Sitting of 30 April 1903

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.

COMMISSION.
Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.
The House went; and, being returned,
Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:
1. Army (Annual) Act, 1903.

UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERETO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—
  Metropolitan Police Provisional Order Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time to-morrow.

  PRIVATE BILLS (PETITION FOR ADDITIONAL PROVISION) (STANDING ORDERS NOT COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for additional Provision in the following Bill, the Standing
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  Orders have not been complied with, viz.:—
  Romford and District Tramways Bill.
  Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.

  POST OFFICE SITES BILL (STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE THERETO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred pursuant to the Order of the House of the 6th day of April, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, viz.:—
  Post Office Sites Bill.
  Western Trust Bill [Lords]. Read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.
  Dover Corporation Bill (by Order). Read a second time and committed.
  Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (Extension of Time) Bill, "to extend the time limited by The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway Act, 1900, for the compulsory purchase of lands and for the construction of certain of the railways authorised by that Act; and for other purposes." Read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
  Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 5), Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to Castleblaney (Urban), Castleblaney (Rural), the Port of Cork, and the Portadown and Banbridge Joint Waterworks District. Ordered to be brought in by Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland and Mr. Wyndham.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 5), Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to the Metropolitan Boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and Lambeth. Ordered to be brought in by Mr. Grant Lawson and Mr. Walter Long.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 6), Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Coventry, Rawmarsh, Shipley, and Tynemouth. Ordered to be brought in by Mr. Grant Lawson and Mr. Walter Long.
  Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway Order Confirmation, Bill to confirm a Provisional Order, under The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway. Ordered to be brought in by the Lord Advocate and Mr. Solicitor General for Scotland.
  Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 5), Bill "to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to Castleblaney (Urban), Castleblaney (Rural), the Port of Cork, and the Portadown and Banbridge Joint Waterworks District." Presented, and read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 169.]
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 5), Bill "to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to the Metropolitan Boroughs of Hampstead, Holbora, and Lambeth." Presented, and read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 170.]
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 6) Bill, "to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board relating to Coventry, Rawmarsh, Shipley, and Tynemouth. "Presented, and read the first time; to be referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 171.]
  Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway Order Confirmation Bill, "to confirm a Provisional Order, under The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to the Lanarkshire and Ayrshire Railway," presented; and ordered to be considered upon Monday next.
  City and North East Suburban Electric Railway Bill, reported [Preamble not proved]; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  RAILWAY BILLS (GROUP No. 3).
  Mr. COMPTION RICKETTreported from the Committee on Group No. 3 of Railway Bills; That, for the convenience of parties, they had adjourned till Tuesday next, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

PETITIONS.
  CHURCH DISCIPLINE BILL.
  Two Petitions from Brighton, against; to lie upon the Table.
  COAL MINES REGULATION BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Greasbrough; Poynton; Dysart; Snydale (No 2); Bank Hall; Burnley; Wallsend Main; Dearne Valley; Barnsley Main; Stanhope Silkstone; Burnley; Frystone (No. 2); Haigh; Crigglestone Coal Company; Stourton Grange, Leeds; Lea Green; Tong; Netherton; Denby Grange; Houghton Main; Waverley; Orgreave; Grange; New market Silkstone; Wakefield; Bowers (No. 2); Lofthouse; Bowers (No. 3); Newland; Frystone (No. 1); Leeds Central; Nostell; Carlton Main; Newmarket High Moor; Marchay; Tollcross; Southgate; Marlpool; Grassmoor (No. 3); Clay Cross; Ryhill Main; South Hindley; and Halton Colleries; to lie upon the Table.
  COUNTY COURTS JURISDICTION EXTENSION BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Burnley; Heath; and Aberavon; to lie upon the Table.
  DETENTION OF POOR PERSONS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Yell, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING LAW (COMPENSATION FOR NON-RENEWAL) BILL.
  Petitions against; from Battersea; Southampton; and Upton Park; to lie upon the Table
  LICENSING (SCOTLAND) ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petitions for alteration; from Spynie; and Alyth, to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING (SCOTLAND) ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from North Berwick, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  MARR AGE WITH DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER.
  Petitions against: from Walthamstow; Oxford; Liverpool; and Brighton (two); to lie upon the Table.
  PUBLIC HOUSES (HOURS OF CLOSING) (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Leith; and Edinburgh; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF ADULTERATED BUTTER BILL.
  Petition from Coventry, against; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADES DISPUTES BILL.
  Petitions in favour: from Southgate; Greasbrough; Poynton; Dysart; Bank Hall, Burnley; Barnsley Main; Wall send Main; Stanhope Silkstone; Dearne Valley; Burnley; Frystone (No. 2); Lea Green; Newmarket High Moor; Newland; Bowers (No. 3); Stourton Grange, Leeds; Lofthouse; Leeds Central; Frystone (No. 1); Nostell; Methley; Snydale (No. 2); Haigh Crigglestone Coal Company; Netherton Denby Grange; Houghton Main Waverley; Orgreave; Grange; Newmarket Silkstone; Wakefield; Bowers (No. 2); Tollcross; Tong; Marlpool; Marchay; Grassmoor (No. 3); Clay Cross; South Heindley; Halton; and Ryhill main collieries; to lie upon the table
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  MARRIAGES, BIRTHS, AND DEATHS (ENGLAND).
  Copy presented, of General Abstract of Marriages, Births, and Deaths registered in England and Wales in the year 1902 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  NAVY (WATER TUBE BOILERS).
  Copy presented of Report on further Trials of H.M.S. "Hyacinth"and H.M.S. "Minerva" (with diagrams) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  COMPANIES (WINDING-UP) ACT, 1890.
  Account presented, showing Receipts and Expenditure on account of Proceedings during the year ended 31st March 1903 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. (No. 135.)
  BANKRUPTCY ACT 1883 (PROCEEDINGS)
  Account presented, showing the Receipts and Expenditure on account of Bankruptcy Proceedings during the year ended 31st March, 1903 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. (No. 136.)
  FACTORY AND WORKSHOP ACTS (PARTICULARS OF PIECE WORK WAGES) (FELT HATS).
  Copy presented, of Order, dated 22nd April 1903, made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, applying, with modifications, the provisions of Section 116 of The Factory and Workhop Act, 1901, to the making of Felt sates and repealing the existing Order of He 30th November, 1897 [by Act]; to lie thon the Table.
  EAST INDIA (RAILWAYS AND IRRIGATION WORKS).
  Return presented, relative thereto [Address 29th April; Mr. Price]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. (No. 137.)
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copy presented of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 2964 to 2966 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising the construction of a Light Railway in the county of Wilts, forming an additional junction between the Basingstoke and Salisbury Railway of the London and South Western Railway Company near Porton, and the Light Railway authorised by the Amesbury and Military Camp Light Railway Order, 1898 (Amesbury and Military Camp Light Railway (Newton Toney Curve) Order, 1903) [by Command];to lie upon the Table.
  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, amending the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway Order, 1900 (Mid Suffolk Light Railway (Deviation and Amendment) Order, 1903 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising extensions of Light Railways authorised by the Don caster Corporation Light Railways Order, 1899, and by the Don-caster Corporation Light Railways (Deviation, &c.) Order, 1902 (Doncaster Corporation Light Railways (Extensions) Order, 1903) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising the construction of a Light Railway in the counties of Bedford and Hertford from Leighton Buzzard to Hitchin (Leighton Buzzard and Hitchin Light Railway Order, 1903) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising the construction of Light Railways in the urban district of Barking Town, in the county of Essex (Barking Light Railways (Extensions) Order, 1903) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  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

  (Mr. Churchill.)

  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising the construction of Light Railways from Morriston to Pontardawe, in the county of Glamorgan (Glamorgan County Council (Morriston to Pontardawe) Light Railways Order, 1903) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  LAND PURCHASE (IRELAND) (GUARANTEE FUND).
  Return ordered, "of Payments to the Local Taxation (Ireland) Account and other Exchequer Grants which form the constituent parts of the Guarantee Fund, under 54 and 55 Vic., c. 48, s. 5, and 61 and 62 Vic., c. 37, s. 58, as proposed to be amended by the Irish Land Bill, 1903.)"—(Mr. Wyndham.)
  Return presented accordingly; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 134.]

  ARMY (COMMISSIONS).
  Address for "Return as to number of Commissions granted during each of the years 1899 to 1902, inclusive."—(Mr. Pirie.)
  Address for "Return respecting the Volunteers, in the following form:—

  MILITARY WORKS AND STORES.
  Address for "Return respecting Mili-

  Military Stores.

  Artillery.

  Fortifications.

  Barracks.

  Amount of money expended:—

  1899

  1900

  1901

  1902

  1903

  —(Mr. Churchill.)

  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 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 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. Churchill.)
  HOUSE OF LORDS (MANUSCRIPTS).
  Ordered, that a message be sent to the Lords to request that their Lordships will be pleased to communicate to this House a Copy of the Manuscripts of the House of Lords, Volume II. (New Series).—(Mr. Arthur Elliot.)
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Accidents caused by Electric Trams.
  SIR JOSEPH DIMSDALE:To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the cases of a cyclist who was killed on Monday, on the road between Kew Bridge and Gunnersbury, and of a cyclist, on Saturday last, whilst riding between Hampton Court and Hampton, when a car of the London United Tramway Company knocked
  tary works and stores, in the following from:—
  him down, causing him severe injury; and whether, in view of the introduction of electric tram cars on the public roads, he will consider the desirability of steps being taken for the protection of the public.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas) I have made enquiries and find that, in the first of the two cases mentioned, the coroner's jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and that it does not appear that there was any negligence on the part of the driver of he electric tram car or any breach of the law as to speed. I understand that the case is being further considered by the Board of Trade. I cannot trace the second case mentioned. The police have received no information as to injury-caused on Saturday, the 18th April, to a cyclist between Hampton Court and Hampton.

  Death of Uncle of Ruling Chief of Panna—Cost of Inquiry.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India if he will state what was the total cost to the Government of India and the Panna Principality respectively of the inquiry that was made from June, 1901, to January, 1902, into the charges arising out of the death of the uncle of the Ruling Chief of Panna.
  (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) I have no information as to the cost of the inquiry into the charges

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  referred to, but I understand that the Government of India sanctioned, for the defence of the Maharaja, an expenditure up to a maximum of Rs.30,000, for which the revenues of the Panna State were to be liable.

  India—Government Advances to Native States.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India if he will state the number of Native States indebted to the Government of India on account of advances, the total amount of that indebtedness, the average rate of interest, and the amount by which the debt is being reduced annually.
  (Anwered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) on the 31st March, 1902, loans were outstanding to 201 Native States, amounting in all to Rs. 4,10,45,506. The repayments during the last three years, for which full information is available, have been as follows, viz.: in 1899–1900, Rs.1,41,293; in 1900–1901, Rs 31,13,950; in 1901–1902, Rs.15,97,864. The rate of interest in all cases was 4 per cent. Since the 31st March, 1902, some additional loans have been granted, at various rates of interest, chiefly to States which have suffered through the late famine; but complete information as to these transactions has not yet reached me.

  India—Acreage of Irrigated Lands.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India, in view of the fact that the proportion of land revenue from irrigated lands is estimated at £821,900, can he state approximately the acreage of these lands in each Presidency contributing to this revenue.
  (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) The amount referred to represents certain additional land revenue receipts which are credited under the head Irrigation in the accounts as being the result of irrigation from State canals. The area irrigated in each province by canals to which land revenue credits are made was as follows in 1901–2: United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, 2,157,565 acres; Punjab and North West Frontier Province, 2,923,884 acres; Madras, 2,981,672 acres; Bombay, 986,082 acres.

  British Government and Rajahs of Panna.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India if he will state the dates of the Treaties between the British Government and the Rajahs or Ruling Chiefs of Panna since the year 1803.
  (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) Panna is one of the minor states of Bundelkhand, whose chiefs hold under Sanad from the British Government, and are bound by deeds of allegiance to the British Government. There are no Treaties between the British Government and the Rulers of Panna.

  India—Grants for Irrigation Works—Unexpended Balances.
  Mr. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for India, seeing that a special grant of twenty-five lacks of rupees was made in 1902–3 under irrigation for new minor works, can he explain why the sum of £60,000 remained unexpended at the end of the year.
  (Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) Owing to projects not being ready in time it was not found possible to expend in 1902–3 the whole of the special grant of Rs.25,00,000 for minor irrigation works, but the special grant of Rs. 25,00,000 has been repeated in the Budget for 1903–4, and will be available for expenditure during the current year, irrespective of the amount actually expended in 1902–3.

  Naval Reserve Men Employed in Royal Dockyards.
  MR. HARMSWORTH: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he can state how many men employed in the Royal dockyards are on the mobilisation list.
  (Answered by Mr. Arnold-Forster.) It is not considered desirable in the public interest to give the precise information for which the hon. Member asks. The Admiralty, however, are fully alive to the importance of keeping a careful check on the numbers and occupations of pensioners and Royal Fleet reserve men employed in the Royal dockyards. Steps are being taken to ensure that in the event of mobilisation for war, the number of men required for the service of the Fleet will be available, and that,

  943
  at the same time, there will be no unforeseen dislocation of the work of the dockyards.

  Damage to the "Princess Alexandra."
  MR. CHARLES M'ARTHUR: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will say whether the Irish Lights Commissioners' steam yacht "Princess Alexandra, "which recently stranded on the Hellyhunter Rock, was at the time in charge of an officer holding a Board of Trade certificate; and, if so, of what grade, and what was his rank on board the vessel; what is the actual or estimated cost of repairing the damage sustained; whether the bell buoy and the automatic whistling buoy near the spot were in working order at the time; and whether it is intended to hold a Board of Trade inquiry as to the cause of the casualty.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) I am informed by the Commissioners of Irish Lights that the "Princess Alexandra" was not stranded on the Hellyhunter Rock, but while approaching some wreckage in the vicinity of that rock she was damaged by striking some obstacle. The vessel was at the time in charge of the chief officer, who holds a Board of Trade master's certificate for home trade. The cost of repair of the damage is estimated at £150. It is not intended that any formal inquiry should be held as to the cause of the casualty.

  Public Health—Vital Statistics.
  MR. HENRY HOBHOUSE: To ask the President of the Local Government Board, if, in view of the uselessness to county medical officers of health of the vital statistics at present issued for registration counties and districts, he will consider if these statistics can in future be issued for the urban and rural sanitary districts instead of for areas which often overlap the administrative counties.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I have been in communication with the Registrar-General on this subject, and I find that he considers himself bound to publish statistics for registration districts and sub-districts which, as contemplated by the Births and Deaths Registration Acts, correspond with poor law unions and
  944
  divisions of such unions. It would be impracticable, therefore, to issue the statistics for the sanitary districts instead of for the existing areas. The Registrar General also informs me that, if it was proposed to treat these districts as statistical units in addition to the present areas, this arrangement would involve an enormous amount of extra labour, and a large increase in the staff of his office. At the same time I sympathise with the object which my right hon. friend has in view, and perhaps some modified proposals might be made on the subject If this is done I will take care that any such proposals shall receive thorough consideration.

  Suggested Increase of Consular Representation.
  SIR THOMAS DEWAR: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will consider the advisability of increasing the number of salaried consular officers representing the United Kingdom, so that the commercial community in this country may have at their command such information as will render them better able to compete with other nations.
  (Answered by Lord Cranborne.) The advisability of increasing the number of salaried consular officers will receive careful consideration.

  Telegraph Conference—International Exchanges.
  MR. BAYLEY: To ask the Postmaster-General whether it is intended to disc as the question of international exchanges between the members of the postal and telegraph staffs at the forth coming International Telegraph Conference in London; and, if not, whether He will direct that this subject shall receive consideration during the proceedings.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) The question to which the hon. Member refers is not within the scope of the forthcoming International Telegraph Conference.

  Improved Position of Sorters in Charge of Travelling Post Offices
  CAPTAIN NORTON: To ask the Postmaster-General whether

  945
  a decision has yet been arrived at regarding the improvement to be made in the position of sorters travelling in charge of travelling post offices, which was promised in reply to representation made by a deputation of sorters on 13th January, 1901; and, if so, whether he will now communicate the proposed improvement to the deputation.
  (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) The matter to which the hon. Member refers has involved numerous and prolonged inquiries, affecting as it does the whole of the travelling post offices throughout the United Kingdom. The inquiries are now, I am glad to say, practically completed, and I hope shortly to be able to announce my decision to the officers concerned.

  Dublin Science and Art and Natural History Museums, etc—Position of Employees.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Treasury will grant to the men employed in the Science and Art and Natural History Museums and College of Science, etc., in Dublin the terms asked for in a memorial forwarded by the Department two years ago, which are similar to those already granted to the attendants of the London and Edinburgh Museums by their respective Boards, following on the changes that had taken place at that time, owing to each department being placed under local administration.
  (Answered by Mr. Arthur Elliot.)The memorial has not been forwarded to the Treasury, and I understand that the Department of Agriculture are not at present in a position to make a recommendation in regard to it.

  Civil Service—Writers' Pensions.
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state in what manner, as regards pension only, the terms of engagement of those writers who were advertised for in the public Press by the Civil Service Commissioners on the 15th August, 1870, and registered by them on the 3rd, 6th, and 8th September of the same year, as referred
  946
  to in Mr. Hanbury's answer of 28th May, 1897, differed from the terms of engagement of those writers who were advertised for and registered after the 19th August, 1871.
  (Answered by Mr. Arthur Elliot.) There was no difference between the terms of engagement of the two classes of copyists as regards pension. In both cases the regulations stated that no service, however much it may happen to be prolonged, will confer any claim to superannuation allowance.

  Army Pensions—Case of John Stapleton.
  MR. JOYCE: To ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether his attention has been called to the case of John Stapleton, pensioned gunner, who served twenty-four and one-sixth years, including two years' service granted for the Indian Mutiny; and whether, seeing that the terms of this man's service entitled him to 4d. per day extra on attaining the age of sixty years, and that he is now seventy-six, he will arrange that this pension shall be paid to this man.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The hon. Member is evidently alluding to the deferred pensions, which were only granted to men who were not in receipt of ordinary pension. This man, being already in receipt of a pension of 1s. a day, has no claim whatever to this grant of 4d. a day.

  Army Pensions—Case of Henry Duke, late of 81st Foot.
  MR. JOYCE: To ask the Financial Secretary to the War Office whether his attention has been called to the case of Henry Duke, late of the 81st Foot, who served in the Army for over twenty-one years, and who is receiving 11d. per day; and whether, seeing that this soldier is now over sixty-six years old, and in view of his circumstances, his case can be favourably considered.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) As this man is in receipt of the maximum rate of pension to which he is entitled the regulations will not permit of the grant of any further pension, as he has had

  947
  no war service, and was not invalided from the Army.

  Somaliland Operations—Wireless Telegraphy.
  SIR JOHN LENG: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether, having regard to the fact that the Marconi instruments used in Somaliland for wireless telegraphy have been marine instruments, he will arrange, in order to secure effective communication, that instruments will be employed adapted for use over-land, and worked by experts acquainted with over-land conditions.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The instruments used in Somaliland were of Admiralty pattern, which has been tried over-land as well as over-sea. The naval officers and men in charge were thorough experts in their use, and were successful in establishing communications in certain cases, in one case to the extent of thirty-two miles, in spite of very exceptional difficulties. The results, however, were not, in the opinion of the general officer commanding, sufficiently certain to justify the further carriage of the instruments, which had led to exceptional difficulties of supply and transport.

  Rough Riders and Scouts—Height Regulations.
  SIR THOMAS DEWAR: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he will consider the expediency of enrolling as rough riders and for scouting purposes men who are at present debarred from entering the Army on account of their being under the regulation height.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The advantage of enlisting men under the regulation height has not been lost sight of in the past, but at present no specials are being taken.

  Pacific Cable—Interruption of Service.
  SIR JOHN COLOMB: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can state the date upon which the Pacific cable was opened to public use; what is the total aggregate interval of time during which through communication between the United Kingdom and Australia by the
  948
  Pacific cable has been suspended; and on how many occasions has the telegraph route been interrupted.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Chamberlain.) The Pacific Cable was opened for public use throughout its entire length on the 8th December last. The cable has never been interrupted, though certain interruptions have taken place in its connecting land lines in Canada. These interruptions occurred on five occasions, and have involved a suspension of communication for 147 hours.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  South African War Trophies.
  MR. BILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether any allocation has yet been made of guns and rifles captured during the war in South Africa; and whether the representations that have been made by the Government of New Zealand for a full share in the distribution of trophies have been considered.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. BRODRICK,: No allocation has as yet been made. The whole question is being carefully considered by a Committee, but the correspondence before the Committee is very large. Full regard is being given to the representations on the subject made by the Government of New Zealand.

  Army Meat Contracts.
  MR. BILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the terms for contracts for the delivery of frozen mutton to the troops in South Africa during this year only reached Australia and New Zealand at the end of January, while tenders had to be sent in on 3rd February; and whether the War Office will take care that in this and future years timely notice of the conditions of contract will be sent to those Colonies.
  MR. BRODRICK: The delay in issuing the notices referred to was due to local circumstances. Steps will be taken in future by which, it is to be hoped, tenders can be called for three months in advance. It must be pointed out that in the case in

  949
  question British as well as Australian competitors were affected, and the pressure is regretted in the interests of both classes of contractors.

  Artillery Firing.
  Major SEELY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War if he can state the rate of fire of the 1885 field gun, the 1899 field gun, and the Ehrherdt quick-firing field gun respectively.
  MR. BRODRICK: As I explained to my hon. friend on Tuesday last, † it is not usual to give the figures, and no good purpose would be served by so doing. Such figures would, so far as I am aware, not be given in respect of any foreign Army.
  SIR CHARLES DILKEasked whether the right hon. Gentleman would be ready to go into the question of the rate of fire, as between quick-firing guns and guns which are not quick firing, on the proper Vote in the Estimates.
  MR. BRODRICK: I should be ready to go into the question generally, especially if we were asking for money in the Votes for a new gun. But I certainly do not think there is any public advantage in our stating in this House precisely what is the rate of fire of the British field and horse artillery guns—a statement which no foreign country would think of making.
  LIEUT.-COLONEL GEORGE KEMP: Are these figures withheld because they show such a discrepancy?
  MR. BRODRICK: Not at all.

  Collision between the "Bulwark" and the "Formidable."
  SIR WILLIAM ALLAN: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he will state the extent of the damage done to each vessel when H.M.S. "Bulwark" and "Formidable" collided during manœuvres in the Mediterranean.
  †See page 650.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,On August 19 last, the "Bulwark" and "Formidable" came into momentary contact while preparing to carry out towing exercises. The damage done was small, the anchor bed and a portion of the torpedo net shelf of the "Bulwark" were slightly damaged, and were repaired during the ordinary refit of the ship in November. On the "Formidable" the hinges of the leadsman's platform were broken, the metal casting of the casemate port was damaged, and a small portion of the hinged torpedo net shelf round the casemate broken. On the ships being subsequently docked for general refit, it was found that three of the frames below the waterline were slightly dented, and as the ship was in dock the opportunity was taken to straighten them, though the sea-worthiness of the ship was in no way interfered with. The damage to both ships was of the slightest description, and the cost of repairs has been trifling. I am quite unable to account for the gross exaggerations of this incident which have recently appeared in the public press.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLESasked whether it was not a fact that notices were posted in each of the ships prohibiting any account of the incident being sent home, and whether that might not account for the exaggerations to which the hon. Gentleman had referred.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTERsaid he had no information on that subject.
  In reply to a further question by Sir W. Allan, Mr. Arnold-Forster said there was no armour plating in the part of the ship where the frames were bent.

  Native Labour in the Transvaal Mines.
  MR. WHITLEY: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will take steps to have a record kept of the sickness and mortality which takes place amongst the Central African natives during their indenture in the Transvaal mines.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. J. CHAMBERLAIN,: I will ask Lord Milner to have such a record kept, so far

  951
  as it may be possible to do so. I doubt if it will be possible in the form suggested in the hon. Member's Question.

  Alaskan Boundary Commission.
  Mr. CHARLES DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state the nature of the objection taken by the Canadian Government to the selection of jurists made by the President of the United States to act on the Tribunal appointed for the adjustment of the boundary between the Dominion of Canada and the Territory of Alaska; and what action, if any, has been taken.
  MR. J. CHAMBERLAIN: The Dominion Government took exception to the jurists selected by the United States on the ground that they did not come within the description of persons specified in Article I. of the Treaty. The Treaty was ratified before the official announcement of the names of the American representatives was received. The Canadian Government, while protesting against the selection, agreed to nominate two representatives, and asked His Majesty's Government to secure, if possible, the services of the Lord Chief Justice as the third representative. No other action has been taken.

  Tientsin Railway Siding Award.
  MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can lay upon the Table of the House the award of M. Detring in respect of the Tientsin Railway Siding dispute.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,: We have heard by telegraph that the award of the Arbitrator has been given in favour of the railway on two points, and we must await the receipt by mail of the full text of the award, which will show whether a settlement has been arrived at on all the points in dispute It is impossible to say whether the Papers Mill be laid until we have seen them, but I hope there will be no difficulty.

  Russia and the Niu-chwang Revenues.
  MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, seeing that Russia has collected and retained the Imperial Maritime Custom Revenues at Niu-chwang since August, 1900, and in view of the fact that these form part of the security for Chinese loans, His Majesty's Government has made representations to the Russian Government in regard to the restoration of these moneys in the interests of British bondholders; and, if so, with what results.
  LORD CRANBORNE: We have been informed that the duties collected by the Imperial Maritime Customsat Niu-chwang are paid into the Russo-Chinese Bank to the credit of the Chinese Government, minus the monthly amount required for the support of the office. I understand that the Russian authorities claim to deduct from these funds the amount expended by them in the repair of the Shanhaikuan-Niu-chwang Railway, but further inquiries are being made as to whether such an arrangement would endanger the security of the bondholders.

  Russia and China.
  MR. JOSEPH WALTON: I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the Russian Government has demanded the dismissal of a British doctor from the position of health and quarantine officer at the treaty port of Niu-chwang, and that he should be replaced by a Russian naval doctor; and, if so, whether His Majesty's Government will insist, either alone or in concert with Japan and the United States of America, upon the retention of the British doctor.
  The following Questions also appeared on the Paper.
  MR. JOSEPH WALTON: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, seeing that the Manchurian Convention provided for the evacuation of Manchuria and the restoration of the Treaty Port of Niu-chwang by Russia to China on or before the 8th April, His Majesty's Government, in view of the failure of Russia to observe these

  953
  provisions, are making representations on the subject to the Chinese and Russian Governments, either alone or in concert with Japan and the United States of America, in order to secure the fulfilment of the assurances repeatedly given by Russia in regard to these questions.
  MR. JOSEPH WALTON: To ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the fact that the Russian Government are seeking to debar China from employing foreign mining experts other than Russian in Manchuria, Mongolia, and the Province of Chili, His Majesty's Government will, either alone or in concert with Japan and the United States of America, insist upon the maintenance of equality of opportunity for all nationalities.
  LORD CRANBORNE: All three Questions refer to the evacuation of Manchuria. Since they were placed upon the Paper, the hon. Gentleman will have learnt from an answer which I gave yesterday, that His Majesty's Government are not yet in a position to give definite information. We have, however, received from sources the authority of which does not admit of doubt, confirmation of the statement that the Russian Government have announced that they have no knowledge of the reported Convention, and that they disclaim all intention of seeking for exclusive privileges in Manchuria, or departing from the assurances given in regard to that province.

  London Underground Railway—Electrification.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will state when the system of electric traction will be introduced on the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,: I have been in communication with the two railway companies referred to, and in reply the Metropolitan Railway Company inform me that they are proceeding rapidly with the equipment of electric traction on their part of the Inner Circle, and on a section of their ex-
  954
  tension line to Harrow, and that the working of the railway by electricity depends upon the completion of their generating station at Neasden, with which considerable progress has been made, and which, according to the contract, is to be finished by the end of the year. The Metropolitan District Railway Company state that they expect to open a section of their line, six files in length, between South Harrow and Ealing, for electrical working in the course of a few weeks, and add that the working of the main line by electric traction depends upon the date of the completion of the Power House at Lot's Road, Chelsea, which is being pressed forward with the greatest possible speed.

  Bankrupt Aliens.
  MR. FORDE RIDLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will grant the Return respecting Bankrupt Aliens in Great Britain which appears on to-day's Notice Paper.
  The Return referred to is as follows:—Aliens (Bankruptcy), Return of the number of Aliens who have become Bankrupt in Great Britain since the year 1890, of the total amount of liabilities involved, and of the assets realised in these cases.
  MR. GERALD BALBOUR: I fear I cannot grant the Return asked for by the hon. Member, as the statistical records of the Bankruptcy Department do not enable them to distinguish aliens from other bankrupts. I understand, however, that the Senior Official Receiver in Bankruptcy is about to give evidence before the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, and I would suggest to my hon. friend that he should allow his Motion for a Return to stand over for a short time. During the interval I will communicate with the Official Receivers, and see whether it would be possible to give some of the information desired, at any rate for a period of two or three years.

  Licensing in Worcestershire.
  COLONEL LONG: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether

  955
  his attention has been drawn to the decision of the Licensing Committee of Worcestershire in the cases of the ancient towns of Upton-on-Severn and Shipston-on-Stour, whereby those towns which since the Act of 1874 have been determined to be populous places, and which are four or five hundred over 1,000 inhabitants, are declared to be no lower populous places, and so reduced to the position of villages; and whether, seeing that there has been no alteration of density, nor decrease of population, nor exceptional drunkenness, he can reinstate the towns in their former position.
  THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE TO THE HOME OFFICE (Mr. COCHRANE,: I have received a report which shows that the decision of the County Licensing Committee was arrived at after repeated hearing and full consideration, and the matter is not one in which the Secretary of State can exercise any authority.

  Postage on Periodicals to Canada.
  MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General, in view of the fact that the postal rates on periodicals are less from Canada to Great Britain and Ireland than from Great Britain and Ireland to Canada, and of the representations from the Canadian Government praying for a reduction of these rates, he can extend any hope that a reduction will shortly be made.
  THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,: I have given this subject very careful consideration. I appreciate the great importance, politically as well as commercially, of facilitating the circulation of our newspapers and periodicals in Canada, and I should have been very glad if I could have adopted the Canadian rates for such matter; but our present rates for newspapers and periodicals sent from this country to Canada are, except in the case of registered newspapers, the same as those charged for the transmission of printed matter within the United Kingdom. Even with the present limits of weight the½d. post is not remunerative, and, after careful con-
  956
  sideration of all the circumstances, I regret that I cannot see my way to its extension generally, nor do I think I should be justified in making special arrangements for the transmission of newspapers and periodicals to Canada only, at rates lower than those in force within the United Kingdom. I am, however, considering whether some increase might not be allowed in the weight now carried for a penny both within and without the United Kingdom.

  Glycerinated Calf Lymph.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, if he will state on what terms glycerinated calf lymph is supplied or sold by the Local Government Board to medical practitioners in private practice other than public vaccinators.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GRANT LAWSON,: The glycerinated calf lymph issued by the Local Government Board is not sold. It is only supplied to Public Vaccinators for use in vaccinations performed by them in that capacity, and no charge is made for it.

  National Vaccine Establishment.
  MR WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board, seeing that under the Medical Department of the Local Government Board Vote there are two separate items for contingencies of£800 and£2,000, the former item under Sub-Head R, National Vaccine Establishment, and the latter under Sub-Head S, will he state in more detail the nature of this expenditure.
  MR. GRANT LAWSON: The two amounts referred to are intended to meet any temporary extension of staff at the vaccine establishments of the Local Government Board, and the cost of purchasing and keeping additional calves, and any extra incidental expenses which may be rendered necessary if smallpox continues to prevail, and there is in consequence an excessive demand for lymph. It is impracticable to state in detail what sums may be required on these accounts.

  Clifford's Inn.
  MR. REA: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General whether he will explain why he has assented to a scheme for the sale of Clifford's Inn; and whether he will consider the advisability of formulating an alternative scheme by which the property would be vested in the Charity Commissioners, the buildings preserved, and the revenues applied to the purposes of the Trust.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (SIR ROBERT FINLAY,: My assent to the scheme for the sale of Clifford's Inn was given on the ground that, having regard to the great change of circumstances since the Institution was founded, and the age and character of the buildings, it could not be properly utilised for the purposes of legal education in any other way. The order of the Court is final, and I have neither the power nor the desire to re-open it. I may add that the alternative scheme suggested in the Question is, in my opinion, quite impracticable, and it certainly would not be for the advantage of the Trust, as it would involve the perpetuation of an obsolete system. So long as the Society continues to exist, its members would have certain rights and privileges inconsistent with the full utilisation of the property for the purposes of the charity. The buildings are in such a condition that their upkeep would absorb funds which might be more usefully employed. I could not have rejected the opportunity afforded by the willingness of the members to extinguish the Society, and put an end to an institution which, however beneficial when it was established, had become obsolete, without sacrificing the interests of the charitable trust for legal education which is in my care.
  MR. BRYCE: May I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman whether he proposes on this important and interesting question to lay any statement before the House, or whether the House will be given any opportunity of expressing an opinion on the scheme of legal education which it is understood is in contemplation.
  SIR ROBERT FINLAY: I do not think the matter is so far advanced that I could with advantage make any statement at the present.
  MR. W. R. PEEL: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General whether, in view of the fact that the sum of£45,000 only is to be handed over to him for the purposes of legal education out of the proceeds of the sale of Clifford's Inn, he will state in what manner has this sum been arrived at; whether the total estimated value of Clifford's Inn is£100,000 or more; and what is the number of the members of Clifford's Inn among whom the balance of the money is to be divided.
  SIR ROBERT FINLAY: My hon. friend's Question is based upon a misapprehension of fact. The share of the proceeds applicable to the purposes of legal education is not restricted to£45,000, nor to any other sum. A certain proportion of the proceeds is under the order of the Court to be applied for the payment of expenses connected with the winding up of the society, and in compensation to members for the loss of certain advantages which they enjoyed while the society continued to exist. Their consent to the sale was necessary, and the terms embodied in the order of the Court are, in my judgment, fair to all parties, and for the advantage of the trust for legal education which it is my duty to protect. The property is no doubt a very valuable one, but it is not for me to attempt to fix a figure—the larger the price paid the better for legal education.
  MR. REAasked whether it was not the fact that the conduct of the scheme was in the hands of the Attorney-General, and that until the Incorporated Law Society had notice nothing was known of the proceedings.
  SIR ROBERT FINLAY: Certainly, the usual procedure was followed. In all these matters the Attorney-General is entrusted with the bringing forward of a scheme. In this case the Law Society, which might be concerned, were also consulted.
  MR. REAasked whether only the Law Society were allowed to put in an appearance.
  SIR ROBERT FINLAY: I do not know who else could appear.

  Irish Rate Collections.
  MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that the existing rule which obliges collectors to close there accounts for the first moiety of the rates on or before the 30th September in each year entails hardship upon ratepayers in agricultural districts, who find it inconvenient to meet rates before their corn is harvested; and whether the Local Government Board will consider the advisability of extending the period to the 31st October.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON,for Mr. WYNDHAM): The financial half-years in the case of County and District Councils are fixed by the Local Government Act of 1898, and the orders made there under, and terminate on the 30th September and 31st March. The Board have no power to vary these dates. I cannot admit that the inconvenience mentioned has arisen. The rates necessary to meet the expenditure of the half-year must be lodged within the half year.

  Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
  MR. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the tradesmen employed in Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum are compelled to work every second week for ninety-nine hours fifty-five minutes, and for seventy-seven and a half hours during each of the other weeks; and that they have to discharge the duties of attendant during portion of the day, in addition to performing their work as tradesmen; and whether he will cause inquiry into the matter, with the object of limiting their duty to the work of their respective trades and lessening their hours of labour.
  MR. ATKINSON: I have called for a Report on this matter, but, not having yet received it, will ask the hon. Member to postpone the Question till tomorrow.

  Housing Accommodation in Galway.
  MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the city of Galway is disfigured by ruins covering a large area; and that the urban council is powerless to deal with the question, seeing that the owners refuse to sell, and will take no steps towards placing the ruined houses in a fit condition; and whether, in view of the need for additional house accommodation in the district, and the pressure of the rates upon those who have improved their lots and properties, he will take steps to enable the urban council to deal effectively with the matter.
  MR. ATKINSON: An adequate remedy for the state of things mentioned seems to be provided by the Housing of the Working Glasses Act of 1890, but even if further legislation be necessary, no undertaking can be given to introduce it this session.

  Castlerea Railway Inquiry.
  MR. HAYDEN: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that at an inquiry held recently in Castlerea into the circumstances of an accident to a train on the Midland Great Western of Ireland Railway Company, representatives of the Press were excluded; and, if so, will he say whether this is in accordance with precedent; and if so, whether, in view of the public interest at stake, he will direct that in future at all such inquiries representatives of the Press shall be admitted.
  MR. GERALD BALFOUR: Inquiries such as that to which the hon. Member refers are held, primarily, for the information of the Board of Trade, and it is at the discretion of the officer holding the inquiry to decide whether he will allow representatives of the Press to attend. Under ordinary circumstances the Board's officers do admit the Press to their inquiries, but where, as in the present case, allegations have been made that point to the possibility of legal proceedings becoming necessary, the officer may deem it his duty to hold his inquiry in private, and it would be

  961
  undesirable to fetter his discretion. The report of the inquiry will, of course, be ultimately presented to Parliament and issued to the Press.

  Mountmellick Mail Delays.
  MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that the mail delivery to Mountmellick, due at 9 a.m., has not arrived latterly until 12 o'clock noon; and whether he will take steps to prevent this irregularity.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: During the last two months the day mail has on eight occasions been late in arrival at Mountmellick owing to irregularity in the service from London to Dublin. In most cases the delay was unavoidable, but on one occasion the railway company appeared to be in fault. I am considering an arrangement which may perhaps reduce the risk of delay to the mail service on Thursday mornings when mails for America are conveyed. Everything possible will be done to maintain the regularity of the service.

  The Hague Convention and Anglo-Russian Disputes.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the fact that by the Hague Convention of 29th July, 1899, which established a Permanent Arbitral Court at the Hague, His Majesty's Government agreed with the Russian Government and other Governments that they would use all their efforts to ensure the peaceable settlement of international differences, and that they especially recommended by Article IX. that in differences involving neither honour nor vital interests, and arising from a divergence of opinion on points of fact, such differences should be referred for report to an International Commission of Inquiry, they will now consider the advisability of proposing to the Russian Government a reference to the arbitral jurisdiction of the Hague of the questions which have recently arisen relative to the claims and position of Russia in Manchuria. I beg also to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, have His Majesty's Government considered, or will they consider, the advisability of proposing to the Russian Government to refer
  962
  to the Hague Tribunal of Arbitral Jurisdiction the pending questions affecting the interests of the two countries in Persia, in Afghanistan, in Asia Minor, and in the Dardanelles?
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (MR. A. J. BALFOUR,: In reply to my hon. friend I would say that, while the Government are desirous of using to the utmost the advantages given to international relations by the constitution of The Hague tribunal, we do not think any of the questions now pending between us and Russia are of a kind which that tribunal could usefully deal with.
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Has the right hon. Gentleman in mind the special form of tribunal I refer to—the International Commission of Inquiry?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I quite appreciate the hon. Member's supplementary question, but I do not think it modifies the general view indicated in my first answer.

  PISTOLS BILL.
  Reported, with Amendments, for the Standing Committee on Law, etc.
  Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed (No. 138.)
  Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed. (No. 138.)
  Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be considered upon Monday next, and to be printed [Bill 172.]

  NATIONAL EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE.
  Ordered, That Sir John Dorrington be discharged, and that Mr. Hayes Fisher be added to the Committee.—(Sir Alexander Acland-Hood.)

POOR PRISONERS DEFENCE BILL.
The Select Committee on the Poor Prisoners Defence Bill was nominated of, Mr. Atherley-Jones, Mr. Black, Mr. Bousfield, Colonel Bowles, Mr. Duke, Mr. Ellis Griffith, Mr. Kimber, Sir Joseph Leese, Mr. William Redmond, and Mr. Solicitor-General for Scotland.
Ordered, That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers and records.
Ordered, That Five be the quorum—(Sir Alexander Acland-Hood.)

SUPPLY [7th ALLOTTED DAY.]
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
[MR. J. W. LOWTHER (Cumberland, Penrith) in the Chair.]

ARMY ESTIMATES, 1903–4.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding£6,895,000, be granted to His Majesty, to defray the Charge for Provisions, Forage, and other Supplies, including South African Compensation Claims, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1904."
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid there was some little difficulty in discussing the question of Somaliland at full length, as various decisions had been given in Committee upon the propriety of discussing the policy of any undertaking promoted by the Government upon Estimates which only provided for part of the cost thereof. In order to prevent misapprehension he therefore asked for the ruling of the Chairman as to whether the discussion on this Vote must be limited to the military policy.
THE CHAIRMAN: Strictly speaking, the debate on this Vote ought to be limited to the policy which is being pursued with regard to military operations; and the policy which led to the undertaking of the expedition in Somaliland is one which would properly come under the Foreign Office Vote. Obviously, however, the two matters are so closely connected that it is almost impossible to divide them. The result of dividing them would be, I understand, to cause every hon. Member to bisect his speech and deliver half on this Vote and half on the subsequent Vote, and that would clearly be very inconvenient. As I understand that there is a general desire on the part of the Committee to discuss the whole question, I do not propose this afternoon to place any obstacles in the way, or to enforce the strict observance of the rule.
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSEsaid the Committee were greatly indebted to the Chairman for his ruling. For four years this country had been undertaking expeditions of this kind without the attention of the House being directed to them. The Foreign Office and the War Office, and, at a more remote period, the India Office, had all had a hand in the operations, and it was not surprising that the work had resulted in something like a muddle of the first order. The Prime Minister was the first person to attract public attention to this question, when, in February of the present year, he stated that the people did not take nearly so much interest in Somaliland as they did in Venezuela, although the cost of the operation in the former country, both in money and in men, and the effect thereof, would be far more wide reaching. Thus, at last, was the attention of the country—and he used the words "at last" deliberately—directed to what was going on in that little-known country. He was not quite sure he might not also say that the attention of the Government, as well as of the country, was thus first directed to the matter. He would not weary the House at any length with the history of past events, but since three Blue-books had been presented, not one of which had ever been discussed, and as the subject was very little understood, he hoped he would be pardoned for briefly referring to what had taken place. The Protectorate of Somaliland seemed to have been acquired about the year 1884, but the first notice this country had of the existence of that part of the British Empire was in 1894, although for six years there had been a treaty in existence with France, laying down our sphere of influence in that part of the world. The country was further delimited by an agreement or treaty which was entered into with Abyssinia in 1897. The Mullah, who for some extraordinary reason which had never been clearly explained was called the Mad Mullah—and anybody whose proceedings were less mad from his own point of view he could not imagine—was a man of good standing in his own country. He possessed exceptional influence and had acquired an extraordinary amount of control over the tribes, by most cruel methods, no doubt. Up to the year 1899 the Mullah had been regarded as rather friendly to our

965
influence, but then he began to trouble our boundaries and became so notorious and so troublesome that in that year Consul-General Sadler suggested to the Government that it should have a military promenade through Somaliland for the purpose of impressing the natives. We had since that time had three military promenades, and the last of these was not yet over. These promenades were undertaken by the Government without any idea of what they would cost, and two of them have already involved an outlay of something like a million sterling. At that time the Mullah had a comparatively small following, 3,000 or 4,000 men, with a very few rifles. He was, consequently, from a military point of view more or less insignificant, and the Government, hampered, no doubt, in other parts of the world, paid little or no attention to the recommendations of Consul-General Sadler.
In November 1900 came the second important event, the murder of Mr. Jenner in Jubaland, a country which was sufficiently adjacent to the Mullah's country to induce a further outbreak of disturbances in Somaliland. An expedition was sent to Jubaland to avenge Mr. Jenner's death, and the officer commanding fell into precisely the same trap Colonel Plunkett had unfortunately fallen into during the last few days. He was severely handled by the tribes, and was brought back in a great hurry by the Foreign Office. The expedition terminated in a way which was certainly not satisfactory to the Foreign Office, and did not add to the glory of our arms. So far as this House knew that was the termination of that particular campaign, for no report of the subsequent proceedings had ever been presented to Parliament. If the Under Secretary to the Foreign Office was prepared to give a little more information as to what had been going on in that part of the world they would gladly welcome it. But things had evidently been going on from bad to worse. In December, 1900, Consul-General Sadler reported that there was
"No hope of order or tranquillity until the Mullah is definitely suppressed."
That report was supported by another report from Colonel Harrington, our agent in Abyssinia, who telegraphed home to the Foreign Office—
966
"Situation become intolerable. Delay tended so to increase Mullah's force that costly expedition would eventually be needed."
That surely was a strong warning to the Foreign Office, which should not have been neglected, that some effective steps were necessary to be taken immediately.
He would like for a moment to explain the difficulties which undoubtedly arose in connection with military operations in that part of the world. The interior of that country—The Haud—was a high plateau 3,000 feet above the sea level. For six months it was waterless, and in that period it was a very difficult country for troops to be manœuvred in. During the remaining six months of the year there was an abundance of rain and pasturage, and that rendered it all the more difficult to capture or to drive the Mullah into a corner. Undoubtedly if military operations in that part of the world were to be successful, they ought to take place after the rains had begun. It was noteworthy that the Administrator told the Government in connection with the present expedition that it ought not to start until April 18th. But the Foreign Office disregarded that advice, as it always did the advice of its local experts, and started the expedition two months before that time. To that he thought might fairly be attributed some of the difficulties experienced in connection with transport and water. He did not know, too, whether he might not also fairly blame the War Office in this connection. Now he would ask them to go back to the original expedition of March, 1901. The column consisted of 1,100 Somali levies, and 1,000 spearmen, under the command of seventeen British officers. But by that time the Mullah's forces had increased to 1,200 horse, and 6,000 foot. Both Consul-General Sadler and Colonel Harrington implored the Foreign Office to finish the matter right off. But Lord Lansdowne "entirely deprecated the extension of operations far into the Haud." No doubt in coming to that decision the noble Lord was guided, not so much by what was occurring in Somaliland, as by events in other parts of the world. But what did the Foreign Office hope to accomplish by only pursuing the Mullah to a particular point, and allowing him another opportunity of gathering his forces to a head. In June,

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1901, Colonel Swayne defeated the Mullah, and Lord Lansdowne thereupon telegraphed to him—
"That he would not undertake the administration of the interior, but would await local opinion before deciding what to do with regard to the town of Burao."
Now this town, although apparently a somewhat important place, was not to be found on the map which had been placed in the tea-room under the auspices of the Foreign Office. Colonel Swayne recommended the retention of the place, in order to prevent the Mullah re-concentrating his forces, and also to protect the tribes who were friendly to us, who had to a certain extent helped us, and who were absolutely powerless to defend themselves, being without arms, the importation of which we had prevented, although the Mullah had been able clearly to get a supply smuggled in for himself. He would like to read a quotation from Command Paper 1394, dealing with a despatch received on 19th August, 1901. Colonel Swayne said—
"Had you seen your way to allow me some latitude the Mullah would have been so weakened as to be incapable of again subjecting the tribes. As it is we have not seen the last of the Mullah."
With that last sentence the Government would probably agree, though they might have seen the last of the Mullah had they adopted the "local" opinion to which they professed to attach so much importance. There was another ground on which the necessity for following local opinion might be pressed. Somaliland was almost the only Protectorate in the whole of the Empire which paid its way. Up to 1898, it not only paid its way, but presented a fair surplus, which the Secretary of State for India absorbed into the revenues of India without saying much about it. He had searched in vain for any financial statement, since that date, of the position of the Protectorate, but he believed it paid its way, and had some small surplus local revenue from which the protection of the frontier would be paid for. The Protectorate, therefore, had not been a considerable, if any, charge upon Imperial funds.
In September, 1901, Lord Lansdowne, having, on one pretext or another, refused to administer the interior or to protect the frontier, reaped his reward. Within eight weeks of his decision, a telegram came from the authorities in
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Somaliland that the Mullah had broken out again, that he had a force, not of 7,000, but of 12,000, and that the situation was extremely dangerous and awkward. The local officers had done what Lord Lansdowne had told them not to do. They had held Burao, and at that place the Mullah was temporarily checked. Colonel Swayne was re-appointed to the command, and went out with these orders:—
"The Government did not wish to be drawn into the pursuit of the Mullah, and the operations were to be of a defensive character."
What was the comment of both Colonel Swayne and the then Consul-General, Mr. Cordeaux. Colonel Swayne said—
"This defensive policy is only possible temporarily."
and the Consul-General added—
"If it was adopted the situation would only become aggravated to a dangerous degree."
One would have thought that that, coming on top of the other recommendations, would have been sufficient to arouse the Government to the dangerous position into which they were drifting. Not a bit of it, on 31st December, 1901, Lord Lansdowne again protested against a forward movement, because—
"He would not take the risk attaching thereto."
The synchronisation of events was very curious. The South African war being practically terminated, the Government apparently awoke to their duties in another part of the world. In April they first seemed to realise that any measures were necessary, and they did what they ought to have done long before. They began by policing the Somali coast with British and Italian ships. In May they sent out a stronger expedition from Burao, and brought up from Central Africa reinforcements of the King's African Rifles and other negro corps. But so little importance did the Government attach to the undertaking that the troops were rationed only for four months. They had already been in the country ten months, and were likely to remain there another ten months. Alarm on the part of the Government was justified, because a naval officer employed on the coast reported—
"It might be years before the Mullah's power could be stamped out, owing to his mobility, armed strength, and influence."

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Colonel Swayne, who had been hunting the Mullah since May, 1902, said—
"The Mullah's prestige has been greatly increased, and the troops are in a state of abject terror."
Nothing could be stronger than this language, and in October, 1902, the Government, realising the scrape into which they were getting themselves and the country, sent out General Manning, and only just in time. He had hardly left this country when the news came of Colonel Swayne's defeat at Erego, with a loss of one or two maxims and many camels, and the Somali levies to whom the Government had hitherto entrusted the conduct of the campaign were described by Colonel Swayne as being—
"So shaken by the Mullah's successes as to be entirely untrustworthy in future in close fighting."
Reinforcements were then hurried up, Regular troops and a Camel Corps were brought from India—the very corps which Colonel Swayne had two years before suggested should be sent.
An entirely new phase of the proceedings was now entered upon. In August 1902, the Italian Government were approached. The really important point was that the Government were to undertake a series of operations entirely outside the British Empire. The Government offered their co-operation to Italy without asking anything in return except leave to use one of their ports. The Government practically said—"Letus operate in your territory and use one of your ports; we will bear the whole of the cost and supply the men; all you have to do is to look on, and gladly take the result of the losses which will fall on us." That was an extraordinary position for the Government to take up, and whatever explanation there must be, was not patent to anyone whose sources of information were confined to the White Books supplied by the Government. Even then Government did not seem fully to realise the importance of the operations, because in their memorandum to Sir Rennell Rodd they said—
"The operations would not necessarily result in the Mullah's capture, but they would check his growing power."
It was something to be thankful for that the Foreign Office recognised that the Mullah's power was growing, but
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the preparations they made to check it were not adequate. The Mullah's forces now amounted to 3,000 mounted riflemen, and probably from 50,000 to 80,000 spearmen, a very formidable force for the body at Colonel Manning's disposal to cope with.
Passing from the Foreign Office part of the proceedings, he desired to refer to certain defects in the military operations connected with the present expedition. Obbia was a most unsuitable place at which to land troops. Five or six vessels, and many thousands of pounds worth of stores, had actually been lost in the process of debarkation. In fact, the port had been found to be so unsuitable that the base had been broken up, and the stores abandoned or destroyed, thus imposing a severe financial loss upon this country, and involving the troops in a serious shortage of supplies and transport. Not only in the past, but in the present operations, the skill, courage, and resources of the enemy had been greatly under estimated. About 2,300 men were sent to a country 500 miles long and 350 miles wide, to operate against an enemy who was certainly able, full of resource, extremely mobile, and which commanded a force of between 80,000 and 90,000 men. Surely the disparity of forces was far too great when it was remembered that not more than 300 of our troops were Europeans. There were a few Indian troops, but dependence was chiefly placed upon negroes from Central Africa. He did not think the military conduct of affairs in Somaliland had been altogether satisfactory, and the general officer commanding ought to have taken more precautions. In the case of the two previous disasters our troops were led into precisely the same trap as Colonel Plunkett, and the Somalis invariably adopted the same tactics. Their tactics were to retire before our forces, and when our advance guard had thoroughly separated from the main body they fell upon our troops in the thickest bush and overwhelmed them. They had suffered three disasters from the same cause, and in his opinion there ought to have been strict orders issued to take precautions against traps of the same sort in the future. What was not patent to General Manning was patent

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to Reuter's correspondent, who, on the 18th of March wrote:—
"The Mullah is playing a waiting game, in the hope that he may lure the force into a trap, when a repetition of the scenes at Erego may happen."
That prediction had been fulfilled to the very letter. He thought that ought to have been provided against by the military officers in charge of this expedition. The subject was an unhappy one, and one upon which the House was not able to comment satisfactorily, but it was a fact which it could not afford to neglect in view of the other operations which it was certain would have to take place.
The only other question was, were they going to hold this country or were they not? There were reasons both ways, but upon the balance of such evidence as he wag able to get he thought that the answer was that they must hold it. In the first place it was the outlet to a very considerable trade with the hinterland. The total trade of this country was not very large, but it was an expanding trade, and the importance of the hinterland was emphasised by the fact that the French had built a railway to tap the trade which would have an outlet at the Port of Jibuti. Not only this country but other countries attached importance to this trade, and it would be a considerable factor in the conclusion which must be arrived at upon this point. Another point was that this territory was so dangerously near the outlet of the Red Sea that they could not afford to allow any other European power to control it. He knew that was a debatable point, but upon the balance of evidence he thought it would be impossible for them to allow any other European power to occupy that territory. The other alternative was to allow the country to pass into the hands of the Abyssinians, but it was by no means certain that Abyssinia could hold its own against the Mullah. The Mullah's rule had been described as giving "a precarious existence of life and property with frequent retaliatory raids, destroying all human and animal life." They did not desire that state of things repeated in Somaliland. For that reason he thought they were bound to keep possession of the country. He wanted to see some real arrangement made whereby
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if they were to continue to protect the Italian frontier, and their own, against the Mullah the Italians should join with them adequately in regard to providing both money and men. He did not see why this country should be turned into national philanthropists going about doing everybody's dirty work, collecting the debts of one country and performing the police work of another. They had got quite enough on their own hands without interfering in other people's affairs, and if they were to continue to protect the Italians from the Mullah, Italy ought to co-operate with them in every possible way. He suggested to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that there ought to be adequate protection of the frontier. The past revenues of the country justified spending a certain amount of money upon the protection of the country, and if that policy was followed then he thought there would be a cessation of disturbances and disasters discreditable to our rule and harmful to our finances.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item L be reduced by£500."—(Mr. Charles Hobhouse.)
THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CARNBORNE,: The hon. Gentleman, in the speech he has just delivered to the Committee, has complained that the Government has not given, as I understood him, sufficient information. I think the hon. Member himself will recognise from the Blue books that we have not been backward in producing all the official papers dealing with the subject, and that we have given all the information in our power to the House of Commons and the country. I am well aware that although the Foreign Office presents many Blue-books, there are very few hon. Members who have the time to read them; but I think the hon. Gentleman himself has evidently read them and studied them with some care. I am afraid, however, that I cannot agree with the conclusions which the hon. Member has drawn from those Blue-books. The hon. Gentleman has spoken of the reasons which originally led us to occupy the Somali coast. In the first place Berbera was occupied because it

973
afforded a convenient place from which to draw the necessary provisions for the garrison of Aden, but though that was perhaps the original view it was not the only reason which led us to retain that position. The hon. Gentlemen himself has appreciated that, and a glance at the map will show the importance of Somaliland from an international point of view. There can be no doubt that if it could be conceived that the British Government should abandon Somaliland altogether, our position with regard to Abyssinia would be very seriously modified; and, in that case, hon. Gentlemen who have made themselves familiar with international politics would be able to measure the very great extent to which that would affect our position throughout the whole of Northern Africa. Our position in Somaliland is very important, whatever it was originally, but it is not intended by the British Government, and it never was intended, to extend our effective administration far into the interior. As it was, we occupied a strong strategical position, and we enjoyed a certain trade—not a very large trade but sufficient to pay its way. It was, as the hon. Gentleman has reminded the House, the only Protectorate under the Foreign Office which had hitherto paid its way, but that, of course, will be altered in the future. Under these circumstances the Government were most reluctant to enter into any policy or operation which would throw a heavy burden on the Imperial Exchequer. I was a good deal astonished at the line the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, took up, for he seemed to think that the Foreign Office was very much to blame for its reluctance to enter upon these warlike operations in Somaliland. He told the Committee that certain warnings were received from our officials, and he said to the Government: You neglected these warnings; you ought to have acted immediately with greater vigour against the Mullah, and you ought not to have exercised any restraining influence with respect to these operations. Well, Sir, I do not agree with the hon. Member, and I am perfectly certain that if the hon. Gentleman was in office, as no doubt he will be, in any of the great ad-
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ministrative Departments of this country, he would recognise it as an elementary axiom that you must not follow, without checking it, the advice of your officials on the spot. The officials are not to blame, because, from their point of view, the only part of the world that bulks large is the territory which they are called upon to administer, and they do not take much account of the risks we might ultimately run. What the officials contemplate is the immediate good government of the area for which they are responsible, and of course they desire the Imperial Government to enter upon expeditions and warlike operations without anything like that self-restraint which becomes the central Government. Under these circumstances the Foreign Office were eminently to be commended—I think I may say so because, personally, I was not in office at the time—when they shrank from entirely oversetting the established policy hitherto of governing the coast and merely having relations with the interior so far as trade rendered it necessary, and put off, as it were, to the last moment the undertaking of these warlike operations. But they did not reject the advice of the officials, as I think anyone who listened to the speech of the hon. Member would have been led to suppose. On the contrary, having carefully weighed and sifted the recommendations put before them, they came to the conclusion that an expedition was necessary. I am speaking of the time, as far back as 1899. An expedition was absolutely ordered and troops had been actually told off to take part in it, but the Mullah elected to retire. At that time, for some reason which was not known, his forces disappeared, and he himself retreated beyond the limits of the British Protectorate. Under these circumstances the course of the Government was obvious. The expedition was no longer called for and they at once countermanded the preparations which had been made. That finishes what I may call the first phase of the Somaliland difficulty.
But, unfortunately, the hopes which we had entertained that the Mullah had finally retired were disappointed, and he reappeared. Fresh raids were committed and fresh atrocities were inflicted upon the friendly tribes—tribes in alliance and friendship with this country. Once more it was necessary for us to consider

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whether an expedition of some kind against the Mullah was not required, We were advised that it was absolutely necessary, as the hon. Gentleman has told the Committee. Once more, having weighed the matter carefully, and taken all the advice in our power, we issued the necessary orders in November for getting together those irregular troops which had to carry out the expedition. The expedition was formed, and was placed under the able command of Colonel Swayne The troops operated under very great difficulty against the Mullah, they defeated him in two or three engagements, and drove his forces headlong before them. Then it is said that we were advised to go forward and that we did not go forward, but restrained our forces and put an end to the expedition. That is perfectly true, but the hon. Gentleman, in another part of his speech, supplied the reason why we acted in that way. In his speech he criticised the Government very severely for having advanced into Italian territory and having undertaken an expedition at a great distance from the base, and he attributed the subsequent check which our arms received to our rashness in that direction. That is precisely what the Government desired to avoid when they put an end to the expedition ordered in 1900. It was because the Mullah had retreated to Mudug which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is not in British territory, that it was impossible to carry the campaign any further. We had not even got the permission of the Italian Government to go there at that time, and even if we had, I frankly admit, my advice, of whatever value it might be, would have been strongly against the expedition being allowed to proceed any farther, and that we should do our utmost to keep these military operations within reasonable limits, both on the grounds of expense and of the loss of life which warlike operations of course entail.
That brings me to the third phase. Although we had established certain defensive posts upon a line which we took up, raids took place within a very few miles of the strongest of our defensive posts. Now that is very significant, because I do not think the Government would have entered
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into a campaign of the dimensions of the present campaign—I mean the campaign actually going on—until they had tried the defensive system. It was evidently necessary before embarking upon what I am afraid will prove to be expensive operations, that we should make some attempt to see whether, by drawing up a line of defensive posts, we could not more economically resist the incursions of the Mullah. The acting Consul-General at that time was Mr. Cordeaux. He had done exceedingly well in the difficult duties he had to perform. As soon as he received the necessary orders from His Majesty's Government he at once drew up the line for the defensive posts which we had to form. When Colonel Swayne and General Manning went out they found this defensive scheme in operation. The acting Consul-General had extended this line of defence and had increased its power by various means. Colonel Swayne and General Manning had not been, I think, a month in the country before the Mullah made yet another raid of a more vigorous character, and combined with greater loss to our friendly tribes almost, than any raid made before. It was then and not till then, as the hon. Member will remember, that our responsible military advisers on the spot, namely, General Manning and Colonel Swayne, informed us that they thought it would be impossible to deal with the situation any longer, unless the Government consented to the delivery of a counter-stroke. As soon as we got that advice the Government no longer hesitated.
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: What was the date of that?
LORD CRANBORNE: The hon. Gentleman will find it at page 6 of the White-book.
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: What is the date? It is the date that is the important thing.
LORD CRANBORNE: This advice was received in March, 1902, and the hon. Member will find Lord Lansdowne's telegram authorising the operations immediately upon this advice under the

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date of March 7th, 1902. Then it took some time to make the necessary preparations. In dealing with Somaliland, of course a great deal depends upon the time of the year at which the grass grows. It was necessary, therefore, for Colonel Swayne to wait some little time for that event to happen. I think that after that the Committee is pretty familiar with the course of the operations. After having carried out a number of subsidiary operations near the coast, Colonel Swayne entered the great valley which traverses east and west the interior of Somaliland, and once more the Mullah was driven back to Mudug. It is a great oasis in the Italian sphere where water is plentiful and grazing too. There the Mullah was accustomed to make his head-quarters and to keep his flocks and herds. By the experience which we had gained and by the successive advices of our various officers, we were driven to the conclusion that there was only one means of dealing with the Mullah, and that was to strike him at Mudug, the place where he looked for the re-equipment and refreshing, which were necessary after these raids into our territory. So Colonel Swayne had decided to advance to Mudug, but when he got to the borders of the oasis he found himself in a thick bushy country, very similar to that in which Colonel Plunkett's unfortunate engagement recently took place. His troops were surprised. The Somaliland irregulars at once fled, but the company of British Central African troops stood their ground like men and saved the situation. The consequence was that there was comparatively little loss of life so far as the British force was concerned, but the hon. Gentleman is quite accurate in stating that the Somalis were so demoralised that Colonel Swayne had no course open to him but to retire. That, shortly, is the history up to that date of the struggle between ourselves and the Mullah in Somaliland. At that point it once more became necessary for the Government carefully to consider the whole subject in all its bearings, and to consult their military advisers at home, with the view to coming to a conclusion as to what was the best policy to pursue.
I might I think, say that the most important consideration from our point
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of view was how could we defend the tribes whom we were bound by treaty to defend at the least possible expense to this country? I am not sure whether hon. Gentlemen know that we are bound by treaty to several tribes in Somaliland. These treaties were made many years ago. They were not the work of any one Party in the State. Both Parties had their share in making them. In the days before difficulties with the Mullah existed these treaties merely described the relations that existed between the British administration in Berbera and the tribes which surrounded it; but gradually the relations became more intimate, and finally, in 1886, a treaty was made definitely taking under the protection of the Queen-Empress certain tribes surrounding Berbera. These tribes are called in the Blue-book the Ishak tribes, and, roughly speaking, they occupy an area of country a hundred miles in every direction from Berbera. Well, after taking these tribes under the protection of the Queen-Empress, there was only one course for the Government of this country to pursue, and that was not to abandon them. I do not see how there can be any argument on a point such as that; but even if we had been dishonourable enough to abandon our friends, it would have been a most unsuccessful policy in this instance, because the abandonment of these tribes to the vengeance of the Mullah would have meant that Berbera itself would have been threatened, and would, indeed, have been rendered actually unsafe. In fact it would not have been worth holding, because the trade which is the only financial quid pro quo we receive from Berbera, would, of course, have entirely disappeared. Exactly the same situation which would have made it impossible to hold Eastern Somaliland would have made it impossible to hold Western Somaliland, and the whole of the Protectorate would have followed suit. I ask the Committee with what face we could hold relations with any black community in that part of Africa if we had been dishonourable enough to adopt a policy of that kind? Our whole influence would have disappeared. But not only that, on the southern side of the Somaliland Protectorate—the quarter where the Mullah's influence prevails, extends to the East African Protectorate, and that, too, would have been threatened by the Mullah.

979
The Mullah, with all the prestige of success, and of having driven out of Somaliland the most powerful Western nation, would, no doubt, have threatened the East African Protectorate. What course was then open to us? We might have adopted a purely defensive policy; we might have established a series of defensive posts on the frontier of British Somaliland; but when we came to inquire as to what that would mean, we found that it would mean the permanent occupation of Somaliland by 10,000 of our best troops, and the expense would have been absolutely prohibitive. The idea was therefore abandoned. If we are not to have a defensive policy or an abandonment policy, there is only one other policy left, and that is an offensive policy; namely, to attack the Mullah in his head-quarters, and render him innocuous in the future. That was the policy the Government adopted. At this point the matter passed out of the hands of the Foreign Office into the hands of the War Office.
MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Did the Foreign Office come to this strategical conclusion?
LORD CRANBORNE: His Majesty's Government came to it. As my hon. friend is aware, we had the best military advice which this country can produce, and we took it as I have detailed. I do not think the Foreign Office has anything to reproach itself with. It seems to me that we acted with great moderation. We did our very utmost to avoid throwing unnecessary expenditure on the taxpayers of this country, but at the same time we showed ourselves careful to fulfil our obligations and to preserve our honourable traditions. If the Committee think that in an Empire like this it is possible to avoid expeditions of this kind from time to time, they are very much mistaken. They are, of course, intensely to be regretted, and I have shown how much the Foreign Office regretted this one. But such expeditions are, on occasion, inevitable, and when these occasions arise, then the only thing we can do is to make the best plans in our power and press them on with vigour. I have shown that that is the course pursued in this case by the Foreign Office.
SIR ROBERT REIDsaid he was not rising to pronounce against the Government on the ground of the care they seemed to have taken before entering into these serious military operations. He thought that his hon. friend behind him had made a very able and interesting speech. He did not know whether his hon. friend desired to reproach the Government for the course they had taken, but if the hon. Gentleman did, he did not share that view. He thought the Government were perfectly right in the first instance in pausing before they took any steps at all and that there was justification for that. In the second place, he thought the Government were right to try to minimise, as far as they could, the extent of the operations they had undertaken. The real point the noble Lord had not explained, and that was why we have got into this trouble at all. The Paper before him—Africa, No. 5, 1901—contained in its very first pages the only explanation he knew of, as to the origin of this trouble, and he wished to draw attention to the circumstances. In 1899, the Consul-General at Berbera, Mr. Sadler, said that the Mullah at that time was a person of pacific disposition: a religious zealot particularly attentive to regularity in the hours of prayer, and to inducing people to abstain from intoxicating liquors. He was generally thought to be on the side of law and order, but the Consul-General seemed to think that he was then organising a religious movement antagonistic to our Administration. But there was nothing of violence. On the contrary, although he had several bad and suspicious characters with him, it was the case that he had quite readily returned to the British authorities a person who was supposed to have committed some offence, in order that that person should be tried and punished. He exhibited no sort of hostility to the British Administration, nor had he committed any act of violence. The Dolbohanti district, in which the Mullah was exercising his influence, although an integral part of the British Protectorate, was a part of the country in which we had never attempted to exercise any effective control, and had interfered but little in its affairs. He was not defending the Mullah at all, who had since been guilty

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of great cruelty; he was speaking of the origin of the trouble as traced in the White-book, and the circumstances under which Consul-General Sadler advised the Government to organise a military promenade. In June, Consul-General Sadler complained, not of anything in the nature of violence, but that the Mullah sought to induce some of our native officials to free themselves from their obligations to our Administration; and then Mr. Sadler went on, in his despatch to Lord Salisbury, to say—
"At the bottom of all is the pernicious influence of this Mullah, who seeks to undermine our authority with the tribes, and impose his own, for what I cannot but consider political rather than religious motives."
Then he confirmed that suspicion by stating—
"We have hitherto only occupied the coast towns, and depended for the exercise of our authority in the interior on such matters as we have found it necessary to interfere in, either in pressure brought to bear on the tribes in their dealings with the coast towns during the trading season, or by occasional punitive expeditions, which in each case have produced an excellent effect for two or three years."
And the Consul-General added—
"If an openly hostile move is made by the Mullah, which I do not at present anticipate, this will have to be met by force."
He proposed to show that no hostile movement had taken place by the Mullah before the recommendation was made to send this expedition. In another despatch dated 16th July, 1899, Consul-General Sadler writes—
"Reports have been received"
whether they were true or not, did not appear from this document—
"that the Mullah has arrested two of our Akils, and seized the rifles of four Biladizahs, who happened to be in the vicinity with caravans. Whether the Akils went to the Mullah of their own accord, or whether they were seized by their tribes, who are hostile, and sent to him, has not yet been ascertained."
Upon that, Consul-General Sadler took certain steps on his own responsibility. He wrote:—
"Steps have also been taken to prevent as far as possible, supplies reaching the Mullah from our coast towns."
He then proceeded to say what was somewhat inconsistent in view of the precipitate action that was taken before any act of violence on the part of the Mullah—
"Reports in Somaliland are generally so various and so conflicting that considerable
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caution has to be exercised in giving them credence; but I am inclined to believe that there is some truth in these reports about the attitude of Sheikh Salih and the religious sects who are opposed to the Mullah…..Raids and counter-raids are taking place between the Mahomed Aysa and the Habr Toljaaba Noh in connection with the agitation raised by this Mullah."
The next statement, in July, reported that the Mullah had gone off his head. The same report was circulated about General De Wet. It was always circulated in similar circumstances, without there being any foundation forit, although he did not think it mattered one way or the other. In August the Mullah was announced at Burao, which in the opinion of the Consul-General was a movement directly against us. Nothing further happened at that time. He had read the Papers and might have omitted something inadvertently; but, as far as he was aware, at that time there was no act of violence on the part of the Mullah. The country was not patrolled or administered by this country, and the tribes moved in it freely. It was more a sphere of influence than an actual Protectorate, because this country did not pretend to exercise any effective authority there at all. That was the situation in August, 1899. Then Consul-General Sadler spoke of the action of the Mullah as an "openly veiled revolt"—rather a strange phrase. Lord Lansdowne at that time was, wisely, he thought, not prepared to take any steps. In September, 1899, he said that the situation was somewhat less alarming; he discounted the alarmist reports of Consul-General Sadler, and he was perfectly right. In September, eight days before Lord Lansdowne had declined to take any steps, Consul-General Sadler took some steps on his own account. On page 14 of the White-book he said—
"The danger of the position lay in the fact that the Mullah Muhammad Abdullah has made such high pretensions and claims that it was thought probable he would be forced soon to take some definite action both to try and maintain his reputation and to satisfy those of his following who had joined him for purposes of loot.… My first act on my return was to proclaim the Mullah a rebel and warn all persons, by proclamation in the Bazaar, that all those affording him any assistance and holding any communication with him would be severely punished.…All caravan communication in the affected districts has been temporarily suspended."

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What took place after September, 1899, was, he thought, most unfortunate. A proclamation was issued declaring the Mullah a rebel, all persons were prohibited under pain of severe punishment from any dealing with him, and attempts were made to shut off all supplies from him—not merely supplies of arms and ammunition. There was no doubt whatever that that was the commencement of the trouble.
LORD CRANBORNEsaid he was afraid the hon. Gentleman had not studied the correspondence sufficiently. In the Consul-General's despatch of September 14th, four days after the despatch quoted by the hon. Gentleman, he would see on page 21 the following:—
"His methods are as follows; he seizes the best men of the tribes who have not declared for him, and all the property he can collect."
—this is in a country under British protection—
"These men he beats until they agree to obey him.…The position of the employees of the Administration is particularly hard. The Mullah is seizing the karias, families, and property of all our servants he can find in the interior. Not content with this, I am informed he has issued a proclamation making the wives of all connected with the Administration lawful to his followers."
These were acts which the hon. and learned Gentlemen tried to persuade the Committee were not of a hostile character, and not such as to justify the Consul-General in declaring the Mullah a rebel. He thought that course was abundantly justified.
SIR ROBERT REIDsaid he had stated that he thought the Mullah had shown great cruelty at a later stage.
LORD CRANBORNE: Four days later.
SIR ROBERT REIDsaid the noble Lord interrupted him, when he was answering the noble Lord's statement. He was not justifying the conduct of the Mullah, but the noble Lord forgot to tell the Committee that the persons whom the Mullah beat were tribes who had declared against him. There was no bloodshed, but there were some acts of violence, although it was only right to remember that the Consul-General himself stated that the reports were very unreliable, and ought to be received with
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the greatest possible caution. The point was that at the time those steps were taken by Consul-General Sadler it did not appear that any serious acts had taken place, beyond what might be expected in territories which this country did not even pretend to administer. It was under those circumstances that in September 1899 a letter was sent by the Mullah threatening war; and he undoubtedly took part in the raid. He neither now, nor had he ever, nor would, he ever, say it was not the duty of the British Government to give protection, when that protection was promised. The noble Lord referred in terms of indignation to the fact that some of the tribes were beaten, but if this country were to occupy a coast territory, he would appeal to the good sense of the Government, seeing the tremendous consequences which followed military operations, whether the greatest care should not be taken before they penetrated far inland, and involved themselves in enormous and incalculable military expenditure unless some definite and unmistakable outrage had been committed which they could not pass by. The hon. Gentleman opposite thought that some hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House were indifferent to the duty and obligation of fulfilling the promises of protection given by the British Government. He could assure the hon. Gentlemen that they were mistaken with regard to that; but before the actual outbreak of hostilities, nothing of any serious moment could be pointed to, on reliable information, for which reparation might not have been obtained by opening up negotations with the Mullah. He did not complain of the dilatoriness of the Government. On the contrary when the Mullah was acting in a friendly way by sending back a prisoner who had escaped, he thought it was a great pity that some steps were not taken before this very serious danger was incurred. He would point out what the real state of things was. They had occupied a coast territory, the interior being partly a desert, and, for a part of the year, having no vegetation at all. They had heard on high authority that the task of chasing a force like that of the Mullah was one of enormous difficulty; and that it was merely good fortune if it were caught up. He did not wish to blame Consul-General Sadler. His was naturally a

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difficult position; and he was surrounded by those who were alarmed for their own safety and prospects; but he felt that this country would be involved in endless difficulty unless more effective supervision were exercised over our representatives in foreign countries. He would further like to ask, was it the intention of the Government to undertake the suppression of the Mullah on Italian territory without the assistance of the Italian Government? Were we taking on ourselves the whole of the business? because, so far as he could see, the Mullah was as formidable to Italy as he was to us. The noble Lord was entitled to say we were bound to extend our protection to these people with whom we had treaties, within 100 miles of Berbera. It would be inexcusable not to do it; but he wished to know how far the noble Lord or the right hon. Gentleman intended these operations should be extended, and were they to be extended in conjunction with the Italians or alone.
SIR JOSEPH LEESEsaid it appeared to him that the interests of Italy were more in danger in this matter than those of England. On the north side of the Red Sea was British Somaliland, and on the east and south was Italian Somaliland, and to the north-west of British Somaliland was Abyssinia and the 300 square miles occupied by the Mullah seemed to be in the very centre. He could not understand why we should have made such a bad bargain with the Italians. The bargain, which was contained in page 90 of the first White Paper, was this. Two British staff officers met two Italian staff officers in conference in Rome, and this was the result—
"The exact route to be followed in the advance from Obbia on Mudug, and the disposition of troops employed in this advance must necessarily depend on the latest intelligence of the enemy. The final decision on these points must, therefore, be left to the discretion of the Commanding Officer on the spot; but it is recognised by the British authorities that it is strategically and politically important to cut the Mullah off from the south. The importance of this view would be impressed on the General Officer Commanding the Obbia force, and he would be instructed to endeavour to make such disposition of his troops in advancing on
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Mudug as would be likely to force the Mullah northward or westward."
Now Obbia is a port on the coast of Italian Somaliland, nearer to the Mullah's military position than any port of ours in British Somaliland. By this agreement, therefore, we received from the Italian Government the right to land troops and stores at Obbia, and to march through Italian Somaliland against the Mullah, but we were to undertake these operations by ourselves for the purpose of driving the Mullah away from the south, where all the Italian interests lie. This seemed a very one-sided bargain, and he would ask the Secretary of State for War in his reply to explain the exact position.
MR. MALCOLMthought so far as the debate had gone there had not been such serious criticism on the conduct of affairs in Somaliland as to disturb the Government. The right hon. Gentleman opposite did not condemn the operations in Somaliland, nor did he counsel retirement. The hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down was loud in his praises of the cautious conduct of the Government before the operations were commenced, but neither he nor the right hon. Gentleman now suggested abandoning Somaliland. With regard to the madness of the Mullah, it was well known that the Mohammedan natives called all their inspired leaders mad; and after what had fallen from the hon. Member for Dumfries, who had told the Committee that the Mullah's madness took the form of great respect for the law and a great aversion to drink, the Government might be congratulated on the tribute they had received from the hon. Baronet the Member for Camborne, who on the previous night had referred to them as a "collection of mad Mullahs." Objection had been taken to these military promenades, but he thought they were of very great use, and with regard to the little checks that they sometimes received, he strongly objected to their being called disasters. Only two effective criticisms had come from hon. Members opposite, one of which was that our operations had been carried on on Italian territories. There was nothing sacrosanct in the phrase "sphere of

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influence" in international law, as such spheres were nothing but international conveniences. We could freely go into our neighbour's territory, and we should be poor creatures indeed if we did not punish the Mullah on Italian territory, having pushed him into it, upon the flimsy pretext that we could not operate upon a foreign sphere of influence, Another criticism of the hon. Member for Bristol with which he agreed was that the Foreign Office had not paid sufficient attention to the reports of the experts in Somaliland. He was not satisfied with the explanation of the noble Lord that we had to check at home the reports made out there. It seemed most remarkable that reports of men upon the spot, who knew all the conditions, should not have more attention paid to them. The operations against the Mullah would have to be continued. Consul-General Sadler would not have suggested military operations unless they had been necessary; and, having started them, it was our duty to smash the Mullah as we had smashed the Mahdi years ago in Egypt. He was the whole head and front of this unrest. It was of the utmost importance, as the Mullah had threatened to invade South-East Abyssinia, that we should assist the Abyssinians in this matter. The time might come when we might be unhappily engaged in war with a European Power on our Indian frontiers; at such a time there would undoubtedly be a hostile diversion in Egypt as well, and in such a case it would be of the highest importance to us to have Abyssinia as our friend, and by assisting Abyssinia now we should be showing our friendship to her in a most tangible form. There was another important point to which we must have regard in this matter; and that was that Somaliland was not very far distant from Aden, and if news were once carried to Aden that we were weakening before the Mullah, it would soon spread up the Persian Gulf and so to India, where very great harm would be done to the prestige of the British name. He hoped the Government would continue to prosecute their operations against the Mullah with all the force that was necessary. With reference to the management of the war by the War Office, he regretted the unfor-
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tunate remark of the Financial Secretary that it would be a big job to change the Mauser bullets. The noble Lord would find it a far bigger job if, in consequence of continuing to use bullets which did not stop these savages, many more of our soldiers were killed. This was, he believed, the first time Mauser bullets had been used against savages of the nature of the Somalis. In conclusion, he declared that our treaty engagements, our highest interests, and our prestige in the eyes of the Mohammedan subjects of the King, demanded that we should press forward until we had smashed the Mullah, and brought the Protectorate of Somaliland to the state in which every British Protectorate ought to be.
MR. DILLONsaid the noble Lord had given the Committee no information as to the present policy of the Government with regard to this expedition. He had spoken of a certain stage at which the Government, after two defeats, had felt it necessary to consider the question in all its aspects, apparently giving the Committee to understand that it had not before been so considered. The noble Lord further stated that the Government hesitated before agreeing to overstep the established policy in Somaliland. What was the established policy?
LORD CRANBORNE: The old policy was to govern the coast, and meddle with the interior only so far as, was necessary to our interests.
MR. DILLONsaid it was hard that the Committee should now be called upon for the third time to vote money for this expedition, without being told what the new policy was. The practice of the present Government was to draw the people of the country into expeditions and large military operations, without taking them into their confidence as to the policy underlying those expeditions, and thereby enabling them to make some estimate as to the ultimate liabilities entailed. Of late years we had been emphatically reminded of the truth of the remark of the noble Lord that it was impossible for a great Empire like the British to be carried on without occasional expeditions.

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The temple of war had never been closed since the Government came into office, and it never would be as long as they remained in power. No sooner was one expedition concluded than another started in some other part of the world, and the settled policy of the Government was to conceal the ultimate object of the expeditions and the policy underlying them, and to misrepresent the probable liabilities and cost of the military operations. The whole cost of the Boer War was to be£10,000,000, and it was to be paid off within two years.£50,000 was asked for for the present expedition. Would the Secretary of State for War pledge his word that the country would get out of it for twenty times£50,000? Why did not the Government put down a sum which they honestly thought might carry them through the operations? To put down such a sum as£50,000 was an attempt to deceive the taxpayers, and he should be greatly surprised if the year closed without an expenditure of£1,000,000 having been incurred. The vicious system of grossly and flagrantly under-estimating the cost of these expeditions was one of the causes of the outrageous increase in the expenditure of the country which was now seriously embarrassing the Government and threatening their destruction. Who was the Mullah? What was the original cause of the trouble? The country was led step by step into such a position that they could not turn back, without there being made, at a time when Parliament could consider whether or not the operations should be initiated, any proper statement of the grounds on which these expeditions were undertaken. Who was the Mullah? A letter had appeared in the Press, professing to have been written by the Mullah himself, in which he said he was not mad, that he was an Hungarian officer, that the reason peace had reigned for a time was that he had gone to Hungary for a vacation, and that he would soon return to Somaliland. Now that on more than one occasion disaster had overtaken the British forces, he assumed it was impossible for the Government to draw back until they had, to some extent, re-established their position. But they ought to tell the Committee how far they intended to go, and
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what was to be the end of the campaign. Did they intend to undertake the administration of this semi-desert country, with all the expense and trouble therein involved?
The one other question to which he wished to refer was the recurrence of that savage instrument of warfare—the dumdum bullet. By persistent effort three or four members on that side of the House had driven the dum-dum bullet out of the British Army, and they would not allow its re-introduction without a struggle. Hon. Members opposite seemed to take up the position that it was lawful for a civilised and so-called Christian nation, when fighting against savages or semi-civilised people, to adopt methods of warfare which, by the universal consent of Christendom, were denied to European Powers. The dum-dum bullet was condemned by all civilised people. At the time of the South African war, although they had determined to use the dum-dum bullet, and many millions of them had been sent out, the Government were forced, by the public opinion of Europe, to withdraw that ammunition. How far would the proposition of hon. Members carry them? If they threw aside in one particular, the limitations on methods of warfare imposed by the growth of civilisation and the common conscience of mankind, where were they to stop? If they could use dum-dum bullets, why not explosive bullets? Where was the difference between expanding and explosive bullets? They were classed in the same category by The Hague Convention. If the use of expanding or explosive bullets was permissible, were they to be allowed to poison the enemy? If not, why not? Experience of human nature and the teaching of history showed that once men were allowed to go beyond the rigid limits laid down, they would stop at nothing. Were they to be allowed to kill all their prisoners and slaughter the wounded? Were they to be allowed to poison the wells? Why not? if they were allowed to use weapons which were forbidden by civilised warfare. There was a principle at stake, because when they once transgressed the limits which civilisation had placed upon the barbarity of war, their military commanders would apply those practices to civilised warfare. They saw this in South Africa.
MR. MALCOLM: Who saw it?
MR. DILLONsaid a great many surgeons and scientific men saw it, and the effect of these bullets had been observed by scientific men who had made experiments upon animals. There was no difficulty about the hon. Member getting at the facts. Having used these uncivilised methods of warfare on Indians, and on the wild tribes in the Soudan, they next proposed to use them on white men in South Africa, and would have done so had not the raising of the question in this House made it impossible. This was the kind of poison which made men absolutely forget all the progress humanity had made during the last two centuries. War was a horrible thing which was too lightly treated by the Imperialists of this country. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh, oh!"] He did not mean it in any offensive sense. When nations went to war they laid aside the New Testament and did all kinds of things which were inconsistent. In spite of all that, a certain influence had permeated all Christian nations, and it was one of the greatest and most sacred treasures of humanity that had been given them by modern progress. In one direction they had made progress, and that was that the horrors, the atrocities, and the barbarities of war had been considerably mitigated and ameliorated in recent times. Now they were going back upon that record, and resorting to methods of warfare, against savages, which had been banned and forbidden by the onward progress of humanity and by regard for human suffering. When they saw a great nation like England in conflict with a barbarian nation saying that they could not manage without using bullets that tore to pieces, and which were not allowed to be used in modern warfare, then they would realise how deadly and subtle this poison was, and how it was capable of corrupting the most civilised and humane of modern people. He appealed to the House not to listen to the military experts, but to insist upon conducting this war against these savages without staining our name by the use of these abominable instruments called dum-dum bullets, thus shocking humanity by going back on the path of progress.
MR. ARTHUR LEEthought the hon. Member for Mayo had drawn a very imaginative picture. He had suggested that this question of bullets might lead on to poisoning wells, murdering the wounded, and killing prisoners.
MR. DILLON: What I said was that these other methods could be defended by the same kind of argument.
MR. ARTHUR LEEsaid he did not think the use of these bullets would lead to barbarities of that description. He wished to know whether the complaint published in General Manning's dispatch on Monday last had been found to be well-founded as the result of further inquiry addressed to General Manning; whether the right hon. Gentleman had any reply to that inquiry; whether General Manning substantiated the previous complaint; and what action was the Secretary of State for War going to take? It had not been suggested that the British troops should be furnished with explosive bullets, or any bullets that would do unnecessary damage to the foe. The hon. Member for Mayo seemed to think that the use of these bullets was against the common conscience of mankind, but the only reference to this subject was contained in paragraph E, Article 23, Section 2 of the Hague Convention, which prohibited the employment of arms of the nature to cause "superfluous injuries." If they engaged in civilised warfare the only thing that was desirable was to use sufficient force to disable your enemy. They did not want to kill, and it was better to only wound the enemy. The question was, could they apply the same treatment to civilised soldiers as to savages. In the case of the Mullah's followers their main idea was to get killed in order to secure more favourable quarters in another world. Of course we did not share that belief; neither did we think it would increase our chances in the other world if we unnecessarily risked our lives in this. The bullets referred to had very little I effect upon savages. The clause he had referred to merely said that they must not use a bullet which would cause superfluous injuries. It was well known that in the Soudan campaign the solid Martini-Henry bullet was not sufficient to stop the Soudanese in their wild charges.

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The question was, were they to equip their troops with ammunition which was sufficient to prevent them being placed at a disadvantage. War was not a game of golf in which it was desirable to handicap one's opponents in order that they should be able to compete on equal terms. In war the object was to defeat the enemy, and to win, and he submitted it was the duty of the British Government to supply the troops with means to carry on its wars in an effective way, so long as those means did not transgress the rules of war. In this case the rules had not been broken. The only rules of which we had any cognisance, and which were recognised by civilised warfare, were the rules drawn up by the Hague Convention. A savage could not be disabled by an ordinary bullet. Therefore it was necessary to use greater force. He hoped the Secretary of State for War would tell the House what information had been received from General Manning on this point, and if his complaint had been substantiated he ventured to appeal to him not to handicap our men in order to satisfy what he could only call a feeling of sickly sentimentality.
MR. BRYCEsaid the statement of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs was candid and clear so far as it went. Still, it did not supply the information required to judge accurately of past events, or to suggest what policy the Government contemplated now. The Committee must also desire to hear something from the Secretary of State for War on the incidental point raised by the hon. Member for Mayo, and which he thought they need not discuss until they heard the facts. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be able to tell them that, to quote the words of the last speaker, they had not made their chances worse in the world to come by the use of a bullet condemned by The Hague Convention. He should also like to hear from the Secretary for War why it was that an adequate provision of artillery and supplies was not sent with the expedition, which would have saved it from the misfortune into which it had fallen. Our position in Somaliland had been, for the past four years,
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a record of growing and extending difficulties and dangers. The Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had said that position was inevitable. He did not think it was. At any rate, it was not unprecedented. It was the old story. It was exactly what had happened over and over again in our experience in uncivilised countries. Those who remembered the debates with regard to the Mahdi in the Soudan, and the debates on the outbreaks on the North-West frontier of India knew exactly how the phenomena of these cases had repeated themselves. In this case we began by establishing a coast Protectorate, and we did it with good intentions and on good grounds. One of the great difficulties Britain always had in the East was that we were continually coming into conflict, in Mohammedan countries, with the religious question which was as serious a trouble as it was at home in the matter of elementary education. The Mullah, as a religious fanatic, seemed to be something between a Trappist and a teetotaller. He obtained an enormous influence over his followers by preaching a jehad against the infidels. There were two courses open to the Government when, three or four years ago, the power of the Mullah began to grow, and one of these was a strictly defensive policy. He was said to be mad, but there had never been a case of madness having so much method. The Government ought to have adhered to their strictly defensive policy. It was to rely upon the sea and hold the country immediately adjacent, at the same time endeavouring to stop the traffic in arms, which enabled the Mullah to add to the gallantry and dash of his spearsmen, the advantages of European weapons. The officers of our forces, as usual, desired a forward policy; and the Government seemed to have been led to enter upon expeditions which had the effect of incensing the Mullah and quickening his appetite for war. If we had confined ourselves to the defensive events might have been different. That was the way the thing grew. It went on steadily growing until the expedition of last year.
Nothing could be more unfortunate than the result of the expedition of last year, when our force was surprised on

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approaching the Mudug oasis. That was the cause of a great deal of the difficulty, because, as was well said by Colonel Swayne, nothing in the East succeeds like success. The fact that we were defeated on that occasion had enabled the Mullah to become very much more formidable. The Committee ought to receive an explanation from the War Office as to why this expedition was allowed to proceed with what turned out to be an inadequate equipment. He thought the policy of the Government through these earlier stages might be reduced to these points. In the first place it was not clear that the Government themselves, although Lord Lansdowne wished to keep on the defensive if he could, stated and forecasted their own policy. They followed the advice of their officers instead of clinging to the policy of keeping on the defensive. In the second place, he found in the Blue-book little trace of what sort of consultation had taken place between the War Office and the Foreign Office, and one of the evils of the whole matter had been that they never knew whether it was the Foreign Office or the War Office that was responsible for the present state of affairs between the two Departments. He thought the whole matter ought to have been handed over to the War Office. So far as he could gather from the Blue-book it was the Foreign Office that had initiated the war, and not the War Office. But both the War Office and the Foreign Office seemed to have underestimated the dangers of the situation. Take one point. This was a waterless country, and it was not realised that better provision must be made for supplying the force with water than was actually made. It was not realised that a mounted force was wanted, because what the Mullah gained by being in possession of cavalry was similar to the advantage which the Boers gained in the beginning of the South African War. It was his celerity of movement that made him so formidable. He was able to escape, to cut our lines, and to scout. The difficulties we had found were very largely owing to the fact that his was an exceedingly nimble mounted force, whereas our force was largely pedestrian. He admitted that from time to time warnings on that subject were given in the reports from the officers. That was
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the position to which we had now been brought. He did not wish to underestimate the difficulties of the position in which the Government was placed. He wished to acknowledge candidly that they did try to adopt a defensive policy. His hon. friend who opened the debate was of opinion that the Government were wrong in not striking soon and hard. That hon. Gentleman might be right, but personally he was inclined to think a defensive policy was the best policy. But when the Government had decided to abandon a defensive policy it might have been better had they struck more quickly and harder. In his opinion, it might have been better to have struck sooner, before the Mullah's forces had been reinforced, and de moralisation had set in among our own troops.
He did not think the debate ought to close without an expression from some part of the House of the great friendliness and cordial spirit which had been shown towards us by the Government of Italy. The Government of Italy, no doubt in their own interests, but still with a disregard of pedantry, and a cordial friendliness to this country which we ought to appreciate, had allowed us to use their ports, and had co-operated with us in every way they could, shoat of employing forces of their own. He had several questions to ask the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, in regard to the concluding despatches in the Blue-book with reference to the Conference at Biome an d the Memorandum in which was contained the outlines of the policy of the Government in reference to the next move forward of the Mullah; but before doing so he might refer to the loss of Colonel Plunkett. He had the honour of knowing Colonel Plunkett, and he wished to acknowledge the gallantry of that young officer of very great promise and very amiable qualities. It was in the movement contemplated by this Memorandum that this unfortunate reverse occurred in which Colonel Plunkett lost his life. It was obviously the intention to despatch a column from Obbia to the Mudug oasis in order to strike a blow at the influence of the Mullah, and to hold it. It now turned out that Obbia was a very difficult port, in fact only an

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open roadstead, in which to land supplies. What, then, were the intentions of the Government with regard to the future? Did they propose to operate from some other point, and did the agreement with Italy foreshadow the policy of acting with friendly tribes? Did they intend to put forward Yusuf Ali, the Sheik of Obbia, against the Mullah? If so, had they considered the difficulties, which he thought insuperable, that would arise from supporting a native chief in the Italian sphere, far from our base? And, lastly, was there any intention on the part of the Government to endeavour to get Italy to actually cooperate? His hon. friend who brought forward this question expressed his desire that if the operations must be prolonged and the country be held, it ought not to be done unless Italy co-operated. But there was no indication that he could see that Italy was disposed to take any active part in sending a force into that country, or in undertaking operations there. He did not know the attitude of Abyssinia. He understood)'t was friendly, but he did not find that there was any indication that Abyssinia was co-operating with us against the Mullah.
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: She is co-operating.
MR. BRYCE: She was patrolling her own frontier, but he did not think it appeared in the latest dispatches that she was co-operating. It was, however, quite clear that, considering the present operations were going on in the Italian sphere, at a great distance from the British base in the Gulf of Aden, and with waterless deserts between, the question of the cooperation of Italy became of primary importance, and the Committee was entitled to some information on the subject. So much for the specific points on which he wanted information.
There were two possible policies for the future. One policy was to keep hold of the coast and of the tribes immediately adjoining, to defend their frontiers, so far as necessary, perhaps by a line of posts, but resting upon our own base in the Gulf of Aden. We were quite able to do that. He thought in carrying out
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that policy everything possible should be done in the way of encouraging trade. We ought to try to give the tribes an interest in keeping the peace by means of trade, and he could not help thinking that not quite enough, had been done in that direction. A great deal also might be done, by way of judicious subsidies, to get the tribes enlisted on our side. He meant the policy adopted by Colonel Warburton in subsidising the tribes in the Khyber Pass What was the alternative policy? Had the Committee consideied where we stood in Somaliland, a territory stretching away backwards into deserts unknown even to the geographer, and where there was no natural boundary, where we did not know what tribes there were between the Italian sphere on the one side and the Abyssinian frontier en the other—and reaching as far as Lake Rudolf? Were we to pursue the Mullah into those trackless limits, were we to endeavour to establish posts there, to keep garrisons, and to make ourselves permanently responsible for those territories? The Government had given the House no indication of the view theý took. This territory was wild, and as absolutely inhospitable as any part of the earth, and little fit for us to occupy with any hope of profit or benefit, while the expense would be exceedingly heavy. He hoped they should hear from the Government that there was no intention to do anything of the kind. At present we were left in a position of great anxiety. We had spent about a million already and had the prospect of spending a million more. While the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in calculating his Budget, had allowed himself a very narrow margin, we were left with the prospect of undertaking a costly operation, the nature of which was not foreseen, and apparently entirely off our own bat. He thought that a٭ question involving so large issues would require further discussion. He invited the Committee to consider the gravity of the position, and he hoped the Government would give an assurance that they were going to conduct this, operation with more prudence and foresight than had latterly been shown, and. that they would think many times

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before they undertook the great responsibility and enormous danger which the permanent occupation of these territories must necessarily involve.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. BRODRICK,: The right hon. Gentleman in his concluding sentence; drew attention to the probability that further discussion on this subject would be necessary. I do not think that anybody can complain of the tone of the debate this afternoon. The discussion, so far as it has proceeded, has gone far to clear away a good many misconceptions, both as to the operations which have been undertaken, and the objects which the Government had in view in undertaking these operations. In the first place, I do not think that the speech of my noble friend has in any serious way been challenged with regard to the account he has given of the manner in which we were forced into these operations, which we would have gladly avoided. It must be remembered that the treaties made with the friendly tribes were made, not by this Government, but by preceding Governments, which had excellent reasons for undertaking the liabilities they did accept. My noble friend showed, step by step, the circumstances which, while the Government were not responsible for them, made it necessary to exercise protection over the tribes whom we had undertaken to defend. Criticisms, indeed, there have been from various quarters. The hon. Member for Bristol thought we did not strike soon enough; and the hon. Member for the Dumfries Burghs thought we had struck too soon, and he endeavoured to show from the Blue book that the challenge was sent to the Mullah earlier than was necessary. But? think these criticisms answer one an. other. The fact remains that the tribes under our protection suffered very seriously before any steps were taken by the Consul-General at all, that they were losing their property and their wives, and had been personally maltreated at the hands of the Mullah.
SIR ROBERT REID: It was only after the declaration of the military parade.
MR. BRODRICK: The right hon. Member has confused two things. If we were to accept a challenge from a European Power, definite acts of war would probably follow almost instantaneously; but, if we reduce the language of the Acting Consul-General, the acts reported on 14th September do not by any means follow on his proclamation of 10th September. On the contrary, they were a recapitulation on his part of information which did not travel so rapidly as is the case with information in the daily paper. It was information of outrages which had been proceeding, not only a few days before, but weeks before. I only make that point for this reason. I can speak with some personal knowledge of negotiations of that kind. I have been Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and no man ever sat in the Foreign Office who was more absolutely determined to keep the country, if he could, out of these small expeditions than Lord Salisbury. That was not a unique case, for a case arose in East Africa at the same time—a case of planting a line of posts—which Lord Salisbury thought might lead to trouble. The case of Somaliland was the second. There was a similar case further south. And in all these cases Lord Salisbury set his face determinedly against anything which would make it necessary to adopt a punitive expedition? am sure it was a sentiment shared by the whole of the Government. If the sentiment would be shared in the present day, how much more would it be shared at a moment when we had undertaken great liabilities in a war in South Africa? I think, therefore, that, as regards the inception of this expedition, we may consider that we are on common ground with all our critics. Something has been said by the right hon. Gentleman as regards the manner in which it has been carried out. I was a little surprised to hear him ask the Government to explain why there was not a better provision of men, artillery, forage, and supplies. I think the question only shows that the information which has already reached us and the country, is insufficient to enable Members to judge what is the force provided by the Government. I have received violent letters in the course of the past few days, complaining that our force is inferior to that of the Mullah, and that we should

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put a larger number of men—the right hon. Gentleman said a larger number of mounted men on the field.
MR. BRYCE: My question referred to the former expedition.
MR. BRODRICK: I am glad the right hon. Gentleman was not referring to the present expedition. All I can say is that Colonel Swayne conceived that, with the force which was at his disposal, he was justified in making the advance he did. He has most gallantly carried out the duties which were laid upon him, considering the force he had under him; and the misfortune which has happened to him is one of those checks which in savage warfare and in a wooded country, with the difficulties of water and transport, may happen and must be risked in any such attempt. Perhaps I may clear that point away by saying that we were anxious, with regard to this expedition, to send as large a force, as fully and plentifully equipped in every respect, as it could possibly be useful to employ, to carry out on the true basis adopted the objects in view. I believe that we fully met General Manning's requirements in every particular. The time has not come for us to have a report on the expedition from General Manning. All I can say is that any demand which has been made upon us has been promptly executed. As regards his own opinion, I may say that I have seen a private letter only a few days ago, in which he expressed the hope that the Mullah will find his force too strong for him. In another paragraph he said—
"We must endeavour to bring the Mullah to book, and with this splendid force I think we shall be able to."
I imagine that General Manning had nothing to complain of in the provision made in respect of his force. It is obvious that in an advance of that description, made through such a country, entirely dependent on camels for transport—and these Somaliland camels, other camels being unsuitable for the work in the country—in having to proceed over large stretches of desert between the wells, we are tremendously handicapped in sending as large a force as we desire.
Complaint has been made as to the bullet. We have no information, nor had we any
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sort of communication on the subject, until the telegram coming, not from General Manning but from Colonel Cobbe, with regard to that retirement of his in which his square was attacked. The case was carefully considered. It must not, however, be assumed that the whole of the ammunition consists of the bullet referred to; we had also a certain number of troops armed with Martini-Henry rifles; and until I heard the hon. Member I was not aware that the Martini-Henry bullet had not been considered sufficient as against savage troops. Generally speaking, the stopping power of the bullet has been recognised as-sufficient. With regard to the other bullet, we wait from General Manning confirmation of this report. I telegraphed at once to know what his opinion was, and whether he had heard of any such complaint in other attacks which have been made I is a difficult and thorny subject. I agree to a large-extent with the hon. Member for Fareham. You are bound to have a bullet of sufficient stopping power to prevent the rush of savages. That is, I think, clear. But it can be achieved without any of the terrors which the hon. Member for East Mayo fears. A very simple operation on the bullet of cutting off the end has that effect without producing the result which has been mentioned. A subject of this kind, however, will have our most earnest attention as soon as we have the facts before us. But hon. Members must not forget that if the facts as telegraphed are true, a force of 200 succeeded in laying low at least 2,000 assailants, and it must be evident, therefore, that the failure of the bullet cannot have been so complete. No serious attempt has been made to prove that the equipment of the force has been, defective; so I am sure that no hon. Member will hesitate to agree that General Manning's progress, the difficulties which he has already surmounted, and the manner in which he has advanced during the three months he has been engaged, call for nothing but the warmest commendation from this House.
We come now to what has been achieved, and what is to be the policy. I must here say a word with regard to the attitude of the Government of Italy.

1003
One of our critics rather assumed that we were endeavouring to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the Italians, and that we were not having sufficient regard to British interests. That is not the case at all. We appreciate to the full the cordial co-operation we have received from the Government of Italy. As far as assisting us to check the supply of ammunition to the Mullah, in sending officers to accompany our forces, in making things easy in every respect they could at Obbia, we have had full assistance from them. But it is necessary for me to say that we have not received all the assistance from Italy we had hoped or had reason to anticipate, in relation to Mudug since we have occupied it. No doubt there have been difficulties which have subsequently arisen, and which the Italian Government were unable to foresee; and we make no criticism whatever on the action of the Italian Government, which has been throughout of the friendliest character. I daresay that the map is in the minds of hon. Members, but the facts which we had to face originally were the Mullah's position. If we attacked from the north, as before, he would probably retire on the oasis of Mudug, and it would be much more difficult for us to attack from the north than for him to defend. We would drive him not merely into Italian territory but south and west into our own territory in East Africa. This was a contingency which would possibly spread the fanatical revolt and make it a bad business for us to undertake. Therefore, on the consideration simply of the strategical position, as in other respects with regard to the operations, there has been the most complete co-operation between the War Office and the Foreign Office. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that the Foreign Office was doing a little filibustering on its own account without having sufficient regard to the military authorities. So long as the Foreign Office conducted the business they conferred continually with our Intelligence Department, and we have to take the fullest responsibility for all that took place. When the matter assumed a more serious character and the War Office took it over, we kept in close touch with the Foreign Office on account of so many political considerations being involved. It became necessary to make an advance from Obbia on strategical grounds. The
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object was to strike a blow at the prestige of the Mullah by driving him from his base at Mudug. In doing that the desire was to drive him, not to the south and west, but to the north and the east. That object was fully accomplished. The Mullah was unable to proceed to the south, and was driven to the north, in close proximity to the Abyssinian frontier. The next step was the closing up of our forces from the north That also was accomplished by Colonel Gough. The question then arose whether a similar column could drive the Mullah nearer to the Abyssinian frontier; and that was accomplished by the advance to Gumbarru; and not only has more been accomplished by General Manning than was contemplated at the outset, but the Mullah's position at present is more un favourable to himself than we could have hoped for from a campaign which could not with any certainty be expected to end in his capture. Then came the advance to Galadi. In that case I think that Colonel Plunkett was probably carried too far by his eagerness to attack the enemy. I agree with the tribute paid by the right hon. Gentleman to Colonel Plunkett. As far as we can tell, the force he commanded behaved with great gallantry and did everything that lay in their power when they were engaged by the enemy. But it is fair to General Manning to say that the further advance of Colonel Plunkett was not part of his scheme, and was undertaken by Colonel Plunkett on his own responsibility; and therefore that check must not be held to have influenced in any degree the operations which General Manning had undertaken. He is at Galadi, far in advance of the position we expected him to occupy. Colonel Gough is at Bohotle, and we are in communication with the Abyssinians, who are advancing from the west and south. I do not prophesy how far the co-operation of these bodies may lead to the desired results. I have telegraphed to General Manning to ask what he considers to be the estimate of the position; and until I receive that estimate I am sure the Committee will absolve me from any statement as to what the immediate military operations must be.
MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: Could the right hon. Gentleman say where General Manning is at present? The right hon. Gentleman has telegraphed to him, therefore he must know.
MR. BRODRICK: We believe him to be at Galadi. But while I cannot tell what the next military steps will be, I should like to clear away the impression that we are bound to hold on to Mudug by any agreement with the Italian Government. We have cleared the Mullah out of Mudug, and have operated from that base for our own benefit. If the Italians are prepared to keep the place they may; but our responsibility for Mudug in the Italian territory is entirely confined to any advantage which our own commanders may think they derive strategically from its further occupation. It is open to General Manning to retire to Bohotle, and to establish there a chain of posts. He may wish to advance further to cooperate with the Abyssinians; but in either case we shall hear before any steps are taken; and it is impossible for me to suggest what will be the immediate course. The right hon. Gentleman has expressed the hope, in which he will have the heartiest sympathy of the Government, that we shall not pursue the Mullah into trackless deserts; that we shall not set up a line of posts and garrisons in the desert, or occupy that part of the country in which this war is for the moment being carried on. The right hon. Gentleman may make his mind easy in that respect. We have no intention of administering the country in which we now are, or, as far as I can predict, of attempting to hold the country. Our policy is to keep the coast line and to maintain our protection of the tribes whom by treaty we are bound to protect; we shall certainly try to keep in hand the traffic in arms and ammunition which leads to these disturbances. We is hall also take any steps in our power by means of the expedition now in progress to break the power of the Mullah,; so as to prevent fresh attacks on our tribes. But we are not going to send a large fresh expedition to pursue the Mullah, to whom we have dealt a heavy blow by seizing his base, and by seizing a large amount of his cattle. We are also not prepared to operate further in the Italian territory, though we recognise the assistance which
1006
we have received from the Italian Government. It is suggested that we selected the wrong base, and that that has led to a loss of stores and ships. That is not confirmed in any way. We have knowledge only of two or three boats staved in, and the loss of a pinnace. We selected Obbia because we proposed to disembark our troops before the monsoon. We had no intention of re-embarking them after, nor would the Italian Government have desired that we should occupy their territory for a longer period. General Manning has carried out, as can be judged by the language used by the Italian Government last December, the intentions with which the expedition started. He, Colonel Gough, and the Abyssinian army, stand in a favourable position for completing what has been begun. We do not propose to incur further heavy expenditure in pushing up fresh troops, though we may have to send reinforcements to enable General Manning to hold the position. We do not propose to administer the country which we now occupy; and it is not proposed to set up posts, unless they be of a defensive character, close to our own boundaries, and for the protection of the tribes within our own boundaries. These expeditions are undoubtedly onerous ones to be undertaken by this country, but the Government to be blamed is not the Government which undertakes them in pursuance of undoubted treaty obligations, but the Government which entered into those obligations. In this case we shall find that the occupation of Berbera and the undertakings given in respect of it can be justified, but it has been necessary for us to carry out those obligations and that has been an onerous charge which we have deferred as long as we possibly could. Having undertaken the task, we have given the best support to our troops, and have every reason to be satisfied with the manner in which those on the spot have carried out the work committed to them.
MR. ASQUITH: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has not taken too optimistic a view of the future, for we should all be glad to share his view. But I rise to express my satisfaction with the assurances with which the right hon. Gentleman concluded his speech. It is perfectly true that the undertakings deliberately given by this country to the

1007
savage or semi-savage tribes under our protection must be rigidly, honourably, and even scrupulously observed, and it is immaterial what Government is in office at the time. As far as that goes our policy is a continuous policy. But I am also sure that we are all very anxious not to extend the boundary of these obligations in this particular quarter. From the point of view of Imperial safety and prestige, and from the point of view of trade, anything more undesirable than enlarging our already onerous and thankless responsibilities I cannot possibly conceive. Therefore I hail the right hon. Gentleman's statement on behalf of the Government that there is no intention of pursuing these operations beyond the boundaries of our own spheres of interest, but that there is the strongest disinclination to undertake the task of administering this country or of permanently occupying it. I am also glad to hear that, as far as the Italian sphere is concerned, we have undertaken no obligation at all. The Italian Government has shown much cordiality and friendliness all through, but I cannot help feeling that our common interests there, such as they are, were very evenly shared between the two parties, and that it is hardly a fair apportionment of the risk and responsibility that we have been compelled to undertake. As regards the future I only venture to say that, having studied these Papers carefully, I have come to the conclusion, which I think must be shared by all those who have looked into the matter, that, if you want to get rid of the formidable character of the Mullah as a possible source of danger in this part of the world, much the best way is to starve him out of his supply of arms. I cannot help thinking that if the policy of rigidly watching the ports and the whole coast, and policing them, had been adopted and pursued with vigour earlier than it was, the power of the Mullah would never have risen to the formidable dimensions which it has since assumed. It is in that direction, far more, I think, than by pushing punitive expeditions into distant parts of the country, that the prevention of the recrudescence of his power is to be looked for. But that, after all, is a comparatively subordinate matter. My whole purpose is to acknowledge the statement which the right hon. Gentleman has made that, so far as the intentions of the Government are concerned, they are rigidly to confine them-
1008
selves to existing obligations, and not to extend or enlarge them in any way.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGEwhile rejoicing that the Government did not propose to proceed with this unfortunate enterprise, thought the Committee were invited by the declaration of the Secretary of State for War to consider why the Government had adopted the course they had been following for the last two or three years in these territories. The right hon. Gentleman said that in this last expedition they had accomplished more than they had anticipated. That was an extraordinary declaration. We had sustained a severe reverse, retreated 122 miles, and abandoned our stores; and yet the Government had accomplished more than they had anticipated. This was really trifling with Parliament.
MR. BRODRICK: I think the hon. Gentleman did not understand. What I referred to was that we had undertaken to turn the Mullah out of his base at Mudug. That we did, with the whole of his force, and ourselves occupied Mudug. We sent a flying column in pursuit, and that flying column penetrated a great deal further than it was supposed it would do, having regard to the route it had to traverse.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGEwas aware that it had penetrated, but it had had to retreat, carrying its wounded 122 miles. How was that an accomplishment of the object it had in view? There had been three expeditions, and the Mullah was stronger than ever. He started with 2,000 spearmen; after the second expedition he had 12,000, now he had at least 30,000 or 40,000; he had increased his prestige; we were in retreat before him, and the Government now declared they were giving up the job because they had accomplished more than was ever anticipated. Why did not the Government have the courage to state the facts? The truth was they made a mistake—not for the first time; they twice repeated the mistake, and then at last, having landed the country in disaster, they had discovered their mistake, and very sensibly were giving up the job. Some of the right hon. Gentleman's phrases had a familiar sound. The Government had heard that the Mullah "would not fight, "or that he

1009
was "getting tired of it," that "every demand made by the General on the spot had been more than met, "these were the phrases Members have heard for three years past. Even the statistics had the same old sound, "2000 killed!" It reminded them of the figures showing that more Boers had been killed than were ever in the field. The Mullah and his forces had been annihilated, and yet he now had ten times the number of men with which he started. The War Office had really learnt nothing. But he confessed that, when it was stated the War Office was co-operating with the Foreign Office, it was with a sense of relief he heard the expedition was to be abandoned. One Department was bad enough, but, with the combined inefficiency of both, not even the co-operation of Italy could save us. The Government had been timid where they ought to have been bold, just as in South Africa they were rash where they ought to have been cautious. They might have done one of two things—either remained on the defensive and protected the tribesmen to whom they had pledged their word, or gone forward and smashed the Mullah. They had done neither. The story was perfectly simple. Here was a Mullah supposed to be mad. If the Mullah was mad what was the War Office? It would really be interesting to have the Mullah's opinion of both the War Office and the Foreign Office. This mad gentleman started, with 2,000 men, fighting the presumably sane Department which administered our affairs in Somaliland. The sane Department at home sent an inefficient force to meet him, and they retreated "having accomplished their object," which presumably was to treble the Mullah's forces. Then, according to the dispatch of 17th March, 1902, the Government discovered that the Mullah had 12,000 men; they allowed him to raid Dolbohanti, where he added another 12,000 men to his forces. Against these 24,000 soldiers, mostly mounted, they sent a number of unmounted men—the same old story! But they sent only 2,000 African levies to overcome this really clever "madman" with a force of 24,000 first-class fighting men, whose only object in life, according to the hon. Member for Fareham, was to be killed. Naturally That force was beaten—but "they had accomplished their object." Having had these two lessons, the
1010
War Office sent another force, not of 2,000 but actually 2,300 men. Who would say, after that, that the War Office did not profit by experience? It was true the Mullah had added 30,000 to his force, but the War Office would not look at that. Then came disaster. But the War Office said their object had been accomplished They had cleared out of the whole territory; the Mullah was broken; he was chasing our troops; and the right lion. Gentleman did not know where his own General was.
MR. BRODRICK: I am afraid I cannot enter into the hon. Gentleman's merriment on the subject. When I was asked where the General was, I said he was in Galadi.
MR. LLOYD - GEORGEunderstood that the right hon. Gentleman added "or somewhere near." That made a great difference. He was glad to hear he had got back to Galadi. At all events, he was in full retreat, and had abandoned his most bulky stores. After two or three years of fighting, with disaster after disaster, the War Office, aided by the intelligence of the Foreign Office, said they were going to abandon the whole thing simply because the object was accomplished. That was trifling with the House of Commons.
MR. BRODRICK: I made no announcement of that kind at all. I very carefully guarded myself against saying what military steps would now be taken until we heard from General Manning. What I said was that the object of the expedition—to expel the Mullah from Mudug—had been accomplished, and it was not supposed that he would operate further in that sphere. Our future policy will depend on the advice we receive from General Manning.
MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid the Mullah had left Mudug to pursue them, and the Government said they had accomplished their object in getting him out of Mudug. They were fighting a gentleman whom they called mad. He should not have thought it possible that two Government Departments would have shown such hopeless inefficiency and in competency as was shown at the present

1011
moment. The Secretary of State for War said he did not know now what he was going to do, and all he was clear about was that he was not going to Mudug again. He talked as if nothing had happened, and he said he deprecated disasters. Was the slaughter of some of the most gallant officers in the British Army a disaster t Was the slaughter of 150 to 200 soldiers to be called a disaster? Here was one of the best officers in the British Army, one of the pluckiest, who knew the country—his life and that of other gallant men had been sacrificed through the sheer stupidity of a couple

AYES.

Allan, Sir William (Gateshead)

Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

Rigg, Richard

Allen, Chas. P. (Glos., Stroud)

Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

Asher, Alexander

Harmsworth, R. Leicester

Robson, William Snowdon

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Harwood, George

Roche, John

Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbt. Hy.

Hayne, Rt. Hon. Chas. Seale

Rose, Charles Day

Atherley-Jones, L.

Hayter. Rt Hon Sir Arthur D.

Russell, T. W.

Barlow, John Emmott

Helme, Norval Watson

Samuel, Herbt. L. (Cleveland)

Barran, Rowland Hirst

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Chas. H.

Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

Holland, Sir William Henry

Schwann, Charles E.

Black, Alexander William

Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

Shackleton, David James

Brigg, John

Hutchinson,Dr.CharlesFradk.

Shaw, Charles E. (Stafford)

Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

Jones, David B. (Swansea)

Shaw, Thomas (Hawick, B.)

Bryce, Right Hon. James

Jones, Wm. (Carnarvonshire)

Shipman, Dr. John G.

Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

Kearley, Hudson E.

Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

Burns, John

Lambert, George

Soares, Ernest J.

Burt, Thomas

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

Strachey, Sir Edward

Caldwell, James

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Taylor, Theo. C. (Radcliffe)

Cameron, Robert

Leng, Sir John

Tennant, Harold John

Causton, Richard Knight

Levy, Maurice

Thomas, Sir A. (Glam., E.)

Cawley, Frederick

Lewis, John Herbert

Thomas, David A. (Merthyr)

Channing, Francis Allston

Lloyd-George, David

Thomson, F. W. (York, W. R.)

Craig, Robert Hunter(Lanark)

Lundon, W.

Tomkinson, James

Cremer, William Randal

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Toulmin, George

Crooks, William

Markham, Arthur Basil

Ure, Alexander

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

Morgan,J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

Wallace, Robert

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Moulton, John Fletcher

Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

Dillon, John

Nannetti, Joseph P.

Warner, Thos. Courtenay T.

Doogan, P. C.

Norton, Capt. Cecil William

White, Luke (York, E. R.)

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

Nussey, Thomas Willans

Whiteley G. (York, W. R.)

Duncan, J. Hastings

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

Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

Dunn, Sir William

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

Edwards, Frank

O'Mara, James

Williams, O. (Merioneth)

Elibank, Master of

Palmer, Sir C. M. (Durham)

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

Ellis, John Edward

Partington, Oswald

Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

Emmott, Alfred

Paulton, James Mellor

Woodhouse,SirJT(Hudd'rsfi'd

Evans, Sir F. H. (Maidstone)

Pirie, Duncan V.

Yoxall, James Henry

Farquharson, Dr. Robert

Price, Robert John

Fenwick, Charles

Priestley, Arthur

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Charles Hobhouse and Sir Joseph Leese.

Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.

Reckitt, Harold James

Fuller, J. M. F.

Reddy, M.

Griffith, Ellis J.

Reid,SirR.Threshie(Dumfries)

NOES.

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Aubrey-Fletcher,RtHonSirH.

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

Allhusen, Aug. Henry Eden

Austin, Sir John

Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch

Allsopp, Hon. George

Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

Banbury, Sir Frederick George

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Bam, Colonel James Robert

Bartley, Sir George C. T.

Arkwright, John Stanhope

Balcarres, Lord

Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

Arnold-Forster, Hugh O.

Baldwin, Alfred

Bignold, Arthur

Arrol, Sir William

Balfour, Rt. Hn. A. J. (Man

Bigwood, James

of Government Departments. Whatever one's opinion might be about the South African War, everybody knew that there was in that war more bloodshed than was necessary, owing to the in competency of one of those Departments. Was it not time that this House should at least make some one responsible for all this muddle and disaster which was perpetrated in the name of the Empire?
Question put.
The Committee divided:—Ayes, 118; Ayes, 233. (Division List No. 72.)

Bill, Charles

Graham, Henry Robert

Pemberton, John S. G.

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs

Percy, Earl

Bond, Edward

Gretton, John

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

Greville, Hon. Ronald

Purvis, Robert

Boulnois, Edmund

Groves, James Grimble

Randles, John S.

Bowles,T.Gibson (Lynn Regis)

Hall, Edward Marshall

Rankin, Sir James

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Rattigan, Sir William Henry

Butcher, John George

Hamilton, Rt Hn Ld.G. (Midx

Reid, James (Greenock)

Campbell, Rt Hn J A (Glasg.)

Hamilton, Marq. of (Londondy

Remnant, Jas. Farquharson

Carson, Rt. Hn. Sir Edw. H.

Hardy, Laurence (Kent,Ashfd

Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton

Harris, Frederick Leverton

Renwick, George

Cautley, Henry Strother

Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

Ridley, S. F. (Bethnal Green)

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

Haslett, Sir James Horner

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Robertson, H. (Hackney)

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Heath, James (Staffs., N. W.)

Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

Helder, Augustus

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

Chamberlain, Rt Hon J (Birm

Henderson, Sir Alexander

Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

Chamberlain, Rt.Hn.J A (Worc

Hickman, Sir Alfred

Round, Rt. Hon. James

Chaplin, Right Hon. Henry

Houston, Robert Paterson

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Chapman, Edward

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

Charrington, Spencer

Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

Churchill, Winston Spencer

Jeffreys, Rt. Hn. Arthur Fred

Sadler, Col. Saml. Alexander

Clive, Captain Percy A.

Jessel, Capt. Herbert Merton

Samuel, Harry S. (Limehouse)

Cochrane, Hon. Thus. H. A. E.

Kemp, George

Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

Coddington, Sir William

Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H.

Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincoln)

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Keswick, William

Seely, Maj. J. E. B. (Isle of Wight

Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

Kimber, Henry

Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

Colomb, Sir John Chas. Ready

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

Knowles, Lees

Simeon, Sir Barrington

Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

Lambton, Hon. Fredk. Wm.

Sloan, Thomas Henry

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow

Smith, Jas. Parker (Lanarks.)

Craig,CharlesCurtis(Antrim,S.)

Lawrence,Sir Joseph(Monm'th

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

Cranborne, Lord

Lawson, JolmGrant (Yorks,NR

Spear, John Ward

Cripps, Charles Alfred

Lee, ArthurH. (Hants,Fareham

Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwich)

Crossley, Sir Savile

Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

Stanley, Hn. Arthur(Ormskirk)

Dalrymple, Sir Charles

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Stanley, Edw. Jas. (Somerset)

Davenport, William Bromley

Leveson-Gower, Fredk. N. S.

Stanley, Lord (Lancs.)

Denny, Colonel

Lockie, John

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir Jn. M.

Dewar, Sir T. R.(Tr. Haml'ts

Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

Stroyan, John

Dickson, Charles Scott

Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

Dimsdale,Rt. Hon. SirJosephC.

Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Dixon-Hartland, Sir F. Dixon

Long,Rt Hn.Walter(Bristol,S.

Talbot,Rt. Hn.J.G. (Oxf'd Univ

Dorington,Rt.Hn.Sir John E.

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

Doxford, Sir Wm. Theodore

Lowe, Francis William

Thorburn, Sir Walter

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft

Thornton, Percy M.

Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir Wm. Hart

Lucas, Reg'ld J. (Portsmouth)

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

Lyttelton, Hon. Alfred

Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

Macdona, John Cumming

Tuke, Sir John Batty

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

Maclver, David (Liverpool)

Valentia, Viscount

Faber, George Denison (York)

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Walker, Col. William Hall

Fardell, Sir T. George

M'Calmont, Colonel James

Walrond, Rt.Hn.Sir WilliamH

Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Ed.

M'Iver,Sir Lewis(Edinburgh W

Warde, Colonel C. E.

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

M'Killop, Jas. (Stirlingshire)

Welby,Lt.-Col. ACE (Taunton

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Malcolm, Ian

Whiteley,H (Ashton-und-Lyne

Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

Middlemore, Jn.Throgmorton

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Molesworth, Sir Lewis

Williams,RtHnJ Powell-(Birm

Fisher, William Hayes

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

FitzGerald,Sir Robert Penrose

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

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

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

More,Robt.Jasper (Shropshire)

Wilson John (Glasgow)

Flower, Ernest

Morrell, George Herbert

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

Forster, Henry William

Morrison, James Archibald

Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

Foster, PhilipS. (Warwick,S. W

Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

Worsley-Taylor, Hry. Wilson

Fyler, John Arthur

Mowbray, Sir Robt. Gray C.

Wortley,Rt. Hon. C.B. Stuart

Gardner, Ernest

Murray,RtHn A Graham(Bute

Wylie, Alexander

Garfit, William

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Yerburgh, Robt. Armstrong

Gibbs,HnA.G.H(City of Land

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

Younger, William

Godson, Sir Augustus Fredk.

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

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

Orr-Ewing, Charles Lindsay

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Mr. Anstruther.

Gordon,Maj Evans (Tr. Hmlts

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

Gorst,Rt. Hon Sir John Eldon

Parkes, Ebenezer

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Pease, H. Pike (Darlington)

Original Question again proposed.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn

CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1903–4.

  REVENUE DEPARTMENTS.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £6,267,500, he granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1904, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Post Office Services, the Expenses of Post Office Savings Banks, and Government Annuities and Insurances, and the collection of the Post Office Revenue."
  THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,: It has not been customary in recent years for the Minister in charge of this Vote to preface the discussion by a statement with relation to matters committed to his charge, but, in recent years, at any rate, the Postmaster-General has been in another place and has not been able to speak for himself. There are one or two matters upon which I should like to address the Committee before the general discussion begins, and which I think will be of general interest to the Committee. They refer, in part, to some of the reforms or changes to which Members have drawn my attention since I have held my present office, and they relate, in part, to those grievances, or alleged grievances, of the staff which makes such demands upon the time and attention, and, I hope I may be permitted to say, the patience of the Postmaster - General. A great many proposals are made from all quarters for changes or reforms, which the writers think would be of great benefit to the public, but the cost of which to the taxpayer they too lightly pass over, and the Postmaster-General, in considering these, has to hold the balance fairly between tli3 convenience lie can extend to the public and the demand he may make upon the public purse.
  Even before I went to the Post Office, and while I was Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. friend the Member for Devizes Division of Wiltshire drew my attention to one matter in regard to which he thought, by a small change, the Post Office could confer considerable
  1016
  benefit, especially on the poorer classes of the community. He drew my attention to the fact that when a person wanted a Postal Order for many sums below one pound, owing to the absence of a Postal Order for that denomination, be was obliged to buy two orders and pay-two commissions for the orders for the sum he required, and that very often ho was obliged to pay a higher commission for a given sum than he would be obliged to pay for a higher sum which happened to have an order representing it. I have given a good deal of attention to this matter. I found that to increase the number of Postal Order denominations so that there might be one representing every sixpence, beginning with sixpence and ending with one pound, would involve considerable increase of cost in printing and in staff to manipulate this increased number of orders, and in other ways; but I found also that when a double order was required to make up a sum, it was nearly always composed of a penny order and a halfpenny order. When you consider the cost of handling, issuing, and paying it, the halfpenny order is issued at a loss—at almost exactly the same loss that a penny order brings in profit. The cost of these orders, therefore, is ¾d. to the Department from their birth until they are finally done with, and thus, in each of these cases where it was necessary that two orders should be purchased, the profit made on the one was consumed by the loss made on the other. I am glad to be able to say that I have also been successful in making such arrangements with the Bank of England for a reduced price of printing these orders as will wholly compensate the increased cost of issuing and dealing with them. Accordingly, I propose to introduce, as soon as the orders can be got ready, a complete set of forty orders for amounts from 6d. to 20s., which will be purchasable by the public at the present rates—under 2s., a ½d., and above that sum Id., or of the higher sum now paid. I shall not be able to bring this scheme completely into operation until the 1st of January next year, but the first of these orders—those for the lower sums—will be brought into use on the 1st of July of the current year. I should add that these new orders will have a counterfoil,

  1017
  numbered with the same number as the postal order, and a blank space for the purchaser to fill in on the counterfoil the name of the per on to whom, and the post office at which, the order itself is payable; and I hope when these securities will be given, I may rely upon the assistance of the public in making fraud difficult by the filling up of every postal order before they send it off. In considering these questions, my hon. friend the Member for Devizes brought to my notice the cost the present arrangements had thrown on the members of friendly societies throughout the United Kingdom, many of whom pay their subscriptions, and many of whom receive their benefit, by means of postal orders. I should like to acknowledge the advice and assistance I received from members of the Parliamentary Committee of the Friendly Societies to whom I applied for help in this matter. I believe that while every user of postal orders will effect a saving, not only of expense and annoyance, no section of the community will feel the change more valuable than the members of our great friendly societies.
  Another change which, with the sanction of the Treasury, I am now in course of carrying out, is one which is less easy to describe in definite terms, but it is the more generous treatment. of the smaller country places, especially in regard to the allowance of a second post. The Committee will bear in mind that, since the Jubilee concession in postal matters, much greater facilities have been given than were given before. I think the time has come for some further move forward in this respect, and, though I do not wish to raise any hope which necessarily will be disappointed, and though I do not pretend for a moment that I can grant anything like all the applications made, still I hope to be able to deal more generously than has been the practice in the past with regard to those appeals for a second post in rural districts.
  Two other trifling changes, which I should like to take this opportunity of announcing, though they more properly belong to the Telegraph Vote, perhaps, you will allow me to mention them now. In the first place, my attention has been called to the fact that the Post Office
  1018
  charges 2d. for a receipt for money paid for a telegram. I do not think it is desirable to encourage everyone to demand a receipt on the payment of their telegrams. It would very much hamper business if there was a crowd at the counters, and it would delay sending away rather than facilitate the work. But there are cases where a person wants a receipt for one reason or another, and I can see no reason why it should be 2d., and I have decided, with the consent of the Treasury, to reduce it to Id. Lastly, there is a small point to which my attention was called by my hon. friend the Member for Canterbury, who is also active in postal reforms, and that is in regard to the sending of a re-directed telegram by post after it has been delivered at the proper address and when the addressee is not there. The Committee are aware that a penny letter sent to any man's house can, if that man is absent on holiday, be re-directed and posted without any fresh charge. I am not prepared to allow a telegram to be re-directed as a telegram without repayment of the telegraph fee, but I see no reason why, in the case of a telegram on which 6d. has been paid, any further charge should be made when re-directed as a letter, and as soon as the new regulation comes into force it will be accepted re-addressed for transmission by post without a stamp. [An Hon. Member: After it has been opened?] Of course not—if it has not been opened; but is forwarded in the state in which it is delivered it may be re-directed like a letter in similar circumstances without fresh payment. These are all in the nature of concessions to the public; but in connection with the extension of the postal order system, there is a restriction which I propose to make, and in which I trust I shall be supported by this Committee and the public at large. Hitherto no postal order has been obtainable for any sum under 1s. It will now be possible to obtain a postal order when these regulations come into force for so small a sum as 6d. That is not profitable business for the Department. It is done entirely for the convenience of the public, but I think, in bringing that into force, I shall be justified in placing a further restriction on the re-purchase from the public of stamps across the

  1019
  counter. It is the custom to make in stamps remittances of sums under 1s., in reply to advertisements in papers, and as long as there was no postal order by which these sums could be made up, it was hardly possible to refuse to allow stamps to be sent in payment and to make payment for the stamps across the counter when they are tendered. At the same time there have been great complaints, from magistrates sometimes, of the temptation to fraud which the practice places in the way, especially of boys and young people with comparatively low rates of wages employed in offices. They are tempted to pilfer stamps and take them to the post office, and obtain money in return. That leads to what, I regret to say, is the most frequent form of fraud amongst the Post Office officials, but which, I am happy to say, is rare proportionally to the number of employees. It undoubtedly places temptation in their way. Many cases have come under my own notice, and still more under the notice of my advisers. I therefore propose that from the 1st January next the repurchase of stamps across the counter by the Post Office should only he made under the following conditions: Any person tendering such stamps for purchase should fill in a form stating his name and address and the value of the stamps; he will not be paid on the spot; but the money will be remitted to him at his address by money order. The commission charged to the public will be increased from 2½ per cent. to 5 per cent. in order to cover the cost of the postal order. The very smallest amount of stamps that will be purchased is £1. I think, if I am supported, as I hope I will be, when this sixpenny order is in force, and that regulation comes into operation, they will do much to diminish the temptations to fraud which are offered, both to those inside and outside the Post Office.
  MR. LOUGH: Is there any restriction at present on the amount of stamps that may be repurchased?
  MR.AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: There may be a minimum, but I really could not at the moment say what the smallest
  1020
  amount of stamps that may be accepted is. There are other subjects of postal administration and reform, affecting large sections of the public and exciting great interest, on which I would have been glad of this opportunity to make a statement, but I think that, having regard to the time at which we have now arrived, I must postpone that to some other occasion. I proceed at once to deal with another class of questions which have come under my notice. Of course, I have had before me a demand for an investigation into the grievances of the Post Office staff. That has been made on previous occasions, and reiterated from year to year. The demand is that a Select Committee of this House should be appointed to examine into their grievances. I have made it my business since I have been at the Post Office to see that every memorial from the staff dealing with their grievances, addressed to me, should come before me personally, and that whatever reply was sent should be one that I personally, not merely officially, approved of, and was responsible for. Even though I have felt that many of the matters thus brought to my notice were very small details of administration, I am determined that an official of the Post Office, going to the head of his service, should receive as fair and careful consideration of his appeal, if he applies to me direct, as if he sought Parliamentary influence to urge his claim. And I venture to think that nothing has occurred during the time I have been responsible which can justify any servant of the Post Office in saying that he is unable, except by Parliamentary influence, or by Parliamentary exposure, to obtain the attention of the head of the Department. Of course, under these circumstances, I have had to examine into the details of a great number of grievances alleged by the staff, and I have received many deputations which have addressed me personally, in addition to the countless written statements which they have submitted to me.
  The other day, at the request of several Members on both sides of the House, I met the Members themselves, and consented that, if they wished, they should be accompanied by members of the staff, who should make

  1021
  before them, and in my presence, a statement of the grounds on which they asked for this Parliamentary inquiry, in order that then and there I might discuss it with my hon. friends. The statement was a long one; we were interrupted by a division, half-past seven had very nearly arrived, and it was not convenient for the Members to further discuss the matter at that moment. Accordingly I was asked by them to draw up a written statement on that subject, which is very nearly ready, and I intend to send it to each one of them. The Vote comes on to-night, and I intend to take this opportunity of making a few observations on the grounds for this Parliamentary inquiry as put forth by the staff. There are three main grounds alleged by the spokesman for the staff for a Parliamentary inquiry—wages, sanitation, and meal reliefs, or the time allowed out of working hours for taking refreshment. As regards all of these subjects, I must remind the Committee again that they were the subject of very full and careful inquiry by what is known as the Tweed-mouth Committee. I am aware that the Members of the staff were disappointed at the composition of that Committee and have expressed an opinion, shared by some hon. Members, that its composition was not of a character likely to secure absolute acceptance of its decision. I think that the staff might have protested in that respect before they found that the report was not wholly in their favour. Whatever may be said as to one gentleman who might be supposed to be too closely connected with the Post Office Administration to be without prejudice, nothing can be urged against the other three; Lord Tweedmouth, who was a member of the Cabinet and Lord Privy Seal, and Sir Arthur Gordon, who was Permanent Secretary of the India Office, not connected with the Home Civil Service at all, and not connected in any way with the Post Office or with the Treasury Administration. The last member of the Committee was Sir Llewellyn Smith, of the Board of Trade, who by his special training was peculiarly qualified to express an opinion on the matters submitted to the investigation of the Committee. The Committee bad many sittings; they gave the most
  1022
  careful attention to the grievances which were urged on their attention by the Post Office witnesses, and while they made a report which proposed many concessions and improvements in the conditions of the Post Office work, that report was adopted and accepted en bloc by the Postmaster-General of the time. And not only was it accepted as it stood, but within a year—or at least a very short time—its recommendations were further received by the then Postmaster-General, the Duke of Norfolk, and by Mr. Hanbury, Secretary to the Treasury. Further concessions were made and the total cost of these concessions, made under these two inquiries, to the taxpayers was something like £600,000 a year.
  I wish to say at once that, in my opinion, at the time these recommendations were made and accepted they were a really fair and even generous settlement of the questions which were considered. I would not be thought to cast any kind of discredit on the recommendations of that Committee, and would not have it supposed that I attach otherwise than the highest value to them. I think we were greatly indebted to the gentlemen who gave so much time and attention I to the solution of these questions. Of course it is the case that with every year elapsing since that inquiry circumstances change more and more, and it does not necessarily follow that what was fair and right then is in all respects fair and right now. I myself have come to the conclusion, after examining the many questions brought before me from time to time, that while a great number of the complaints made have no foundation in justice, and that a great many of the men who think themselves aggrieved would find it difficult to get, elsewhere than in the public service, such good employment as they have now, there are other cases which are open to improvement and for which further inquiry is needed to fix exactly what should be done. I have on two occasions, speaking on behalf of the then Postmaster-General in this House, stated that I hold as strongly as I ever have done that a House of Commons Committee is not a body for such an inquiry. No one can have a higher respect than I have for this

  1023
  House or its reputation, and for the spirit which leads so many gentlemen to give up so much time to public work, and it is, therefore, with no disrespect for the House or its Committees that I repeat for myself and for my colleagues that we are unalterably opposed to anything in the nature of a Select Committee of the House of Commons for the decision of this question. Hon. Members know, and it is no use blinking it, the kind of pressure which is brought to bear, or is attempted to be brought to bear, upon Members in all parts of the House by the public servants, servants of the Post Office I am afraid especially, though not entirely, at election time. I have had Members come to me, not from one side of the House alone, to seek from me, in my position as Postmaster-General, protection for them in the discharge of their public duties against the pressure sought to be put upon them by the employees of the Post Office. Even if the machinery by which our Select Committees are appointed were such as would enable us to secure a Select Committee composed of thoroughly impartial men who had committed themselves by no expressions of opinion on one side or the other, I still think that it would not be fair to pick out fifteen Members of this House and make them marked men for the purposes of such pressure as is now distributed more or less over the whole Assembly.
  But if I am opposed to the appointment of a House of Commons Committee for fixing wages in the Post Office, I am still more opposed to thrusting upon it, or, indeed, on any Committee, the duty of regulating in all its details the daily administration and work of the Post Office. The two main points which were brought before the Committee upstairs in support of the demand for an inquiry were sanitation and meal relief. It was contended that certain post offices, owing to a broken staff, necessitated by broken business, became over-crowded, ill-ventilated, and otherwise in sanitary. Of course it must happen from time to time that the staff will exceed the capacity of a building, and that the Department has to look out for a new
  1024
  one, but no one who knows the difficulty the Government has to contend with as a purchaser or renter of property when it is known that the Government is in the market will be surprised if there is sometimes an unavoidable delay extending over a greater period than, to members of the staff not cognisant of the difficulties, appears reasonable. But how can a House of Commons Committee, or any temporary Committee, examine into the sanitary condition of; every Post Office building throughout the in country which the staff thinks not to be in a good condition? Two specific I instances have been given to me of offices which were said to be in an unfit I condition—Swansea and Grimsby. At in Swansea the new head office was opened in April of last year, and the old office continued to be used merely as a branch sub-office, with a greatly reduced staff, until new premises could be found. It was only a week or two ago that I had papers before me with proposals for a new site, but they did not appear to me to offer proper accommodation for the staff, and I was obliged to direct that some other scheme should be devised. I At Grimsby we are in negotiation for, and I hope we will soon purchase, a site for a new telegraph office. The existing one consists of four houses thrown to gether, not a very convenient arrangement, although I am pleased to say not an in sanitary arrangement. As this is a typical instance of statements submitted to me, I will read the report, dated June 6, 1902, of a local medical practitioner who is the medical officer to the Post Office and also certifying surgeon under the Factory Acts. He says that after a very careful examination there was no objection of any kind on sanitary grounds, and that it appeared to him that great pains had been taken to render the office sanitary. The rooms were clean, the air was abundant, and no illness, as far as he knew, could be attributed to the sanitation of the building, and that is a typical case. After all, the real test is the amount of sick leave taken by the staff. Let it be borne in mind that a member of the established staff, if provided with a proper medical certificate, receives full pay up to as much as six months' sick leave; and that a member of the unestablished staff receives something less than full pay. I

  1025
  ask the Committee to bear that distinction in mind while I give the statistics. The average sick leave for 1901 was—for men on the established staff, 7·6 days per annum; and for men on the unestablished staff, 5·2 days; while for women on the established staff it was 12·1, and for women on the unestablished staff it was 8·4. It will be found that these numbers are below the normal for similar classes throughout the country, and at any rate I am quite confident that they will not support any charge that the Post Office buildings are generally in an in sanitary condition. Cases will arise from time to time in which buildings become out of date and overcrowded through the growth of work, but all such cases must be dealt with on their merits, and if the Postmaster General and his staff, with the assistance of the officers of the Board of Works, and, if necessary, of the factory inspectors, whose services we can obtain through the Home Office, are not competent to look into these matters they are not fitted to hold the positions to which they have been appointed.
  Lastly, there is the question of meal relief, which is intimately connected with the arrangement of the hours of work. The work of the Post Office servant lasts for eight hours, and if he does eight hours' continuous duty he is allowed half-an-hour out of that time for a meal, reducing his actual working time to seven-and-a-half hours. But the work of the Post Office is peculiar. The Department has practically no control over the time at which it comes. It has to be taken whenever the public bring it, and when they bring it they expect it to be dealt with at once. Therefore, it is not possible, in spreading the work evenly over the twenty-four hours, as is comparatively simple in many manufacturing and distributing businesses, to divide it up into continuous hours duty. Accordingly there are a certain number of split duties in which the eight hours' work is divided between two attendances; and it is chiefly in connection with this that the grievance as to meal relief is alleged. I have had one or two cases brought before me which I thought not satisfactory, and whenever a grievance, in my judgment, has been proved, I have tried, or am trying, to devise a remedy. I am not going to trouble the
  1026
  Committee with many more details There are over 150,000 persons constantly employed by the Post Office, and, although this House can do many things, it cannot lay down rules as to the working hours of such a vast number employed in varying circumstances. I only wish to draw the attention of the Committee to what was described to me as a typical grievance by the spokesman of a deputation which waited on me shortly before Christmas. It is the case of certain sorting clerks and telegraphists in the provinces, who have to come on duty at ten o'clock and work till two o'clock and who then, after two hours off, work from four o'clock till eight o'clock. The typical grievance was that they were not allowed twenty minutes for tea. I do not think that was a reasonable claim, or that the working day I have described was an unreasonable working day, and I hold that the country ought not to be expected to pay for tea-time taken out of the working hours for people engaged on these duties. I put it to the deputation whether meal relief which was not counted as part of their working hours would be accepted but they replied in the negative, and said that they thought they were entitled to meal relief, and ought to be paid for it. In the judgment of any impartial person was that a reasonable grievance?
  I admit also that I have found some duties which hive seemed to me unduly arduous and unduly inconvenient. But these are not questions capable of settlement by any general set of rules. They must be judged on their merits, having: regard to the person doing the work and the circumstances and conditions under which that work must be done—I means as regards the despatch of mails or telegrams at the proper time. I venture to say that no Committee, be it a House of Commons Committee or any other, which may be asked to examine this question, could possibly lay down rules for the guidance of the Postmaster-General on all these various matters. I said, therefore, the grounds which were put before me for a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry were all unsuitable for consideration by such a Committee, and some were unsuitable for the consideration of any Committee at all, bat that each case, as it arises, must be judged by the Minister

  1027
  who may be from time to time responsible for this great office. But as I hare already said in regard to our status of wages, I have come to the conclusion that the wages the postal servants receive are not in all respects satisfactory. I am not certain that in some cases they do not erron the side of being unduly hard, while, on the other hand, they err in the opposite direction, and I think my hands would be strengthened in this matter, and that I should be able to deal more satisfactorily with it if I sought advice from men of practical and business experience. Accordingly, I propose to take that course. I think that such an inquiry should be limited, as I have said, to the question of wages, the adequacy or inadequacy of the wages, having regard to the conditions of the work, and the general remuneration which Post Office employees obtain. I think such an inquiry should be conducted by men of practical business experience, and I think, if we are to get an impartial and judicial decision, the gentlemen who are invited to undertake this most difficult task should be as free from any kind of political and electoral pressure as they should be from any departmental influence. Therefore, if I can obtain the services of such gentlemen, I propose to seek them outside this House and outside the Department. I should suggest a small body of men—I hope not more than five—of practical business experience, who will consent to examine the scale of wages now paid, and who will report for my advice and information as to whether they consider the wages adequate or not. I do not wish to pledge myself to the terms I am now going to read, because I have not had time fully to consider them; but in order to give the Committee an indication of what is in my mind, I may say I think the reference should be something of this kind: "To inquire into the remuneration of the undermentioned classes of Post Office employees, and to report, having regard to the wages current in other employments, whether the wages of postal sorters, London, telegraphists, London, and sorting clerks and telegraphists, provincial, are adequate or inadequate." Those are the four great classes of Post Office employees. If I am
  1028
  fortunate enough to obtain the services of gentlemen who can and will give their time and experience to this matter, I shall hope they will be able to lay down a general opinion on the scale of wages for these classes, and that I or my successor, whoever he may be, will be able to deal with the claims of the minor classes who would not be actually included in the list I have read out. I think it is very important that, if this inquiry is to Le satisfactorily conducted, it should be a limited inquiry and not interminable. It is absolutely essential, if I am to get men of business experience to give their time to this matter, that I should reduce the inquiry to reasonable limits, and for this reason I think it necessary to limit it to that definite subject, and so limit the scope of the inquiry. I have approached no one on the subject at present, and therefore I had better say at once that I am not prepared to give any names, but my idea is that these gentlemen should not be members of the Civil Service at the present time; that they should be men of business experience and not Members of this House. [An Hon MEMBER: Nor of the House of Lords.] I would not like to say that under no circumstances would I take a Member of the House of Lords, but if I took a Member of the House of Lords it would have to be on the condition that he had business experience and that he was not subject to any influence whatever.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the question of leave, which in of greatest importance to the Post Office officials, will be included in the scope of the inquiry?
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: No, Sir. I have made, I think, most clear the length to which I am inclined to go. I am certainly not prepared to place the whole of the duties of the Postmaster-General in the hands of a Committee.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: I presume the right hon. Gentleman will give an answer himself on the question of special leave.
  MR. SOARES: Will the provincial salaries be included?
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Yes; the postal sorters, London, telegraphists, London, and sorting clerks and telegraphists, provincial—they are the four classes. I do not want to go outside the scope of the particular case with which I am dealing. I think it would be a great advantage to the Postmaster-General—I think it would strengthen his hands if he had the judgment of a body of business men in this matter of the Post Office wages, but I do not propose to surrender the general duties of the Postmaster, General to a Committee so long as I have the honour to hold office. I ask the Committee to give me all the confidence it can, and when it is unable to give me that confidence I say that that is no reason for granting a Committee to do my work, but only for transferring the office to somebody who is more competent. I thank the Committee for listening to me in the way they have done. It is an unprecedentedly long statement for a Postmaster General to make, but I was anxious to make known the conclusions I had arrived at at the earliest possible moment, in the hope that they will be received in the spirit in which they are made by me, by both sides of the House.
  MR. BAYLEYsaid he congratulated the Postmaster-General on the able speech he had made, and also upon the fact that while he had not promised a Committee of the House, he had promised to appoint a Committee with which they had every reason to be satisfied. The reasons given for not accepting a Parliamentary Committee were most extraordinary. They were that the Postmaster-General had to protect Members of this House against their own constituents, by whom they might be influenced in this matter; and also that the right hon. Gentleman wanted a Committee of business men. There were plenty of business men in the House, and there was no need to go outside for them. He was not willing to give up the rights and privileges of the House of Commons, whose duty it
  1030
  was to remedy the grievances of the public service.
  And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
  Committee Report Progress; to sit again this evening.

EVENING SITTING.

  MIDLAND AND BELFAST AND NORTHERN COUNTIES RAILWAY BILL (BY ORDER).
  MR. MACVEAGHsaid he had two Motions down on the Order Paper, one of which was: "That the Order [21st April] that the Midland and Belfast and Northern Counties Railways Bill be committed, be read and discharged, and the Bill be committed to a Select Committee of nine Members, five to be nominated by the House, and four by the Committee of Selection. That, subject to the Rules, Orders, and Proceedings of this House, all Petitions against the Bill be referred to the Committee, and that the Petitioners who pray to be heard by themselves, their Counsel, Agents, or Witnesses, be heard on their Petitions against the Bill, if they think fit, and Counsel heard in support of the Bill against such Petitions. That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records. That Five be the quorum." And the second: 'That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Midland and Belfast and Northern Counties Railways Bill to insert in the Bill a Schedule or Schedules setting forth the local and through rates to be charged on the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway and on the Midland Railway, for the conveyance in and from Ireland of agricultural produce, minerals, and general merchandise, including special charges for small consignments of agricultural produce." When the Bill came up for Second Reading, he had moved its rejection in order that the House might consider the question of the management of Irish railways by English railway companies. At that time he was more concerned with the general principle than with this particular Bill, but he indicated at the time that unless satisfactory assurances were forthcoming the Bill would be strenuously opposed at every

  1031
  stage. Yesterday he received from the promoters a letter setting forth that they had neither the intention nor the desire to raise any rate now prevailing on the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway, and that was a very satisfactory assurance in view of the gross breach of faith of which the wealthy Great Southern and Western Railway was guilty after they had secured amalgamation with the poverty-stricken Waterford and Limerick Line. They stated in the second place their readiness to closely examine and Report upon any demand for better facilities, either in rates or otherwise, where any expectation was held out that development of traffic would result. Thirdly, the promoters offered to give to the Department of Agriculture the fullest information as to all rates, and to concur in discussing before that Department any question as to alleged unreasonable rates on their system. It was obvious, therefore, that this would be an enormous improvement in the present cumbrous, costly and almost useless system, but it was, of course, only an experiment, and was conditional on the Department not exercising their powers as prosecutors under Section 17 of their Act of 1899. Under these circumstances he did not propose to proceed with either of the Motions of which he had given notice.
  Motions, by leave, withdrawn.

  SUPPLY [7th allotted day].
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)

CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1903–4.

  REVENUE DEPARTMENTS.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £6,267,500, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1904, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Post Office Services, the expenses of Post Office Savings Banks, and Government Annuities and Insurances, and the Collection of the Post-Office Revenue."
  MR. BAYLEYsaid he must again congratulate the Postmaster - General
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  on the clear manner in which he had stated his case. What he wished to-know was were the counter clerks, lines-men, and sub-postmasters all included in this Committee of Inquiry. He also submitted that the Post Office staff should be able to give evidence before the Committee, which should also investigate the condition of the auxiliary postmen, among whom there was great discontent because they were not made permanent servants; and were the proceedings of the Committee to be open to the Press? All these were questions upon which they would like to have the right hon. Gentleman's opinion. Another point upon which information was desirable was whether the House would have a chance of voting on the names of the Committee separately, and so raising a discussion.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he did not propose to ask the Committed to vote on the names, either individually or collectively. Such a thing was entirely contrary to his ideas upon this subject.
  MR. BAYLEYsubmitted that it was usual, whether a Committee was-appointed from the House or outside, to give the House an opportunity of raising a discussion by voting on the names. They were quite willing to meet the hon. Gentleman on this matter, but they would rather have had a Parliamentary Committee, and he thought if the right hon. Gentleman reconsidered the matter and appointed a Parliamentary Committee he would lose nothing and gain much. But this Committee, however constituted, would only deal with part of the grievances of the Post Office officials, and although he had been assured by those whom he represented that the Post Office officials would loyally abide by the decision of the Committee of the House of Commons, the right hon. Gentleman could not expect that there would be the same loyalty with regard to the decision, of the Committee he proposed to appoint. However, speaking on behalf of the Post Office officials, he would say that they were quite willing to try the Committee which the right hon. Gentleman had suggested, though it was not the Committee they would most-have preferred. He hoped it would be appointed and get to work at once.
  SIR ALBERT ROLLITsaid he was glad there seemed to be before them now some practical solution of this matter. The thanks of the Committee were due to the right hon. Gentleman for the manner in which he had put the case to the Committee. Of the administrative reforms promised by the Postmaster-General the introduction of the sixpenny order would be most useful to friendly societies and to the savings banks with which he was officially connected. The action of the right hon. Gentleman in this respect was a distinct aid to providence and thrift. He thought there was room for further reforms. The Post Office during the last half-century had not been altogether a progressive Department. He could not accept the suggestion that the Post Office should be merely regarded as a revenue-producing machine, and he thought it should have the first claim on any surplus it made. While in Canada recently he found very general complaints about the cost of the postage of newspapers from this country, the effect of which had been to flood Canada with American literature and indirectly to exclude literature from the home country. In this direction he hoped the Post Office surplus might be made available.
  Twenty years ago there was great discontent on the part of the officers of the Postal service, and that discontent had been growing ever since, and he thought a certain class of the telegraphists had not had their proper and reasonable anticipations realised, and that they had a perfect justification for the discontent which had existed for so long. He also thought the grievance with regard to sanitation justified. He held that there was real ground for the dissatisfaction among certain classes of Post Office employees. The Tweedmouth Committee was a one sided tribunal; the officials were represented on it, but the men not at all. The Postmaster-General, in dwelling so much on the objections to a Parliamentary Committee—objections which he did not share—overlooked what was the exact attitude of the employees. It was quite true that they suggested a Parliamentary Committee, but their general demand was for an independent inquiry, and they had Offered to accept the result of any such
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  inquiry. He was glad that, as the result of long and persistent endeavour, this demand was at length to be conceded. The announcement of the right hon. Gentleman was satisfactory so far as it went, but the reference was too limited. There were questions other than that of pay, such as those of special leave and the rights and conditions of combination, of which complaint was made. He hoped the meetings of the inquiry would be open to the Press, and he took it for granted that the employees would have a right to submit witnesses and state their views. His only doubt, subject to the disclosure of the names, was whether the tribunal would have the necessary specific knowledge and experience of Government Departments, which differed in many respects from private business concerns. However, he accepted the inquiry in good faith, and sincerely hoped, in the interests both of the employees and of the State, that the long-existing, and sometimes embittered, series of differences would be brought to an end, so that the country should have the willing, able, and contented services of this great body of public servants.
  SIR WALTER FOSTERcongratulated the right hon. Gentleman on the excellent precedent he had set of making a statement before the general discussion on the Vote was opened. If in connection with other Votes similar clear and candid statements were made by the Ministers concerned, he believed it would shorten the debates and conduce to the efficiency of the proceedings of the Committee. One of the gravest faults of the right hon. Gentleman's Department in the past had been its extreme rigidity, and a lack of willingness to modify its conditions to meet public or private demands. He therefore welcomed the more progressive spirit suggested by the right hon. Gentleman's statement. It was quite refreshing to hear talk of reforms, because in the past they had been most difficult to secure. The proposed changes were to some extent useful. More frequent deliveries in rural districts had long been required. The Post Office existed not as a profit-making Department but for the convenience of the public, although there was no doubt that the more facilities they granted the greater would be the amount of business

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  done, and, consequently, the greater the amount of revenue received. The modification with regard to postal orders would also be a convenience to the public, but he regretted it had been accompanied by the restrictions with regard to the purchase of postage stamps. Those restrictions would interfere largely with a legitimate method of passing money from one person to another; they would be a hindrance to business, a detriment to trade, and an inconvenience to the public.
  The demands of the employees had been divided under three heads—wages, sanitary conditions, and relief from work for meals. As to the question of wages, the right hon. gentleman had taken a course which, he thought, would probably meet the demands of the employees. He did not, however, think that the reference was altogether satisfactory. It ought, in his opinion, to be settled in conference with representatives of the Post Office workmen. As to the question of the sanitation of Post Office buildings and telegraph offices, he regretted that a suggestion made a year or two ago that a Home Office inspector should be called in when complaints on this head were made was not adopted. Surely it would be better to call in an impartial official unconnected with the Post Office to look into these matters. At present the men had to make their complaints to their superiors, and this caused friction. That would be avoided if an inspector, specially appointed for the inspection of workshops, were allowed, at the request of the Postmaster-General, to enter these premises and to ascertain if the sanitation was satisfactory. He thought the complaints of sanitation were borne out by the sick-leave figures, which, considering that the Post Office employees were a select class, were too high, being seven-and-a-half days per annum on the average, as compared with nine days among the members of friendly societies, who belonged to all classes, including those engaged in dangerous trades.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid that seven-and-a-half days' sick-leave was the average among those who received full pay when absent. The average among those whose illness involved
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  sacrifice was 5·2, which was little more than half what the hon. Member quoted as the friendly society average.
  SIR WALTER FOSTERbelieved that those who were not on the full establishment did not all work in Post Office buildings.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Nor do those on the full establishment.
  SIR WALTER FOSTERsaid that probably the proportion of those on the establishment working in Post Office i buildings would be greater than the proportion of those not on the establishment.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The out-door staff complain that their work is more unhealthy than the work inside.
  SIR WALTER FOSTERsaid that was hardly in consonance with scientific observation. The out-door staff ought to have less sickness than the in-door staff. The Committee would see the difficulty of drawing any conclusion from statistics which were more or less conjectural; in fact, there were no figures on which an argument could really be based. He believed, however, that the rate of seven-and-a-half days per annum was higher than it should be, and justified the question of sanitary arrangements being gone into. As to meal intervals, it appeared that the men had frequently to go six hours without food, and, in times of pressure, even longer, so that just when the telegraphic work was heaviest the men were most exhausted from want of food. This was bad economy on the part of the Post Office, and bad treatment of the men. He therefore thought there was reason for the reconsideration of the claim of the staff to have intervals for refreshment, especially when the hours were extended by the necessity for working overtime.
  Mr. GOULDINGexpressed his satisfaction at having the Postmaster-General once more in the popular assembly. No public Department spread so widely amongst the public as the Post Office, and he did not think there was a Member of the House who did not receive evidence of that fact by numerous letters from his constituents

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  in regard to the Post Office. He desired most sincerely to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the concession he had made with regard to postal orders. The sick pay of friendly societies was invariably paid by postal orders, and it had been a great burden to have to send two or three postal orders to make up small amounts. The change in regard to the signing of postal orders would also prove a very great advantage. The fact that my right hon. friend is going to issue these new postal orders at Id. will also be an advantage. As the representative of a working class constituency he desired to refer to the Committee which was going to be appointed to inquire into the question of the wages of Post Office employees. He commended the right hon. Gentleman's action in not appointing a Committee of the House of Commons which would be influenced by the electorate, and he thought they would get a much better decision from a Committee appointed from outside of men connected with business and commercial undertakings. He rejoiced that his right hon. friend had taken upon himself the burden of deciding the other questions. In the past they had had too much of Ministers delegating their responsibilities to Committees, and it was much better that they should come and defend their action in the House of Commons instead of appointing Commissions and Committees, behind whose reports the Minister afterwards sheltered himself. The Postmaster-General had determined to take the burden upon himself, and he was ready to wait with confidence the decision of his right hon. friend because, as regarded all these questions which must come before him, he was sure he would give a decision worthy of the support of the House.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid the Postmaster-General deserved the thanks of the public for the three or four concessions he had made. They were small concessions, but they were sensible, cheap, and convenient, and he hoped they would be the forerunner of a number of other concessions which would be suggested both by questions and the criticisms upon this Vote. But whilst thanking the right hon. Gentleman for
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  what he had done for the public, he attached greater importance not to the concessions but to the speech which the Postmaster-General had made in regard to the treatment of the Post Office staff. He regarded that speech as one of the most serious statements ever made by a responsible Minister, for it was significant of social and political changes which were coming over certain classes in the Government service, and they indicated a serious moral decadence of the House of Commons when they found that the Postmaster-General was so impressed by the claims and petitions that came from his Department that he was prepared to sublet his authority to an irresponsible Committee of outsiders, and to sub-contract the duty of every Member of Parliament to keep the common charge of the purse and to relax its strings or be more economical as the facts and circumstances warranted. As a Member of the House of Commons; he protested against the statement that had been made by the Postmaster-General. He had told them that the staff he commanded was a staff of good character, honesty, capacity and zeal, and he said also that it was inevitable that the staff should complain and make memorials and requests, some of which were serious but mostly trivial. So long as employers of labour employed workmen there was sure to be a demand for shorter hours, for more holidays, and other conditions, which they need not now go into, and when a Minister was responsible for employing a number of men it should be regarded as inevitable that there must be more or less discontent and the men would ask for more wages and shorter hours, and for that which others enjoyed and which they did not receive. It was his business to adapt means to ends, and if postal employees were unreasonable and went further than the taxpayers' responsibility would allow, then it was the duty of the Postmaster-General to stand to his guns and resist this electoral pressure. Failing that courageous attitude, if he thought he was going to get rid of future agitation by appointing this Committee of independent outsiders, he was living in a fool's paradise and perpetuating agitation, because when this independent Committee was appointed it would be

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  suspected even before it went to work; it would be considered partial and discredited; and its report would make the employees more discontented; and, to that extent, would cause friction, jealousy, and prejudice.
  The hon. Member for Devizes said that the tendency in recent years had been to snub the House of Commons, and he illustrated this by quoting the Royal Commission and the Special Commission. He said there had been too much delegation by Ministers of their duties to Committees and Commissions. In his opinion, instead of this delegation to an independent Committee of outsiders, he thought the Postmaster-General ought to decide these matters himself, and failing that they ought to have a Committee of the House of Commons. He thought this was a kind of delegation of work which would do more harm than good to the Post Office. This Committee was to be appointed to inquire into the wages, the hours of labour, relief and questions of sanitation [Cries of "No, no."] He understood now that this inquiry was to be confined to wages only. Did the Postmaster-General think that a narrow reference of wages alone, with hours of labour and sanitation left out, was going to please this staff of 180,000? Did he think an independent Committee of outsiders on wages alone would satisfy them? Certainly not, and there would be great dissatisfaction. In asking that this Committee should be appointed, the Postmaster-General said that as a preliminary he had received deputations and memorials in the presence of some Members of Parliament with postal representatives present, and he found that some of the grievances were serious and some were trivial. This in dependent Committee would not deal with some of the serious grievances because they were outside the scope of the reference. There was no reason why they should submit the trivial grievances to the Committee at all. The House of Commons was satisfied that the Postal Service had done their cause incalculable harm in the House of Commons and in the Press by the way in which they had exalted the immaterial and the nonessential, and left the substantial grievances alone. Take a man starting work at ten o'clock in the morning. He works
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  till two, and then after two hours interval, starts again at four and works till eight o'clock. The postal officials would never convince the House of Commons that this was a grievance.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Hear, hear.
  MR. JOHN BURNSthought the Post-master-General should say when postal servants were wrong and why their grievances were trivial.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I told the deputation of Post Office employees upon this subject—when a typical case was described by them—that I thought they had no case at all, and that I could not for a moment entertain their suggestion.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid he thought they might find, in regard to the question of wages, that some of the complaints were equally trivial, and they might find that some were serious grievances. He would, however, rather have the view of the Postmaster-General at his post, supported by the House of Commons, as to whether those grievances were well-founded. In consequence of electoral pressure and intimidation the right hon. Gentleman had decided that he could not appoint a Committee of the House of Commons or a Committee wholly of the House of Lords, but he had resolved to go outside, and appoint an independent Committee of distinguished outsiders, to whom he was prepared to sub-let his authority, and the House of Commons would sub-contract their duty. As a Member of the House of Commons, he objected to this undermining, first, of the authority of the Postmaster-General, and secondly, he refused to allow the sub-letting of his own responsibility with regard to 180,000 postal employees. If all that the Postmaster-General had said with regard to influence at elections were true, influence which amounted almost to electoral intimidation, the real remedy for that lay, not in an outside Committee, which might pacify the staff for a year, but in disfranchisement.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will you vote for disfranchisement?
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid under certain circumstances he would. It was for the right hon. Gentleman to prove the case. If 180,000 persons employed by the State were using unfair electoral pressure and causing people to seek the protection of the Postmaster-General, if they were intimidating Members of this House to such an extent that they were incapable of discharging their duty, then the remedy was not an outside Committee but disfranchisement for servants who were capable of using this intimidatory and corrupt power upon Members of Parliament. He had been twelve years a Member of the House of Commons, and invariably the official voters in his own district were practically unanimously against him. He hoped they would continue to be against him, because then he knew where they were. He had rarely, if ever, advocated the claims of sections of Government servants, and never intended to. If the House of Commons did not do their duty to their own servants, and were influenced improperly, they would show that they were devoid of moral courage and lacked a sense of duty to the taxpayer. Fancy the Glasgow Corporation, because their men asked for an extra½d. an hour, saying, "We will not refuse this because they will vote against us." Fancy the London County Council, employing 12,000 men, saying, in regard to a claim of their workmen, "If we do not listen to this claim we shall not be able to face the electors, because of the pressure they will bring to bear upon us." The exercise of such an influence in municipal administration would produce confusion, and the government of all our big cities would pass into the hands of municipal servants, simply because the members of the Corporation did not display moral courage in the discharge of their duties. When the tramway men or the policemen made a claim before a municipality, what happened? The question was invariably referred to a Committee, and newspaper men were not there. It was considered by a practical business Committee, who on their own responsibility to the taxpayer and their duty to the workmen fitted in the wages accordingly. If they did not think the claims of the workmen
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  should be granted, they told them so frankly; and, of course, if their claims were reasonable they were granted. Who was this Committee going to be? They were not going to have Peers or a Committee of the House of Commons. The Postmaster-General did not want to do his duty by dealing with these questions individually, and so was going to appoint this outside Committee of Inquiry. He supposed one of the members would be Mr. Harrod, of Harrod's Stores, another Mr. W. Whiteley, another Sir T. Lipton, the fourth a railway director, and the fifth, possibly, Mr. Macnamara, the Post Office horse contractor. Would a Committee of that kind give satisfaction to 180,000 employees? Certainly not. They would all be employers of labour, and some of them would consider 12s. a week high wages in the country, and 18s. or£1 a week good wages in towns. Immediately this Committee commenced their investigations, the postal servants would be encouraged to suspect and discredit the Committee. They ought not to allow this thing to be done. The Postmaster-General said they wanted business men to deal with this question, but were there no business men in the House of Commons? If he were Postmaster-General he would nominate a Peer as chairman, and the two Members for Oxford and Cambridge Universities, or, if that did not suit, he would select five men who had majorities of 4,000 in their constituencies, and few postal servants to bring pressure to bear on them. He believed that would better satisfy the Post Office employees.
  The reference to the Committee was to be on the question of wages only. But that would cause discontent rather than allay it. It would apply to 100,000 out of 180,000 men, the best paid, the men who worked the shortest hours and who had greater chances of promotion, while it would leave outside 80,000. The men left out would include the auxiliary postmen, and the House of Commons did not want a Committee to decide whether they were overworked and underpaid. They were all agreed upon that already. No one would say 18s. a week was a wage on which the auxiliary postman could decently support himself and family, and if the Postmaster-General was to ask the House of Commons

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  to make it 20s., or even 24s., they would unanimously support him.
  He did not agree that the Home Office should be called in to look after insanitation in the Post Office. He believed that nine-tenths of the complaints of the postal servants with regard to insanitary post offices could be dealt with in the same way as other nuisances of the same kind were dealt with, by deciding that the post office was like a workshop or factory, and came within the purview of the local authority. He was in favour of equal rights for all white men, whether they were Post Office servants or not. He did not think very much had been made out of that point. As a member of a great friendly society, he had investigated the subject of health in the industries of the country, and he found that the health of postal servants and municipal servants compared favourably with that of the general population, while with regard to absence of liability to accident and injury they were considerably above the average of any other trade. He was elected to the House of Commons by a working class constituency, and one of his duties was to vote for trade-union conditions for all Government workmen, and to see that they were properly and fairly treated and not needlessly pampered or pandered to. This independent Committee which the Postmaster-General proposed to appoint would possibly do the postal servants a great injustice by not satisfactorily meeting their reasonable demands. In that case the Postmaster-General would be badgered next year on the Estimates to rectify their shortcomings. Indeed, it would perpetuate the agitation and increase the pressure on members of Parliament to have matters rectified. The effect would be to undermine the discipline of the Post Office, to undermine the authority of the Postmaster-General, and, generally speaking, to sap that respect which the staff was prepared to give to any Postmaster-General who made the concessions due to them, but who would stand up with a face of steel against trivial grievances. That was not a peculiar doctrine for a labour representative to give utterance to. Members of the County Council and of the Borough Councils knew that when they were fair and reasonable in dealing with the complaints of employees, the working-class ratepayers would stand by them. Hon. Members had been rushing
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  to the Postmaster-General and congratulating him on the step he had taken. Why? Because it relieved some Members of Parliament from telling postal servants when wrong that they were wrong, and thereby incurring electoral displeasure. In the absence of disfranchisement, they might find it necessary to appoint a small permanent Committee of the House of Commons to sit with the Postmaster-General and advise him in precisely the same way as committees of municipalities advised the mayor, the engineer, the clerk, and other officers, and if unfair and ridiculous demands were made, the Committee would stand up and support the right hon. Gentleman in refusing to give concessions, and, on the other hand, they would share the responsibility for the concessions which they considered to be justified. If the House of Commons would do that very little would be heard of these complaints. The Postmaster-General had not had the moral courage to face the situation. He had hoped for better things from the right hon. Gentleman, who had shown capacity and patience during the short time he had occupied his present office. He was afraid that in this matter the right hon. Gentleman had listened to the voice of the charmer, in the person of the permanent official, who had advised him to appoint a Committee in order that responsibility might be diverted to other shoulders. The only way to stop logrolling and the intimidation of Members was for the House of Commons to do its duty and to take the consequences at the polls. He protested against their executive and administrative duties being taken away from them and handed over to a body of men who would stir up greater discontent than there had ever been in the past.
  MR. DUKEsaid that the hon. Member for Battersea had been less generous than he usually was. The hon. Member accused the Postmaster-General of abnegation of his functions, and the Members of the House of abnegation of their functions. He seemed to take the view that Members of Parliament, with one exception, were afraid to do what they ought to do in the direction of reform, because they had some base anxiety as to whether they would lose some votes which the hon. Member thought were purchasable votes. The hon. Member did not usually deal thus with his

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  colleagues in the House, and he hoped he; would bear with him if he presumed to point out that he did not think he had dealt fairly with the Postmaster-General or the House. In the course of the discussion on this subject last year, he ventured to say with regard to a class of postal servants—those who were not established in the Post Office—that to his mind they were badly treated by the public. He thought so now. He was glad that hon. Members who more directly represented labour, bore in mind that there might be a conflict of interest between established servants of the Post Office and other branches of the Civil Service, and the general body of working people in the country who provided to some extent the wages out of which public servants were paid. But that did not dispose of this matter. The Postmaster-General had a duty to discharge on his own responsibility, and if he did not discharge it there was an appeal to the House. He did not understand the Postmaster-General at all resented that view of his responsibility. It was pressed upon him with not quite so much temper last year as it was this year, and he was told he was not taking the position which the head of a Department employing a great deal of labour ought to take in his dealings with the labourers in its employment, at its disposal, and to some extent helpless in its hands. That was pressed upon him. What course had the Postmaster-General taken that day? He had not come and said, "I wash my hands of it; take charge of it yourselves." On the contrary, the Postmaster General had most properly said that which the hon. Member said he ought to have said. The Postmaster-General had said, "This is my responsibility." It was his responsibility, and it was the responsibility of hon. Members to see that he exercised it, and how he exercised it. The great difficulty in dealing with the question of proper wages and proper terms of employment of public servants, was the absolute ignorance which most Members of the House shared of what must guide the Postmaster-General, and ought to guide the House itself in coming to a conclusion on these matters. The Postmaster-General said that up to this time he had acted on the advice of those responsible to him in his Department, but Members of the House challenged that upon repre-
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  sentations made by their constituents. Up to this point it was a constitutional position. He denied absolutely that any constituent was disentitled from coming to him and saying that he had a grievance, and that he was oppressed by the head of a Department in which he was a servant. He denied that there was any right on the part of the head of a Department to refuse to listen to the grievances of the employees. But how was anyone without special knowledge to know whether there were real grievances? The Postmaster-General had a generous confidence in those who advised him. The servants of the Post Office on the other hand had convinced many Members of the House that there were grievances and the Postmaster-General had been bound to take that into account. What did the right hon. Gentleman say? He said—
  "You represent to me that my advisers are biassed and prejudiced. I will go outside of my Department. I will go outside the House and I will find five men of business who are experts in these matters, and they shall tell you what the facts of the matter are."
  When the Postmaster-General had got that information he would know more than he knew now. For his own part, he did not care so much about that, but he was selfishly glad because he himself would know more than he knew now. He would be in a position with regard to the representation of grievances, which appeared to him to be real grievances, to say to the employees if their grievances were unreal that their case had been considered by experts and men of business, that he saw what the Committee said and that he could go no farther in advocating the redress of grievances on their part, and that he must stay his hand. On the other hand real grievances would be redressed. What was there unconstitutional in that? There were Members of the House who had not the advantage of the hon. Member for Battersea in dealing with labour questions. In taking steps to assist them the Postmaster-General was not delegating his functions, nor was the House of Commons delegating its functions. He ventured to ask the hon. Member for Battersea whether he had not done a little injustice to the Postmaster-General and some of those who

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  had advocated the claims of the civil servants.
  MR. JOHN BURNSsaid he had not consciously done injustice to the Postmaster-General. He wanted to save the right hon. Gentleman from a world of dissatisfaction and discontent. It was out of regard and respect for him that he had warned him in the way he had done.
  MR. DUKEsaid he had not that tenderness about the Postmaster-General, who must fight his own battle. He was very sorry that there was not some such Committee as the hon. Member for Battersea referred to, and to which the lowly servants of the State who were helpless in the hands of Ministers and heads of Departments, could go and properly present their grievances, instead of having the hopeless and disappointing task of going day by day, month by month, and year by year, and making representations to Members of this House, who were practically helpless, but who had absolute goodwill and the desire to help them. They had no means of knowing the rights of the matter, and so far as he could see there was no way of ascertaining the facts in any constitutional way except that proposed by the Postmaster-General, to whom he was exceedingly thankful for making the proposal.
  MR. BROADHURSTsaid that one of the subjects he understood the Postmaster-General to reserve to himself was the vexed question of leave of absence. When the Postmaster-General dealt with that subject he would ask him to say that the men who were constitutionally taking an active part in the men's organisation should have every facility to attend their council meetings and executive gatherings, in whatever part of the kingdom they might be. Difficulties ought not to be placed in the way of men discharging a duty which had been imposed on them by their fellow-workmen. That was a matter of considerable importance, and one which had caused a great deal of irritation. Knowing the Postmaster-General's disposition to] meet reason-
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  able demands, he felt certain that if the subject were brought under his notice he would see that those difficulties were removed or modified. Another point was, that when this Committee was appointed and proceeded to take evidence, he hoped every facility would be given to take the evidence of men who were best acquainted with the grievances of the Post Office servants, namely, the officials of their trades unions. Let there be no hesitation about inviting the leaders of the movement and affording them every opportunity of venting the grievances they represented and had mastered.
  In regard to sanitation, he had a case to bring under the notice of the Postmaster-General when he was Secretary to the Treasury, and he was bound to say that the right hon. Gentleman had carried out his pledge to remedy the complaint. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would be encouraged to go on in that direction. Two years ago the Committee on Trade was engaged in the prolonged work of consolidating the Factories and Workshops Acts, and the great majority of the Committee would have inserted clauses in that Act empowering inspectors to visit all Post Office establishments and see into their sanitary condition but for a pledge that was given by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Home Secretary, that he would make such representations to the Post Office Department as would lead them to deal effectively with the complaints laid before the Committee. The Committee did refrain from inserting any clause, relying in good faith on the pledge of the Home Secretary, and the success which they anticipated would follow the right hon. Gentleman's representations to the Postmaster-General. The right hon. Gentleman opposite was now in full command, and was strong enough to carry out a policy, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give the Committee his word that he would further see into this question of sanitation. The servants of the State should not be obliged to engage in operations under conditions highly injurious and even dangerous to their health. There was much to be said for the appointment of an outside Committee. The Postmaster-General had made out a case

  1049
  for it, at any rate to his complete satisfaction; but the right hon. Gentleman would not accuse Members of any want of consideration, or disregard for his opinions, if some of them differed from him on this point. There were some questions which might be dealt with best by an outside Committee, but in a case of this kind he had the firmest conviction that it would have been better to have confined the constitution of this Committee of Inquiry to Members of the House of Commons, with, if ornamentation was wanted, one or two Members of the House of Lords thrown in. Such an inquiry should be conducted by persons responsible to the community, and not by irresponsible outsiders, who would have no one to challenge them except those who had appointed them. A Committee sitting upstairs would have given a full measure of satisfaction to all concerned in these complaints. However, such apparently was not to be the case; the Postmaster-General was master of the situation, and appeared to be determined to carry out his own policy, which hon. Members could not prevent. But might he join with his hon. friend the Member for Chesterfield Division in humbly submitting the claim of the House of Commons to have something to say as to the constitution of that Committee, either in taking objection to certain proposed names, or in submitting others? The Postmaster-General shook his head at that, and apparently the right hon. Gentleman meant that the was going to appoint the Committee on the authority of his own selection, and that the House of Commons would share no responsibility for the composition of the Committee. [Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Hear, hear.] He would not then argue the point further, but only express the hope that the right hon. Gentleman would appoint a capable, fair-minded, and competent Committee, and that it would make an exhaustive report. The inquiry would really partake of the nature of an arbitration, and he trusted that every one interested would have a full and free opportunity of submitting his evidence.
  MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENsaid he thought that the champions of the Post Office employees had
  1050
  every reason to congratulate themselves upon the statement of the Postmaster-General. They might not have got everything they asked for, but they had got a promise of an inquiry by an absolutely fair and impartial body. For himself, he preferred an entirely outside body, for such a purpose, to a Committee of the House of Commons. One of the dangers of municipal trading was that it put members of municipalities into a similar position to that of Members of Parliament, upon whom constituents exercised pressure. However, what was wanted now was not to discuss the grievances of the men, but the administration of the Post Office, and the facilities which have been given by it to the public. He congratulated the Postmaster-General and the Committee on the increased facilities promised, and while he approved of most of them, he thought the suggestion of placing restrictions on the sale of stamps across the counter by the public to the Post Office would be most inconvenient and irksome. The existing practice was convenient and handy, and therefore he hoped the matter would be re-considered, and the proposal withdrawn.
  He wanted to ask the Postmaster-General whether he could not see his way to making the parcel post more useful in country districts. They had heard much lately of the difficulties farmers had to deal with in regard to railway freights on agricultural produce. These difficulties might be very largely met by an improvement of the parcel post service, which was much more useful in the town than in the country. In towns there were frequent deliveries, and a post office for collection was in every other street, so that it was perfectly easy for tradesmen to despatch their small parcels by that means. But in the country districts the case was very different; farms were widely scattered, and far from the nearest post office; and while the Department distributed parcels, no effort was made to collect them. He suggested that the Department should organise a collection of parcels as well as a delivery; if they went to the expense of the one, why not of the other. Alternatively, the Department might authorise every postman going along the country roads to collect parcels, take letters, and sell stamps; in

  1051
  fact, to be a travelling Post Office. If that were done, it would do a great service to the country districts. Then, Again, the limit of weight, at present 11 lbs., should be increased, if there was to be any system which was really to compete with the railways, and enable farmers to send their produce cheaply to the market.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid he regretted that he could not take the same view of the constitution of the Committee of Inquiry as the hon. Member for Tunbridge. He viewed the appointment of that Committee with some apprehension. He thought a much better method would have been for the Postmaster-General to investigate all the matters and grievances raised, and decide for himself. The Postmaster-General was in a constitutional position to do so, and had a constitutional responsibility to the House of Commons; whereas, a Committee appointed from outside would be like a corporation, which had neither a soul to be damned nor a body to be kicked. From some indication the Postmaster-General had given in reply to the hon. Member for Leicester, the House of Commons was not to be told the names of the members of the Committee, or to have a right to express any opinion in regard to them. The hon. Member for Tunbridge said that this Committee would be a perfectly fair and impartial one. How did he know that?
  MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENsaid that it would be fair and impartial if it partook of the nature sketched by the Postmaster General.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid he was sure that the Postmaster-General would not appoint a Committee which he did not think fair and impartial; but in an ordinary wages dispute a tribunal would hardly be considered satisfactory on which there was not something like a fair division of representation between the classes interested, with, perhaps, an impartial person as an arbitrator or chairman. In Lancashire they had a Board of Wages, consisting of half employees and half employers, with an employer as chairman; and in Wales during the coal
  1052
  dispute there was a Board of six miners and six coal-owners, with an impartial chairman. That was what he called an impartial tribunal. They might dispute as to the wages question in the Post Office, but he could not imagine any possible division of opinion on the point that the State ought to be a model employer in seeing that its servants worked in healthy surroundings. It was shocking to know that the Post Office officials frequently worked under conditions imperilling their health and life. He had before him the report of a very important and interesting conference which took place between representatives of the Post Office workers and a number of Unionist and Liberal Members of the House of Commons. He wished to call the attention of the Postmaster-General to a statement which had been communicated to him, but as to the correctness of which he could not pledge himself, as he had no means of knowing. It was with reference to a post office regarding the sanitation of which there had been many complaints. A Committee inspected it. and reported that it was satisfactory. Afterwards, in consequence of the pressure which was brought to bear, the Duke of Norfolk visited it, and was so horrified that he insisted on an immediate expenditure of£15,000.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I cannot trace any history which corresponds to that statement, which was made to me before.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: If that statement were correct it certainly showed a most shocking state of affairs. The idea of a great public Department keeping its servants in laborious employment, which involved a great strain, in insanitary surroundings, ought to shock the conscience of the country. The other day, at Liverpool, some gentlemen came to him from the Birkenhead Office, and they made a statement as to the conditions of work in that post office which shocked him. The complaint was that the post office accommodation was inadequate, that it was provided at a time when the work was very much smaller than at present, that the men were overworked, that they were constantly breathing bad air

  1053
  as the result of overcrowding, and that the staff was always diminished by men absent on sick leave. He had no opportunity of testing these statements, but they impressed him because of the emphasis with which they were made; and it struck him that such surroundings were certainly not creditable to the Post Office Department. The case was aggravated by the fact that there was a site, the property of the Post Office, available for the new Post Office necessitated by the enormous growth of Birkenhead; but at the present moment it served the purpose of a travelling circus, and the unfortunate officials were kept in insanitary surroundings, with the added grievance that before their eyes was a site for a better building. All those matters could be easily brought to a test. He was a member of the Factories Committee, which did a great deal of good work for the working classes of the country. It was proposed that the Post Office should be brought under the Factory Law, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was a master of mystification, said that a public Department could not be brought under the Factory Acts, and he gave reasons with which he himself was taken in at the time, though he could not understand why the State should escape restrictions with regard to labour which it imposed on other employers. Could anything be more grotesque than a Committee of this House imposing grave restrictions, some of them no doubt expensive and inconvenient restrictions, with regard to labour, and at the same time allowing the Government to escape. He considered that position quite illogical; and unless the Postmaster-General was able to further enlighten him he could not understand why the State should escape the healthy restrictions imposed on other employers.
  His hon. friend the Member for the Clitheroe Division was a member of the Town Council of Darwen, a town which had the great advantage of supplying most of the paper used by the newspaper Press in this country. His hon. friend was a member of a Committee which visited those paper factories; they examined them; they went into all the sanitary arrangements;
  1054
  and they made recommendations when they found the state of things not very desirable. The manufacturers did not like this outside interference, but still they had to submit to it. The recommendations of the Committee were so reasonable that they were adopted by the Home Office, and the Home Office sent a circular to every paper factory in Darwen insisting on the recommendations being carried out. Why were those gentlemen entitled to visit every factory in Darwen and compelled to pass by the door of the Post Office? Had they not as much right to go into the Post Office as into any other building where labour was employed? If they went into the Post Office and found it in an insanitary condition, surely the Post Office, instead of resisting such interference, should welcome it. It would save them a lot of trouble, give them a lot of information, and enable them to do their duty to those for whom, as employers, they were responsible. The fact was that if the Post Office would consent to an independent inspection by the local sanitary authorities half the complaints would disappear, and if the remedies which would be recommended were adopted he had no hesitation in saying that the right hon. Gentleman would hear little more of complaints.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Several points have been raised during the course of this debate to which I think I ought to make some reply. Let me deal, first of all, with the matter to which the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken mainly addressed himself, and which also formed the subject of comment by several other hon. Gentlemen. I thoroughly agree with the hon. Gentleman when he said that the servants of the State should not be obliged to work under insanitary or improper conditions. I think, however, there are reasons—though I will not attempt to give them, as the hon. Gentleman found difficulty in understanding them, even when they were put by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—why Crown offices should not be treated in exactly the same way as establishments carried on for private profit and conducted by private enterprise. I think I am right in saying that the hon. Gentleman himself was the leader of that hand of Members who

  1055
  resisted the inspection of conventual laundries by the Home Office, and other establishments of that kind where work was carried on.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNOR: I do not think that that is quite a fair observation. In the first place, I was not a leader of the band at all; I had not that honour, although I was a member of it. At the same time the right hon. Gentleman would admit that profound religious feelings were stirred in regard to that question; and I do not think it is quite fair that the right hon. Gentleman should use that argument against me.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not wish to do anything unfair, or to press the argument for more than it is worth. I had no intention of causing any offence to the hon. Gentleman by saying he was the leader of that band. I thought he was the leader, because he moved the Amendment. But in any case let me put the hon. Gentleman out of the question, if he will allow me, and take it on its merits. Here were certain establishments, conducted by private persons, deliberately excluded by this House from Home Office factory inspection. The hon. Gentleman says that they were excluded because profound religious feeling was stirred up. That is perfectly true; but I should say that safeguarding the sanitary conditions in which the people work, the importance of preserving the health of the people, and the danger that possibly some necessary precaution may be overlooked, are not less in the case of those laundries than in the case of the Government establishments; and I think I am entitled, to that extent, without venturing on the religious question at all, to put that as
  1056
  against the general expression of opinion delivered by the hon. Gentleman. I think that in some cases, where there is good reason to doubt whether a post office is or is not sanitary, the Postmaster-General might well have recourse to the advice and assistance of the Home Office through its factory inspectors. I myself recently received a report from a Home Office inspector on the accommodation at the General Post Office which may remove some of the hon. Gentleman's misapprehensions. I have no doubt that had the General Post Office been in the hon. Gentleman's constituency he would have received as shocking an account regarding it as he received about the offices he mentioned. The Home Office inspector went over the General Post Office, and the only alterations he recommended were certainly very trifling. They are now carried out. He said that the air was generally good, the sanitary condition excellent, and that although the building was neither a factory nor a workshop it would comply with the requirements of the Factory Acts had they been applicable. Hon. Gentlemen must understand that these ex parte statements made in regard to the sanitary condition of post offices must not be accepted as definite and final proof. At the same time it is quite true that in some cases where we are about to move into a new office, I cannot, for the short term that the staff may remain in the old office, recommend that large expenditure should be undertaken for sanitary and other requirements. But all these cases should be brought to the notice of the Postmaster-General, and, if brought to his notice, he will investigate them. My complaint is, not that the members of the Post Office staff should go to hon. Members and make statements, and that hon. Members should raise

  1057
  questions in this House. My complaint is that they should go to hon. Members in preference to coming to the Postmaster-General, to whom, I would hope, they might have gone in these matters, he being their natural friend and protector, and beyond whom they should not go until, at any rate, they had failed to obtain redress at his hands. Of course the debate has turned on the statement I made as to the action I propose to take in order to obtain advice regarding the scales of wages paid to certain classes of Post Office officials. With a great deal of what the hon. Member for Battersea said I am in agreement. But I do not agree with him in what I understood him to lay down as the duty of a Minister in my position. The hon. Member says that if I ask gentlemen out-side this House to advise me—gentlemen whom I shall try to choose because they are competent to give advice—if I ask such gentlemen to give me advice, I am sub-letting my authority and derogating from the dignity of this House. He suggests that I ought sooner to act on my own responsibility, and not go to anyone outside for advice; that I ought to take my own line in dealing with these questions and refuse any other form of inquiry. I do not know how long the hon. Member has held such views.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: I have always held them, both with regard to municipal and to State servants. I think the Postmaster-General's staff is more competent to advise him on questions of wages and hours than any outside experts.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I regret the hon. Member has not expressed those views before. Last year, when the hon. Member for the Chesterfield Division
  1058
  moved for an inquiry into Post Office grievances—not a limited inquiry into a specific point, but a general inquiry into the whole range of Post Office administration—and proposed a reduction in the salary of the Postmaster-General by way of giving effect to his views, the hon. Member for Battersea supported him.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: Yes. But why? Because we were asking for a Committee of this House to assist the Postmaster General.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The hon. Member's objection is not to sub-letting or taking advice from other people; it is only to the proposal to select gentlemen who are not Members of this House, instead of throwing the matter into the hands of a Committee of this House. He was good enough to tell me how he would select such a Committee. He said he would take the Members for the Oxford and Cambridge Universities, because they have no postal employees amongst their constituents, and because, I suppose, they would be especially impartial men on labour questions, as they had never been concerned in business transactions. Then he would add a Peer, possibly to give dignity to the Committee. What a strange selection! By what authority is the Postmaster-General to nominate such a Committee as that? Surely the hon. Member knows that his suggestion is not practicable for any Postmaster-General or any Minister of the Crown to follow. That is not the way in which Select Committees are nominated. For my own part, I have given a great deal of attention to this wages question since I have been responsible for the manage-

  1059
  ment of the Post Office. Before I held my present office, I had some knowledge of it, as, in my capacity of Secretary to the Treasury, I represented the Postmaster-General in this House, but now that my responsibility is more direct my knowledge is more complete, and my opportunities of acquiring information are greater. While I think that, on the whole, the Post Office scales of pay are just, and even rather generous, and that it is quite possible that an inquiry might show that in some cases they are too high, it is also clear that in some cases they might not be justified, and I do not believe that a Minister of the Crown derogates from his own authority, or the dignity of the House, by seeking advice from those who are competent to give it. The course I propose to adopt will not lessen my responsibility, but will enable me to come to a decision, with the concurrence of the Treasury, in the light of fuller information. I intend to give the names of the Committee to the House as soon as they are complete, but I think it inadvisable to submit their names to be voted on by the House. I decline to ask busy men to give their time to the public service in this way, with the condition that their names shall first be submitted. If the names I submit do not meet with the approval of the House, it will be for the House to express its want of confidence in me. I think it would be impossible to get men of the authority and position I hope to secure, unless the scope of the inquiry is kept within reasonable bounds. Having once come to a conclusion as to the proper scales of pay for the classes I have named, it will be com-
  1060
  paratively easy for the Postmaster-General to decide as to the other standards.
  My hon. friend the Member for Tunbridge has raised the question of extending the facilities for the collection of parcels in the rural districts. I understand my hon. friend to suggest that postmen, delivering in rural districts, should be empowered to sell stamps and to accept letters and parcels; but a postman in a rural district does these things now, although, of course, he cannot carry more than a certain weight. It is one thing for a postman to accept parcels and letters offered to him on his round and another thing to say that, whether he has letters to deliver at a house or not, he shall call to see whether there is anything to send away. That will be a very large undertaking. It could not be carried out with the present staff, and would utterly disorganise the delivery of letters. If, however, he could see his way to further development, he should not be slow to adopt it. As to the suggestion that extra facilities should be given for the carriage of parcels of agricultural produce the late Mr. Hanbury, with whom I discussed this matter, was unable to suggest a scheme, and I can only say that if I can possibly find one I shall not be unwilling to adopt it. The hon. Member for Leicester has asked me as to the question of special leave of absence. I dealt with that subject fully last year. At the present time working postmen have fourteen days' holiday on full pay in the year. In addition to that, subject to the necessities of the moment, they may have ten days' special leave with pay, if they apply for it, on their providing a substitute. Is not that reasonable leave as compared with what working men in other employments are allowed? I think

  1061
  it is very generous, and I do not hold it is right to give any further concession in that direction. On that point I have given my final reply to the Post Office officials. Seeing that we have had ample discussion may I appeal to the Committee to allow us to get the Vote, especially as no reduction has been moved.
  MR. NANNETTIregretted that the right hon. Gentleman, in endeavouring to make a case against the hon. Member for the Scotland Division, should have introduced the question of the inspection of conventual institutions. The argument was not well founded, because the hon. Member had never objected to the sanitary inspection of convents. The right hon. Gentleman had asserted that when complaints were made as to in-sanitation they were brought immediately under his notice and attention given to them, but he could assure him that in the City of Dublin that was not the case. Time after time the attention of the Sanitary Officer of the City had been drawn to the condition of the Post Office, and he had replied that he had no power to enter on Government premises. Why should not such premises be equally open to inspection with private workshops? He did not think the right hon. Gentleman had met the claim of the men in anything like a fair or generous manner. The inquiry promised had reference only to the question of pay. But there were other grievances which ought to be considered, and amongst them the cases of favouritism in promotion which so often occurred. As to the character of the Committee he would like to know if, in the case of a dispute between employers and employees,
  1062
  any employer would agree to the matter being referred to a body of workmen outside the trade to settle? The effect of the hon. Gentleman's action would be to delay the removal of grievances, and therefore he held that the scope of the inquiry ought to be widened. He could tell the right hon. Gentleman that there was seething discontent in the Dublin Post Office, and the Lord Mayor and citizens had agreed that the officials were not well treated. He moved the reduction of the Vote by£100.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Item A (Salaries) be reduced by£100, in respect of the Salary of the Postmaster-General—(Mr. Nannetti.)
  MR. CLAUDE HAYsaid that though many of them who had taken an interest in this question for many years might be disappointed at the decision arrived at by the Postmaster-General, he still thought that the Committee marked distinctly a step in advance. Hitherto there had been an obdurate refusal on the part of Postmasters-General to consider the claims brought forward by the postal establishment for an inquiry into various matters of which they complained, and although the proposed Committee might not altogether satisfy the postal clerks, he felt it would result in placing before the House a great amount of evidence which would lead to further inquiry into the conditions under which the postal service was administered. He regretted that the right hon. Gentleman had not answered questions put to him in the course of the debate as to why certain classes were to be exempted from the

  1063
  afforded to members of the staff to present their case. Why was it that 80,000 employees were outside the scope of the inquiry. As had been suggested by the hon. Members for Battersea and Plymouth, it was not right that the investigation should be confined to the higher grades of the postal staff; it ought rather to deal with the lowly-paid classes, whose position had become a by-word in the country. It was disappointing, indeed it was almost a shame, that a class whose wages ranged from 18s. to 25s. weekly, and whose case had not been reconsidered since 1878, should be left out in the cold. There were other classes omitted, the sub-postmaster and the engineers and linemen, whose case deserved consideration. The Postmaster-General had shown he was a master of his business and not merely an ornament of the Department, but he had not that evening taken them very far along the road of reform; still the Committee will probably lead to a useful exchange of ideas. He regretted that the reduction of the Vote had been moved, because, if the Committee were composed of men of wide experience in dealing with large masses of men and a variety of interests, it would be able to ascertain if the scale of wages paid in the Post Office was in accordance with the scale generally paid in outside employment. Personally he was confident that the result of the inquiry would be to prove that the complaints made year after year were well founded. It was all very well to say that the taxpayer must be considered, but they must also remember that postal employees were the servants of a monopoly, and if they lost their appointment had little or no chance of getting similar employment elsewhere. They had entered on a new chapter of postal
  1064
  inquiry, and what opportunities would be history, and he hoped the result would be to largely improve their position.
  MR. LOUGHsaid it was quite impossible in the time left to them to discuss the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, which had dealt with a question of gigantic importance, viz., the re-purchase of stamps across the Post Office counter. Perhaps there had been some pilfering, which it was desirable to stop, but in order to do that they ought not to treat as rogues every one who wished to sell stamps to the Post Office.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not suggest doing anything of the kind.
  MR. LOUGHsaid he would deal with the matter on a later occasion.
  And, it being Midnight, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

  BOROUGH FUNDS BILL
  (Not amended by the Standing Committee), considered; Bill to be read the third time upon Monday next.

  OUTDOOR RELIEF (PENSIONERS) BILL.
  Considered in Committee, and reported, with an Amendment; Bill, as amended, to be considered upon Monday next.
  Adjourned at five minutes after Twelve o'clock.

COMMISSION.
The following Bill received the Royal Assent—Army (Annual).

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Liverpool University Bill [H.L.]. Report from His Majesty's Attorney-General received, and ordered to lie on the Table.
Pentillie Estate Bill [H.L.]. Judges' Report received. Bill presented and read 1a.
Hove, Worthing, and District Tram ways Bill [H.L.]. Petition for additional provision; of the British Electric Traction Company under their Common Seal; together with the proposed Amendments annexed thereto; read and referred to the Examiners.
Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Belfast Electric Power Bill [H.L.]. The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the promoters do not intend to proceed further with the Bill: Ordered that the Bill be not further proceeded with.
Cardiff Railway Bill [H.L.]. The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the opposition to the Bill was with drawn: The orders made on the 12th and 26th March last discharged, and Bill committed.
Harrogate Water Bill [H.L.]; Wirral Railway Bill [H.L.]; Pelican and British Empire Life Office Bill [H.L.]; Harrow and Stanmore Gas Bill [H.L.]; Wellington (Salop) Gas Bill [H.L.]; South Wales Mineral Railway Bill [H.L.]; Milford Docks Bill [H.L.]; All Saints, Poplar (Rate Abolition) Bill [H.L.]. Reported, with Amendments.
Knott End Railway (Extension of Time) Bill [H.L.]. Reported, with an Amendment.
Dublin Improvement (Bull Alley Area) Bill. Read 2a and committed.
Great Western Railway (Pension Fund) Bill. Read 2a, and committed for Tuesday next.
Macclesfield and District Electric Tramways Bill [H.L.]. Standing Order No. 92, considered (according to order), and dispensed with, with respect to a petition of Messrs. Green all, Whitney, and Company, leave given to present the said petition.
Local Government Provisional Order (Housing of the Working Classes) Bill, (No. 40); Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill, (No. 41); Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill, (No. 42); Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 3.) Bill, (No. 43). Read 1a, to be printed; and referred to the examiners.
County Councils (Bills in Parliament) Bill; 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. Brought from the Commons.
Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway Bill; City and South London Railway Bill. Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and referred to the Examiners.
Hastings Tramways (Extensions) Bill [H.L.]; Hastings Harbour District Railway Bill [H.L.]; Worthing Corporation Tramways Bill [H.L.]; Hove, Worthing, and District Tramways Bill [H.L.]. Report from the Committee of Selection that the Five Lords appointed a Select Committee on the Bournemouth Corporation Tramways and other Bills, do form the Select Committee for the consideration of Hastings Tramways (Extensions) Bill [H.L.], Hastings Harbour District Railway Bill [B.L], Worthing Corporation Tramways Bill [H.L.], Hove, Worthing, and District Tramways Bill [H.L.]; read, and agreed to; 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.
Carmarthenshire Electric Power Bill [H.L.]; Somerset and District Electric power Bill [H.L.]; Shropshire, Worcestershire, and East Denbighshire Electric Power Bill [H.L.]; Fife Electric Power Bill [H.L.]; North-Western Electricity

915
and Power Gas Bill [H.L.]; Exeter Corporation Bill [H.L.]; Preston and Horwich Tramways Bill [H.L.]; Manchester Corporation 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. Abingdon,

L. Barnard,

L. De Mauley,

L. Aberdare,

L. Glanusk (Chairman);

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; of the Incorporated Society of Law Agents in Scotland; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
  DECLARATION OF THE SOVEREIGN AGAINST TRANSUBSTANTIATION.
  Petition for abrogation of; of Catholics residing in Ford, Liverpool; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  NAVY (WATER-TUBE BOILERS).
  Report on further trials of H.M.S. "Hyacinth" and H.M.S. "Minerva" (with diagrams).
  TURKEY No. 3 (1903).
  Further correspondence respecting the affairs of South Eastern Europe.

  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  No. 2964. Spain (Bilbao).
  No. 2965. Netherlands (Amsterdam).
  No. 2966. France (French Indo-China).

  MARRIAGES, BIRTHS, AND DEATHS (ENGLAND AND WALES).
  General Abstract for 1902.

  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Orders made by the Light Railway Commissioners and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising—
  I. The construction of—
  Light railways from Leighton Buzzard to Hitchin, in the counties of Bedford and Hertford.
  Light railways in the urban district of Barking Town, in the county of Essex.
  Light railways from Morriston to Pontardawe, in the county of Glamorgan; extensions of light railways authorised by the Doncaster Corporation Light Railways Order, 1899, and by the Doncaster Corporation Light Railways (Deviation, etc.) Order, 1902.
  A light railway in the county of Wilts, forming an additional junction between the Basingstoke and Salisbury Railway of the London and South Western Railway Company, near Porton, and the light railway authorised by the Amesbury and Military Camp Light Railway Order, 1898.
  II. The extensions of light railways authorised by the Doncaster Corporation Light Railways Order, 1899, and by the Doncaster Corporation Light Railways (Deviation, etc.), Order, 1902.
  III. Amending the Mid-Suffolk Light Railway Order, 1900.
  Presented [by Command], and ordered to lie on Table.

  METROPOLITAN POLICE (ACCOUNTS).
  Accounts showing the sums received and expended for the purposes of the Metropolitan Police, and Police Pension Fund, between the 1st April, 1902, and the 31st March, 1903.
  FACTORY AND WORKSHOP (PARTICULARS OF PIECE-WORK WAGES: FELT HATS).
  Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, dated 22nd April, 1903, applying with modifications, the provisions of Section 116 of the Factory and Workshops Act, 1901, to the making of felt hats, and repealing the existing Order of the 30th November, 1897.

  COMPANIES (WINDING-UP) ACT, 1890.
  Accounts showing receipts and expenditure on accounts of proceedings

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  under the Companies (Winding-Up) Act, 1890, during the year ended 31st March, 1903.

  BANKRUPTCY ACT, 1883 (PROCEEDINGS).
  Account showing the receipts and expenditure on account of bankruptcy proceedings during the year ended 31st March, 1903.
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  ARMY (ESTIMATES).
  Return showing the items of expenditure in 1903–1904, amounting to £34,245,000, in excess of those of 1893–94 amounting to £17,631,300. Laid before the House (pursuant to Address of the 30th of March last), and to be printed. (No. 38.)

  MANCHURIA.
  EARL SPENCER: Seeing the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is in his place, I should like to ask him whether the report which has appeared in the newspapers to-day is true as to negotiations between Russia and China. If he can give the House any information I am sure it will afford your Lordships very great satisfaction.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNE): My Lords, at the last sitting of your Lordships' House I mentioned to the noble Lord that communications were passing between His Majesty's Government and the other Governments concerned with regard to the conditions which the Russian Government was alleged to be demanding in connection with the evacuation of Manchuria†Those communications are still in progress; but in the meanwhile we have received from sources the authority of which we cannot question, information to the effect that the Russian Government has made an intimation that they disclaim all intention of seeking for exclusive privileges in Manchuria or departing from the assurances given in regard to that province.
  † See page 639.

  LAND REGISTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
  Order of the Day for the House going into Committee read.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (LORD BALFOUR of BURLEIGH): My Lords, I do not propose to ask the House to take this stage of the Bill to-day, but I did not take the Bill off the Notice Paper because I desired to make a very short statement to the House as to the course which I propose to pursue in regard to it. Some petitions have been presented against it, notably by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who is in the House, and one by Lord Shand, and various objections have been laid before me at the Scottish Office by the legal societies. As I explained to the House on a former occasion, the Bill is of a highly technical character, and the arguments on the one side and the other with regard to some of the clauses, require most careful consideration, and, indeed, an amount of technical knowledge which I myself do not possess, and which I fancy few of your Lordships would lay claim to. I see my way, I hope, to meet a good many of the objections urged to the Bill as it now stands. Some, I am afraid, it is not possible to meet. They must be argued out and Parliament must decide. The course I propose to pursue, and which I think will be for the convenience of the House, is this. I propose to postpone the Committee stage till Tuesday and then to pass the Bill through that stage pro forma, inserting a number of Amendments which, I hope, will make the Bill agreeable to some, at any rate, of those who at present have stated objections to it. After that I propose to recommit the Bill, either to a Committee of the whole House or to a Select Committee, or to take it in any other way that may be most convenient to the noble Lords, allowing ample time to elapse for the legal societies in Scotland to consider it in its altered form. I have no desire to take anybody by surprise in regard to the Bill, or to rush it through. I believe it contains some clauses which are very distinctly in the public interest, and I should be sorry if it failed to pass altogether; but I recognise that it touches a very

  919
  important part of the Laud Register system of Scotland. This is a matter which the legal profession take a very great interest in and have a right to watch very carefully, and therefore, though I think there are some reforms eminently desirable, I do not, as I have said, desire to take anybody by surprise, and if the course I suggest is agreed to I will undertake between the stages to give ample time both to the House, and to those in Scotland interested in the matter, for the consideration of the Bill in its altered form.
  LORD TWEEDMOUTH: My Lords, I am glad to hear the statement which has just fallen from my hon. friend the Secretary for Scotland, because it was my intention, if he had not made the proposal he has now made, to offer the suggestion that for the purpose of considering this Bill it would be more satisfactory that it should be referred to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House. We have many Scottish noble Lords in this House, expert in the law, and others who would be able to give a thorough consideration to the Bill and who would, I think, be able to amend it so as to make it a useful measure for us in Scotland. I think at first we were under a little misapprehension with regard to the scope of the Bill—I mean before it was printed. The noble Lord when he introduced the Bill—the only occasion on which he has made a speech on it—produced to us a most interesting volume consisting of the photographic copies of various deeds. I confess I was very much taken with the appearance of the volume, and I think the general idea was that the whole purpose of this Bill was to replace the system of copying deeds in the office by a system of photography. But when we come to examine the Bill we find that it proposes nothing short of a complete revolution of the system of land registry as it exists, and as it has existed in Scotland for 300 years.
  May I venture, in a few words, to describe the process of registering a deed in Scotland at this moment? A deed relating to heritable property is presented at the Register House and entered in a book by the presenter,
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  wherein is stated his name, the name of the parties, the day and hour of presentment, and the county to which the deed applies. It is left at the Register House and thereafter engrossed by handwriting in a bound volume which is issued by the Deputy Clerk Registrar, who has charge of the Records and is responsible for their proper and safe keeping. The volumes are issued by the Deputy Clerk Registrar, bound up to prevent any tampering with the Records either by leaving out sheets, or introducing sheets, or' otherwise manipulating the Records. A short abstract is there upon prepared, giving the names of the parties, a short description of the property, the nature of the deed, and the date thereof. This abstract, which is termed an abridgment, is thereafter printed, and a copy is sent to the Sheriff Clerk of each county in Scotland, for reference, or to be consulted by any party desiring to do so. The deed is thereafter returned to the presenter thereof, or the agent who has charge of the matter. An index is then prepared stating the name of the parties to the deed, which is kept in alphabetical order, and a similar index giving the places of the property in like alphabetical order is also prepared. These indices are written in the Register House, and by statute are open to the inspection of the public on payment of a small fee for the purpose of enabling either the abridgments or the proper Record to be examined. That system has worked well. Now, my Lords, the effect of this Bill is to do away with these indices and abridgments altogether. I maintain that for the purposes of the public in Scotland these indices and abridgments are the most important part of our whole Record Office. I do not think the ordinary public want to go into the details of all the various deeds. What they want to find out is, whether a particular property has been dealt with in any particular manner, or whether there is a charge on any property or deed. That they find out by consulting these indices and abridgments, and if you abolish these conveniences to the public in the Land Registry Office you really destroy a great deal of the utility of that Office. I do not think we in the least understood that that was going to

  921
  be the effect of the Bill; and the inclusion of such a provision is all the more extraordinary from the fact that Lord Low's Committee (paragraphs 164 and 181) strongly recommended the retention of the indices and abridgments in any future arrangement. I will not go into any of the other details of the Bill. I think it is open to doubt whether, after all, these photographic reproductions of deeds are likely to be so necessary as may appear. I think a certified copy of a deed in a particular place, for reference by parties interested, amply meets the case, and I do not think it is desirable that we should have a perfect shower of facsimile copies of deeds scattered over the whole of Scotland. I would like to remind my noble friend that the Court of Session has not had any opportunity of fully considering the Bill. The Committee of the Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Court prepared a report on the Bill, and on April 9th a special general meeting of the Society approved that report. In that report they strongly recommend that the Bill should be opposed, and that, in any event, the section as regards repeal of the Land Registry Act must be omitted. I have received a number of letters on the subject of this Bill, in which it is stated that no demand has been made either by the public or the legal profession for the measure; that Scotland has enjoyed, in consequence of the present admirable system of registration, remarkable immunity from forgery and fraud, and that to circulate facsimiles of deeds and the signatures would be practically offering a strong inducement to fraud, besides distributing needlessly information regarding the rights of landlords to their property. I am quite sure there is a great improvement possible in the present system, and that we are all anxious to secure that improvement, and I hope my noble friend will see his way, when he comes to deal further with this Bill, to refer it to such a Select Committee of this House as I have ventured to indicate, rather than attempt to discuss it in Committee of the whole House.
  Committee of the whole House put off to Tuesday next.

NAVAL FORCES BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (The Earl of SELBORNE): My Lords, this Bill is not a large Bill, and yet it is a distinctly important one from the point of view of naval efficiency. Its object is to increase the facilities of the Admiralty for the enlargement of naval reserves, and it is based on the recommendations of the very able Committee on Naval Reserves, which was presided over by Sir Edward Grey, and the Report of which has been laid before both Houses of Parliament. The object of the Bill is, in the first place, to enable the Admiralty to establish forces of Naval and Marine Volunteers. I have been asked to what purpose in a war a Naval Volunteer could be put. I can only reply that the Admiralty would use him according to the interests of the State at the moment. There can be no pledge that the Volunteer will be used either on land or on sea specially. He would probably be used on land in connection with the ports and the coastguard and signal stations, but he would also, I think, be used at sea and if once used at sea a Naval Volunteer must understand—and those who are interested in the creation of this force thoroughly understand—that he must be prepared not to limit his service either in scope or kind. He must be prepared to come under the Naval Discipline Act, and to do any work on board ship to which the captain of that ship may put him, and he must also be prepared to serve wherever the Admiralty may send the ship in which he is entered. So far as possible, the Admiralty are quite prepared to undertake to employ such Volunteers in the fleets and squadrons nearer home, but there is no obligation on them not to employ them elsewhere, and, of course, if in lime of war a ship in which Naval Volunteers are borne is ordered from home waters to more distant waters, they must be thoroughly prepared to go with their ship. It is quite obvious that there are special ratings in which a Naval Volunteer may be of particular use. I refer to such ratings as the electrician ratings, mechanic

  923
  or artisan ratings, and signal ratings, if he has taken every opportunity in time of peace to perfect himself according to the opportunities given him, and those are extra and special to the more ordinary seamen ratings with which your Lordships are all familiar. The great distinction between this force and the old Naval Artillery Volunteers lies in the fact to which I have drawn your Lordships' attention, that such Volunteers must be prepared to serve wherever the Admiralty send them, and not only in coastal waters.
  The second object of this Bill is to extend the powers of the Admiralty in respect of non-continuous service men. Your Lordships will remember that about fifty years ago a great revolution took place in the manning of the Navy. Up to that time every man serving in the Navy was a non-continuous service man; that is, he entered for a limited period, generally for one commission, at the end of which time he reverted to civil life. The continuous service system changed all that, and offered to the seamen a profession for life. It offered him an engagement, first of all for ten years from the age of eighteen, and now for twelve years from the age of eighteen, at the expiration of which period he was offered a pension if he extended his service to twenty-one years. That is the continuous service system, and the great bulk of the men are now serving under that system; but the non-continuous service men, although constantly diminishing in numbers, have never disappeared; there are several thousand of them at present in the Fleet, more especially in connection with the ratings that are not seamen ratings, and at the present time the non-continuous service man and the continuous service man are serving side by side. The object of this Bill is to enable the Admiralty to make a bargain with the non-continuous service man and say to him: "Will you join the Navy to serve in the Fleet for three or four years and then pass into the Fleet Reserve for the unexpired portion of twelve years from the date of your enlistment?" This is in order that we may build up in a more rapid manner the Royal Fleet Reserve, which, unlike the Royal Naval Reserve, is composed entirely of men who have served in the Fleet. This is to enable the Royal
  924
  Fleet Reserve to be increased more quickly, especially in the stoker ratings, where there is, and otherwise will be in the future, serious deficiency, and by entering these men for non-continuous service in the Fleet, and then for six, seven, or eight years in the Reserve, as the case may be, in a few years time we hope to build up a really large Fleet Reserve. It is also proposed to extend the system to the seamen ratings as well as to the stoker ratings, but it is with the special object of increasing the stoker ratings that this proposal is made. At the same time we ask Parliament to abolish those limits to both the Fleet and the Naval Reserve now imposed by Act of Parliament. There is no object in having such limits imposed because, of course, it rests in the discretion of Parliament every year to limit the Reserve by limiting the money it chooses to vote for their pay. Therefore in no sense is the control of Parliament decreased, but an arbitrary, and, it seems to me, quite unnecessary, limitation of the Reserves will be removed. I ask your Lordships to read this Bill a second time.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Earl of Selborne.)
  EARL SPENCER: My Lords, though this Bill is not a long one, I think it is a measure of no small importance to the future of the Navy. If I recollect correctly, it was in the early days when I was at the Admiralty that the final dissolution of the Naval Volunteer force took place.
  THE EARL OF SELBORNE: I think it was in Lord George Hamilton's time.
  EARL SPENCER: I remember very well that the Board over which I had the honour to preside had to consider this question, and we came to the conclusion that it was not desirable to renew at that time this Volunteer force for the Navy. The noble Earl the present First Lord thinks it would be wise, and he is supported by the recommendation of a very important Committee, that we should once more have recourse to Volunteers for seamen and Marines. I sincerely trust that this will turn out

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  well, and that past difficulties will not recur. The noble Earl referred to the special ratings under which Volunteers might enter and be of great service. I need hardly point out that these special ratings have increased in number and become very much more important since the old Volunteers existed, and therefore I think there is every reason to hope that in this respect Naval Volunteers will be of great use; but I hardly expect that a large body of Volunteers will ever be found to be of great service in manning ships in time of war. That they would be of service on the coast is likely to be true, and I sincerely hope the experiment will be successful. I attach great importance to securing a proper Reserve for naval service. Even if the efforts to secure large numbers of seamen and stokers have been successful, we have not now the resource the mercantile marine provided in old days. The pages of the report of the Committee over which Sir Edward Grey so ably presided show how circumstances have completely changed and how, while the number of British seamen in the mercantile marine has diminished, the demands of the Navy have increased. The proposal to increase the number of non-continuous service men will add enormously to the number of the Reserve, and I welcome the Bill in the belief that it will be of service to the Navy in the future. It has been said that this Bill removes from the House of Commons the power of regulating the number of men employed in the naval forces, But the real fact is that, though the Admiralty may name the number of men to be employed in these different forces, Parliament must have the ratification of the numbers and can always refuse to vote the money for them. I therefore rejoice that part of the Bill removes the limitation of 30,000 and 15,000 to the two great Reserves that now exist for the Navy. There is another point which has been discussed in another place. I would be glad if the regulations which have to be drawn out with regard to these new forces were, when made or shortly afterwards, to be laid before Parliament. The Admiralty in another place have refused to agree to a new clause dealing with this matter. Possibly the proposal made is not quite consistent with some of the old regulations, but at
  926
  the same time I think Parliament has a right to expect that all the regulations should be made known to it. I heartily support the Second Reading of the Bill.
  On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House on Monday next.

  REGULATION OF MOTOR CARS.
  LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government for a return of cases reported to the police since 1st January, 1902, in which injury was caused to the person or property of the public by motor cars, otherwise than those accidents in which occupants of the cars were alone injured. I am not bringing this forward in any hostility to motor cars; on the contrary I believe the day will come when special roads will be constructed by those who use motor-cars so that they can run at high rates of speed. But in the meantime motor-cars, except in a very few instances, are not practicable machines. For the most part they are not employed for commercial purposes, and their use is merely a branch of sport indulged in on the public roads at considerable risk to the public, and certainly at great detriment to the public convenience and comfort. When our public roads were built there was no anticipation that they would be used for traffic of this sort, and the number of accidents that have occurred is decidedly large. Numerical comparisons simply between accidents from carriages drawn by horses and from motor-cars are misleading, because the number of carriages drawn by horses is very much greater than the number of motor-cars. I think that if it were possible to arrive at a proper return, it would be found that motor-cars are a source of danger out of proportion to any other form of traffic. I know a parish which used to be very quiet where the people now live in a state of terrorism during the summer months. People living in the suburbs of London do not dare to drive about as they used to do. I admit that if I had a motor-car I would use it to go at the fastest speed I could get out of it, and I am sure all noble Lords would do the same. [A NOBLE LORD: "I do not."] What needs to be legislated against is a tendency of

  927
  human nature which is hurtful to the public; temptation ought to be taken out of people's way. I think one reason why people drive their motor-cars at full speed is that it is injurious to the machinery to run them at any lesser speed. In the case of railways we have imposed stringent regulations in the interests of railway servants and the public. The owners of motor-cars, unlike the railway companies, contribute nothing to the roads which they use except the share which falls to an ordinary ratepayer and taxpayer, and they use these roads to the risk and the detriment of the public. I understand that the Local Government Board are at the present moment occupied in framing regulations. I do not see the representative of the Local Government Board in his place, but I would suggest, in the first place, that we should insist that all motor cars should be numbered and perhaps painted according to their rates of speed; and, in the second place, that all drivers should hold certificates, and, like engine drivers—I understand that the driving of an ordinary railway engine is simplicity itself compared to the intricacies of a motor car—be required to pass a stringent examination. There ought also to be regulation of pace, but that is a matter of detail which I need not go into now. I trust that the noble Lord who represents the Home Office will be able to give the Return for which I ask. I know that even in the most favourable circumstances it is bound to be an imperfect Return as many accidents which occur are not reported to the police, but I think some Return ought to be presented.
  THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH: I am sure everyone in this House will agree with the noble Lord that some regulations should be put in force to stop reckless driving, but I think it is erroneous to imagine that this can be done by imposing a maximum speed, because to drive at even a slow speed through a crowded district is a source of danger. There are some level open roads of which the motorist can command a view for miles ahead and where he may safely go at a high speed, and I contend that it is perfectly ridiculous to impose
  928
  a fine in such a case, when there is not the slightest risk of injury to anybody. There are other roads, of course, where the greatest caution is needed. What is required is not so much a limit of speed as regulations which would oblige people to drive carefully. Persons who are guilty of repeated offences ought to be severely fined. With regard to the Return which is asked for, I should like to inquire who is to decide when an accident is the fault of the driver of the motorcar and when it is due to other people. Such a Return would be an invitation to the police in certain counties to manufacture cases. I hope the Department will lose no time in drawing up reasonable and proper regulations.
  LORD BELPER: I regret I cannot go into the main part of the speech of the noble Lord, because it is practically a point which is dealt with by the Local Government Board. I may have my own views with regard to the present regulations. As a private individual, I think it would be very difficult to defend them as they stand. But, in answer to the request of the noble Lord for a Return, I would point out that there is no obligation at present to report these accidents to the police. No doubt a good number of these accidents do come within the knowledge of the police, especially in the big towns; but to secure a Return of the kind asked for, the Home Office would have to apply to every police authority in the kingdom, which would entail much expense and trouble, without, as the Home Office think, any corresponding advantage. For such a Return would not in the circumstances really represent the number of accidents which had taken place. I am informed that in the Metropolitan Police District, there were forty persons reported to be injured by light locomotives in the year 1902, but it is impossible to say how many more cases there may have been which were not reported. I may also say that no person within the Metropolitan area was killed by a light locomotive in 1902.
  LORD LAMINGTONdid not press for a Return.

  THE PROPOSED ARMY GUILD SERVICE.
  THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTHhad the following notice on the Paper: "To ask the Lord Bishop of London whether his attention has been called to a service proposed to be celebrated at St. Paul's Cathedral on 6th May 'In commemoration of those members of the Guild of the Holy Standard and St. Helena and all soldiers who died in the war in South Africa'; whether the right rev. Prelate holds himself responsible for special services in St. Paul's Cathedral; whether he has had submitted to him any such service; whether it has received his sanction; and what deviations, alterations, or additions he has sanctioned to the Office of Holy Communion on such occasion."
  The noble Earl said: My Lords, I think I ought to explain that on arriving in London yesterday evening I wrote to the Bishop of London telling him that, as I had been informed that this proposed service had been definitely abandoned, I did not intend to put him to the inconvenience of leaving his diocesan conference and coming down to the House this afternoon. However, a letter from the right rev. Prelate crossed my letter, and I am sure it would only be justice to the right rev. Prelate to read an extract from it to the House. The Bishop writes—
  "The service, as you probably know, has fallen through. The service to which you all de was not submitted to me, but no doubt would have been on my return from abroad. It was, however, withdrawn before the necessity arose."
  I thought it was only fair to the right rev. Prelate to state those facts and to explain his absence, and to make it quite clear that the right rev. Prelate, while as visitor accepting responsibility for any special services, was not in any way responsible for this proposed service at St. Paul's. A great deal of nonsense has been written in the papers on the question of prayers for the dead. Speaking for myself, I cannot see that there can be any objection, either from the Church of England point of view or from the Christian point of view, to private prayers for the dead. We pray for those we have with us here, and there can be no reason why we should not pray for those in another world. But what was
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  felt by a very large number of persons to be the really serious point in this matter was that it was not a question of private prayers for the dead, but a question of a public service which implied a very serious alteration in and addition to the Office of Holy Communion. There is naturally a very strong feeling that the service of Holy Communion should not be altered in any way. The moment you do that, very grave questions of principle are at once raised. It was felt, as I think wisely, by a very large number of persons that, if any such service were celebrated in St. Paul's Cathedral which met with the serious suspicion of a large portion of the community, which also was condemned by several members of the Chapter itself, and which would have been taken by a certain section, and openly explained to be a requiem mass, great offence would have been given. Further, what would have been much more serious in regard to the discipline of the Church of England, the service would have been taken as a precedent and largely amplified in a number of other churches not themselves in so responsible and important a position as St. Paul's. I am very grateful to know that no such service is to take place. Although it is quite clear that the Bishop of London must be exonerated from any responsibility for the proposed service, I very much regret hat it should be in the power of certain members of the Chapter of St. Paul's to start services of this kind without full and complete consideration and without consulting the best and highest authority. In that view I am only reiterating the sentiments of the late Archbishop Benson. After the Lincoln judgment had been pronounced, that distinguished man wrote of a visit to St. Paul's—
  "Alas! those minor canons, who are allowed their own way in everything, have introduced ablution since the Lincoln Judgment, and have turned the order on openness in consecration into a new bit of ritualism, lifting the cup high and breaking the bread and drawing the arms apart with the two pieces of broken bread. Thus, what was meant to give plainness is by these perverse folk turned to a far more ceremonious mode. Full tilt we go to alienate all the laity we can. If they were not so much wiser than the clergy, they would be all gone to Dissent before this."
  In the circumstances I shall not put my question.

  COUNTY COUNCILS (BILL IN PARLIAMENT) BILL.
  Read 1a; and to be printed. (No. 39.)

  BISHOPRIC OF BRISTOL BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for re-arranging the boundaries of the dioceses of Bristol and Gloucester, and Bath and Wells—was presented by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury; read la; and to be printed. (No. 44.)
  House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past Five o'clook, till To-morrow, half-past Ten o'clock.