Bill
  MR. MILVAIN: I would remind hon. Members that it is the Empire which has made the Metropolis and not the Metropolis the Empire. In my humble judgment it is integrity, honesty, and industry which has promoted the Empire far more than education. I admit that changes in the world demand something more in the training of our children, and I admit that higher education is essential, but I deny that London, as the Metropolis of the Empire, is entitled to any better education, or any special form of education, which is not generally applicable to the country at large. I have listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Haddingtonshire, and there is one expression which he made use of with which I cordially agree, viz., that it is a difficult thing to make plans. I think if it were desirable to put forward an illustration of that simple proposition you have only to look to the speeches which have been made by all the Members of the House who have spoken

  725
  on this question since the debate began. No two Members have agreed as to what ought to be the educational authority for London. Everyone has given us different ideas, with the exception of the hon. Member who has just sat down and the hon. Member for Camberwell, who are both in favour of ad, hoc representation. At the same time it must be remembered that they are, I assume, members of the Association of Teachers. I take no exception to that, but I should like to know what would have happened if the Government had introduced any Bill that can be mentioned framed on lines suggested by hon. Members opposite. If they had gone for the London County Council pure and simple the Bill would have been torn to pieces, whilst one framed on the ad hoc system would also have been torn to pieces. This is a question of principle, and the principle in this Bill is what is the machinery which is to be applicable to London, having regard to the principle of the Bill that was passed last year. The prevailing principle of that Bill was decentralisation, and I think if anything would justify decentralisation in London it is the remarks of the hon. Member for Camberwell in reference to the cumbrous work the School Board has to perform in London, and the numerous children it has under its care and protection. The best way to get rid of all that work is by means of decentralisation. That being the principle of the Bill, I want to know what is the object of decentralisation. It is in the first place to awaken the authorities to their responsibilities on educational matters, secondly, to elicit the interest of parents in the education of their children, and thirdly, to enable ratepayers to say how, consistent with economy, education can be carried out with efficiency.
  These being the principles of the Bill of last year, I attended a meeting of my constituents early this year and had the boldness to endeavour to apply those principles to what ought to be the educational authority for London. It must be remembered that these metropolitan boroughs have only recently been created—I suppose on the same principle as decentralisation—but they are still in their infancy. They have no power of rating in reference to education, and
  726
  having regard to that I expressed my opinion that elementary education ought to be in the hands of the metropolitan boroughs, and also that, with the object of the metropolitan boroughs being able to learn what are the duties in reference to education, no matter what the authority was, they should be appointed by the Government to have a right to have a representative on the rating authority. I was of opinion that there ought to be co-opted members who were experts in education, and that there ought also to be ladies who would render very good service as regards education. My object was that the metropolitan boroughs should be educated in their duties in order that when the time came they might be able to throw aside the County Council or the Education Board, each individual authority managing education within its own area. If I had known the amount of correspondence that my proposal would evoke, I might have hesitated before making it. Some of my correspondents advocated an ad hoc authority; the greater number were in favour of the County Council, and condemned the municipalities as the very worst authorities on the ground that their representatives were narrow-minded, bigoted, and ignorant. I cannot think that these strong expressions are justified. Certainly, they are not justified so far as the Municipal Council of cultured Hampstead, which I have the honour to represent, is concerned. But if these criticisms were justified would it not necessitate zealous educationists throwing the weight of their influence into public life, in order that men qualified to discharge the duties should be returned on representative institutions. If educationists would throw their zeal into public life there would be a better class of representatives, assuming the criticism is justified that the present representatives are narrow-minded, bigoted, and ignorant. I assume the whole of the Opposition are united in their opposition to the representation of the municipalities on the education authority. That cry comes with ill grace from those who formerly advocated: "Trust the People." I have every confidence in the people. Let us for a moment consider what an ad hoc authority is. It is a body which expends the rates, but is not responsible for

  727
  them—a body of irresponsible experts, generally extravagant, and admittedly elected by 15 per cent. or 20 per cent. of the electors. I do not think that that is a body calculated to know the needs of the people or the wishes of the parents as to the manner in which their children ought to be educated. The County Council has admittedly far too much to do already; and if the County Council were to be the only education authority, it would do as it did with reference to technical education—delegate the matter to a Committee. That would be a slight, I go further and say an insult, on all the London municipalities. Every borough in England and Wales appoint sits own education authority; and I am at a loss to understand in what respect Hampstead is less efficient or less public-spirited than any borough in England or Wales. There has been a circular issued showing the relative populations of the metropolitan boroughs and what are called non-county, with populations of under 150,000, and I find Hampstead has a population of over81,000, a larger population than Devonport, Newport, Wigan, and other places, all important boroughs in their counties and all having their own education authority. Now, Sir, I have always maintained, and shall continue to maintain, that, whatever the system of education may be, the metropolitan boroughs are entitled to representation. I am not so foolish as to insist that they shall have a majority. What my desire is, is that they shall be educated to their duties. It is not necessary that they should be in the majority at once, but I have no doubt in course of time they will be educated to their duty and their responsibilities and will not shirk them. I think this is the only Bill which is consistent with the provisions of the Act of last year, and however much it may be amended in Committee, subject to the metropolitan boroughs being represented on the Board, I shall vote for it.
  MR. LOUGH (Islington, W.): I am glad the Government have at last got one solid supporter to this Bill, especially as he comes from such a cultured district as Hampstead. Now I desire to protest against the way in which London is
  728
  being treated by the Government in this matter. The whole handling of the Bill has been grossly and manifestly unfair. This Bill was introduced and read a first time on the day the London County Council separated for its recess, and there has been no meeting since. The School Board also has not had time to consider this matter, and now we are being hurried along to the Second Reading without either of these great authorities having had time to consider it. The Bill itself is an apparently inoffensive one of five short clauses, but the London County Council have taken the opportunity of printing for us the proper Bill of the Government, and I now hold it in my hands. They have printed in full all the clauses the Government have adopted by reference, and I find, instead of a simple Bill of five clauses, we have got a great document of twenty-eight pages, with as many most intricate clauses. The Bill which I hold in my hand is the honest measure, and the Government ought to give official sanction to the printing and circulating of this document to Members before it proceeds with the Second Reading. I desire to second the appeal of my hon. friend on my right with regard to the way the House handles this subject. We do not want any reconstruction or Amendment by amateurs either on this side, or below the Gangway on that side. We should deal with the Bill as it is. I listened to the hon. Member for the Cambridge University, and how on earth he can vote for the Second Reading I cannot for the life of me understand. He does not agree with a single clause of the Bill. He says there is a vague principle in the Bill, and in consequence of that he will vote for the Second Reading, but he wants to amend it in every particular, and hon. Members on this side want to do the same. I am very much obliged to hon. friends on this side for the way in which they have listened to the debate and spoken and assisted us in this matter, because I believe London deserves a little more consideration from the Liberal Party than they have given to it. My right hon. friends may say: There are only nine of you against fifty-two. How, under these circumstances can you claim to speak for London?

  729
  But I deny that the fifty-two represent London in this matter. If you go to the bodies which are interested in the Local Government of London you receive a very different expression of opinion, I would ask hon. Members most respectfully not to give us any more alternative Bills which are entirely different to the Government Bill; to follow each of the Bills which are suggested in every speech leaves our minds in such a state I of confusion that they are perfectly I useless to us. My hon. friend the Member for Camberwell said it would be easy to make an excellent Bill, but what he meant was, that if he were in power, with a majority of 120 behind him, he would make an excellent Bill. But a great deal must be done before he is in a position to submit any Bill at all. Let us not, therefore, go a step beyond our proper position, which is to express our opinion upon the Bills the Government introduce.
  Now, I cannot help being struck by the bad reception which this Bill continues to receive. When the Bill was read a first time there was not a single Member who spoke in the House who did not suggest Amendments and alterations in it, and that criticism has gone on ever since. The hon. and learned Member for Stretford recently made a most interesting speech to his constituents in reference to this Bill, and he had not a good word to say for it. That was very remarkable, because he is a constant supporter of the Government. He made one very unfavourable criticism, and that was, that the Borough Councils were not the proper authority to have powers under the Bill; that the local authority set up under the Bill should be the rating authority of the district. The educational rate is one for the whole of London, and not for any locality in it; therefore the authority under the Bill should represent the whole area of London. That is a strong criticism to make, and the Government ought to pay attention to such criticism. The hon. Member for the Oxford University is to speak at a meeting of the London Diocesan Conference to-morrow, and I have seen the Resolution which is to be proposed, and that is, that the Bill should be passed into law but that the Council will
  730
  welcome amendment to it. The Government ought not to ask us to adopt a proposal of this kind which does not appear to have received favour anywhere. It was pointed out in the First Reading that it destroys the London School Board, but what does not seem to be so generally noticed if that it also destroys the excellent educational work that has been carried out by the London County Council. The same authority will no longer exist to do this work in London; the Technical Education Council of the London County Council will be as much abolished as the School Board itself. The great fault of the Bill is that it is opposed to the right principle of local government for London. I allude to its treatment of the Borough Councils. The principle on which the Borough Councils were founded is this. They are set up to deal exclusively with local matters which can be dealt with without respect to any other locality and without regard to the Metropolis as a whole. But education affects London as a whole and the cost is put on the general rate, and yet these bodies are tacked on and enabled to deal with this great matter. The principle ought to be carried to the full length of the proposals, and if it were we should have twenty-nine different systems and twenty-nine different authorities; and as it would be absurd if carried to its logical conclusion, we ought not to adopt it at all, but adopt instead the right principle of one authority for the whole of London.
  Another point is the great cost of this Bill and the great new burden which will be placed upon London to pay the rate. I put a question to the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill at Question time in regard to the matter and asked him how much the Exchequer grant would amount to. He could not give me an answer at the time but he has sent me a courteous reply since, from which it appears that the new grant-in-aid will amount to 7s. 6d. on every child in London, That is a large additional sum and that is the aid grant from the Exchequer quite apart from the burden on the rates, and the burden on the rates will not be less than 1½d. in the £. Another important matter to be remembered is

  731
  that a quarter of the rate for the whole country is paid by London, and when we think of the additional burden thrown upon London in this matter we ought to pause before we make the fatal breach in the principle that control ought to go with taxation, and see that a legitimate amount of control is extended to London at the same time. Another point has been mentioned, but only parenthetically, by the right hon. Member for the Cambridge University, but it is important. It is assumed by the representation given by these Borough Councils they will have comparatively equal duties under the new Act. They will have nothing of the kind. The right hon. Gentleman has pointed out that there will be only four or five schools under the great local authorities like Westminster and the City, but Islington will have thirty-six schools, and Camberwell will have thirty-six. That shows that the incidence of this Bill locally has not been considered by the Government. It must make a great difference to the local authority whether it looks after three or thirty-three schools. The only other point of detail is the treatment of women by the Bill. Everybody agrees that the women who have served on the London School Board, and the 500 at present on the Management Committees have done excellent work, but there is no provision for women in I he Bill. The right hon. Gentleman's position therefore is illogical. He desires to see these women's work continued, but what guarantee is there that it will?
  Sir JOHN GORST: I said I was in favour of so amending the Bill as to leave the position of these women not dependent on the will of the local Council but to put them in a statutory position.
  Mr. LOUGH: I quite agree, but that is a strong Amendment to suggest. We have not got it in the other Bill. The Government have not made us any promise with regard to it. But the right hon. Gentleman went further; he agreed to give the schools into the hands of the Borough Councils on which these women have no right to sit. He knows what efforts we have made to get the law altered so that women might be
  732
  admitted as members of the London Borough Councils, and how little likely we are to succeed on this. The position in which these women are placed after the work they have done for education is anomalous. This House is treating them very ungratefully indeed. But my main objection to the Bill is that it seems to offer a large endowment to sectarian institutions. It is really a Bill for endowing the Church, and I might say more than one Church. It is also a Bill for endowing private institutions, and private schools will get large sums under it. And finally it contains proposals for endowing unnecessary schools. I think the burdens of the people are great enough at the present moment without pouring out public money in this underhand and unfair manner. The position of the Established Church is strengthened unfairly in London as against the Free Churches. This point has not been considered sufficiently. The London School Board, through thirty years of its existence, has acted fairly towards the Free Churches in London. The board schools were considered to be so fair that they led to the abandonment of many schools belonging to the Free Churches in London, and the substitution of schools under the School Board for them. A great deal has been heard of the suffering of the Nonconformists in the 8,000 parishes of England in which there was no school but a Church school. I do not think the Nonconformists in these places have been subjected to nearly the same injustice as the Nonconformists of London will be subjected to under this Bill. The School Board is an institution regarded as favourable to the Free Churches and Nonconformists. Under Sir Charles Reid, and many of its earlier Chairmen, the character of its teaching was such as appeared to afford Nonconformists every security, but everyone who looks carefully at this measure will recognise that it is intended to strengthen the control of the Church over schools. It will act through Committees largely dominated by the local clergymen, who are generally bitter partisans and sometimes narrow-minded sectarians, and it will be a terrible thing if the House sanctions education being put so completely under

  733
  their control. In Islington the moment this Bill was launched many of my constituents took the view I have put forward of the measure, and I think something should be done to preserve the character of London education to secure that the schools throughout this great city shall be devoted to education and not to the promulgation of any particular creed, and in this way steps should be taken to protect the interests of the Free Churches. There is not, as it stands, an atom of popular control in any part of this Bill. Take for example the London County Council. It is supposed that the London County Council will be the authority, but it is not, for it is in a minority and it cannot do what it likes. The London County Council is obliged to elect a Committee of a certain kind, and its control over education is taken away. The Prime Minister reminded the House that the Borough Councils were elected by popular vote. That is so, but they will only send one representative. How can the Borough Councils select perhaps one man out of seventy who will have to form a part of the education authority for all London? Even when electing County Councillors the voters will remember that the County Council is not the authority. Therefore this Bill destroys that popular control of education which has been enjoyed by Londoners for many years past. It is said that at School Board elections only a small number have voted, but my hon. friend the Member for North Camberwell has proved that the proportion is larger than has been suggested. I am not, however, convinced by the argument that a small poll means that the people do not take an interest in education. I think the Government should not do anything that will tend to diminish the interests of the people in educational work, but on the contrary they should see that direct popular control is given equal to that enjoyed in the past. I can find little that has been said in favour of this Bill. The authority set up is a sham authority and it is a retrogade measure of the worst kind. The main object is to strengthen the position of the Church against the Free Churches. By this conspiracy, which has now been taken up by the Government, the clergy think, with the majority which they enjoy, that they will be able to foist upon London
  734
  a narrow and sectarian institution calculated to further the interests of their own sect rather than the broad principles of national education.
  MR. EVELYN CECIL: With regard to what has just been said by the hon. Member for West Islington, I wish to say that the Bill of last year was passed after the fullest consideration, and, although a certain line of policy was adopted which was not entirely agreeable to many Churchmen, I do not see the slightest use in raising a question of that kind again after it has been decided by the House, and therefore I intend to take no such course. I have been interested in the speeches in the debate to-day, because they display considerable diversity of opinion among the ranks of the Opposition. Personally, I was very much disposed to agree with many of the observations that fell from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Haddingtonshire, and I felt there was much in his speech which I should very gladly endorse, but his example was not followed by the hon. Member for West Nottingham or several other speakers, and I gathered the opinion that the opposition to the Bill is not so much because they cannot lay hold of some particular failing in it—because the Government, through the mouth of the Prime Minister, stated that many details will be treated in Committee with considerable elasticity—but because they cannot induce the Government to establish an authority ad hoc. I am entirely opposed to the institution of an ad hoc authority, elected, as this ugly barbarism means, for the express purpose of education only. I have long felt that the whole argument with regard to it is exceedingly futile. Do hon. Members really suppose, even now, that the London School Board obtains a large number of experts because it is an ad hoc authority? If when they speak of experts they mean teachers, no doubt some members of the National Union of Teachers do get into the School Board, and the fact has been the subject of some comment. But the candidates chosen at present are, as a rule, not experts. I do not wish to go further than my own case. I first went on to the London School Board in 1894. Why was I selected I had not made a very special study of education at that time. Let me confess it openly. At the moment I was selected I had never been in a London board school. I

  735
  was interested generally in the subject of education in the country, but I could not for a moment claim that I was an expert in the matter. I venture to think—and I say it from my experience on the Board itself—that that was the condition of very many, probably the large majority, of the candidates who stood for the School Board. Therefore it is somewhat ridiculous to say that unless you have an ad hoc authority you will not get proper attention to education. My desire is that the administration of education, like the administration of many other of our important national requirements, ought to be conducted from a broad, general point of view with due regard to all the other interests and matters involved. I do not see why the London County Council cannot take a broad national view and administer education just as it administers many other matters. One of the advantages of looking at the thing in proper perspective is that you can have more regard to the financial position. I think that the body that looks after these matters should have due regard to the allotment of money to the various directions in which it is desired. I am the last to say that education ought not to receive a very large amount of money, but I think that in the allotment of that money due regard should be had to other requirements, and the authority ought to make sure that all those other requirements are also carried out on a proper financial basis.
  I also value the proposal to co-opt. That is the true way to get the experts we require for this purpose. It brings in men who would not stand for popular election. I can quite believe that there are many such men. Let me, for instance, mention Dr. Garnett, who probably would not care to face the turmoil of popular election. He does admirable work on the Technical Education Board. [An HON. MEMBER: He is a paid official.] Yes, no doubt, but I mention him as a type of the men I should like to have co-opted on the new authority, and who very likely would not stand if they had to go through a popular election. I am also in favour of women being on the new authority. They have done to my knowledge much valuable work on the School Board. Miss Davenport Hill was an admirable worker, and perhaps more particularly as regards the industrial schools.
  736
  There are numbers of women who, I have not the least doubt, do not like to face popular platforms. There again the principle of co-option comes in, and is a valuable one for the purpose. My only object in urging that there should be a general authority and not a mere ad hoc authority is because I think that experts, who very often constituted ad hoc authorities, are disposed to administer education as if it were the be-all and end-all of human existence. That, in my opinion, it certainly is not, and though it is of great relative importance with regard to other national and municipal questions, it ought to be treated in proper proportion, and ought not to be administered by mere enthusiasts, without regard to other subjects. I agree with the general principles of the Bill. I approve thoroughly of the central authority of the London County Council, and of the delegation of powers to the Borough Councils, but, speaking for myself, I am not quite sure that I can approve of an Educational Committee which puts the London County Council in a minority. I feel that if we are going to give the London County Council the financial control, and if it is to be responsible for the financial management of the central education authority, if, in fact, it is to hold the purse strings, it should have the majority. That is a proposal which cannot be gainsaid, and I shall be very glad if my hon. friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education would consider that matter in Committee. There is no doubt that, if the Bill remains as it is, the dominant party in the London County Council will use their powers of co-option in order to give themselves a majority on the Education Committee, and I want the co-opted members to be independent experts. The London Members say that they want to have a Committee of nearly a hundred, but I think that would be cumbersome and unworkable. It seems to me that the desire to retain the representation of the Borough Councils is largely because the London members have had consider able pressure brought to bear on them by local persons. [Cries of "No!"] Well, I cannot help thinking that some kind of pressure has been brought to bear upon them. The appetite of the Borough Councils has been whetted by the original proposals in the Bill, and it is but natural that they should desire to retain what is

  737
  therein granted. It is left for us provincial members to save the London members from themselves. In any case, I hope for the taking away of the representation of the Borough Councils on the Committee, while ensuring to them a large amount of power delegated by the London County Council in regard to certain details of local management. I will not enlarge on the question as to whether the selection of the sites should be left to the Borough Councils; but so far as the appointment of the teachers is concerned I am disposed to think that the Borough Councils should have the appointment of the assistant teachers and that the appointment of the head teachers should be with the London County Council, or that the County Council should send down a list of candidates to the Borough Councils which should decide which one of three or four on the list should be elected. That would have the advantage of preventing the growth in each locality of an exclusive staff of teachers, deprived of the advantages of interchange of appointments with other parts of the Metropolis and the country But, as I have said, I am entirely in accord with the general principles of the Bill. I approve of the general central authority which it proposes for London education being the London County Council, and I desire that that general authority should delegate its powers in the direction I have suggested. For these reasons I have not the least hesitation in giving my support to the Second Reading.
  MR. HARRY SAMUEL: I have been somewhat astonished at the extreme divergence of opinion which has been expressed by hon. Members who have spoken in regard to the whole of this Bill. I am going to endeavour to prove that the inclusion of representatives of the Borough Councils on the Educational Authority for London is the only just and reasonable conclusion to which the Government could arrive. One would have imagined, from some of the speeches of hon. Members, that the citizens of the Capital of this country were absolutely incapable of dealing properly and fairly with the great question of education. What still more strikes me is the fact that the provincial Press and provincial Members consider that the citizens in the provinces are capable of dealing with education. [DR. MAC-
  738
  NAMARA:—"Hear, hear."] I am glad to hear that cheer from the hon. Member for Camberwell. Now I take it there are two principles actuating the Government in bringing forward the present Bill. The first is that there should be one authority, for all forms of education, and the second that the one authority should be a municipal authority. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Poplar, who said there is only one principle, and that is, that there should be only one authority. The Government have endeavoured to thoroughly grapple with this question of municipalisation, and the endeavour to exclude Borough Councils seems to have fallen to the ground. I think that London's Borough Councils are absolutely entitled to be placed on the education authority. Under the Act of 1902 a County Council or a County Borough is created the education authority for its own area. What is a county borough? The county boroughs are all boroughs having a population of over 50,000, and some others are included without that population because they happen to be ancient cities. I believe there is only one borough in London that has a smaller population than 50,000, and when you come to the question of age the City of London and the City of Westminster can vie with any cities as to length of existence. One might fairly advance the argument, without fear of contradiction, that there would be some claim to consider that those large boroughs which are equal to county boroughs in size and importance might be the educational authority for their own area and district, but I grant at once there is an objection, namely, that there must be one rate for the whole of London, and in addition you must have one fixed scale for the salaries of the elementary teachers. The County Council is undoubtedly the only authority that is entitled to make a rate for the whole of London, but it does not follow that it is the only rating authority, or that it is the rating authority at all. It is the only County Council in the whole country that does not make and collect the county rate. The Borough Councils rate themselves in their own districts for their own wants, and, moreover, when

  739
  the County Council requires money for any purpose it sends a precept down to the Borough Councils and they collect the money. School Boards and Boards of Guardians do the same thing, so that really and truly the despised Borough Councils are the rating authorities for the whole of London. And yet the hon. Gentleman wishes to exclude them altogether from having any part in the educational authority for London. If the Borough Councils are not to be considered as County Borough Councils, then in what other way are they to act? The Act of 1902 says all Borough Councils with a population of more than 10,000shall be the local education authority for elementary education, and what is proposed in the Bill of the Government? It is proposed that the Borough Councils shall be the managers, shall have the choice of sites and the appointment of teachers. But mark the difference in the case of the country, where the boroughs are to have the power of finance. I have been a manager and can assert that I the powers I had were absolutely nil. I believe if a new handle was wanted to a door the managers were perfectly powerless to put one on without first I obtaining the consent of the central authority. The hon. Member for Poplar said we cannot allow the Borough Councils to take the position of the county boroughs. The Government should follow the precedent of the 1902 Bill, and if the Borough Councils are deprived of I their financial rights you must put them on the central authority. The Borough Councils of London must be one of two things. They must either come in as the educational authority for the whole of London or be the ordinary Borough Council and have the powers conferred by the Act of 1902.It would be ridiculous to create Metropolitan Boroughs and then deprive them of the whole of their rights.
  And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.

EVENING SITTING.

  LONDON EDUCATION BILL.
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment to Question [28th
  740
  April], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  Which Amendment was—
  "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words 'upon this day six months.'"—(Mr. Sydney Buxton.)
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  Debate resumed.
  MR. HARRY SAMUEL: In the remarks I have ventured to make to the House, I have endeavoured to prove that London Borough Councils must be placed either on an equality of power with the county boroughs, or, if that position is denied them, they must at least be the local education authority and have power over the education of their own areas. The Opposition, who have criticised the London Borough Council, must be asked to decide one way or the other. It seems to me that hon. Members who oppose the Government in this matter have the greatest possible pleasure in belittling the whole system of London government that has been set up for the capital of the country. I have endeavoured to prove that justice must be dealt out to the Borough Councils of London in this matter. I go further—I say the members of the Borough Councils are the most natural representatives for this purpose of any single popularly-elected body. They are, first of all, the best judges of sites, for the simple reason that I have always found that the School Board, whenever they have endeavoured to find sites for board schools, have always come into conflict with the local authority, and I have always found that the site selected by the local authority was the hotter. I have the honour to represent a constituency in East London where the poor have to keep the poor; that is a principle I do not defend and am not here to defend. I think it is a wrong principle; but if you take a valuable site in a district like that which is highly rated you necessarily add considerably to the rates per head of the district. That is why I think the London County Council should be the authority for the whole of London education, because it is impossible for us to allow the principle with regard to education of the poor having to keep the poor in any section of

  741
  the Metropolis. That is one fault of the School Board. Up to the present moment they have totally disregarded the recommendations of the local authorities, and dumped their schools down anywhere they chose without any regard to the wishes of the districts. With regard to the teachers I am one of those who would like to pay a very high compliment to the integrity, honesty of purpose, and deep devotion of the whole of the School Board teachers to the work of education. As a manager of a Board school in the East of London, I have taken the opportunity to pay many and frequent visits to the Board schools of my districts, and I have found at all times that the teachers have done ail in their power to maintain the high standard of education in every school. They have given all their time and all their intellect ungrudgingly to the work of improving the minds of the children of the district, and under any educational authority at which we may arrive I certainly trust that the teachers will not imagine that we shall lose sight of their devotion and the integrity of purpose they have given to the profession which they adorn. I am certain that the teachers will always find that their suggestions will be absolutely and justly considered by every responsible body. Their qualifications are well known, and I have the greatest pleasure in paying this small tribute to their great work.
  In dealing with the difficult problem of London Education I have arrived at the conclusion that it is one of great complexity. There are two authorities which have power over the whole of the London districts—the London County Council is one, and the London Borough Councils, which have been created in addition, the other Now I would like to insist on this one thing—that both these powers are indispensable to the constitution of London, and while they overlap to a certain extent the Government, in solving this problem, as I think justly, have arrived at the conclusion that both must be constituted the educational authority for London. The London County Council is the only body that has the power to make a rate over the whole of London, and I have no objection whatever to the number of the representatives of that body being
  742
  increased on the Board. Under the Bill we have placed upon them, the responsibility of the education of London as a whole, and if the education is not carried out throughout London in the way in which it should be, then the responsibility will fall upon them, and the electors of London will demand at their hands a recognition of the way in which the work has been done. That being so it would ill become us to deny to the representatives of the London County Council the power they ought to have, and I do not see why we should not give them the control, at least numerically, in this matter. It is always possible to formulate the alterations which can be made to a Bill in Committee, but I wish, on this occasion, to confine myself as far as I possibly can to the principle underlying the Bill, and I certainly think that the London County Council should have a numerical majority, but at the same time I have contended, and I hope successfully, that it would be an injustice of the worst kind to deny representation to the London Boroughs as well.
  With regard to the ad hoc authority. I have the greatest objection to it; in my opinion it has not been the success which hon. Members claim for it. In the first place, I contend that the School Board does not represent the electors of London. I have in my hand certain figures, which have been compiled with regard to this matter, and I agree with the figures given by the Secretary to the Board of; Education, and also those given by the hon. Member for Camberwell, and I think they have come to a very fair conclusion as to the number of electors the School Board represents. Fifty-five members of the present School Board have been elected, thirteen of whom have resigned and one has died, consequently 25 percent., or a quarter of the present School Board, have never been elected at all. I would also point out that not more than 21 per cent. Of the electors voted at the last election, and under those circumstances no member of the School Board can represent that he is responsible for more than 16 per cent. of the electors, but if you deduct from that the one quarter of the School Board which has since been

  743
  co-opted you come to this, that when you have polled every vote given by the electorate no member represents more than 12 88 of the electors. Now certain Members have contended that the reason that the electors do not go to the poll in these matters is because of multiplicity of elections. That is what we, on this side, have always said, and what we want is to do everything we can to make the electors of London take a deep And vital interest in what, in my opinion, is the most important question that exists, namely, the education of the Metropolis. Yet you want to deny to the metropolitan boroughs what you give to the humblest boroughs in the country. I hope that I have contended successfully that it is only right and proper to give to the London boroughs the representation that is their due, and I trust that the Government will not follow the example that has been set in this matter by the hon. Member for Poplar, but, having created the Borough Councils, and having foreshadowed that they would clothe them with greater powers in the future, they will now give them that representation to which they are entitled in the control of education for London.
  MR. EMMOTT: I do not desire to follow the hon. Member at length into his statistics, but I would say in passing that the argument he has used is a peculiarly dangerous one. He says because many of the London electors did not go to the poll that therefore the London School Board is not a representative body, but, if that Argument is carried to its logical conclusion, the hon. Member himself only represents a minority of the electors of the constituency which he has the honour to represent in this House, because less than 40 per cent. of the electors voted for him.
  MR. HARRY SAMUEL: No, Sir; 75 per cent. of the electors polled their vote.
  MR. EMMOTT: Less than 40 per cent., I say, voted for him, but I will not pursue the matter; it is of no consequence.
  MR. HARRY SAMUEL: I beg your pardon, it is of the greatest consequence to me.
  MR. EMMOTT: As I am challenged, I would say that the total electorate of the Division which the hon. Member honours by representing is 6,800, and that the total number who voted for the hon. Member is 2,600. I am not putting it forward as an argument against the hon. Member being a fair representative for his Division; I merely use it to carry his peculiarly dangerous argument a little further than he appeared to be inclined to do. The hon. Member has made a strong appeal in regard to the position of the Borough Councils under this Bill, and I should like to try and disabuse his mind of the fact that by anyone on this side of the House the Borough Councils are condemned or despised; the real facts of the case are rather the other way. We have a fear on this side, which I think is justified to a very great extent, that Members on the other side of the House have an unreasonable objection to, and suspicion of, the London County Council. We may be wrong, but naturally, in matters of this kind, when one holds that view, it must affect one's position. I entirely agree that the Borough Councils of London are sufficiently large to become separate educational entities, but, inasmuch as the hon. Member has acknowledged that you must have one rating authority for education in London, it is quite impossible that the Borough Councils should be complete authorities. That being so, the hon. Member has confined himself to making a fervid appeal to the Government to retain the powers of the Borough Councils as foreshadowed in the Bill. There is one fundamental objection to that, which is that you cannot give these powers to the Borough Councils and retain the authority of the London County Council. You cannot serve two masters in this matter, and if you are to set the power of the purse against the power of management in the selection of teachers and sites, there must necessarily at the outset be a great deal of friction, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education will have to do a great deal in the way of arbitration. But there is another objection. The hon. Member has compared Borough Councils with minor authorities under County Councils in the country, but the representation of those authorities for education under the County Councils is

  745
  four to two. This proposes to give the entire management to the Borough Councils, and his analogy falls to the ground. More than that, I attach the greatest importance to the question dealt with by my hon. and learned friend the Member for Haddingtonshire and the right hon. Member for Cambridge University, namely, the continuity of management. You cannot hand over these schools to the Borough Councils and retain that continuity of management which is so desirable if the system is to work without friction. There is another thing, if you hand the management of these schools over to the Borough Councils you practically exclude women from the share they have taken in the past. The hon. Member said the Borough Councils were the more suitable people to select sites for schools, but from the little experience I have had of cases where there has been a controversy between the School Board and the local authority, I have found the School Board has made a much wiser choice with regard to sites than the local authority has done. If it is left to the Borough Councils, parochialism must enter far too much into the choice of teachers, and, that being so, it is perfectly evident that the choice of teachers ought to be left in the hands of the larger authority and not in the hands of the Borough Councils.
  An extraordinary view has been put forward by the Government as to what the House should vote for in voting for or against the Second Reading of the Bill. The Colonial Secretary said recently that all we were concerned for in such a case was the main principle. That idea is going to carry us a long way. Occasionally, on a Friday, we have an opportunity to introduce Bills into this House on such matters as the taxation of land values, or temperance reform. Then we are told by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite that these are matters which cannot be dealt with except by the Government, and only then after having regard to all the questions involved, and that we have not only to consider the principle but also all these matters surrounding the Bill. It seems to me that if the authority of the Colonial Secretary's statement is to maintain in this House that, then hon. Members would
  746
  have to vote for every wild-cat scheme that might be introduced, if they agreed with the principle, quite independent of the fact of whether it was a workable scheme or not. It seems to me that what we ought to consider in deciding to vote for or against this scheme is this: whether the scheme proposed by this Bill will give us a better Education Board than we at present possess, and in answering that question one must say whether this scheme is better than others which could be produced. We are faced by the fact that the scheme of this Bill has been abandoned. We do not, know where we are. We do not know what Amendments the Government is going to accept, and until we know that, and what the scheme is likely to give us, we cannot say if this is a scheme which should be voted on or not. The scheme must be greatly altered in detail, and when it is altered and the Government have intimated the Amendments to which they I will agree, I do not see what will be left: of the Bill except the first clause. Every other clause will be so altered as to make the Bill totally unrecognisable. Vague promises made by the Government to us are of no use in this matter; we want to know more exactly than we have been told the alterations which the Government I are going to accept, and I do not think I the House ought to give a Second Reading to this Bill until they know what the Government is going to do. In my opinion the Government is playing with the House. We are not being treated fairly. This scheme depends as much on detail as on principle, and although one cannot expect the Government to say exactly what they intend to do in an entirely new scheme, I hold we ought to know in outline and know what the Government are going to accept before we are asked to give a vote on the Second Reading. We want to know: is the Council to be a real authority, is it going to make the scheme for the Committee of managers by itself, or is that scheme to be subject to the approval of the Education Board? Are the Borough Councils to be kept out, or are they to be represented on the Committees, and are they to carry on the management of the schools? We also want to know, with regard to the question of women, how many there are going to be on the Committee, and how many are

  747
  going to be retained in the management of those schools in which they have taken so great a part in the past. We don't ask for the exact number, but we want a good deal more information than we have had, and it is only fair it should be given to us. We want that information the more because of the extraordinary hurry with which that Second Heading is being passed through. As regards Parliamentary time, the First and Second Reading have come almost together. No time has been given to consider the matter, and until we have these particulars from the Government, we can only deal with the Bill as drawn. As it is drawn, it seems to me a very bad measure; we are told that the principle is municipalisation. There is much to be said in favour of that, and much to be said against it. There is the argument that if you have a body for all purposes, you get a stronger body and better men on it. There is the argument that has been used that you cannot have ad hoc bodies for every purpose, that you must elect men to deal with a large number of subjects, and you must not leave education out; that you must not elect for educational purposes, and nothing else, just as hon. Members sent here represent their constituencies on all subjects, including those they do understand and those they do not. Against this it may be urged education is a special subject, and there are men and women who are willing to go on an authority dealing with education, but are not willing to go on a body dealing with all purposes. There is also a great danger, especially in a great city like London, of your overworking the municipal authorities.
  Now the Government have taken a most extraordinary course with regard to municipalisation. At the present time they are considering whether the power of municipalities ought not to be curtailed with regard to some of the functions they have taken upon themselves, and, on the other hand, they are throwing upon their shoulders the burden of the education of the great mass of the people. The municipalities of London say we do not want it. Mr. Beechcroft's Amendment, I am told to-day, was rejected by the County Councils by eighty to twenty-three, and Mr. Beechcroft's resolution was in support of the principle of this Bill. Therefore you say to the London County Council
  748
  "You must take control of this education." You do not want to have any School Board and it is for that reason you are forcing this Bill through the House. It is a strange thing that the Government should desire to destroy a great body like the School Board, which has done such great work, and to give the work they have done to a new and untried body. That, instead of being Conservatism, seems to me Radicalism in excelsis. I am justified in making these remarks, not so much with regard to London as to other great towns which I know. It would have been much wiser to have given them an opportunity of keeping their School Boards if they chose. In the Act of last year, we made, I am afraid, a great mistake, and I am afraid we are going to do the same in this Bill this year. We are making a great leap in the dark. Some hon. Members say the technical education committee of London h as been a great success. I agree, although I think that success has been a little exaggerated. I think the problem they have to deal with, and the amount of work they have to perform, is a small matter to that which will be thrown upon them under this Bill. We are throwing too much work upon the municipalities without regard to their wishes or capacities. We shall have to deal in the future with the way in which municipal work will have to be regulated—whether it shall be regulated, as Parliamentary work is regulated, by setting up a sort of municipal cabinet to control it, and have the work carried out by paid servants under the authority of the municipal cabinet. If something of that sort is not done, I am afraid, with the work we are throwing on it, that the municipality will break down and some serious muddle will occur with regard to carrying on municipal enterprise. In conclusion, I would say, granted that ad hoc election is impossible, and granted that municipalisation is the remedy, I maintain that this scheme is absolutely wrong. I am perfectly aware that our peculiar English character believes much in compromise, and in that way schemes illogical and absurd in themselves are carried out, but I say at the same time this scheme cannot and will not work. There is friction in every line of it. If the

  749
  minority only of the members of the Committee are to be members of the London County Council, I hope the House faces this fact, that the London County Council, in nominating the authority, will have to depart from the wise system of proportional party representation it has adopted hitherto. The financial control given under this Bill is illusory. How can it work? The minority appointed by the London County Council may be overwhelmed. The London County Council immediately say "We will stop supplies," and the Board of Education has to step in. A system which can be broken down and crippled in that way this House ought never to consent to.
  SIR FREDERICK BANBURY: As the hon. Member, as I understand, is opposed to the ad hoc authority——
  MR. EMMOTT: I should prefer to keep it in London, and with regard to municipalisation I think we should have gone more slowly.
  Sir FREDERICK BANBURY: He thinks we should have gone more slowly. He is also against the Borough Councils, and does not want the London County Council, because he says it is forcing on them something they do not want. Under these circumstances I do not know what authority he would put in the place of that the Government proposes. One of the main objections which have been put forward to the Bill is that it has been brought forward too hurriedly. Now the First Reading was taken on the 6th of April, and the Second Reading is being taken on the 28th; that is surely not too short a time for the London County Council to discuss and master the details of the Bill. But I may point out that alterations in a Bill do not take place on Second Reading, but in the Committee stage, and I do not believe that will be entered into for another week or ten days, and there will be plenty of time to move Amendments when we get to the Committee stage.
  The hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington said the free churches were going to suffer because of the suspension of the School Board for
  750
  London, and that the result of this scheme would be to largely endow the Church of England; but I do not see why the London County Council and the Borough County Council should favour the Church any more than the School Board has done. If any change takes place I should think the London County Council would be even more against the clergy than the School Board. I remember a time when the clergy had great influence over the School Board, but I have never heard of their having much influence on the County Council. Then the hon. Gentleman who just has sat down seemed to quarrel with the Government because it had been said that on the Second Reading of a Bill one voted for the principle and not for details. I have been here in the House nearly eleven years and I have endeavoured to devote as much time as I could to the details of the business of the House, and I have always understood that on the Second Reading of a Bill the only thing that has to be considered is the principle. It is on that understanding that I intend to vote for this Bill. I have never had reason from my place to advocate the cause of the London County Council. When they are in the right I am their supporter, but when they are in the wrong I am their opponent. My action against the London County Council has not been due to any prejudice on my part. I believe on the particular occasions to which I refer they have been misled. I intend to vote for the Second Reading of this Bill because I admit that the principle involved in the Bill should be one authority. I agree with the principle, but I do not agree with the details of the Bill, because I think the London County Council, though nominally constituted as the authority, is, as a matter of fact, not the authority; and I hope in the Committee stage right hon. Gentlemen below me will encourage Amendments which may be moved with the object of giving more effective control to the London County Council. Whatever the authority is to be under this Bill it should be an effective authority I do not believe in constituting an authority, and then taking away all its powers. I think that the County Council should be the authority, and that if a rating authority has the power to levy a rate that authority should be elected by

  751
  the people who pay the rate. The County Council levies a rate all over London, and is the only authority which should be chosen under the Bill.
  Then, again, the Council has done good work whenever it has taken up the subject of education. I believe that no one will contend that the Council has done badly as regards education; and, therefore, it has a right to be chosen as the authority for education in London. My hon. friend the Member for Hampstead said that if the Borough Councils were eliminated it would be a slight upon them. I do not wish to do anything that might be considered a slight on the Borough Councils, but, in this particular instance, I do not think that they are the proper authorities. The Borough Councils were not created to be an educational authority, but to carry out other very important and useful work, and it would be no slight on them not to be chosen as the education authorities. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Haddington made, if I may be allowed to say so, an extremely eloquent and able speech on the subject. I am not able to follow him into the intricacies of the education question, but I should like to say that I hope that the Government, besides making the London County Council the paramount authority, will endeavour in some way to arrange that the co-opted member shall be co-opted under some scheme to be arranged with the approval of the Board of Education. I would leave the Borough Councils to be the managers under that scheme; but I think something such as I have suggested would go far to remove the difficulty in connection with the Bill. It would be practically on the lines of the Bill of last year; and we give London an education authority for which it has a right to ask.
  MR. CHANNING: The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has referred in a spirit of doubt, which I think is largely shared on this side of the House as well as on the other, to the advisability of extending powers under the Bill to the Borough Councils; and he seems to desire to make the London County Council not only the paramount authority over the Borough Councils, but to place it in the position
  752
  of being a real education authority, as other County Councils were placed under the Act of last year. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware of the opinion expressed at a meeting of the London County Council this afternoon. After all, the London County Council are the best judges of their own business. They are a singularly businesslike and competent body. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster interrupted my hon. friend the Member for North Camberwell, and said that the resolution which was to be proposed at the meeting of the County Council was not a resolution demanding an ad hoc authority. The resolution which was passed is in this form:—
  "That this Council is strongly opposed to the scheme proposed by the Bill, and would prefer either the maintenance of the present system or the creation of one directly-elected education authority which should have real and complete control over all grades of education."
  The following words were afterwards added:—
  "And to devote itself exclusively to educational purposes."
  I do not think that after that resolution it can be contended that we are any longer in the dark as to the opinion of the Parliament of this great Metropolis, the London County Council, as to what ought to be done under this Bill. I make no disguise of my attitude. I approach this Bill in the same spirit that I approached the Bill of last year. I opposed the Bill of last year because it divorced education from popular control, and imposed on the people the duty of supplying funds for sectarian teaching. With regard to this Bill, I say that if these arguments had any force with regard to the Bill of last year, they have ten times more force with regard to this Bill. To destroy the London School Board is a much more serious act of destruction than to destroy the other School Boards of this country; and the endowment of religion, and the-fortifying of the sacerdotal spirit in directing the lives and the future of the children is a much more serious question in London, where many of the churches and church schools are, to my knowledge, far more under the influence of extremists than are churches and church schools in the country. Romish doctrines are being inculcated in every possible way in the children; and it is far more serious to

  753
  endow sacerdotalism with new resources in London than in the country. This Bill seems to be the worst of all possible measures for dealing with the problem of education in London. When the principle of the democratic control of popular education was endorsed in the Act of 1870, the triumph in London was the greatest of all. Look at the difference between districts in London at that time, and the same districts now, with their splendidly equipped Board schools—centres of light and culture and refinement for the children of the poor. They are magnificent monuments to the principle of the democratic control of education.
  Then again the London County Council itself is a splendid monument of municipal unification, and a broad conception of municipal duty, which has been evolved, not from small local bodies without any special unity, but from this great body of representatives gathered together from all parts of London. Both the London School Board and the London County Council are themselves the strongest arguments in favour of an ad hoc directly-elected authority as the omnipotent education authority in London. The Act of last year attempted, I will not say dishonestly, but deceptively, to set up a single education authority in the counties and great boroughs of England and Wales. But in regard to this Bill, which openly sets aside the principle of a single authority, you propose to give nominally administrative and financial control to the London County Council; but it is not real control, because you do not give a majority to the London County Council. There have been adumbrations of a possible reconstruction of this Bill from the back Benches opposite; and it was also alluded to in a rather indefinite manner by the First Lord of the Treasury; but there has been no reconstruction as yet which would justify us in saying that the Bill does not propose a purely nominal administrative and financial control to be given to the London County Council—a control which is to be at once taken away because the Council is to be denied a majority on its own Committee.
  MAJOR JAMESON: I beg to call attention to the fact that forty members are not present.
  MR. SPEAKER: I am not satisfied that forty members are not present.
  MR. CHANNING: Further, the London County Council is not to be left free, as other councils are, to fix the limits of delegation of powers to the Borough Councils; and it is not to be free to regulate local expenditure, except as regards the question of sites. The third clause practically gives a very large number of indefinite powers to the Borough Councils. If any question arises as to whether the point in question is a detail of administration or management which belongs to the Borough Council or not that point is not to be decided by the supreme authority of the County Council, but is to be referred to the Board of Education. This Bill sets the Borough and County Councils fighting together, with the Board of Education as a sort of umpire. We all know that the school managers have taken an earnest interest in educational matters, and we ought to continue to trust them with the management of the schools. The hon. Member for Hampstead said the Borough Councils were infants whom they ought to instruct in respect to these tremendous obligations to be placed upon them. I think it is a monstrous thing to ask these "baby councils" to undertake the management of all the schools of London and entrust them with the future of the many children of this great Metropolis. The First Lord of the Treasury has stated that it is absolutely necessary to have a unity of rating throughout the metropolitan area. I agree with that, but why are we not to have a unity of administration as well? The London County Council, by its resolution to-day, shows that it is so overworked that, far from taking up other duties, it is anxious to transfer to a directly representative body elected for educational purposes the educational duties which it now carries out with regard to technical education.
  We have heard frequently of the multiplicity of elections and the sparseness of the polls. Naturally people do not like their business life disturbed by elections for two or three months together. It might be true that the number of electors who go to the poll is very small, but what is the real reason why hon. Members opposite are so hostile to the County Council and the School Board? Is it

  755
  because of the smallness of votes? No, it is because those votes, whether given for the County Council or the School Board, manage in the long run to return a progressive majority. Supposing it is true that 25 per cent. only record their votes for the County Council and School Board elections, and 75 per cent. abstain from voting—why do they abstain? We know the artifices and appeals which have been made by the Unionist Party again and again with regard to School Board questions and County Council elections, but those appeals have been rejected and refused again and again by the people of London, and why? Because the greater portion of the electors have made up their mind that the business of the London School Board and the London County Council has been well and wisely conducted in the best interest of the Metropolis, and therefore they have not been able to whip up this 75 per cent. The question of the multiplicity of elections is a very serious one, and really in this matter right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite would do well to study the example afforded by the United States upon this subject. My hon. friend the Member for North Camberwell suggested that we might have the School Board elected in single electoral districts like the County Council, and at the same time and on the same ballot paper as the London County Council. That is the method adopted in every one of the American elections, and it is an immense saving of time, trouble, and expense. This arrangement completely avoids all those difficulties which seem to be such stumbling blocks to many hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  What is the real solid objection which members of the Conservative Party, and some hon. Members on the Opposition side, have raised continually against the London School Board? It is that the School Board is elected for educational purposes, and that it is not a rate-making body. But it makes a precept, and imposes its will upon the rating authority, and its precept cannot be set aside by the rating authority. There is another case in which the example of the great American cities might be followed. In America they have a single education authority elected by the people. It is an
  756
  ad hoc authority, but it has not the right to impose its own financial obligations upon the rating authority of that district. Under the American system men and women give their lives wholly to one class of duty, and they are not members of the municipal body at all. They draw up their plans and suggestions, but the finance remains absolutely under the control of the City Council, or whatever the paramount financial body may be. I have raised as one of my principal objections to this Bill the conflict between the jurisdiction of the power of the Borough Councils and the County Councils. I do not quite understand the figures furnished by the hon. Member for Islington as to the grant in aid which may be given to London under this Bill. Under Clause 3 of this Bill you are creating twenty-nine new bodies which can impose a precept upon the London County Council, and, as far as I can understand the Bill, the London County Council will not be able to resist the precepts and expenditure imposed upon them by the various Borough Councils.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LANG, Bristol, S.): Certainly they will.
  MR. CHANNING: That is the effect of the Clause, as I understand it. [An HON. MEMBER: It is the other way about.] I should welcome any assurance that we shall not have an immense increase of London rates under this Bill. The Borough Councils are to test the qualifications of the teachers, and they are to appoint surveyors to examine sites and appoint officers to carry out the various duties which are given to them somewhat indefinitely under this Bill. If the Board of Education is favourable to Borough Councils, Clause 3 is very elastic, and their power to increase the rates may be very much multiplied. Both administratively and financially this Bill is unworkable and prejudicial to the interests of London. The problem of dealing with nearly 1,000,000 children demands an authority capable of devoting all its energies, and the efforts of the best men and women you can find in London, to this work of educating the children; and to call

  757
  upon a Borough or County Council to treat this as a mere light and unimportant extra addendum to its agenda is simply playing with the educational interests of this great metropolis. I shall be glad if before the Second Reading we have some assurance of the complete recasting of this Bill, both in its principles as well as its details, but if the measure is not thoroughly re-cast I shall give it my most strenuous opposition.
  MR. MIDDLEMOREwho was indistinctly heard, said: This Bill does not please anybody, not even the Government. Even at this early stage the Prime Minister has hinted, not vaguely, that he will be prepared to amend it, which looked like banning his own Bill, playing the rôle of the devil's advocate. In the very few remarks I shall offer I shall confine myself almost entirely to the authority and its creation. Everything we objected to, some of us strongly and passionately, in the Bill of last year, reappears in the present measure, with an authority so astonishing that it appears frankly to have surprised the Prime Minister himself, who is prepared to run away from it. The farther the right hon. Gentleman runs away from it the better. The Bill as it stands is an impossible Bill. I do not think it can be carried without the assistance of the Irish Members who helped to carry the wear-and-tear Bill of last session.
  MR.T. P. O'CONNOR: Why not send us back to Dublin?
  MR. MIDDLEMORE: There will be twenty nine authorities created under this Bill. I should like to say a very few words in criticism of these new authorities and also to add a few words of regret in regard to the extinction of the School Board. Under this measure the County Councils will have to pay the bill. I think that is clear.
  MR. WALTER LONG: No; it will supply the money.
  MR. MIDDLEMORE: The County Council will have to pay the bill and to control, or try to control, the education
  758
  of London through this new many-headed authority with which, I suspect, the County Council will have little or no connection. The Borough Council committees are to manage the schools, select the sites, and employ and dismiss the teachers. Now, where does the control of the County Council come in? You transfer to these Borough Councils all that is vital and essential, and then you say the County Council has the control. I respectfully submit that that is not so. If you deprive your authority of the power of initiation and of the power of selecting sites, and appointing and dismissing teachers, you make the County Council a subordinate authority at once as far as these all-important duties are concerned. The Bill attempts to establish a dual control and fails, and it establishes control by twenty-nine bodies, which it calls, most incorrectly, subordinate bodies. If the County Council has one spark of self-respect it will not accept the duties which the House is invited to impose upon it, and, if they take that course, I do not think there is any power on earth to compel them to take up those duties. This Bill does not allow the County Council to make its own scheme, and in this respect you treat it worse than any borough in the country that has 10,000 inhabitants. The Government even places them in a minority on their own Committee, and makes their authority a sham and insincere one, and ineffective because it is deprived of all control. The right hon. Gentleman said that this is a Bill to destroy the School Board. Why should the School Board be destroyed? The Prime Minister be lauds it and says that, though it has many enemies, he is not one of them. But the right hon. Gentleman is doing an enemy's part. Can hostility go further than destruction of the School Board? When the right hon. Gentleman says the Board has conferred immense obligations on children and parents, and then proceeds to recompense the Board with loss of life, I am reminded of the Walrus and the Carpenter, weeping over the oysters before eating them. I should have thought that the proper course to have taken would have been to extend the operations of the School Board and confer fresh powers upon them. The right hon. Gentleman gave certain reasons for destroying the

  759
  School Board, but they were not equal to the occasion. The right hon. Gentleman says ad hoc authority is extravagant, but I do not believe that the London School Board has been more extravagant than the great Municipal Councils of the country, which have been piling up debt in a way to jeopardise their credit. But I must add that for the present Government to pose as the apostles of economy is a spectacle that "staggers humanity."
  The right hon. Gentleman said further that the work was over-centralised. I do not believe it. The School Board has decentralised its work as occasion required; it has appointed Committees, Sub-committees, 250 groups of managers, and 2,000 individual managers. What could they do more? Could these fresh bodies decentralise or depute better? I believe the right hon. Gentleman wants, not to decentralise, but to dethrone. He wants to take the crown from the School Board, break it into thirty pieces, and distribute the pieces among local authorities, giving the most insignificant piece of all to the County Council. The electors do not go to the poll in sufficient numbers for the right hon. Gentleman. According to his scheme they will not go to the poll at all. Clearly he will make bad worse in that respect. As far as they do go to the poll it is a great gain to education. I do not know what are the real grounds for destroying the School Board. He seemed to praise the Board on educational grounds, but I am afraid he is going to destroy it on non-educational grounds. I am told that the influence of the teachers on elections is a matter that lies very heavily on the conscience of some of my hon. friends. The chief influence of the teacher is in the schoolroom, and there these elementary teachers are the greatest force we have for forming the character of the future citizens of London. For my part I would do everything possible to encourage their interference in elections; I am glad to see them anywhere, and I would do anything I could to improve their status. The only reason for destroying the School Board is, in my opinion, that they have done badly for the children of London. The reverse is the case. The parents are under immense obligations to them. I say, therefore, that the Bill is radically bad, because, according to the
  760
  right hon. Gentleman's own showing, it is going to destroy what is radically good. The right hon. Gentleman had an almost supreme opportunity of re-organising the education of London—the almost Imperial task of taking the first educational step towards bringing the Empire closer together, but I am afraid there is only one man in the Ministry who can see and seize a great Imperial task. The Government have missed a great educational opportunity, and, what is more, I believe they are doing a very ill turn to upwards of 1,000,000 children in London.
  MR. CREMER: Not only has the Borough Council in my constituency protested, I believe unanimously, against the passing of this Bill, but throughout the constituency, as far as I am aware, there has not been a single voice raised in support of the proposals of the Government. I have had a long experience on the subject of education. At the time Mr. Forster was preparing his Bill I was one of a large deputation of working men who waited on that statesman urging him to make the Bill a popular measure. I say popular not because the masses of the people were wanting in sympathy with education, but because the proposal as originally drafted was to do what this Bill proposes—to give to the local authorities the power to control the educational destinies of London. The deputation wrestled with Mr. Forster for some time on the subject, and ultimately he frankly admitted that they had convinced him as to the desirability of the authority being directly elected by the ratepayers, and the result was the establishment of the London School Board. There was then in London, a large organisation of working men, called the Auxiliary of the National Education League, and a very angry controversy ensued between the supporters and the opponents of a national scheme of education as to the kind of religious teaching to be given in the board schools. It was due to the working men to whom I have referred, and to Mr. Spurgeon, who presided over a great meeting of that body in Exeter Hall, that the compromise ultimately agreed to was first suggested. At the first election for the School Board I was a candidate having for my colleague Professor Huxley, and

  761
  we took an active part in endeavouring to give effect to the Act. At subsequent elections also I did the best I could to assist the cause of education, in which, during all my life, I have taken a very deep interest. For twelve years I was a member of the School Attendance Committee of the old Borough of Marylebone, so I think I may say without egotism that I have some practical acquaintance with the work of the School Board, and I have no hesitation in saying that it has accomplish a splendid work, the full benefits of which we have not yet lived to see. The present generation has derived enormous advantage from that work, and even the Prime Minister is compelled to bear testimony to its excellence, although he has forgotten to tell us why he proposes to annihilate the body which has done that wonderful work. I mention these matters simply to show that I may claim to speak with some practical acquaintance of the subject under discussion.
  Notwithstanding the small percentage of the electorate which has from time to time gone to the poll, I believe that the great work which has been accomplished is largely due to the democratic basis on which the Board was established, and I cannot help thinking that that is one of the crimes it has committed, and one of the reasons its dissolution is to be precipitated. I hope I am wrong in that view, but if the School Board has done such magnificent work for London why is it to be abolished? That is the question my constituents are asking. It has been asked in this House, but no satisfactory answer has been vouchsafed. What demand has been made, and from whence has that demand come, for the abolition of the School Board? There has not been a single meeting in the Metropolis, or a single petition presented to this House, or the slightest feeling exhibited anywhere, except in clerical quarters, for the abolition of the School Board. We have, therefore, to seek for reasons which do not appear on the surface, and I do not think it is very difficult to ascertain what those reasons are. It is easy to account for the small percentage of the electorate who have voted at the School Board elections. The masses of the people had been so confident
  762
  that nobody would be found so wicked as to stop the cause of educational progress that they did not trouble to go to the poll. Ever since the Board was established the clerical party have from time to time made efforts to stop the educational clock, and on one occasion they did manage to "capture the School Board," and to retain the control for three years. It has been said that the masses of the people were indifferent to the cause of education. It was not indifference, but over-confidence, that lost that election, and when the next opportunity came round there was an uprising throughout London, with the result that the clerical party were swept from power, and they have never regained the position they then lost. That is the real reason the School Board is now to be abolished. Because it is clear that the ratepayers will not tolerate the Board being governed, and the educational destinies of London being controlled, by a clerical majority, that authority is to be swept away. It was not indifference on the part of the ratepayers of London that led to the catastrophe but it was over-confidence, and ever since they have been doing their best, except at the last election of the School Board, to prevent the clerical party from regaining the ascendancy it once occupied on the School Board. When the election took place in 1900 the country was suffering from the delirium of the war fever, and if I wanted any evidence that war has a demoralising effect on the people I should find it in the fact that the people of London in that year forgot their duties. They were "Mafficking" in the streets instead of going to the poll to record their votes but they have bitterly repented themselves. You will have plenty of evidence accumulated before long that will convince you that I am right. The General Election of 1900 overshadowed the elections for the Borough Councils and the School Board which followed. When the election for the School Board of London took place the electors were absolutely surfeited with elections. Those facts were quite sufficient to explain the small percentage of electors who went to the poll at the School Board election. So far as I am able to judge this Bill is going to result, for some time, in chaos.

  763
  During the past thirty years splendid work has been done for education in London through the machinery set up by the School Board, whose members have devoted themselves assiduously to the work without fee or reward. Now you are going to summarily dismiss the body which has done that splendid work and put all the efficient costly machinery into the melting pot. You will have to begin all over again with a new authority. Why should we begin all over again? I ask the Parliamentary Secretary in all sincerity if he will tell us what crime the School Board has committed that it should be annihilated? I cannot help thinking that it is because the clerical party that are behind the Government failed to permanently capture the School Board of London, as they were advised to do some time ago by a very high authority. If it had not been for that influence I feel strongly that the School Board would have been allowed to continue its work. The new authority which is to be set up against the wish of the London County Council is to be an educational authority but only in name. Everybody in the House has from time to time noted the sturdy opposition which the hon. Member for Peckham has given to any proposals of the London County Council. He never loses an opportunity of pitching into that body and saying the most unpleasant things about it. But he now tells us that he is in favour of the work of education being undertaken by the London County Council. Does he wish to popularise a body which, ever since it was established, he has been doing his best to denounce and belittle? Nothing of the kind. Everybody knows that a taxing body is always unpopular. People do not inquire into the reasons which induce a body to impose taxes, and, supposing that this Bill passes, as it unfortunately will, every ratepayer will know that the demand for the school tax, which there is too much reason to fear will be increased, comes from the London County Council. The County Council will not have its Popularity increased by that fact. On the contrary it will afford the hon. Member for Peckham, and others who view the County Council in this unfavourable light, to say, "Oh, yes, these new taxes for educational purposes
  764
  are being imposed by the wicked County Council." It will assist them in their persistent efforts to make that body unpopular. There are many more reasons which could be stated in opposition to the Bill, but I have stated the sentiments that animate the working men in the constituency of Haggerston, which I represent in this House. I have not found one of any political creed, whether he be Tory, Radical, or Socialist, who has a good word to say for the Bill. They say that there must be some ulterior purpose to serve in proposing to abolish a body like the School Board of London, which has done such splendid work. In voting against the Second Reading of the Bill I shall feel that I have never given a vote with a greater amount of heartiness.
  SIR WILLIAM ANSON: There is one feature which has characterised this debate throughout the afternoon and evening, and that is the extreme strength and vigour of the language used in denunciation of the Bill contrasted with the profound calm which has reigned in the House. The Bill has been called by every sort of name. The hon. Member for Poplar who compared me to Rehoboam has, I think, followed the injunction of Solomon, that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. I may also remind the hon. Member that Rehoboam does not furnish an altogether happy illustration of the results of that educational method. I do hope that the Bill may be a better justification of the proverb, and by the Bill I mean the real Bill, and not the Bill which has been described by various Members who have taken upon themselves to expound its provisions, each according to his particular fancy. The hon. Member for North Birmingham drew a picture which certainly did not portray the Bill of the Government. It never entered the mind of the Government, and it certainly is not the Bill before the House. The Bill before the House is simply the application of the Education Act of last year to London, with two changes—first, as to the management of a certain class of schools; and secondly, as to the composition of the Committee which is to advise the Council and to whom the Council may, if it pleases, delegate powers. That is all the novelty in the Bill, which is really a

  765
  piece of machinery for the extension, and to a certain extent the adaptation, of the Act of 1902 to London. The London County Council is to be the education authority, and the control of the provided schools is to be delegated to the Borough Councils. There is a good deal of misunderstanding as to what that decentralisation or delegation means. It has been alleged that the Government were breaking up the elementary education of London into twenty-nine separate departments. Nothing could be a more untrue representation of the purport of the Bill. What would happen if we followed the Act of 1902? In that case for every school which was not a voluntary school the London County Council would have to appoint four managers, and the Borough Council as the minor local authority, would have to appoint two, and therefore the London County Council would have to deal with over 450 bodies. What we provide in the Bill is that the Borough Councils are to be responsible to the London County Council for the management of the schools. They are empowered to conduct the management through committees consisting of themselves, or of outsiders joined to members of the Councils. Can this be said to be breaking up the educational system of London? What powers do the London County Council retain? I think if hon. Members would only be good enough to read the Act with the Bill they would have clearer notions as to the powers proposed to be conferred. Under the Act, the County Council has the powers of the School Board and the complete control of expenditure. Under the Bill the County Council will have power to give general directions and to fix the numbers, salaries, and qualifications of the teachers; the amount of school accommodation needed, and the provision to be made for it. The Council is also the school attendance authority, and regulates the numbers of the staff in all its departments. In fixing the qualifications of the teachers they can acquire variety of experience, and can secure the supply of that great service of teachers to which the Member for Haddingtonshire referred. The Borough Councils will make out estimates for their requirements for repairs, furniture and the like, and submit these to the
  766
  County Council. Thus, instead of having to keep a check on 450 separate bodies of school managers, the County Council will deal direct with twenty-nine Borough Councils, and will thus be free from care for all the small details which so much oppress the members of the existing School Board—as we heard from the most interesting but somewhat depressing diary which was read to the House by the hon. Member for Camberwell—because the central authority will only pass the estimates and exercise powers of inspection, audit, and the like, so as to ensure that the money is properly spent. In that way, I cannot help thinking the central local authority will find itself relieved from the burden of administration in small matters which has weighed very heavily on the London School Board, while it will not lose control over the general educational policy, or the regulation of the educational system of London. There is no reason to fear that the London County Council and the Borough Councils will desire to alter the existing organisation of the School Board. That organisation only wants to be re-arranged with a view to the new relations between the boroughs and the educational authority; and there will be plenty of time to do that in the interval between the passing of the Bill and its coming into operation. I hope that next year we shall see a new scheme of management of the schools, which will be as effective and less onerous to those who take part in it as that of the London School Board.
  The right hon. Member for Cambridge University expressed a wish that special schools, such as those for epileptic children and deaf and dumb children, would not be excluded. I do not think that they are excluded. They are public elementary schools; but that is a matter which may fairly be considered at a later stage of the Bill, and it does not touch the principles with which we are now concerned. What we shall have to consider, and what will have to be dealt with when there is one educational authority for London is the educational problem of the future—the grading of schools, and the determination of what are really public elementary schools, and what are schools which give education higher than elementary under the Act of 1902. But that is an educational

  767
  problem which rests in the future, and which I do not think concerns the educational principles of the Bill. There are one or two other advantages which must arise from decentralisation. I think there will be greater elasticity imparted to the curriculum of the elementary schools. The School Board system has been rigorous. The School Board inspectors have had to insist on a certain uniformity, which has borne hardly on the poorer parts of London.
  DR. MACNAMARA: Hear, hear: we recognise that.
  SIR WILLIAM ANSON: The Borough Councils, knowing the needs of their area will, advised by their Committees of management, occupy a stronger position as against the central authority than the existing Boards of Managers can possibly do in relation to the School Board. In some schools progress must be slower and subjects less numerous, and things must be repeated in some schools which do not need repetition in every school. The teaching will be simpler or more complex in one school than in another, and that will be to the great advantage of the children of London. The Borough Councils will also take some account of the relation of elementary education to the industries of their respective areas, and in that way education will be related to local requirements as it never has been before in London. Besides, there will be an increase of local interest created in the schools, and a more serious and constant effort to find employment for the children as they leave the schools. Nothing will be more valuable to the progress of the children in later life than that, when they can earn a livelihood, there will be people always on the alert to secure engagements for such children. Then there is the question of the Committees through whom the Borough Councils are to act. It has been said that the Clause dealing with the Committees is crude. I am afraid that the Clause has been framed on the principle—perhaps too absolutely on the principle so much heard of, and pressed upon us in the debates last autumn—that we should trust the local authorities. The Clause was framed
  768
  on the assumption that the Borough Councils would exercise common sense in the formation of their Committees, that they would put on these Committees those persons who for so long and successfully interested themselves in education, and worked under the School Board. I have the greatest possible desire that we should not lose the assistance of the managers who have worked with the London School Board. I think it an absolute necessity also that women should have a place in the management of the schools. If this House cannot put that confidence in the Borough Councils, it is perfectly open to hon. Members to make the clause more precise, so as to ensure that there should be persons from outside the Borough Councils, and that some of them should be women. Then as to the provision of sites, I think that some hon. Members have mixed up the question of the choice of sites with the accommodation and provision of schools. But I hold that it is a reasonable provision that the Borough Councils should be entitled to have a word is the choice of the sites in the future. Then if the management of the Borough Councils is inefficient, and if there is any neglect on the part of the local authorities, there is in the last resort the right of the County Council to interpose and represent to the Board of Education that the management is not what it should be, and to enter and make its own provision through its own Committee. I think, therefore, that we are taking every precaution that there should be good management of the schools. I believe that this process of decentralisation, this delegation of power to the Borough Councils, will not only be a great relief to the local authority in regard to the heavy work imposed upon it, but that it will also excite an interest in the education of the children of London which has not existed before, and which should be the object of every Government, even at some temporary sacrifice of good administration, to promote and encourage. I hope I have satisfied the House that this clause as to management, which has been called defective, and many other hard names, may be worked, even as it stands, for the benefit of the children of London.

  769
  There is a departure from the Act of 1902, in the constitution of the Committee. Now that departure has been attributed to various sinister motives—to animosity to the London County Council, to love of the Borough Councils, to political interests, to clerical interests. All these are said to have combined to induce the Government to frame a Committee devoid of those elements which the last speaker thought were the basis and main object of the Bill. I should have thought that a Committee on which the preponderance is given to the London County Council would enable hon. Members to trust it. There can be no doubt as to where the predominant influence will rest. One hon. Member suggested that the matter ought to have been settled by scheme; but what would happen would be that when the County Councils had framed its scheme, and brought it before the Board of Education, the Borough Councils would protest that they were not represented. From the experience I have had of the working of the Act of 1902, I should most earnestly deprecate, on behalf of the Board of Education, throwing on that Board the duty of saying whether or no the boroughs should be represented on that Committee. I maintain that the question of whether the Borough Councils should be represented on the Education Committee should be settled by Parliament, and not by the Board of Education. If these Borough Councils are to present their estimates, and to exercise the administrative power, which I wish to see them exercise, then it seems to me not merely equitable, but reasonable and convenient that they should be represented on the Committee. In framing this scheme of a Committee, I have been actuated by a desire to associate all interests concerned in education in the common work of the education of the area. The main principle of the Bill, it must be borne in mind, is that the London County Council shall be the local education authority; that it must have a Committee which it can trust, and whose advice it will be willing to take; that it must have a Committee to which it will be willing to delegate such powers as it does not desire to exercise itself. How the Committee should be framed is not a matter to be discussed
  770
  on the Second Reading of the Bill. Our object is to lay down the principle which I have submitted—that the Committee must be so framed that the London County Council can give it its full trust and confidence. Having laid down that as the principle of the Bill, and as the desire of the Government, I ask the House to proceed with the Second Beading of the Bill without further cavilling at the present construction of the Committee. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh!"] That ex hausts the points of departure from the policy of last session in the Bill now before us. But there remains a question which has been raised, and which I believe is the main question in the minds of many hon. Members opposite, and that is, whether a body directly elected for educational purposes or a body directly elected for general municipal purposes, with education thrown in, is the right sort of authority in the interests of London. We are told that an authority directly elected for educational purposes, is democratic, and that an authority directly elected for other than educational purposes is not democratic.
  DR. MACNAMARA: Who said that?
  SIR WILLIAM ANSON: The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, whom I regret not to seen in his place, has alleged that a body constituted as this Committee would "De-democratise" our educational system—that the London County Council elected by the ratepayers for general and municipal purposes is democratic, but that the Borough Councils, elected by ratepayers for the purposes of the Borough are clerical or retrograde, or un-democratic. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman would be prepared to go to Poplar or to Bethnal Green and tell the councillors there that they are "De-democratic." Perhaps he might safely do so, because they might not understand jargon which is a convenient vehicle for confused ideas. Perhaps he might explain that this was a notion of democracy constructed ad hoc for the purposes of debate, as principles sometimes are. Well, why should education be severed from the rest of municipal work? Surely education, and particularly elementary education, is full of municipal problems. There is a good deal of waste, I am sorry to say, of educational force, because the children

  771
  going to school do not come in a condition in which they can really benefit by the education provided for them. We have never known this. Our educational deficiencies are due to our own idleness, our own shiftlessness, our own stupidity; but we have never been able to say that we could not learn because we were cold or hungry, or because our homes were noisy and squalid, or because we were tired out before the day began with running errands or with doing domestic work. These are serious questions which should engage the attention of the municipal authority, for we must bear in mind that there is a good deal besides teaching which goes towards the education of the poor. And then there are great educational problems which are worthy of the attention of any Municipality, however great. There is the adapting of the education given to the needs of the children; there are the particular industrial and trade needs as well as the higher forms of education. And I would not limit the considerations to the material and industrial needs. There is need that our education and training should be such as to form the character, to add to interest life and to give a permanent value to the education of a child. And I think with these great problems to be solved—and with these great objects in view we may well hope that these new municipalities, between whom it has been so often said to-night that friction is sure to arise—will forget the squalid jealousies which have been attributed to them by hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House, and will give their whole heart to the great work of educating the children of this generation to be the good citizens of the next.
  MR. ROBSON: The hon. Gentleman has addressed a House in a state of political calmness that it is worth while to compare with the feeling which pervades the country. I suppose we have scarcely ever had a measure of first-class importance debated in a House so thin, and in which the speeches on the whole have been so quiet. But in the country we have a feeling of religious conviction aroused to an extent that has not been observed for many years. We have men of position and substance in the country; men to whom the old-fashioned phrase "Fear God and honour the King" may well be
  772
  applied; men who fill all sorts of positions in public life and serve their fellow citizens without reward. We have these men, excellent citizens and responsible fathers of families, called upon to choose between their conscience and a statute of the law, and for the first time in my time—or in the time of many of those present—we have a great body of respectable English citizens declaring that they will not obey the Acts passed by this House—that they will not obey this Act when it is passed. The House is calm because it is discussing that which is undoubtedly important, but is not a matter of vital importance to the country. The country has not yet thought how the Education Bill is to be adapted to London. To the country the essential vice and injustice of the Act of last year and of this Bill are apparent. It is therefore, calm to discuss details, but you cannot be sure that it will be calm when you apply the Act. It has not yet been put in force in the country; when it has that will be the time for the Secretary to the Board of Education to judge of the political calm. He will then, perhaps, find himself in a sort of storm-centre, and he will not enjoy the position. However, may I say a few words upon those questions of administrative detail upon which the Secretary has not dwelt? He has treated this Bill as though it were a mere matter of machinery, and I apprehend he proposes to substitute for an inefficient a more efficient machinery. That should be the Government's object, and yet, curiously enough, that is not their declared object. They do not profess to substitute a more or less efficient machinery, because the Prime Minister in his speech was careful to disclaim any intention of casting any reflections upon the London School Board, which is one of the public institutions most esteemed, not only by those under whose jurisdiction it comes, but by the whole of England. The right hon. Gentleman, in defending this Bill, was careful not to say anything calculated to lessen the London School Board in public esteem. But that is a small matter compared with his restraint in not attacking it. What is the efficiency that you expect from the new bodies? It is certainly not to be supposed they: will be more ardent in the cause of edu-

  773
  cation, nor is it supposed they will be any less extravagant than the London School Board. I, for my own part, have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has just said about the advantages he expects to be derived from the new bodies. But he does not expect that the financial control will be more efficient. On the contrary, it seems the desire of the Ministry to reproduce in our local institutions the kind of muddle and mischief that we have in this House. We have here learned the great disadvantage of having a mass of duties beyond our administrative capacity. In the municipalities there has been a sort of specialisation in the functions that they have to perform. These duties are apparently to be thrown into the hands of one body, so that the electors will no longer be able to choose men especially fitted for an especial purpose. I really begin to think that the Ministry are elevating muddle to the dignity of method. The very essence of this Bill is an attack upon an efficient body for its inefficiency. It is not enough to call this Ministry inefficient; it is anti-efficient; and we have a striking instance of that in this Bill. But it is not the administrative side of the Bill that I wish to lay the most stress upon. I began by drawing attention to the state of feeling in the country. One of the essential features of these Education Bills is that they make the great masses of people pay for the teaching of doctrines in which they do not believe. It is that injustice which this Bill proposes to extend to London.
  Since the last Bill passed we have had a remarkable movement spreading throughout the country, a movement on the part of responsible law-abiding citizens for refusing to pay rates or taxes to be levied by this Bill. I think the Ministry ought not to allow that situation to pass without observation in dealing with this Bill. Have they taken the trouble to inquire what is the Nonconformist grievance? An hon. Member behind me said last year that, if men would not go to the State for taxes they would go for rates. Under the old system the theory was that the State paid, by means of taxes, for secular education alone, and that in the case of School Boards ratepayers paid for whatever other education might be required over and above the State grant, but in the voluntary schools religious teaching
  774
  was paid for entirely by subscribers. That was the old theory on which the State acted. It was the theory laid down by the Act of 1870 and which has been since steadily maintained. Now we have the subscribers definitely and finally relieved from that charge. Therefore the Nonconformists are called upon to pay by these rates the very sum that was previously paid by the subscribers, and they are faced for the first time with a demand upon their consciences which they cannot avoid. They will stand a great deal that is bad in practice so long as the theory is good, but when both theory and practice are bad as Englishmen they naturally rise up against them. That is a situation with which the Ministry have not fairly dealt in this Bill. They say that, after all, the existing system does not make a great difference, and that the injustice complained of is exceptional. But that is no answer, and this is an injustice to which the Nonconformist will not submit. He would be unworthy of his creed and nationality if he were to do so. May I remind the House of what was laid down as a Church view by the noble Lord the Member for Greenwich? In a passage of fine eloquence, which greatly impressed the House and which well repaid consideration, if only on argumentative grounds, he put forward the view that the Church depended upon apostolic succession. That is the theory which the Church has taught in schools throughout the country, and it cannot be taught without teaching children to regard Nonconformists as being without the pale of the Church in its true and legitimate sense. That is the teaching you put into the hands of 13,000 or 14,000 laymen in the country, under the control of the clergymen and the foundation managers. That is the doctrine which must be taught to the children of Nonconformists.
  SIR JOHN GORST: Oh!
  MR. ROBSON: The right hon. Gentle man says "No," but——
  SIR JOHN GORST: No, I said "what nonsense." In thousands of Church schools on four days of the week

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  the same kind of Bible teaching is given as that in the Board schools, and on the fifth day, while the Church children are taught the Catechism, the Nonconformist children have a Bible lesson of the same character as on the other four days.
  MR. ROBSON: I greatly doubt the generality of the right hon. Gentleman's statement, but it does not meet my argument, which is, that the Church insists on having the control of teaching in these schools. If the Church is willing to adopt that system and give up the control then away go the grievances of the Nonconformists. But the Church will not adopt that system, and, therefore, when the right hon. Gentleman speaks of cases of which Nonconformists cannot complain, and which exist not because of the law but because of the will of the particular managers, by way of indicating that there is no Nonconformist grievance, then I say to the right hon. Gentleman, "What nonsense!" It is nonsense of a character which is not creditable either to the logic or the candour of the right hon. Gentleman. Everyone knows that the state of things I have been describing is the state of things permitted by law, and that the teaching of religion in the non-provided schools is put into the hands of the clergy and the foundation managers, and that once it is put into their hands no Nonconformist has a right to demand any religious teaching except that given by the Church. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well there is no such right, and that it is denied by those who pretend to be champions of religious teaching. They will get the law into such a condition that the child of a Nonconformist will be compelled to have religious teaching detrimental to his faith, or no teaching
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  at all. This is the grievance which this Bill proposes to extend, and I warn the Ministry that they will have to consider something more in this Bill than has yet been considered.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Burdett-Coutts.)
  Put, and agreed to.
  Debate to be resumed to-morrow

  COUNTY COUNCILS (BILLS IN PARLIAMENT) BILL.
  Read the third time and passed.
PARLIAMENTARY VOTERS' REGISTRATION BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—
  Debate arising.
  And it being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed to-morrow.

  CHEW'S FOUNDATION.
  Resolved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying hat he will withhold his consent from the Scheme under The Endowed Schools Act, 1869, and amending Acts, for the management of the Charity of Chew's Foundation in the parish of Dunstable, in the county of Bedford, founded by deed of the 16th day of September, 1724,—(Mr. Ashton,)
  Adjourned at three 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 Certificate from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have been complied with:—
Jewish Colonisation Association [H.L.].
And also the Certificate that the Standing Orders applicable to the following Bill have not been complied with:—
Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (Extension of Time).
The same were ordered to lie on the Table.
Macclesfield and District Electric Tramways Bill [H.L.].
A petition of Messrs. Lewin, Gregory, and Anderson, of 6, The Sanctuary, Westminster, Parliamentary agents, praying for leave to present a petition of Messrs Greenall, Whitley, and Company, praying to be heard by counsel against the Bill, although the time limited by Standing Order No. 92 for presenting such petition has expired; read, and ordered to lie on the Table; and Standing Order No. 92 to be considered on Thursday next in order to its being dispensed with in respect of the said petition.
Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation Bill [H.L.].
The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn. The orders made on the 13th and 26th of March last discharged, and Bill committed.
Birmingham District Tramways Bill [H.L.]. Read 2a.
Jewish Colonisation Association Bill [H.L.]. Read 2a (according to order).
South-Eastern and London, Chatham, and Dover Railways Bill [H.L.]; Sutton Coldfield Corporation Bill [H.L.]; Cardiff Railway Bill [H.L.]; Manchester
594
Southern Tramways (Lancashire) Bill [H.L.]; Manchester Southern Tramways (Cheshire) Bill [H.L.]; South Lancashire Tramways Bill [H.L.]; Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Tramways Bill [H.L.]: North Cheshire Tramways Bill [H.L.].
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the Lord Zouche of Haryngworth be proposed to the House as a member of the Select Committee on the said Bills in the place of the Earl of Lytton; read, and agreed to.
Scunthorpe Urban District Water Bill [H.L.]; Salford Corporation Bill [H.L.]; Belfast Water Bill [H.L.]; Oldham Corporation Bill [H.L.]; Dewsbury, Batley, and Birstal Tramways Bill [H.L.]; Dudley, Stourbridge, and District Tramways Bill [H.L.]; South Staffordshire Tramways Bill [H.L.]; Maryport Harbour Bill [H.L.]; Derby Gas Bill [H.L.].
Report from the Committee of Selection, That the following Lords be proposed to the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bills—viz.:

E. Albemarle,

L. Clifford of Chudleigh (chairman),

L. Oranmore and Browne,

L. Farrer,

L. Wandsworth.

Agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly: The Committee to meet on Tuesday next at Eleven o'clock; and all petitions referred to the Committee, with leave to the petitioners praying to be heard by counsel against the Bills to be heard as desired, as also counsel for the Bills.

PETITIONS.
  LAND REGISTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
  Petition against or for Amendment of, of the Faculty of Procurators of Greenock. Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
  LAND REGISTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
  Petition against. Of the Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Courts of Scotland. Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
  LICENSING ACT AMENDMENT BILL [H.L.]
  Petition in favour of, of the Darlaston Licensed Victuallers and Beer Retailers Society. Read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
  DECLARATION OF THE SOVEREIGN AGAINST TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
  Petition for abrogation of, of Roman Catholics residing in Ripon. Read and ordered to lie on the Table.
  ARMY (ANNUAL) BILL.
  Read 2a (according to order): Committee negatived: Then Standing Order No. XXXIX. considered (according to order) and dispensed with: Bill read 3a and passed.

  SHOPS (EARLY CLOSING) BILL [H.L.]
  [THIRD READING.]
  Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
  Moved that the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Avebury.)
  THE EARL OF WEMYSS: My Lords, instead of simply moving that this Bill be read a third time this day six months, it appeared to me, so important are the principles involved in the Bill, that it would be better to proceed by Resolution. I therefore drew up the Resolution which stands in my name on the notice Paper, and which is as follows—"That legislative interference with freedom of contract and the liberty of labour of full-grown persons is contrary to the hereditary rights of a free people, That these rights are taken away by the Shops (Early Closing) Bill; and this House declines to proceed further with a measure hurtful alike to trade and industry, which would press cruelly on small shopkeepers and their working-class customers, and for the first time in modern legislation limits the hours of free adult labour. Now, my Lords, I venture to think that your Lordships cannot deny the truth of the propositions here laid down. Can anyone deny that legislative interference with freedom of contract and the liberty of labour of full-grown persons is contrary to the hereditary rights of a free people? Further, can anyone deny that those rights are taken away by this Bill, and that the Bill is hurtful alike to trade and industry, and would press cruelly on small shopkeepers and their working-class customers? The import-
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  ance of this measure cannot be ex aggerated. It is not a question of the hours of shop assistants, but of freedom of trade and adult labour, and this Bill, for the first time in modern legislation, attempts to limit the hours of free adult labour. In moving this Resolution I do not intend to go into the provisions of the Bill. It does not matter to me how the Bill is put into operation. The question with me is its principle, and it is to the principle of the Bill that, with your Lordships' kind indulgence, I would direct your attention. In so doing, I propose to show whence this sort of legislation comes, whither it infallibly leads, and what hope or chance there is of putting a stop to it. Now, my Lords, whence comes this kind of legislation? I give my noble friend, Lord Avebury, full credit for his action in this matter. I believe him to be moved by the purest and truest philanthropy. He has for over twenty years been working on this question. Now philanthropy is a very good thing in its way. We are all, I believe, kindly disposed to our fellow creatures; but there should be discretion even in philanthropy. There is ill-regulated philanthropy in social life. Where does that lead? It leads to the divorce court. There is ill-regulated philanthropy in legislation. Where does that lead? It leads to such a Bill as that of my noble friend. Therefore I am quite willing to accept philanthropy as the bed-rock upon which my noble friend rests his Bill; but, my Lords, there are other considerations in politics which also enter into the principles of legislation.
  To my great surprise, and I have no doubt to the great surprise of your Lordships, in the early part of this session my noble friend, Lord Ribblesdale, gave notice of a Bill of the same kind as that now before the House. I naturally thought that my noble friend was acting in harmony with Lord Avebury; that Lord Avebury, having found it difficult to carry his Bill across a rather stiff country, had gone to my noble friend, the ex-Master of the extinct Royal Buckhounds, in the hope that he would be able to carry it more successfully; but very soon afterwards Lord Avebury's Bill itself appeared, and the Lord Chancellor, thinking, no doubt, that you ought not to allow in this House poaching 'on other people's measures,

  597
  shunted that Bill, with the result that we now have my noble friend Lord Avebury's Measure alone before us. I do not think we should be hard on Lord Ribblesdale for the course he took. He is a good party man. He has the letters C.B.—I do not mean the Companionship of the Bath-well burnt into his breast. He naturally felt it would never do, in these days when Liberalism means something different from what it used to mean, to allow a Liberal Unionist to carry a measure which would be so popular with a certain class of voters, and that therefore he and his Party must go in for it. This is confirmed by what has passed lately with reference to Liberalism. When Lord Rosebery seceded from the so-called Liberal Party there were no end of speeches made about the true principles of Liberalism. What are those principles? The principles of the Liberal Party we now know are those of labour. I think it was Lord Tweedmouth who first suggested that the Liberal Party should go in for labour, and now Liberalism reads "Labourism"—it has nothing to do with Liberty.
  Thus, what have we had within the last few days but a sign of the times showing what Liberals are doing? We had Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman asking for a day for Mr. Asquith's Motion, of want of confidence consequent upon the nonintervention of the Government in the labour dispute at Lord Penhryn's slate quarries, which was moved in the House of Commons yesterday. There and then the Campbell-Bannerman party and the Rosebery-Asquith party both plunged collectively head over heels into the hot and troubled waters of Bethesda, in the full belief that thus all this Party's ills would be removed, and the sore that existed in the Liberal Party would be cured. Thus there is no hope, I think, of support for my Resolution from noble Lords on the Liberal side of the House. We know, too, the active part which Earl Spencer took—at any rate, if not he himself, which his carriage took—in the Woolwich Election. [Earl SPENCER dissented.] Well, the noble Earl got the credit for it. I read that all the Liberal carriages had been sent down there, and that the procession of carriages was headed by my noble
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  friend's family coach. The newspaper reporters were evidently in the wrong, as the noble Earl denies having sent his carriage. I think I have clearly shown that this kind of legislation has its origin in philanthropy plus popularity. Having thus shown the origin of this sort of legislation, I now ask your Lordships to consider, if you pass the Third Reading of such a Bill as this, containing such novel, and, I hold, such evil principles, however well-intentioned, whither will it lead? The end is certain. Read the list of Bills in another place bearing on this question. There are three or four Shop Bills, whose success will be the natural sequence of your passing the Third Reading of the Bill now before the House. There is the Wages Boards Bill to create Wages Boards to fix the minimum rate of wages to be paid to workers. Then comes the question of eight hours in mines. Is there a single noble Lord who hears me, and who has a grain of common sense, who does not feel that, as certain as the sun will rise to-morrow—although we do not often see it in London—if you pass this Bill you will be compelled to pass the Bill for eight hours in mines? Further, there is a Bill in another place to deprive all persons employed on tramways of their liberty to work more than eight hours a day. Now, who are the persons who bring forward these Bills? They are Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. John Burns, Mr. Tennant, Sir Albert Rollit (a Socialist Conservative), and Mr. Keir Hardie.
  I have a letter in my hand from the Scottish Trade Protection Association asking me to withdraw my Resolution against this Bill. I naturally answered that here was a Bill which interfered with trade, with hours of labour, and everything else, and I asked if a National Trade Protection Society did not resist such a Bill what were they formed to do. I pointed out that if they approved of this Bill they must be prepared to see the hand of the State in all their concerns, to see everything regulated by the State, and this is the end your Liberal Socialist has in view; for, three years ago, in answer to a question from me at a discussion at the Society of Arts on Municipal Trading, Mr. John Burns admitted that the Party he represents desire that property of all kinds—lands, houses, shops, mines, everything, including shop distribution—should be under the control of a labour-governed

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  State. That is what you have to look to as the result of the legislation for which my noble friends have gone in. But they should bear in mind that we have in this country labour that is organised and labour that is not organised. Out of the labour population of the country only one in ten are members of trades unions. There are nine labourers who are not organised to every one who is, and they do not wish to be interfered with by this sort of legislation, and yet it is for the support of the organised one that political Labourism is labouring.
  I have now, I think, shown whither this legislation leads. It remains for me to ask your Lordships to consider what possible check there can be on such a tendency. You already know by sad experience that there is not one of your Lordships' homesteads in England or in Scotland, in connection with which the principles of the Irish land legislation have not been more or less established, and I ask, what possible check can there be now upon the like spread of evil principles in this Bill to trade and industry of all kinds? If my noble friend the Duke of Devonshire and the present Government choose to go on racing with the labourists on the socialistic race-course, they must infallibly be beaten, for, no matter what the state of the labour-socialistic horse may be—broken-winded, spavined and everything else—if you try to run your mild socialism against it, you cannot help being beaten. The labourists are sure to go one worse than you. What then is the proper thing for you to do in your own interests? What have the Liberals done? They have cast the old Liberal flag into the gutter. Let then the Conservative Unionist Government take it up—cleanse it—hold it aloft, and all men who love Liberty will rally round it regardless of Party. Lord Rosebery had this chance, but he lost it—threw it away. Suppose, in blindness, the Conservative and Unionist party go on racing for these socialistic measures with the other party, is there any other hope of checking them? Yes, and that hope rests with your Lordships. Your Lordships are the highest court of appeal in this kingdom. Instead of blindly following the Front Bench, whether their measures be sound in principle or not, you should take your stand according to your rightful position in this constitutional State and say, "No! Principles before Party.
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  We have had enough of Government without principles. We intend to put our foot down and pass no measure which is not sound in principle, and, above all, we will not pass a measure which for the first time in our legislation limits the trade of a trading nation, and the hours of free adult labour." I believe that to be our only hope. I am afraid the Government support this Bill. I wish them joy. If they do, all the Bills of a cognate character to which I have referred will be very soon on the Table of your Lordships' House.
  And now, when I speak of adult labour I shouldlike just to say one word with regard to myself and my position. It is more than forty years since, in another place, I brought in and carried a Bill which was called The Master and Servant Act. Before that, there was one law for the master and another law for the servant. If the master broke his contract he could only be prosecuted civilly, but if the servant broke his, he was treated criminally. It was my good fortune to be able to carry a Bill which placed the two on an equal footing. Later on, for two years, I had the honour of sitting on the Trades Union Commission. That Commission—I being one of those assenting—gave trades unions the power, which they are now in the habit of abusing by picketing, to combine in the way that might seem to them best. So far I have not shown myself hostile to labour. On the question of Early Closing, I think it was in the early sixties, I had the honour of presiding at a meeting held in St. Martin's Vestry Hall for the purpose of inaugurating an Early Closing Association, but it was a voluntary association. The Duke of Westminster, I recollect, was there, and many others, and that association still exists. I hold in my hand a letter from its President, Sir J. Blundell Maple, in which he states that this sort of legislation will put an end to the voluntary closing of shops which is going on. I am only interested in the principle of the Bill, but here is the opinion of a great trader in the Metropolis, a Member of Parliament, a strong Conservative, and I think his views must have some weight with your Lordships. Sir J. Blundell Maple states that my noble friend's Memorandum attached to the Bill contains a great many statements more or less correct, but leaves out important facts.

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  What are the important facts? It is true, as my noble friend states, that there has been a Second Reading of a Bill of this kind carried in the House of Commons, but Sir J. Blundell Maple says that it was a catch Second Reading, and that no debate at all took place. What my noble friend has omitted to state is this: that another Bill of this kind was defeated in the House of Commons by three to one in 1888, in which Division Sir J. Blundell Maple and that wise, brave, truthful man in all social questions, the late Mr. Bradlaugh, were Tellers. Therefore, I cannot help thinking that my noble friend in his very full statement would have done well if he had mentioned that little pregnant fact. Sir J. Blundell Maple writes, further, as to the expenses of the working of the Bill, the constant annoyance of visitations, and he states that, if nine o'clock is fixed under the Bill for closing, there will be no rest for the small retail shop keepers, but attempts will be made to fix an earlier hour. I do not think that can be denied. Sir J. Blundell Maple states his determination to work hard to defeat the Bill, and expresses the hope that this grandmotherly legislation will not be allowed to pass your Lordships' House. You have there a much more important practical opinion than mine upon this question. Now it is always said that, however hard the Bill may be on the small traders, all the big traders are in favour of it. Here you have one of the biggest traders in Great Britain opposing the Bill on principle, because it will have the effect of preventing the greater spread of the voluntary movement. At my time of life this legislation cannot much matter to me, although it may matter to those who come after me. I was born free, and I should like to feel that my children and my grandchildren will also be free, but at the pace our rulers are going there is little chance of that. What I might readily do would be to accept the French saying—"Aprés moi le déluge," sit quietly by with folded arms and see the game going on between the two Front Benches. But I hold that French maxim to be a most miserable one, and I think there is another which is much more worthy of acceptance—"Fais ce que doit advienne que pourra," and for myself, as long as life is left to me, I shall endeavour to fight in this House and
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  elsewhere for what I believe, and what I know, to be right, aye, and in this intance what your Lordships, in your inner consciences, also know to be right.
  I have quoted one opinion, that of a member of the other House, to strengthen my case, but I wish to conclude with a quotation which cannot fail to have great weight with your Lordships, as it is from one of the most distinguished members of your Lordships' House. It is a quotation from a speech made ten years ago at the Freemasons' Tavern on the occasion of a dinner under the auspices of the Liberty and Property Defence League. The orator who proposed the toast of the evening said, with reference to the League—
  "I cannot but feel that the principle of this League, which rests upon a basis as true and eternal as the law of gravitation itself, must ultimately prevail."
  We might just as well, continued the noble Lord, preach down the law of gravitation as attempt to reverse economic laws, which were independent even of the wisdom of Parliament. He then spoke of liberty and said that the most sacred property a man could possess, and the most inviolable, according to the law of all just States, was his right to dispose of his labour as he liked. If this Bill passes, he will no longer possess that right. The noble Lord concluded—
  "We are on the eve of attempting to prevent grown men working as long as they like. This may be all very right, though at present I cannot think it is, but, whatever it is, it is not liberty."
  These words were uttered by a distinguished Member of your Lordships' House—by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor. They are as true now as they were then, and I call upon my noble friend, whose heart I know is with me on this question—I would indeed be surprised if it were not—I call upon him to help me in resisting a Bill which sins against economic law and would take from us and from our children the priceless heritage of liberty.
  Amendment moved—
  "To leave out all the words after ('that') and insert ('this House resolves that Legislative interference with freedom of contract and the liberty of labour of full-grown persons is contrary to the hereditary rights of a free people. That these rights are taken away by the Shops (Early Closing) Bill; and this House declines to proceed further with a measure hurtful alike to trade and industry,

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  which would press cruelly on small shopkeepers and their working-class customers, and for the first time in modern legislation limits the hours of free adult labour.'"—(The Lord Wemyss.)
  LORD AVEBURY: My noble friend who has just sat down has made, as usual, a very interesting and vigorous speech. He has referred to a great many subjects—to Irish land legislation, to Tramways Bills, to The Eight Hours Miners Bill, to the Woolwich Election, and to the family coach of my noble friend Lord Spencer, and almost the only subject to which he has hardly alluded at all has been the unfortunate Bill the rejection of which he has just moved. I really cannot imagine from his speech that the noble Earl can have read the Bill. For my own part it seems to me that his Resolution, with the exception of a few words, is a most admirable Resolution; but what in the world it has got to do with the question now before your Lordships' House I have been puzzling over ever since I saw the terms. My noble friend referred to a letter which has appeared in to-day's newspapers from Sir J. Blundell Maple. Well, Sir J. Blundell Maple has consistently opposed all legislation dealing with the hours of labour in shops.
  THE EARL OF WEMYSS: Quite right, too.
  LORD AVEBURY: My noble friend says "quite right." That may be his opinion. But he again cannot have read this Bill. He describes it as a Compulsory Closing Bill which may shut up shops against the will of the shopkeepers. In the first place, the Bill cannot be brought into operation at all unless the local authorities are satisfied that two-thirds of the shopkeepers are in favour of it. Surely, then, it cannot correctly be described as a compulsory Bill. Then he blames me for not referring to the Bill of 1888 in the Memorandum. I did not refer to that because it had nothing whatever to do with this Bill. It was a totally different Bill. It proposed to shut shops everywhere at the same hour. In the discussion on that Bill, Member after Member pointed out that the circumstances of different places, different seasons, and different trades were so varied that you could not fix any
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  single hour of closing as applicable to the whole country, and that you must leave particular localities to deal with the needs of their localities. Acting on the general sense of the House of Commons in that debate, I brought up a Resolution in 1893 upon which this Bill was founded. It was discussed at considerable length and was supported on all sides of the House, and was eventually unanimously adopted. It was on that Resolution that this Bill—of course without Lord Salisbury's Clause—was introduced in 1893. It passed its Second Reading without division, was referred to a Select Committee and passed through that Committee, and was only lost because I had no opportunity of bringing it forward for Third Reading. In 1895 I brought it in again in the House of Commons. It was referred to the Grand Committee on Trade, and passed through that Committee with a few verbal alterations. But again we were prevented from bringing on the Third Reading. What has been the history of the measure in your Lordships' House? Two years ago your Lordships appointed a strong Committee to consider it. I think those of your Lordships who heard what Lord Salisbury said when he agreed to that Committee, will confirm me when I state that the opinion he then expressed was not very encouraging. I am speaking in the presence to-day of several members of that Committee, and they, I think, will corroborate me that the evidence brought before that Committee was so overwhelming that the Committee made a unanimous Report, and it is upon that unanimous Report that this Bill is founded.
  I am very sorry to occupy the time of the House in restating the provisions of the Bill, but I may just briefly mention what they are because I am sure nobody who heard my noble friend's speech would have the least idea of the provisions of the Bill, but, on the contrary, would have a most erroneous idea as to the objects for which it has been introduced. The first provision is that nothing whatever can be done under the Bill unless two thirds of the shopkeepers agree as to the hour of closing. If two-thirds of the shopkeepers desire to close earlier they may memorialise the local authority. The second safeguard is that the local authority need not act on the desire of the shopkeepers unless they think it reasonable. In that case they may then go to the Home Office, and if the Home

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  Office are of opinion that what is suggested is wise, they may lay a Provisional Order on the Table of both Houses of Parliament, and if Parliament does not dissent, then the Provisional Order becomes effective. We have never disguised our opinion that the question whether in a particular town the hour of closing should be eight, or half-past eight, or nine o'clock, is one you might very well leave to the shopkeepers and the local authority, and that to bring in the august interference of the Home Office and of Parliament is unnecessary. But your Lordships' House were of opinion that it was necessary. Surely, however, everybody must admit that the safeguards, if they are not unnecessarily full, are, at any rate, very ample in the matter.
  My noble friend asks the House to say that legislative interference with freedom of contract is contrary to the hereditary rights of a free people. I quite agree with him. Freedom of contract is really the basis of civilisation, and deeply should I regret any interference with it; but my noble friend omitted to point out in what part of this Bill we interfere with freedom of contract. Then he said the Bill interfered with the liberty of labour of full-grown persons. Where does the Bill interfere with the liberty of labour of full-grown persons?
  THE EARL OF WEMYSS: If a shop assistant wishes to work till, say, ten o'clock at night in a shop which has been ordered to close at eight, he or she cannot do so.
  LORD AVEBURY: One of the objections brought against this Bill is that although shops may be shut, there is nothing whatever in the Bill to prevent employees from being worked after the doors of the shop are closed. I have always said that if you made such a provision as that you would be interfering with the liberty of labour, but while we submit that shutting up shops is no more an interference with the liberty of labour than shutting up public houses, we believe that in the long run, if you shut up shops in the way proposed, the shop assistants will be greatly benefited. My noble friend next says the Bill will be hurtful to trade What trade will it be hurtful to? No doubt to some extent the factory legislation has somewhat hampered English trade and commerce, but we put up with
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  it because on the whole we believe that that is a minor evil and that in other ways it does a great amount of good. But in this case the Bill cannot interfere with trade in the least. No shopkeeper will sell a pound of tea or a yard of ribbon less, when this Bill becomes law, than before. The trade of shopkeepers will go on exactly as before. Indeed we had a good deal of evidence before the Committee from shopkeepers to the effect that, in their judgment, they would do more trade, because, if this Bill passed, more money would be spent in the shops and less in the public houses.
  My noble friend next contends that the Bill would press cruelly on small shopkeepers. This cannot be; the small shopkeepers are the great majority, and the Bill cannot come into operation unless two-thirds of the shopkeepers are in favour of earlier closing, and the small shopkeepers will certainly not agree to an hour which would be inconvenient to them or to their customers. The small shopkeepers all over the country, who are the most concerned, are our strongest supporters. They are the backbone of the movement. Then my noble friend speaks about the Bill pressing cruelly on the working-class customers. We had before us the secretaries of the Trade Councils of England, Scotland, and Ireland. They all told us that in the opinion of their councils this Bill would not be injurious to the interests of the working classes. Trades Unions all over the country say that the only complaint, they make is, that the Bill does not go as far as they would wish. Surely, if the Bill were hurtful to trade and industry, and pressed cruelly on the small shopkeepers, we should have heard something about it. I do not say that the trades unions are always wise advisers of what are the true interests of the working classes, but I do think that in a matter like this, which comes home to them all, you may fairly take it that the trades unions do represent the feelings of the working classes in this country.
  What was the accusation which my noble friend, I thought rather ungenerously, brought against Lord Ribblesdale. He said his Bill had been introduced because he knew that this measure would be so popular in the country. For my part, I believe he introduced his Bill with a desire to benefit the class concerned, but at any

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  rate, if this Bill is so popular that it would strengthen any party that brought it in, surely that is not an argument against the Bill, but rather in its favour. Bills of this kind have been before the country for a great many years. They have been discussed in every large city and town; they have been brought before every association of shopkeepers throughout the country, and discussed by them; and, as your Committee report, out of over 300 associations of shopkeepers, there were only two who opposed the Bill. Therefore, you may take it that the opinion of the shopkeepers is overwhelming in its favour. Again, there have been petitions signed by thousands of persons in favour of the Bill, and in the last five years the petitions against it have not comprised 100 signatures. It is no exaggeration to say that there is no measure which could affect so largely the health and happiness of a large section of the people as to which there is such an overwhelming consensus of opinion in its favour.
  With regard to the medical evidence, we have had it stated on the highest authority—I see my noble friend Lord Lister opposite, who is a warm supporter of this Bill—that some such measure is absolutely necessary if we are to improve or even maintain the standard of health in our great cities. The Committee of your Lordships' House took a great deal of evidence, and came to a unanimous report. They expressed the opinion that the earlier closing of shops would be an immense boon to the whole of the shopkeeping community—to shopkeepers and shop assistants alike—and that the present hours are grievous and injurious to health, especially in the case of women. It is not only on behalf of the shop assistants that I hope your Lordships will pass this Bill. I speak also as representing the shopkeepers' associations all over the country, and in their name I implore the House to reject the Amendment of the noble Earl on the Cross Benches, and to pass the third reading of the Bill.
  LORD RIBBLESDALE: My Lords, as I had the honour of playing a rather disjointed part in the progress of this
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  Bill through the House, perhaps I may be permitted to say a few words. I associate myself with the final remarks which fell from my noble friend, and would ask the House to have nothing to do with the Resolution which has been proposed by the noble Earl on the Cross Benches. I do not, however, agree with Lord Avebury that this is in any sense an admirable Resolution. It would be a very admirable Resolution for a mechanics' institute, but put at this time of the development of civilisation to your Lordships' House it seems to me the kind of Resolution which we should accept with extreme caution. The latter part of it, that which deals with the matter before the House, namely, Lord Avebury's Bill, is entirely subject to anybody being able to define what the hereditary rights of a free people are. I quite understand what the hereditary rights of your Lordships' House are, but when you talk about the hereditary rights of a free people at this time of day—well, the tax collector's visit and the nearest policeman discount that abstract proposition. Therefore I object to a Resolution which, in the latter part, is precise and deals with a particular question, being governed by what I believe to be an abstraction.
  I pass from the general to the particular, the particular being the Bill now before the House. I do not want to repeat myself. I have already spoken on this subject, and I am sure the House must be quite tired of all the champions on Shop Bills. The stock of human ideas is extremely limited. I believe Ecclesiastes, Montaigne, Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Arthur Balfour are all working on the same ideas, and it is only by new combinations that any novelty is given to them. I have no such skill of combination at my disposal, and, unlike Mr. Pickwick, I am not a rapid or powerful thinker when I have to make a debating speech. The noble Earl on the Cross Benches made me, so far as I am concerned, the perfectly agreeable target of some of his best arrows. I do not at all take it that there was anything ungenerous in what he said, but he referred in rather a cryptic way to certain letters which, like the strange device in "Excelsior," I am supposed to carry on my breast. I

  609
  understood that those letters were "C. B." I cannot pretend to say I do not know what he meant by that reference, but if it is to be a case of In hoc signo vinces, then, as far as I am concerned, the sooner the better. At all events, their being there gives me no such inconvenience as I believe the scarlet letter gave the hero of Hawthorne's remarkable novel. In the compliments which the noble Earl paid to my party he threw some doubt upon my object in introducing my Bill. Those doubts have been to some extent dispelled by Lord Avebury. What I understood the noble Earl to say was that the only reason I rushed into the arena with a Bill at all was to prevent noble Lords opposite having the credit for passing this measure. I assume that something of the same sort, was in the mind of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack when——
  The LORD CHANCELLOR (THE EARL OF HALSBURY): No, I assure you not.
  LORD RIBBLESDALE: Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will allow me to say what I was going to say before he assures me of anything? I assume that something of the same sort was in the mind of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack when, on the occasion of what is known as the shunting of my Bill, he said that I had only got it before the House at all by Parliamentary tactics. Everything the noble and learned Lord says has a pregnant meaning, and I submit that his observation must either have meant that or nothing. Therefore I submit that when the Lord Chancellor used the words "Parliamentary tactics" he must have been labouring under something of the same sort of delusion as the noble Earl on the Cross Benches appears to have been when he laid to my charge motives which I knew not of, and said that I introduced my Bill in order to snatch what seems to be really a very insignificant Party advantage. I gave my reasons for my action at the time. I placed my Bill on the Paper of your Lordships' House because I thought it a better measure than the one standing in
  610
  the name of Lord Avebury. As your Lordships will remember, I laid it upon the local authorities to do what was wanted in their own districts in the matter of the earlier closing of shops. I did so because it seemed to me that that was part of the general policy now being pursued by Government, of co-ordinating everything by giving to local authorities powers to legislate for the needs of their particular districts, and because I thought that the success of any legislation of this kind was largely a question of circumstances and locality, which, presumably, local authorities are the best judges of. The reason why I have never liked Lord Avebury's Bill, though a great deal in it is better than my own, is that the legislation which everybody admits is required for the public advantage must, by the provisions of this Bill, be initiated by a particular class, that particular class not being the class most affected by the long hours but the people who keep the shops open. That is the whole of my objection to Lord Avebury's Bill, and I have seen a great deal to confirm me in that objection. Since the Second Reading of this Bill there have been meetings of the shop assistants at Manchester and at one or two other places, and the proceedings at those meetings, reports of which, have been sent to me, go a long way to qualify the statement which is made in the memorandum that this Bill has the support of the shop assistants, because the shop assistants' unions have said they do not like this Bill. But I do not wish to reopen this controversy. I only rose to put myself right on the personal ground, to disclaim any wish to snatch anything like a party advantage in the matter, and merely to state again that I introduced my Bill because I thought it a better Bill than my noble friend Lord Avebury's. On the other hand, I said, when I introduced my measure, that if I could not get my Bill I would loyally support the Bill standing in the name of Lord Avebury, and in those circumstances I shall vote against the Resolution moved by the noble Earl on the Cross Benches.
  On question, whether the words proposed to be left out shall stand part of the Motion.
  Their Lordships divided:—Contents, 45; Not Contents, 21.

  CONTENTS.

  Canterbury, L. Abp.

  Stamford, E. [Teller.]

  Kinnear, L.

  York, L. Abp.

  Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

  Kinross, L.

  Devonshire, D. (L. President.)

  Waldegrave, E.

  Lawrence, L.

  Lansdowne, M.

  Churchill, V.

  Lindley, L.

  Ripon, M.

  Peel, V.

  Lister, L.

  Pembroke and Montgomery, E. (L. Steward.)

  Carlisle, L. Bp.

  Macnaghten, L.

  Chester, L. Bp.

  Overtoun, L.

  Camperdown, E.

  Avebury, L. [Teller.]

  Poltimore, L.

  Ducie, E.

  Balfour, L.

  Reay, L.

  Hardwicke, E.

  Chelmsford, L.

  Ribblesdale, L.

  Lathom, E.

  Denman, L.

  St. Levan, L.

  Lytton, E.

  Dunboyne, L.

  Sandhurst, L.

  Mount Edgcumbe, E.

  Ellenborough, L.

  Shute, L. (V. Barrington.)

  Romney, E.

  Farrer, L.

  Tweedmouth, L.

  Sandwich, E.

  Kilmarnock, L. [E. Erroll.)

  Spencer, E.

  Kinnaird, L.

  NOT-CONTENTS.

  Bedford, D.

  Headley, L.

  Stalbridge, L.

  Abercorn, M. (D. Abercorn.)

  Hylton, L.

  Stewart of Garlies, L. (E. Galloway.) [Teller.]

  Lauderdale, E.

  Lamington, L.

  Colville of Culross, V.

  Manners of Haddon, L. (M. Granby.)

  Suffield, L.

  Aldenham, L.

  Wemyss, L. (E. Wemyss.) [Teller.]

  Allerton, L.

  Newton, L.

  Ardilaun, L.

  Sherborne, L.

  Wimborne, L.

  Blythswood, L.

  Sinclair, L.

  Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

  Bill read 3a accordingly.
  Amendments (privilege) made.
  Bill passed and sent to the Commons.

  MILITARY LAW AND PROCEDURE.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD,who had given notice, "To call attention to Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act and to Rules of Procedure, Part 2, Section 124, and to the existing system of prerogative courts of inquiry; and to ask if the Commander-in-Chief is empowered to pronounce sentence against an officer upon his statement made not upon oath, and as a witness before a court of inquiry" said: My Lords, in calling attention to certain questions of military law and procedure, I am compelled to quote largely from the Army Act, and for the length of my quotations I feel I must seek your Lordships' indulgence. I propose to illustrate those points which I am anxious to submit for your Lordships' consideration by reference to the case of Colonel Kinloch. Let me say at once that I do not intend to discuss the decision of the Commander-in-Chief. The questions at issue are far wider than the vindication of the character of a particular officer.
  612
  They involve the discipline of the Army. They affect the position of every man who holds a commission in His Majesty's service. Soldiers do not live under civil law, but they are entitled to have their special law administered strictly in accordance with the Army Act, and upon the broad principles of justice which centuries of experience have established in this country. Their special law is embodied in the Army Act and the Rules of Procedure which contain the contract of service that Parliament makes with officers and men. The terms of that contract cannot be altered by the Commander-in-Chief or the Secretary of State. A company may empower their manager to dismiss their servants, but these summary powers do not justify the manager in breaking the terms of any contract of service between the company and their servants.
  In the first place, then, I direct your Lordships' attention to the 42nd Section of the Army Act. This Section lays down the regulations under which officers may obtain redress of their wrongs. The Section reads as follows—
  "If any officer who thinks himself wronged by his commanding officer, and, on due application to him, does not receive the redress to

  613
  which he may consider himself entitled, he may complain to the Commander-in-Chief, in order to obtain justice, who is hereby required to examine into the case, and through the Secretary of State for War, to make his report to His Majesty in order to receive the directions of His Majesty thereon."
  In the Manual of Military Law, printed by authority of the War Office, the following note is added in connection with this Section—
  "It is the custom of the Service to forward every complaint through the officer commanding the regiment, and an officer would not be justified in deviating from this course unless the commanding officer refused or unreasonably delayed to forward. An officer complaining himself to the general in command should apprise his commanding officer of his doing so, and must observe in the channel of approach to the Commander-in-Chief, each intermediate gradation as a general of brigade or division. A false accusation or statement on preferring a complaint under this Section is punishable under Section 27."
  Section 27 of the Army Act provides—
  "That any officer making a complaint when he thinks himself wronged, and knowingly making any false statement, or suppressing any material facts, is liable to trial by Court-martial."
  The effect of these two Sections combined is obvious. They enable any officer to prefer a complaint to the Commander-in-Chief by observing the necessary regulations. They impose grave penalties upon an aggrieved officer for any inaccuracy in his complaint. They protect a commanding officer from any charges brought against him behind his back by those under his command, without which protection and the case of Colonel Kinloch shows it very clearly—his position would be impossible. No subalterns under the command of Colonel Kinloch ever asked to have a wrong redressed. On the 5th of March, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, made the following official statement—
  "On December 12th, 1902, Lord Bel haven the father of one subaltern in the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, and Lord De Saumarez, the relative of another subaltern, called on the Commander-in-Chief, and verbally complained that young officers in the battalion had been tried by so-called Subalterns' Courts martial, not only for offences against regimental etiquette, but for military offences."
  This form of conveying a complaint to the Commander-in-Chief is nowhere contemplated in the Army Act. From fresh departures spring new results, and in tins instance a conflict of evi-
  614
  dence arose in your Lordships' House, an incident upon which I need not dwell. On the 11th March, the Secretary of State for War made the following statement—
  "Lord De Saumarez would never have gone to the Commander-in-Chief had it not been that a relative of his had received notice from the regimental authorities that on the following Monday Mr. Leveson-Gower would be called upon to resign his commission, because he had ceased to be a credit to his regiment."
  This second statement changes completely the character of the first, but it is not with the contradictory tenor of these official statements that I am concerned I take the second statement, and deal with the fact that Mr. Leveson-Gower complained through his relative, Lord De Saumarez, direct to the Commander-in-Chief that he had been called upon to resign his commission, because he was no longer a credit to his regiment. We have it on the authority of the Secretary of State for War, that Lord De Saumarez would not otherwise have gone to the Commander-in-Chief. Colonel Kinloch was not the regimental authority who called upon Mr. Leveson-Gower to resign his commission. That regimental authority must have been the colonel commanding the three battalions. No officer is called upon to resign his commission without some sufficient reason. Briefly, the circumstances were these. Colonel Kinloch, having discovered the abuses consequent upon the Subalterns' Courts-martial, had reported the circumstances to the colonel of the regiment, some of the officers concerned having passed from his command. The colonel of the regiment directed him to deal with the matter. In consequence of the action then taken by Colonel Kinloch, Lieutenant Leveson-Gower asked for a private interview with Colonel Kinloch, who consented to see him, but only in the battalion orderly room and in the presence of the two senior officers of the battalion. On that occasion Lieutenant Leveson-Gower threw himself on the mercy of his commanding officer, confessed to having made false statements concerning him, and asked to be allowed to withdraw them. Colonel Kinloch consented to their withdrawal, but said that the matter had passed from his hands into those of the colonel commanding the regiment. Lieutenant Leveson Gower

  615
  then appeared in the regimental orderly room before the colonel of the regiment and his regimental adjutant, and repeated the same confession of false statements concerning Colonel Kinloch.
  Such are the circumstances which led to Lieutenant Leveson-Gower being asked to resign his commission. His complaints concerning the colonel commanding the regiment, the lieutenant-colonel commanding his own battalion, and the discipline of his brother officers constitute a comprehensive indictment. But all these complaints were referred direct to the Commander-in-Chief through his relative, and have never been subject to Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act, and that in spite of the fact that on two previous occasions, and in the presence of several witnesses, Lieutenant Leveson-Gower had confessed to making false statements concerning his commanding officer. The course adopted threw to the winds all the protection to which, under the terms of the Parliamentary contract, every commanding officer is entitled, and freed the accuser of all responsibility as to the truth of his charges imposed on him by Parliament under Section 27 of the Army Act. Of this statutory protection and statutory liability afforded by the Army Act, commanding officers are naturally jealous. The Secretary of State for War in another place declared that to insist upon the Statute would be a very severe straining of military law. But, my Lords, it is a term, and, in the opinion of commanding officers, it is an essential term of the Parliamentary contract. It is part of the bargain, and, whether Secretaries of State and Commanders-in-Chief like it or not, Parliament must be obeyed and the Statute acted upon. In this connection I would remind the noble Earl the Under Secretary of State for War of the argument he made use of a short time ago in this House. He justified the refusal of the Commander-in-Chief in the first instance to grant Colonel Kinloch the favour of a hearing by saying—
  "Lord Roberts cannot think it fair to countenance one code of discipline for a regiment which may be favourably situated for access to the authorities, and a different code for one not so situated."
  But may I ask the noble Earl this question? Does he think it fair to countenance one code of discipline for the officers of a regiment whose relatives may be
  616
  favourably situated for access to the authorities, and another code for those whose relatives, by the accident of locality, are not so situated? Parliament plainly intends that a case such as that of Lieutenant Leveson-Gower, an aggrieved officer because he had been called upon to resign his commission, as being no longer a credit to his regiment, which, in his opinion was not the case, should be dealt with under Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act. But the discretionary power claimed and exercised by the Commander-in-Chief of our Army enables him to decide if he will allow the Act to operate. In other words, it enables him to dispense with the Army Act altogether, and to nullify the contract which Parliament has made with officers and men. I beg to ask the noble Earl why Lieutenant Leveson-Gower was allowed to prefer a complaint to the Commander-in-Chief in a manner contrary to Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act, and thus to free himself, as an aggrieved officer, from the responsibility of the truth of his charges, and to deprive his commanding officer of the statutory protection against false statements conferred on him by Act of Parliament?
  I now leave Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act and pass on to an entirely different state of matters. Once a Commander in-Chief has adopted a certain form of procedure, then he is bound to carry it out according to the strict letter. He is no longer, in virtue of any discretionary power, outside the Army Act, but he is firmly held within the meshes of the Rules of Procedure laid down by Act of Parliament. Acting on the information conveyed to him on Friday, December 12th, by Lord De Saumarez, who was instructed by Lieutenant Leveson-Gower, the Commander-in-Chief ordered a Court of Inquiry to be convened. That Court of Inquiry met on Sunday, December 14th, and forwarded the information collected on the next day. Now, my Lords, what are Courts of Inquiry. Remember that nothing like them is known in civil life. Courts of Inquiry are of two kinds—statutory and prerogative, but I am only concerned with prerogative Courts of Inquiry. A Court of Inquiry convened by the Commander-in-Chief is of this character. It is not under the sanction of a Statute, but its proceedings are regulated by the

  617
  Rules of Procedure, Part 2, Section 124. The members who compose a Court of Inquiry take no oath. They do not, unless so directed by the convening officer, and in this case they were not so directed, take evidence on oath. The witnesses who attend do not give testimony under the sanction of an oath or any legal summons from the Crown. Their information is purely voluntary, and they are invited to speak under the representation that their statements will be received and treated as confidential communications. The whole proceedings are informal and extra-judicial. Until a year ago this was the definition of a Court of Inquiry—
  "A Court of Inquiry has no judicial power, and is in strictness not a Court at all, but an assembly of persons directed by a commanding officer to collect evidence with respect to a transaction into which he cannot conveniently himself make inquiry."
  That was changed by an Army Order of April, 1902 into—
  "An assembly of officers directed by a commanding officer to collect evidence and report with respect to a transaction into which he cannot himself conveniently make inquiry."
  But can the noble Earl the Under-Secretary of State for War explain why the former definition is no longer applicable? No authority is anywhere conferred on the Commander-in-Chief to pass sentence on any of the material forwarded. Subsection L says—
  "The proceedings of a Court of Inquiry, or any confession, statement, or answer to a question, made or given at a Court of Inquiry, shall not be admissible in evidence against an officer or soldier, nor shall any evidence respecting the proceedings of the Court be given against any officer or soldier.
  Now, in view of that Section, is a Commander-in-Chief empowered to pass sentence, as he did in the case of Colonel Kinloch, upon the statement made by him as a witness before a Court of Inquiry? I must now remind the noble Earl, the Under-Secretary of State for War, of the words he used in your Lordships' House before Easter. The noble Earl said—
  "I desire to emphasise the fact that Colonel Kinloch gave evidence before a Court of Inquiry appointed by Sir H. Trotter, and that it was on that evidence that the Commander-in-Chief formed his opinion."
  We know, then, that the Commander-in-Chief did, as a matter of fact, sentence Colonel Kinloch on the statement made
  618
  by him as a witness before the Court of Inquiry. Therefore, the War Office must hold that the Commander-in-Chief is empowered to take such action. But, my Lords, from whence is derived this authority which over-rides an Act of Parliament and confers upon the office of Commander-in-Chief a despotic power which is beyond all law, and which has never been allowed under our constitution to any single individual in any department of Government? On this point I hope for some information from the noble Earl, the Under Secretary of State for War, because I do not understand how the discretionary powers of a Commander-in-Chief can be used to in fringe the provisions of an Act of Parliament. I am confident, however, that when an officer appears before a Court of Inquiry then no Commander-in-Chief and no Secretary of State can deprive him of the assistance of those provisions which Parliament has enacted for the vindication of his character or military reputation.
  My Lords, this is no question of military law or military procedure. It is a question of the infringement of the provisions of an Act of Parliament. I propose to quote the various Subsections of Rule of Procedure 124, and to show how in each instance in the case of Colonel Kinloch they have been violated. Sub-section F lays down—
  "Whenever any inquiry affects the character or military reputation of an officer or soldier full opportunity must be afforded to the officer or soldier of being present throughout the inquiry, and of making any statement, and of giving any evidence he may wish to give, and of cross-examining any witness whose evidence in his opinion affects his character or military reputation, and producing any witnesses in defence of his character or military reputation."
  Your Lordships must remember that Colonel Kinloch appeared before this Court as a witness only. Yet it was on his statement before this Court that the Commander-in-Chief based his decision that Colonel Kinloch was unfit to remain in the command of his battalion. Colonel Kinloch appeared before the Court with the character of a competent commanding officer. The Secretary of State for War said on the 5th March—
  "I may add that Colonel Kinloch is an officer who, apart from recent occurrences, had served with credit at home, and with distinction on active service."

  619
  As a result of the proceedings before the Court of Inquiry the Commander-in Chief bestowed upon him the military reputation of unfitness to continue in the command of his battalion. Now it is a fact that Colonel Kinloch was not allowed to be present throughout the Inquiry. He was not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses, although Mr. Leveson-Gower, his accuser, appeared as a witness before the Court. He was not afforded a full opportunity of making any statement or giving any evidence he might wish to give. He was not even allowed to complete the statement he did make, because the Court of Inquiry stood suddenly adjourned to finish its investigations, and, whilst thus abruptly adjourned, was dispersed. Sub-section C provides that—
  "The Court will be guided by the written instructions of the officer who assembled the Court. The instructions should be full and explicit, and must state the general character of the information required from the Court of Inquiry in their report."
  This Section directs that the Court itself must be informed by written instructions what is the specific point of their investigations. That point could not have been the character or military reputation of Colonel Kinloch, for if the Court had been warned that Colonel Kinloch's military reputation was to be determined by his statement they would have proceeded under Subsection F. The very fact of their not so proceeding was the strongest possible intimation to Colonel Kinloch that his character was not in question. He therefore made his statement, having been assured by the procedure adopted by the Court that his words could not be used to affect his military reputation. Sub-section G reads—
  "It is the duty of the Court of Inquiry to put such questions to a witness as they think desirable for testing the truth or accuracy of any evidence he has given, and otherwise for eliciting the truth."
  The Court had been told that Colonel Kinloch's character was not under investigation, therefore they did not examine witnesses with a view to extracting the truth on that point. This is most important because of Lieutenant Leveson-Gower. I must remind your Lordships that Lieutenant Leveson-Gower admitted having made false statements concerning his com-
  620
  manding officer, in consequence of which the regimental authorities asked him to resign his commission. He then preferred a complaint to the Commander-in-Chief in a manner which evaded Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act. He next escaped cross-examination at the hands of Colonel Kinloch because Sub-section F. of Rule of Procedure 124 was violated, and finally avoided that examination to which he would have been subjected at the hands of the members of the Court of Inquiry had they not been misinformed as to the true point of their investigations. The information collected by the Court of Inquiry was forwarded to the Commander-in-Chief. It is here that the extreme hardship of the procedure begins. If the Court of Inquiry forwarded information on which the Commander-in-Chief decided whether the case should be formally tried, no great harm would be done. But it is not so. The Commander-in-Chief at once proceeded to sentence Colonel Kinloch. The duties of a Court of Inquiry have been compared with those of a Grand Jury, who decide whether there is primâ facie evidence for the solemnities of a formal trial. But the analogy is altogether false. Whoever heard of a Judge pronouncing sentence on the statement of a witness before a Grand Jury? But that is precisely what the Commander-in-Chief did in this instance in his capacity of judge. I think that there is no one who does not agree with the words of "Clode's Military and Martial Law," page 199. Speaking of these Courts of Inquiry he says—
  "Before anyone is prejudiced by the result, it would appear desirable, if not demanded by justice, that the decision of the judge be communicated and an opportunity of explanation be afforded to him."
  The sentence only was communicated to Colonel Kinloch. Neither he nor the Court before which he appeared were ever informed that there was any charge against him. Meantime, circumstances had combined to place the Commander-in-Chief in a position which it is not at all desirable for a Commander-in-Chief to find himself, namely, that before he assumes the position of judge he had heard the ex parte statement of a relative of one of the subalterns principally concerned. From the moment that the

  621
  Commander-in-Chief had ordered a Court of Inquiry he had assumed judicial functions. I hope that the noble Earl the Under Secretary of State for War will be able to assure the House that after the 12th of December the Commander-in-Chief allowed no more ex parte statements on the merits of the case to be made to him, but confined himself entirely to the channel of information he had himself chosen, namely, the Court of Inquiry. I ask for this assurance because the following facts have come to my knowledge. On the 17th December—that is, two days after the Court of Inquiry had reported, but nearly a fortnight before the decision of the Commander-in-Chief was announced—Lord de Saumarez called on the second lieutenant of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, and informed him that he had come to see his father, but that as his father happened to be out he would do as well. The purport of the noble Lord was to ask if the officer's father had anything to say upon the case which was then proceeding in the Grenadier Guards because, if so, the noble Lord would undertake to lay it before the Commander-in-Chief without the information going first before the colonel of the regiment, and in this way the name of the officer would be left out of the matter. I should add that the officer, with a true sense of discipline and of loyalty to his commanding officer, refused to have anything to do with such a transaction. I make no comment upon this incident, but I cite it to show the grave disadvantage of departing from Section 42 of the Army Act.
  Compare, my Lords, the security for the just exercise of the discretionary powers of a Judge and of a Commander-in-Chief. A Judge is a public man in a great and conspicuous situation. Nothing that he does is done in a corner, and in that publicity lies the security for the just exercise of the discretionary power of a Judge. The Commander-in-Chief bases the exercise of his discretionary powers upon a haphazard collection of irresponsible statements made before a secret Court, and upon the information privately conveyed to him by the relatives and friends of officers concerned, the whole transaction being veiled in secrecy, and, moreover, being final and
  622
  subject to no appeal. Sub-section M. reads—
  "An officer or soldier who is tried by Court-martial in respect of any matter or thing which has been reported on by a Court of Inquiry, and, unless the Secretary of State sees reason to order otherwise, an officer or soldier whose character or military reputation is in the opinion of the Secretary of State affected by anything in the evidence before, or in respect of, a Court of Inquiry, shall be entitled to a copy of the proceedings of the Court, including any report made by the Court, on payment of the actual cost of the copy required, not exceeding 2d. for every folio of seventy-two words."
  Under this Section Colonel Kinloch applied on the 12th January for a copy of the Report. On the 15th January he was officially informed in answer that no Report had been made, but on the 20th January a copy of the Report was forwarded to him without comment. Can the noble Earl assure me that the Report was ever read, because, if so, how could its existence be officially denied? Further than this, the Report of a Court of Inquiry is only furnished to officers whose character or military reputation is in the opinion of the Secretary of State affected by its contents. But the whole proceedings of the Court of Inquiry were conducted on the instruction that such was not the case. The Secretary of State in his place in Parliament on 5th March stated:—
  "The General Officer Commanding the Home District at once assembled a regimental Court of Inquiry. The character of Colonel Kinloch was not in question."
  The noble Earl, the Under Secretary of State for War, as I have reminded him, wished a short time ago to emphasise the fact that Colonel Kinloch had been heard before the Court of Inquiry. I now wish to emphasise in your Lordships' House the nature of that hearing. Colonel Kinloch then was deprived of that hearing to which he was entitled under the Rules of Procedure. The statement which he made before the Court, and upon which his sentence was based, was made under the assurance conferred by the provisions of an Act of Parliament that it could not be used to affect his military reputation. The Court itself was misinformed as to the real point of their enquiry, and therefore did not conduct their examination of witnesses in the way they would

  623
  otherwise have done. Colonel Kinloch was never heard in his own defence at all, as the noble Earl implied he had been. He appeared before the Court only as a voluntary witness, and not as a person charged, or to be heard in his own defence. Both he and the Court had been assured that there was no charge against him. In consequence of a debate in the House of Commons in April, 1901, on Courts of Inquiry, the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State gave the following promise to Parliament—
  "I will take care to make Courts of Inquiry more formal and to give to each officer the fullest possible opportunity of being heard in his own defence."
  That is a very distinct pledge given to Parliament. Why has it been so totally disregarded in the case of Colonel Kinloch? In criminal proceedings you warn a prisoner that his statements may be used against him, and without that warning you cannot use them in evidence. But in military proceedings an officer is assured by the provisions of an Act of Parliament that his statements cannot be used against him, and then the Commander-in-Chief bases his sentence upon them. I beg to ask the noble Earl the following questions. Why were the Rules of Procedure disregarded in Colonel Kinloch's Court of Inquiry? When a Court of Inquiry has been irregularly held, is there any appeal? If there is no appeal, then on whose authority can the Army Act be dispensed with, and of what value is the Army Act to officers and men under our present military administration? It is obvious from the statement printed by the War Office that there was direct conflict between Colonel Kinloch and Lieutenant Leveson-Gower on a matter of fact. Colonel Kinloch states that when Lieutenant Leveson-Gower was asked for his reasons, he said—
  "When you censured me some weeks ago for absence without leave and disobedience of orders, you said to me that you were going to hand me over to the senior subaltern to be dealt with, or words to that effect. This statement was untrue, as the Adjutant can prove."
  The circumstances which led to that interview in the orderly room, the previous conduct of Lieutenant Leveson-Gower, and the reasons which induced
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  Colonel Kinloch to ask the senior subaltern to use his influence with Lieutenant Leveson-Gower as regards his general conduct, none of these essential points appear in Colonel Kinloch's published statement, because both Colonel Kinloch and the Court had been assured that the statement he was making as a witness would not be used to affect his military reputation, and was in no sense a statement made in his own defence. I have myself been the senior subaltern of a battalion in the Grenadier Guards, and have been told by senior officers of the regiment to remonstrate with the junior subalterns on their general conduct. The custom of thus appealing to the influence of senior subalterns was the custom of the regiment when I joined it a quarter of a century ago. It was in accordance with that system, for the existence of which Colonel Kinloch is most certainly not responsible, seeing that it existed in the regiment long before he joined, that he asked the senior subaltern to use his influence with Lieutenant Leveson-Gower. Now, in civil proceedings where evidence is thus conflicting, the greatest possible weight is put on the impression formed by the Judge, who has had the witnesses before him, observed their demeanour, and decided which of the two statements is to be believed. The three officers who composed the Court, and had the witnesses before them and observed their demeanour, had formed their opinion and recorded it in writing. Their opinion did not coincide with the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (The Earl of HARDWICKE): What document is the noble Duke referring to? A Court has no right to express an opinion.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: The Court did express an opinion, and in writing.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I think not.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: I think the noble Lord will find that they did issue a report, and their opinion did not coincide with the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, who had not seen the witnesses

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  or heard them make their statements, but who had seen the relatives of officers concerned and had heard their ex parte statements on the merits of the case. Their report was sent to Colonel Kinloch. He is entitled to use it for his own advantage. But now arises another hardship inseparable from secret Courts. The report affects many other officers besides Colonel Kinloch. Officers respect the private character of the report and proceedings of a Court of Inquiry because they know that, according to the terms of their contract with Parliament, such reports are private and sacred from publication. In another place the Secretary of State for War condemned Colonel Kinloch on the proceedings of the Court of Inquiry. But not a hint did the right hon. Gentleman drop that the report of the Court was favourable to Colonel Kinloch. There is a rule known to everyone, that documents quoted by Ministers must be laid upon the Table of the House. Every man is assumed to intend the necessary consequences of his action. The Government quoted Colonel Kinloch's statement as a witness, and as a foreseen and necessary consequence the statement was published, in spite of the Army Act, which says that no statement made at a Court of Inquiry is admissible as evidence against an officer.
  Let me again remind you of the circumstances under which Colonel Kinloch made the statement published by the War Office as evidence. It is the statement of a willing witness, not made upon oath, not made under legal compulsion. It is the statement of a witness who has been assured that his own character is not the subject of inquiry before the Court. It is a statement made by him under the most solemn pledge of confidence conferred by the provisions of the Act of Parliament to three officers well known to him, and is thus couched in language of familiar conversation. Such, then, is the statement which the War Office held out to Parliament and the country as if it were the legal evidence of a man knowing himself to be on his trial before a formal tribunal. I am constrained to say that that publication amounts to a misrepresentation on which I cannot refrain from commenting, and from
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  asking whether this infringement of the Army Act entailing a breach of confidence can be justified by the noble Earl, the Under Secretary of State for War? If anything further is needed to discredit these secret Courts of Inquiry, it would be this action of the War Office. Parliament is aware of the injustice which such secret Courts may perpetuate, and has provided safeguards in the various sub-sections which I have quoted. But are these safeguards provided by Parliament to be swept away at the caprice of the War Office? Remember, my Lords, that without such safeguards Courts of Inquiry violate the principles of Common Law, because, as Lord Coke said—
  "A man may be unjustly accused and shall be without remedy, or defamed and not have any traverse of it."
  These words were true of Courts of Inquiry as they were 300 years ago. They are equally true now of the Court of Inquiry as conducted by the War Office in the case of Colonel Kinloch. They are true to-day, because the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of State for War have disregarded the explicit terms of the Parliamentary contract, and violated the Rules established by Parliament for the vindication of the character and military reputation of officers in His Majesty's Army. I beg to ask the Question standing in my name.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: My Lords, I feel that the House will sympathise with me in having to reply to the speech that has been made by the noble Duke, based as it has been on a Question consisting of about six lines, and to answer which would not have occupied many minutes of your Lord ships' time. There is no suggestion in the notice of the Question that the case of Colonel Kinloch would be introduced, and I had a hope, which I believe is shared by the House and the public, that that case had passed from the political arena. The noble Duke has spoken at some length on highly technical matters, and I think I am justified in strongly protesting at the noble Duke's not having done me the courtesy of giving me notice of the subjects with which he was going to deal, because, in

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  a question of this kind, with which dates, regulations, and sections of Acts of Parliament, and Rules of Procedure are concerned, it is obviously necessary to prepare, and carefully prepare, the reply. The noble Duke has availed himself to an unusual extent—indeed, to a greater extent than I have ever heard before in this House—of the licence the House allows, and I ask indulgence if I do not attempt to follow the noble Duke through all the points he has raised, in an endeavour to dispose of some of the sinister suggestions he has made against the War Office and the Commander-in-Chief in respect to the treatment Colonel Kinloch has received. The noble Duke, in discussing Sections 42 and 27 of the Army Act found an opportunity for introducing the name of Lieutenant Leveson-Gower, and stating that that officer had made a false statement, and ought to have been proceeded against under these Sections.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: I beg the noble Earl's pardon. I said that an officer preferring a complaint, whether he makes a false statement or not, should do so under the Section.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I respectfully submit that the noble Duke suggested that Lieutenant Leveson-Gower made a false statement, and from what he said it would be inferred that that false statement was a serious one.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: I stated that Lieutenant Leveson-Gower admitted making a false statement; he did so in the presence of many witnesses.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I wish to do the officer the justice of explaining that Lieutenant Leveson-Gower, when asked why he had not complained to his commanding officer of the treatment that certain officers had received in the Grenadier Guards, said—and this is the "false statement"—that he believed Colonel Kinloch was aware of this treatment. But when Colonel Kinloch said he had no knowledge of what was going on, Lieutenant Leveson-Gower said—
  "I am sorry I made the statement, I admit I was wrong."
  I do not think the noble Duke is entitled to refer to that as a false statement made against a commanding officer.
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  I think the noble Duke will recognise that the charge against Lieutenant Leveson-Gower is not so serious as he has led the House to believe. With regard to the particular case of the Court of Inquiry, to which the noble Duke referred, I would like to explain that when matters connected with the Grenadier Guards were first brought to the notice of the Commander-in-Chief, he directed the adjutant general to give instructions to Sir Henry Trotter, commanding the Home District, to make an inquiry into all the circumstances. He did not order him to appoint a Court of Inquiry, he merely asked him to inquire and report to him as to what truth there was in the statement made by Lord De Saumarez and Lord Belhaven. The Commander-in-Chief had every intention of appointing a formal Court of Inquiry at Aldershot, but in the meantime the adjutant-general had given Sir Henry Trotter these instructions. Sir Henry Trotter was asked to inquire into the general question of the discipline in the regiment, in reference to officers and to the chain of responsibility; whether within the period of the then commanding officer's tenure of command there had taken place punishments by officers of their comrades, the cause and nature of the punishment, and the names of all concerned; to what extent he (Sir Henry Trotter), or other officers in authority, were aware of what was going on; what steps had been taken, and what decision had been come to, by other commanding officers in connection with these matters; and to report as regards the present case upon all the circumstances in detail. Sir Henry Trotter thereupon, on his own responsibility, formed a regimental Court of Inquiry, and within two days the evidence of the Court was placed in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief. The noble Duke referred to the recommendations of the Court.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: The report.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: The Court made no report.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: The noble Earl must be in error, for a report was sent to Colonel Kinloch and I have seen it.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I presume that the noble Duke is referring to the covering letter forwarding the proceedings of the Court.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: No, to the report of the Court itself—the report signed by the President.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I can find nothing to indicate that there was any recommendation or report. Indeed, I would point out to the noble Duke that a Court is specially forbidden to make any report.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: I cannot help that. The Court did make a report—that report was sent to Colonel Kinloch, and I have seen it.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: It is very difficult for me to deny what the noble Duke says. I cannot quote, because I am not prepared to lay the document on the Table of the House. I can only say that a Court of Inquiry was appointed by Sir Henry Trotter to inquire into the matters which I have read, and that there was no finding and no recommendation of any sort or kind in the report of the Court of Inquiry. There was merely a covering letter from the general officer commanding. With regard to the point that the officer ought to be present during the hearing of the Court, I would observe that the general reference to Sir Henry Trotter and the Court of Inquiry he appointed would have necessitated every officer in the regiment being present during the inquiry.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: Why not?
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: The Court of Inquiry, I presume, would have been perfectly willing to allow Colonel Kinloch to be present, but he made no such request.
  THE DUKE OF BEDFORD: Colonel Kinloch did not know what was going to happen.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: Colonel Kinloch had every opportunity of being present during the proceedings of the Court if he had wished to avail himself of that right. He did not
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  and, so far as I understand, there was no reason why he should, because there was no direct charge framed against him. It was merely a general inquiry as to matters connected with the regiment. I now come to the most important point in the remarks I have to address to your Lordships on this matter. The noble Duke has asked how it is that the Commander-in-Chief could override Sections of the Act of Parliament, Rules of Procedure, and Regulations by sentencing Colonel Kinloch on the statement which he made, not upon oath, but as a witness before the Court. The Commander-in-Chief did not take action on anything contained in the Army Act, or on any of the regulations to which the noble Duke refers. He acted on the Royal Warrant, Section 98, which provides that should it be considered desirable in the interests of the service to remove an officer from full pay for causes other than misconduct, it shall be in the power of the Secretary of State, upon the recommendation of the Commander-in-Chief, to place such officer, if he is entitled to half-pay, on the half-pay list, subject to Article 308, which merely refers to the question whether half-pay is to be reduced or not. I do not think anyone will deny that it is absolutely essential that the Commander-in-Chief should have that authority. It is an authority which exists in the Navy, in the Civil Service, and in every business concern. The noble Duke asks whether the Commander-in-Chief has power to pronounce sentence. Of course he has not the power to pronounce sentence—that is, to sentence an officer to fourteen days or three months imprisonment, That is quite another matter, which has nothing to do with the course of action taken by the Commander-in-Chief. The Commander-in-Chief acted, as I say, under the Royal Warrant. Every Commander-in-Chief has had to act under that Warrant over and over again, and to suggest, as the noble Duke does, that the Commander-in-Chief exceeded his authority in having accepted Colonel Kinloch's own statement as to the condition of the regiment, and having acted upon it is, I think, going a little further than the noble Duke would go were he not an old Grenadiersman. I cannot help remarking that it is curious that we should to-night have been listening to the noble Duke explaining to the

  631
  House his views as to the amount of authority which should remain vested in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief when it is not so very long ago that he was pointing out in this House that the Commander-in-Chief had not sufficient authority for the proper discharge of his duties. I have merely to say, in conclusion, that, if the noble Duke wishes me to give a more detailed reply to the various questions he has addressed to me this evening, I must ask that notice should be given and the questions placed on the paper.
  EARL SPENCER: I do not propose to enter into the details of the extremely technical, but, as it seems to me, highly important matter which has been brought before the House by the noble Duke, but I rise to ask His Majesty's Government whether it would not be more conducive to a thorough knowledge and understanding of the matter that the debate should be adjourned than that it should proceed now. The noble Duke has made an exceedingly able and important speech; he has brought forward some very strong arguments in support of his attack on the action of the Commander-in-Chief and the manner in which the Court of Inquiry has been held. How has that been met? I do not, for a moment, say that the noble Earl has not met it as well as he possibly could, but he began his speech by saying that he was not in the least degree aware that the particular case to which the noble Duke referred were going to be made the subject of debate to-night. He said he could have answered the Question as it stood on the Paper in a few words, but that it would be extremely difficult for him to answer forthwith the detailed attack which had been made. Moreover, the noble Earl has been repeatedly contradicted on matters of fact. In the circumstances I venture to think we ought to have a further declaration on the matter. So far as I am able to judge, I hardly think the answer that has been given is a complete answer to the noble Duke. It is not always necessary for the Commander-in-Chief to be in his place, to answer any particular attack himself, but it was the case the other day that Lord Roberts came down to the House, and replied on his own behalf in
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  a matter that was then brought up. I understand from the noble Earl that no one anticipated that the particular questions referred to would have been brought forward, and in all the circumstances, the Government not being in a position to satisfactorily and thoroughly reply to the statements made, I think the discussion should be adjourned.
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (The Duke of DEVONSHIRE): On behalf of the Government I should certainly object to the simple adjournment of the debate. As a matter of fact, there is no question on which the adjournment could be moved. I think my noble friend the Under Secretary of State for War and His Majesty's Government have very great reason to complain of the course which has been taken by the noble Duke, who put on the Paper one or two abstract questions of a kind which it would have been perfectly simple to deal with, and then made a long and elaborate statement as to matters of which he had not given the smallest notice. I am perfectly willing, if the noble Earl opposite, or if any Member of the House desires, to discuss further the case of Colonel Kinloch, the treatment which he received and the whole history of the case, on the understanding that ample notice is given specifying the documents and the principal facts to which it is desired to call attention.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: I should like, after the speech we have just heard, to know in what position we stand. The noble Duke has told us that this is the case of Colonel Kinloch.
  THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: Which Duke are you referring to?
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: The noble Duke below me (the Duke of Devonshire) has said that this is the case of Colonel Kinloch.
  THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: I said that the case which has been brought forward by the noble Duke, the Duke of Bedford, was the case of Colonel Kinloch.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: To my mind, and, I think, to the minds of many of your Lordships, this is the case of His Majesty's Government and the Commander-in-Chief. Colonel Kinloch's name has necessarily been introduced into it, but the question is not whether Colonel Kinloch did or did not do particular things, or whether he has or has not been properly punished. That would be the case of Colonel Kinloch. In this case the real issue is whether His Majesty's Government, the Secretary of State for War and the Commander-in-Chief have utterly disregarded Acts of Parliament and the regulations of the Service and substituted a procedure of their own which gives the accused no chance of fair play. The question which the noble Duke asks, and which I should have thought was fairly expressed, was whether this was legal and whether it had the approval of your Lordships' House. It appears to me to be something like an attempt to, vulgarly speaking, draw a red herring across the scent for His Majesty's Government to protest, after the speech of the noble Duke, that they were not prepared to go into all the circumstances of Colonel Kinloch's case. I should like to ask if the Government are unprepared at the present moment to answer the two or three plain questions submitted, and to which I must say the Under-Secretary has not yet replied. The Army Act lays down a certain course of procedure—that when an officer has anything to complain of he should report to his commanding officer, and he is at liberty, if he cannot get satisfaction from his commanding officer, to request that his complaint may be forwarded to the highest authority. I would ask His Majesty's Government this plain question—Why, when these noble Lords came to the Commander-in-Chief with a complaint, did he not follow the usual, the plain and straightforward, course? Why did he not say, "If the officers have anything to complain of let them make their report to the commanding officer of the battalion, and, if he cannot satisfy them, let the complaint be forwarded to me? "Why was that course not adopted? The only shadow of a reason which has been alleged is this, that one of the noble Lords who went to the Commander-in-Chief discovered that one of these subalterns was to be dismissed from the battalion within a very few
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  days. That is no reason at all, for the Commander-in-Chief could very well have stopped any action of that sort by a telegram until the officer had had an opportunity of making his complaints in the usual course. That is one perfectly inexplicable feature in this case, and one which I should have thought His Majesty's Government, without much preparation, might have managed to answer. Now, my Lords, what are the evils which His Majesty's Government have brought about by this course of procedure? The Secretary of State for War waxed very indignant over the charge suggesting that he and the Commander-in-Chief had been influenced by the rank and social position of the complainants. That is not an accusation which will be made in this House; but can the Secretary of State for War wonder very much if those who have not the fine feelings which possess him, and which, no doubt, possess your Lordships, should conceive some sinister suggestion when, in the absence of all possible and conceivable reasons for not adopting the usual course, the Commander-in-Chief goes out of his way to adopt an unusual course? I think it is most undesirable that great officers of State and distinguished officers of the Army should do anything which, even to the most uninstructed, should lead to the belief that they are actuated by anything but the high motives by which we know them to be actuated. That is in itself a reason why your Lordships should demand to know why the Commander-in-Chief departed from the usual course open to him. Then we have exactly the same question as to the reasons for the Court of Inquiry instituted by Sir Henry Trotter.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I have told you.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: The noble Earl says he has told us. I do not wish to misrepresent the noble Earl, but, as far as I could gather, I understood him to say that it was a blunder of the adjutant-general's.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: I told the House that the Commander-in-Chief, through the adjutant-general, asked the officer commanding the Home District, Sir Henry Trotter, to report, him as to

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  whether there was any truth in the statements made by Lord Belhaven and Lord De Saumarez; that Sir Henry Trotter, perfectly within his rights, and on his own responsibility, summoned a regimental Court of Inquiry which took evidence from all the officers concerned, and that Sir Henry Trotter within two days forwarded that evidence, including the evidence of Colonel Kinloch, to the Commander-in-Chief.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: What I want to know is, was that what the Commander-in-Chief intended, or was it not? If it was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to investigate this by a Court of Inquiry, what we want to know is whether the career of an officer is to be at the mercy of the finding of a Court of Inquiry, at which he has no right to be present, and to cross-examine witnesses, and at which he is asked to make a statement as a witness, and is then, as the noble Duke fairly pointed out, condemned upon his own evidence? Is this fair play? So far as I understand, it is not military practice. I hope it is not; but, if it is, so much the worse. It is not fair play. The noble Earl the Under Secretary spoke as if being put on half-pay was merely an arrangement which everybody admits must be in the power of the Commander-in-Chief. The discretion of the Crown to deal with an officer, on the advice of the Commander-in-Chief, without giving any reasons of any sort or kind is a power which must exist; but this is a different case. Here is a case where there is an inquiry, and at that inquiry charges are made which the officer has no possibility of rebutting. I maintain that a man should not be dismissed upon accusations and charges which he has no power of rebutting.
  THE EARL OF HARDWICKE: No charges were made.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: Then why was he retired? He was retired because, in the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief, he was unfit to command the regiment. Is not that a charge?
  THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: No.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND: Not a charge when it is stated on the evidence of a Court of Inquiry, that an officer is unfit to command a regiment? Well, I have never had the honour of serving in the Army, but I think we all have some idea of the abstract principles of justice, and I do say that a man has no right to be condemned—and to deprive a distinguished officer of the command of his battalion is to condemn him—on evidence taken before a Court of Inquiry—and if the action taken was not on the evidence given before that Court of Inquiry there was no reason for holding the inquiry—when he was not present, had no power to cross-examine witnesses, and, indeed, had no locus standi before that Court at all. The noble Earl said that if Colonel Kinloch had asked he would no doubt have been allowed to be present. He did not ask to be present because he did not know that these strange consequences were going to follow from the holding of the Court of Inquiry. The noble Duke behind me has already told your Lordships that a Court of Inquiry for many purposes occupies the position of a grand jury, and I do say that it is not justice, whether it be a practice or not—and I do not believe it is a practice—that a man, on the finding of a grand jury, that is to say, on the finding of a Court at which he is not present and cannot cross-examine witnesses, should be visited by any penalties. I hope this matter will not be allowed to rest, and that some noble Lord who is better acquainted than I am with the details of the Service, and who possesses the knowledge which military experience alone can give, will raise this point later on in some form or other, and pursue it to a conclusion. This question is not raking up again the case of Colonel Kinloch. It is a question of the procedure of the Army, and whether the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of State can or cannot override Acts of Parliament and the whole custom of the Army. If they cannot—and I believe they cannot—I think it must be admitted that there has been a gross miscarriage of justice. I believe I am right in saying that, when a private soldier is tried by Court-martial, if it is afterwards found that that Court was improperly constituted, the sentence is annulled, and the man goes free. I

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  cannot see why, in justice, the same treatment should not be meted out to officers. The serious part of the case is that it affects the position of every officer in the Service. There has been a great deal of nonsense talked of late outside, about its being necessary that officers should not think they had a vested interest in their commissions. The question is not whether they have a vested interest in their commissions, but whether the Army is a profession which a man can look forward to with a certainty that so long as he keeps within the four corners of the Acts of Parliament which govern the powers and authority of his superiors, he is safe; or whether, on the other hand, he is to be at the caprice of any Commander-in-Chief or Secretary of State. I trust this matter will not be allowed to rest.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The specific question sought to be raised by the noble Duke ought to be placed on the Paper and notice given of it in terms. For a considerable time, under the form of an abstract question, the House has been discussing facts which are in dispute. What specific charges is it desired to make against the Commander-in-Chief, the War Office, and the Government? If it is true that a person has been punished without being heard, no one will say that it was a proper thing; but if that is the allegation, why is not a Motion brought forward challenging the Act? As it is, the discretion of the Commander-in-Chief has been challenged, without any notice being given. If the matter is to be discussed at all, it ought not to be in this interjectional form of abstract questions. The noble Duke's Question on the Paper assumes that judicial procedure is applicable to matters to which it is not applicable; that sentence was pronounced unjustly; and that what a man had said was not evidence against him. I should have said that one of the best sources of evidence in the world was what a man said. Knowing nothing about the particular case in question, and speaking only in the abstract I should say that if I were Commander-in-Chief, and had to form an opinion on an officer's fitness to command, the fact that that officer was found to give evidence in such a way as
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  to prove his unfitness would be sufficient for me, without any other form of procedure. I do not say that that was the case in this instance; but it shows the unfortunate way in which the subject has been introduced. Let the noble Duke submit the broad proposition that Colonel Kinloch has been ill-used, and that the Commander-in-Chief has disregarded the Regulations. The abstract question before the House can lead to nothing but loose discussion, in which all are at cross-purposes, and one person does not understand the allegation denied by another. Nothing that has occurred precludes the possibility of the question being raised on specific allegations, when your Lordships would be able satisfactorily to discuss it.
  THE MARQUESS OF RIPON: I agree with much that has fallen from the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, but I would impress upon your Lordships that it is absolutely impossible to leave the question where it stands, if only in justice to the Commander-in-Chief. No official answer to the serious detailed charges which have been brought against the Commander-in-Chief has been made on behalf of His Majesty's Government. I do not blame the noble Earl the Under Secretary for that, because the notice on the Paper was, no doubt, so vague that he had not an opportunity of preparing an answer, but those charges are of the gravest kind, and it is necessary in justice to the Commander-in-Chief that some reply should be made.

  SOMALILAND.
  EARL SPENCER: I beg to ask the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give the House the latest information as to Somaliland. From what has appeared in the public Press there can be little doubt that a very serious disaster has occurred to the forces that have been employed in that country. I do not propose to discuss the subject on this occasion. I referred to it in the remarks I made on the Address, and I then expressed a fear that the difficulties had not been sufficiently faced by His Majesty's Government, and that the results might prove much more serious than they anticipated. The question will, no doubt, be debated in Parliament, and for the

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  present I shall confine myself to asking the Question standing in my name.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of Lansdowne): The War Office has already given to the Press all such information as can at present be given in reference to recent operations in Somaliland. At the same time, I can well understand the desire of the noble Earl to be fully informed with regard to these important events, and we shall take care that the desire shall not be lost sight of. I might, perhaps, add that General Manning has been called upon for a full report upon the situation in Somaliland as it at present presents itself.

  RUSSIA AND MANCHURIA.
  EARL SPENCER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can lay on the Table any despatches in regard to the communications that are reported to have passed between the Russian and Chinese Governments. This is, perhaps, a more delicate question than the one I have just asked, but the subject to which it refers is one in which the country takes a deep interest. There have been various reports as to the notes that have passed between the Russian and Chinese Governments, and, although I fully recognise the delicacy of the question, I can assure the noble Marquess that any statement he can see his way to make as to what is going on with regard to Manchuria will be heartily welcomed.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: The question to which the noble Earl has referred is engaging the most serious attention of His Majesty's Government. The question, no doubt, refers to the rumours which have lately been prevalent as to the conditions which the Russian Government is insisting upon in connection with the evacuation of a portion of Manchuria. There is some doubt as to the actual facts of the case, and we are endeavouring to clear that doubt up; but for the moment I hope that the noble Earl will not press me for information. The matter is one which concerns several Powers, and it would be most inconvenient that while communications are passing any statement should be made,
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  or any Papers laid upon the Table of the House. At the same time, I recognise that the noble Earl has a right to expect that we should inform the House as soon as possible, and I do not anticipate that the silence which I am obliged to keep at this moment need be of long duration.

NEW BILLS.
  BETTING BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to amend the Betting Acts, 1853, and 1874, and for other purposes was presented by the Lord Davey; read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Thursday the 14th of May next. (No. 35.)
  EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDER CONFIRMATION (LONDON) BILL [H.L.] (No. 36.)
  A Bill to confirm a Provisional Order made by the Board of Education under the Education Acts, 1870 to 1902, to enable the School Board for London to put in force the Lands Clauses Acts.

  EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (EAST HAM, &c.) BILL [H.L.] (No. 37.)
  A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Education under the Elementary Education Acts, 1870 to 1900, to enable the School Boards for East Ham, Lower Michaelstone, Manchester, and Willesden, to put in force the Lands Clauses Acts.
  Was presented by the Viscount Churchill (for the Earl Vane (M. Londonderry); read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.
  House adjourned at a quarter past Seven o'clock, to Thursday next, half-past Ten o'clock.