Sitting of 8 July 1904

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

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (STANDING ORDERS NOT PREVIOUSLY INQUIRED INTO COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKERlaid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, viz.:—Ilford Urban District Council Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.

  PRIVATE BILLS [LORDS] (NO STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE).
  Mr. SPEAKERlaid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, viz.:—De Trafford Estate Bill [Lords].
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
  Great Central Railway Bill; London County Council (Money) Bill; Plymouth Corporation Bill; Wolverhampton Corporation Bill. Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
  Filey Improvement Bill [Lords]; Maidenhead Bridge Bill [Lords]. Read the third time, and passed, with Amendments.
  Ebbw Vale Urban District Water Bill [Lords]; Harrogate Waterworks Tram-road Bill [Lords]; Richard Jaeger's Patent Bill [Lords]. As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
  Airdrie Corporation Gas Order Confirmation Bill [Lords]; Wishaw Corporation Order Confirmation Bill [Lords]. Read the third time, and passed, without Amendment.
  Arbroath Corporation Water Order Confirmation Bill; Dunfermline District Water Order Confirmation Bill. Considered; to be read the third time upon Monday next.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 11) Bill. As amended, considered; to be read the third time upon Monday next.
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill [Lords]. Read a second time, and committed.
  Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 9) Bill (by Order). As amended, considered; to be read the third time upon Monday next.

  RAILWAY BILLS (GROUP No. 10).
  Sir LEWIS MCIVER reported from the Committee on Group No. 10 of Railway Bills; That, for the convenience of
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  parties, they had adjourned until Tuesday next, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have agreed to—Soothill Nether Urban District Tramways Bill; Doncaster Corporation Bill]; Skipton Water and Improvement Bill, with Amendments.
  Amendments to— Minehead Urban District Council Water Bill [Lords], without Amendment.
  That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1900." [Merchant Shipping Bill [Lords].
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Electric Lighting Acts, 1882 and 1888, relating to Bath Rural District, Brynmawr, Chippenham, Eastleigh and Bishopstoke, Hanwell, Southgate Urban District, Tamworth, Walton-le-Dale, Watford, and Widnes (Amendment)."[Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill [Lords].
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Electric Lighting Acts, 1882 and 1888, relating to Ashford (Kent), Ely, Ham, Hexham, Horley, Keynsham (Somerset), Kings-wood, Newton Abbot (Extension), Teignmouth (Amendment), and Walton-upon-Thames. "Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [Lords].
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade, under the Electric Lighting Acts, 1882 and 1888, relating to Clevedon, Portishead and Long Ashton, Crediton, Devizes, Hampton Wick and District, Houghton-le-Spring and District, the Maidens and Coombe, Northampton and District, Stroud, Nailsworth, and Dursley and Trowbridge (Urban), Brad-ford-on-Avon (Urban), and Bradford-on Avon (Rural)." [Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 6) Bill [Lords].
  Also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by

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  the Board of Trade, under The Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Bognor Gas, Elham Valley Gas, Elstree and Boreham Wood Gas, Finedon Gas, and Godalming Gas." [Gas Orders Confirmation (No. )) Bill [Lords].
  And, also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under The Gas and Waterworks Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Rainham Water, Sevenoaks Water, Southwold Water, Wetherby District Water, and Meldreth and Melbourn District Gas and Water." [Gas and Water Orders Confirmation Bill [Lords].
  Strabane, Raphoe, and Convoy Railway Bill. That they request that this House will be pleased to give leave to the right hon. George Wyndham, Chief Secretary for Ireland, a Member of this House, to attend, in order to his being examined as a Witness before the Select Committee appointed by their Lordships in the present Session of Parliament on the Stabane, Raphoe, and Convoy Railway Bill.
  Lords Message, requesting the attendance of the right hon. George Wyndham, considered:—
  And, Mr. Wyndham, in his place, having consented, leave given.
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 260.]
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 261.]
  Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 6) Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 262.]
  Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 263.]
  Gas and Water Orders Confirmation Bill [Lords]. Read the first time; re-
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  ferred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 264.]

PETITIONS.
  ALKALI WORKS, ETC., BILL.
  Petition from Glasgow, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING BILL.
  Petitions against; from Alston; Alvas-ton; Bentham; Bridgwater; Bristol (two); Burnley; Copmanthorpe; Greet-land; Dairycoates; Denton; Dumfries: Eaton; Edenfield; Edinburgh; Ex-mouth; Fenton; Frisby; Garndiffaith; Garrigill; Gatehouse on Fleet; Great Dalby; Hadfield; Halton; Hornsey; Hull; Hungarton; Huntingdon; Isle of Wight; Lambeth; Lincoln ( two ); Linlithgow; Littletown; Llanidloes; Long Clawson; Marston; Merthyr Tydvil; Morpeth; Nenthead; Newcastle on Tyne; Ocker Hill; Oldbury; Oldham; Partick (two); Pendleton; Ponte-band; Pontnewynydd; Rhyl (three ); Rotherhithe; Seaford; Seaton Delaval; Sewstern; Sheffield (two ); Sidmouth; Sowood; Sproxton; Stainland; Stockton on Tees; Teesdale; Thomaby on Tees; Thrussington; Waterhouses (two ); West Vale; Wingate; and Wysall; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING BILL.
  Petition from Brighton, for alteration; to lie upon the Table.
  TELEGRAPH (CONSTRUCTION) BILL.
  Petition from Essex, for alteration; to lie upon the Table.
  VALUATION BILL.
  Petitions for alteration; from East Ashford; and Saddleworth; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  CRIMINAL AND JUDICIAL STATISTICS (IRELAND).
  Copy presented, of Criminal and Judicial Statistics of Ireland for the year 1903. Part II. Civil Statistics [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL).
  Copy presented, of Colonial Report, No. 388 (Wei-hai-Wei), Annual Report for 1903 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  IRON AND STEEL, 1901.
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 6th July; Mr. Gerald Balfour]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 244.]
  HUMANE SLAUGHTERING OF ANIMALS.
  Copy presented, of Report of the Committee appointed by the Admiralty to consider the Humane Slaughtering of Animals, together with Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, and Index [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  ALLOTMENTS (SCOTLAND).
  Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 16th May; Mr. Eugene Watson];to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 245.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Use of Site of English Cemetery at Corfu.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether a casino has been built on ground formerly part of the old English cemetery at Corfu, and whether gambling will be allowed in such casino ; whether the old cemetery consisted of a piece of land 350 yards by 120 yards, and that this land has been conceded to the Greek Government in exchange for a piece of land ninety yards by sixty yards; and, if so, what were the reasons for this exchange.
  (Answered by Earl Percy.) The old British cemetery is being laid out as a garden, and no casino will be built on the site. Gambling is forbidden by Greek law. The main reason for ceding the old cemetery was that it occupied a very central position, and was a serious obstacle to the extension and embellishment of the town of Corfu. The area of the old cemetery is approximately 197 by sixty-seven yards. A space of some
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  100 by thirteen yards has been provided in the new cemetery for the re-interment of the remains transferred from the old. A further space of about eighty-two by eighty-two yards is available for future British burials, and in addition a strip of land amounting to 750 square yards has been ceded by the municipality in case further space is required. It is estimated that the new cemetery is of sufficient extent to provide for all interments for nearly a century to come.

  Position of Post Office at Kilrea, County Antrim.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the fact that the post office in Kilrea, county Antrim, is now vacant, he will consider the public convenience of placing it in a more central position than has hitherto been the case.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.). In making a new appointment to the sub-post office at Kilrea, I will see that due consideration is given to the situation of the office.

  Qualifications for Post Office Engineering Department.
  MR. SCHWANN: To ask the Postmaster-General whether the recent alterations in the examinations for the position of second-class engineer were under consideration by the Department at the time the official witnesses gave evidence before the Bradford Commission; whether, in view of his declaration that telegraphists are not excluded from competition, he will state what steps the Department intend taking to give opportunities for operating telegraphists in their employ to undergo two years training in a suitable workshop attached to a college or University; and will he explain the reason for the reduction of the age limit, seeing that heretofore practical experience in the telegraph service has been considered of great advantage to the engineering department.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.). The scheme for throwing open to competition a certain proportion of the vacancies for second-class engineers was under consideration at the time referred to. There is nothing in the evidence given before the

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  Wages Committee which is inconsistent with that scheme. The condition that candidates must have undergone at least two years training in a suitable workshop attached to a college or University, or under a firm of electrical or mechanical engineers, applies to candidates for those vacancies which will be filled by open competition. Officers already in the service will be eligible for promotion to the much larger number of vacancies which will be filled as before, and in this case the requirement of two years training does not apply. The limits of age, recently fixed, apply to open competition candidates only.

  Volunteers in the Postal Telegraph Service—Leave to Attend Annual Inspection.
  CAPTAIN NORTON: To ask the Postmaster - General whether he will explain why the arrangements made by the authorities at the Central Telegraph Office, London, for the purpose of permitting Volunteers employed in that department to attend annual regimental inspections have been altered this year; and whether he will direct that the practice of last year shall be reverted to.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.). The rule is that all Volunteers on duty at the time of the inspection should be relieved and substitutes found for them by the department. No alteration has been made in the rule this year. I find, however, that some men have applied for much longer leave than is necessary to enable them to attend the inspection, and this, of course, cannot be granted.

  Erection of Small Arms Factory in India.
  MR. BELL: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether in view of the fact that a factory for small arms has been erected, or is in course of erection, in India, he will say how much has been expended on buildings and plant, and what further sums are to be expended on these; and can he state to what extent this factory will decrease the necessity of relying on private factories for the manufacture of small arms.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.). The estimated total initial expenditure on
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  the buildings and plant is Rs. 37,50,000. The whole of this sum was included in the Estimates for the years 1902–3 and l903–4. The actual expenditure has not yet been reported by the Government of India. The object of establishing this factory is to make India to a large extent self-supporting in the manufacture of small arms, and this must to some extent diminish the expenditure on supplies from private factories.

  Pension of Mr. J. C. Neeson, Late Clerk of Belfast Union.
  MR. SLOAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mr. J. C. Neeson, late clerk of Belfast Union, has claimed a pension on a salary of £1,764 9s. 10 d., this being the average of the past three years gross receipts as officer for clerk of the union, clerk to the No. 1 Belfast Rural Council, clerk to the Castlereagh Rural Council, compiler of the jurors' lists, compiler of the harbour lists, compensation for the loss of office in 1898 as returning officer for the board of guardians, compiler of the Belfast Parliaments lists, compiler of the Belfast municipal (women's) list, and compensation for the loss of office as compiler of income-tax lists; and, if so, will he instruct the Local Government Board to secure that the Belfast poor rate will be charged only with such sums as pension in such offices as clerk of the union and net emoluments as deputy registrar which properly belong to the Poor Rate Relief Acts.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.). I replied to a Question on this matter on the 20th June.† The Local Government Board is not empowered to determine the amount of pension payable to Mr. Neeson. The guardians, I understand, have decided to take the opinion of counsel on the general question of Mr. Neeson's right to pension on the gross amount of his salary and emoluments in respect of his office as clerk of the union.

  War Trophies—Alleged Refusal by London County Council.
  MR. WHITMORE: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in view of the refusal of the London
  †See (4) Debates, cxxxvi, 493.

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  County Council to take charge of the two guns allotted to London by the War Office, he will take steps in conjunction with the First Commissioner of Works to have them placed in some suitable public position.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.). No letter has been received from the London County Council refusing the guns allotted to that body, but, should such a refusal be received, the guns would be allotted to some other town within the boundary of the Fourth Army Corps.

  Epizootic Lymphangitis among Army Horses.
  MR. HAYES FISHER: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that a disease called epizootic lymphangitis has been introduced into this country from South Africa by Army horses; and that a large number of cases have occurred recently at numerous barracks; and whether, with a view of preventing its introduction into civilian stables, he will withhold the sale of cast horses until the disease has been stamped out, especially, as owing to the incubation period extending to several months, horses may be sold in an occult stage of the disease, even though veterinarily examined on the day of sale.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.). It is the case that a disease called epizootic lymphangitis has appeared in this country, and it is believed that it was introduced from South Africa, 394 Army horses have been infected with this disease at various stations, of which number 254 have been destroyed, 32 have recovered, and 108 are still under treatment. Orders have been given that the Bale of horses to the public from affected units will be withheld for six months from the date of the last case in that unit. I am informed that this action will effectually prevent the introduction of the disease into civilian stables.

  Trading Privileges of British-Indians in the Transvaal.
  SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAG-GREE: To ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if his attention has been called to a debate
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  which took place in the Legislative Council at Pretoria last Tuesday, in which the local Colonial Secretary gave an assurance that he intended to introduce legislation restricting the trading privileges at present enjoyed by British-Indian traders in the Transvaal, when an Amendment was adopted urging the local Government to press to a conclusion the negotiations on this subject with the Imperial Government; and, if so, will he state what steps he proposes to take with reference to such intended legislation; and whether the legislation in question is directed against the subjects of the Mikado of Japan as well as against British-Indian subjects.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Lyttelton.). I have seen the newspaper telegrams to which the hon. Member refers. I am not in a position to make any statement at present as to the legislation in question.

LABOURERS (IRELAND) BILL.
THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,)moved that this Bill be committed to the Standing Committee on Trade. He said he made this proposal on behalf of the Government in order that they might have some chance of fulfilling the pledges which had been made, and on account of the congested state of business in the House. He would be out of order if he referred to the merits of the Bill, or stated what action he would be able to take in accepting this or that Amendment on it. He might remind the House that during the passing of the Land Act last year he pledged the Government to do all in their power to pass a Labourers Bill this year. That pledge was given quite indifferently to hon. Members on either side of the House. They joined in a common interest in this matter. So far, so good. But the Government now found that some hon. Members who took a great interest in the labourers held that this Bill was almost worthless. He should have to demonstrate the contrary, but it would take time and there was no time for that at this stage of the session if they tried to deal with the Bill in Committee of the Whole House. What he would suggest was that the Bill

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should go upstairs to the Standing Committee, that the Government should consider all the Amendments from either side of the House, and that they should there discover whether this could be made a useful measure or no. If they did not take that course they would waste some of the very short time at their disposal, and, by so doing, prejudice the chances of any other Bill to which the Government had been equally committed, or committed in even a higher degree. He moved this Motion in the interest of Members on both sides of the House, who were agreed that something ought to be done.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Order [24th June] for Committee be read and discharged, and the Bill be committed to the Standing Committee on Trade, etc."—(Mr. Wyndham.)
MR. WILLIAM MOOKEsaid he might be permitted at the beginning to make a proposal to the Chief Secretary, whose reply might very largely alter the attitude he and his friends took up on this subject. To enter into a discussion on the merits or demerits of the Bill would, he thought, be out of order. He was about to make a proposal the acceptance of which would, he thought, facilitate the passage of the Bill, and save the time about which the Chief Secretary was so anxious. There was one section of the Bill to which they had the greatest objection. It was not necessary to the machinery of the Bill that it should remain, and it was distinct from the rest of the Bill in its effects on the part of the country he and his friends represented. Before beginning to discuss the Motion, he wished to give the Chief Secretary an opportunity of saying how far he was prepared to meet them, and to tell him that if he would omit Section 13, which would entail a loss of £10,000 to Ulster, there would be little objection from that part of the House to reasonable Amendments from the other side. He did not think this an unreasonable proposal to make, and on the manner in which the Chief Secretary dealt with it depended their attitude on the Motion. He observed no sign of assent, and having made his proposal—
MR. WYNDHAM: I only speak with the leave of the House, but if I indicated to the hon. Member the attitude the Government is prepared to take on this Amendment, all hon. Members who have Amendments in which they take interest would be entitled to ask similar Questions. I think there is a great deal to say on the matter raised by the hon. Member and on other matters, and I assure the House I shall approach the Amendments upstairs with a desire to do what is fair to all parties interested.
MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he quite understood the Chief Secretary's position. Still, it would have been quite possible for him to meet them on this point if he had so desired. He himself had held out the olive branch. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: The Orange branch.] It had not been accepted. He had no option, therefore, but to point out to the House the reasons— and he thought they were weighty reasons—why they should do nothing to facilitate the passage of the Bill. The Chief Secretary had given as the reason for sending the Bill to Grand Committee that its passage would be facilitated. With regard to what had been said of the Bill that was to follow, he thought every cat must hang by its own tail, and whether the next Bill was an Irish, a Scotch, or an English Bill was immaterial to the question. The Bill was supposed to be the fulfilment of pledges given not only during last session but also in the King's Speech. As far as fulfilling those pledges was concerned they had no objection to raise. The question how far part of the Bill, not in fulfilment of the pledge, was a settlement of the question was another matter.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now proceeding to discuss whether the Bill fulfils the pledges given in a previous session. That is not in order on this Motion.
MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he bowed to the ruling, but he would point out that the Bill was proposed for the purpose of settling the claims of a very large section of the community. This he thought a matter for the House of Commons itself. He remembered when

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the Land Act was introduced in 1902, and a similar proposal was made that it should go to a Grand Committee, the hon. Member for Waterford, on behalf of those associated with him, indignantly rejected such a proposal, and that action was, he was bound to say, justified, because next year a better Bill was the result. He should have liked to have heard from the Chief Secretary why a Bill which proposed to solve the land question should be dealt with by the House, and a Bill which proposed to solve the labourers' question sent to Grand Committee. He supposed it could not be argued that the claims of one section were not so important as the claims of the other. Therefore, he suggested that, whatever the state of the session, the House should keep the Bill for discussion. The Chief Secretary seemed to think it would be a public calamity if the Bill did not become law that session. That calamity, however, he and his friends could bear with equanimity, as would become more and more evident to the Chief Secretary as the discussion went on, whether the Bill was retained in the House or went to Committee. What would be saved? The Bill would certainly be amended—hon. Members opposite said that, though the Bill was not a good Bill now, they hoped by Amendments they could improve it. The Chief Secretary had announced, as he did on every occasion of Irish debate, his sympathy with all Irish views and his readiness to consider such Amendments from either side as might be brought before him. They knew the right hon. Gentleman would find himself in Committee with a majority of Members opposite, for English Members would not attend a Committee on an Irish Bill, and they all knew what would be the result of the Chief Secretary's sympathies. He thought, therefore, it would be very undesirable for them, objecting as they did to the contentious parts of the Bill, to let it get into such a stage. He was rather digressing from his argument, which was that the Bill would come back amended; and that would involve a j day's discussion in the House. He could assure the Chief Secretary that if ever it got through Grand Committee it would certainly occupy one day on Report.
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There was no particular enthusiasm for the Bill, and why it should be forced through, for really it was forcing it through to send it to Grand Committee, he could not understand. He could not see why the ordinary principles should be departed from, and why this matter of public legislation should have more than the ordinary chance of getting through. Another reason why the Bill should not go to Committee was that it was a highly contentious Bill, containing a proposal under which a large sum of money would be transferred from one part of Ireland to another. Again and again it had been urged in the House that they should retain in their own hands measures which were highly contentious. Moreover, if the Bill should be sent to the Grand Committee, hon. Members would be entitled to debate every line, every word, every provision. What that meant they had had a forcible example in proceedings on another Bill. He only referred to that Bill as an example of a contentious Bill which the machinery of the Grand Committee failed to carry through. If this Bill would be equally contentious and equally opposed, that was an argument against sending it to a Grand Committee. It was perfectly obvious that if two or three members of the Committee opposed the Bill—and he could promise that the opposition was not limited to two or three Members—after a fortnight the Chief Secretary would have to do as a brother Minister had done in the case of the Bill he had mentioned, namely, ask the permission of the Grand Committee to withdraw it. The Bill might endure for a fortnight before the Grand Committee and then the labours of the House would be lost. He had no desire to vex or annoy the Chief Secretary, but he should like to save him from the ignominy of being compelled to ask leave of the House to drop this darling god-child. He also objected to the Bill going to this Committee because the Committee was composed of business men who wer ecommercial princes and trade magnates, who could not be expected to possess a knowledge, indispensable in this case, of the labourers' question in Ireland. These gentlemen could not be expected to deal with the tangled skein of—
MR. SPEAKER: Order, order!
MR. WILLIAM MOOKEsaid that if he was not permitted to pursue that line of argument he would ask permission to be allowed to say that this was a lawyers' Bill. He would go farther and say it was an Irish lawyers 'Bill—a Bill which could only be understood by gentlemen who had experience of the working of the Labourers Acts in Ireland. In the Grand Committee he supposed that knowledge was not over-abundant, and that fact would not help to pass the measure. It was also unfortunate that a Bill involving so much contention and special knowledge should be thrown upon the Grand Committee at this time of the session. It really meant that the labours of the Committee would be futile. It was also a long one, and already there were eleven pages of Amendments. That showed its contentious nature and also the uselessness of sending it to a Grand Committee. If it received careful attention it would occupy at least a month of Parliamentary time. The number of Amendments would swell probably still more. Sending it to a Grand Committee might be regarded as a short way of dealing with the Bill, but short cuts were not always the shortest way of getting a Bill through. There were plenty of proposals in it on which Members on both sides of the House would agree, and he would suggest that the contentious subjects should be omitted and those on which there was agreement retained. The opposition to the Bill was such that the Chief Secretary could not expect to see it back from the Committee on Report stage under three weeks. But if his suggestion were adopted the progress of the Bill would be materially hastened.
MR. CHARLES CRAIGsaid that he also behaved that the Bill should remain in this House on the ground that it contained contentious matter. He and his colleagues considered it to be their duty to oppose the Bill in the most strenuous way they could on account of the inclusion of Section 13, which robbed the measure of any value it might otherwise possess. But independent of that section, almost every clause contained matters of the greatest importance which should be thoroughly debated. A great reform was, for instance, proposed by transferring the powers at present exercised by the Local
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Government Board to the county councils. They were very inadequate and would require very drastic Amendment, and for that reason could be much better discussed in that House than in Committee. There was a very important and desirable Amendment dealing with the question of simplification of title, and which every lawyer in the House would admit required the very fullest and most careful consideration.
MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Gentleman cannot discuss that subject at present.
MR. CHARLES CRAIGsaid he only meant to discuss the contentious subjects generally. Having regard to the question of the transfer of power from the Local Government Board to the county councils, to the technicalties of the measure, and to the difficulty of dealing with the many points which were bound to arise, he maintained that that House, and not the Committee, was the proper place in which to deal with the Bill. Even though there might be a consensus of opinion among Irish Members as to the desirability of making the changes, he did hope that the Chief Secretary would reconsider his position on the matter of sending the Bill to a Grand Committee. With regard to the particular Committee to which it was to be sent, he and others objected to a Bill of this kind, which was full of legal points from beginning to end, being sent to a Committee on Trade. The scope of this Committee was supposed to be confined to questions relating to trade, manufactures, and shipping. Nobody could contend that this Bill came within that purview. He trusted the House would carefully consider the question whether they would do right to agree to the Chief Secretary's Motion. He would appeal to the Chief Secretary to meet them in the matter of Clause 13.
MR. SPEAKER: That matter cannot be considered now.
MR. CHARLES CRAIGasked whether it would not be in order to say that the removal of a part of the Bill would take away a great deal of the objection which several hon. Members had to the measure.

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The Bill was contentious and the Chief Secretary knew where the contentious matter lay. If the right hon. Gentleman would assure them that this bone of contention would be removed, there was no doubt that the feeling of opposition to the Bill amongst Ulster Members would automatically disappear. They all agreed that the Bill was useful, but he believed that labourers would not be one whit worse off if the Bill were not passed. As long as it contained the contentious matter he had referred to, the opposition to the measure in the Grand Committee would be bound to be so great that a great deal of valuable time would be lost before the Bill could possibly get through. Was the Bill worth all this? Even with the best intentions, without erasing a great deal in the Bill, and building up a new one, they could do very little. There were some things which they would be glad and willing to see passed into law. The contentious matter, however, was so great that it was doubtful whether the Bill could ever become law. If this matter was removed, and only the innocuous and harmless matter left in, the measure might possibly do the labourers of Ireland some small good.
MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid he had the great and unaccustomed felicity of agreeing with his colleagues from Ulster; that was to say he agreed with them in the conclusions which they had reached, but not with their arguments. The main objection he had to the Bill was in regard to its financial provisions, and if the Bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Trade or Law, it would be perfectly impossible to introduce Amendments bearing upon the financial question because such Amendments would be wholly out of order. He was a very old Member of the Standing Committee, and he had seen that ruling given over and over again; and if any alteration was to be made in the financial clauses of the Bill, the Bill would have to be re-committed to the Committee of the Whole House. That was his serious objection to the course proposed. The hon. and learned Member for Antrim had quoted the precedent of 1902 when the Chief Secretary introduced a Bill and expressed his willingness
1102
to send that Bill to a Standing Committee at the end of the session He contended that the hon. and learned Gentleman was not entitled to cite that as a precedent for the course now proposed. He was abused and held up to opprobrium in Ulster for having objected to that course being taken on the ground that he had spoiled the settlement of the question. He did not entertain any objection to the Bill per se going to a Standing Committee. He would have been glad to see it sent to a Standing Committee of all the Irish Members, and he believed it would have been admirably dealt with by such a Committee. Some Ulster Members had objected to the Bill going upstairs because it contained one clause with which they did not agree; that was a very weak ground for objection. He did not share it and he thought the House should not be frightened by the bogey held out that the Bill would be roughly treated in the Committee. After all, they had got to the month of July. What he meant to say was that the month of July did not conduce to the intelligent discussion of Bills upstairs. They had had complete proof of that in the present week. He knew that his opinion was shared to a large extent on the other side of the House that this was an inadequate Bill. The weak point of the Bill was in the financial clause, and he did not believe it could be amended in the Committee upstairs.
MR. WYNDHAMsaid there was precedent for that. It could be done by Section 18 of the Act of 1883.
MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid that if that was the case it simplified the matter considerably. But he persisted in his view that the financial question could not be discussed by the Committee. He did not object to Clause 13, or any other clause, going to the Committee if it were possible to do in the Committee what ought to be done with regard to the matter of finance. If that could be done he would vote for its going upstairs. Manifestly this Bill should go to the Standing Committee on Law and not on Trade. If the Chief Secretary could assure him that the question of the financial portion of the Bill could be thoroughly overhauled in

1103
the Standing Committee, his difficulty would be entirely removed and he would vote for its being committed. If that could not be done—and he believed it could not—he would vote against it. Unless they could deal with the financial part of the Bill it was absolutely useless,
and would mock the hopes and aspirations of the Irish nation.
Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes, 223; Noes, 10. (Division List No. 214.)

AYES.

Abraham, William (Cork,N.E.)

Egerton Hon. A. de Tatton

Lucas, ReginaldJ.(Portsmouth)

Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

Fenwick, Charles

Lundon, W.

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Fergusson, Rt. Hn. SirJ.(Manc'r

Lyell, Charles Henry

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

Maclver, David (Liverpool)

Bagot, Capt. Josceline FitzRoy

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Fison, Frederick William

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Bain, Colonel James Robert

FitzGerald, Sir RobertPenrose

M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

Baird, John George Alexander

Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

Balcarres, Lord

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Majendie, James A. H.

Baldwin, Alfred

Flavin, Michael Joseph

Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

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

Flower, Sir Ernest

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

Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsey)

Flynn, James Christopher

Melville, Beresford Valentine

Balfour,Rt.HnGeraldW.(LeedS

Forster, Henry William

Middlemore, Jn. Throgmorton

Barran, Rowland Hirst

Furness, Sir Christopher

Mitchell, William (Burnley)

Bathurst, Hon. AllenBenjamin

Graham, Henry Robert

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Bill, Charles

Grant, Corrie

Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

Blake, Edward

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Mooney, John J.

Blundell, Colonel Henry

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

Morpeth, Viscount

Boland, John

Grenfell, William Henry

Morrell, George Herbert

Bond, Edward

Gretton, John

Morrison, James Archibald

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

Brassey, Albert

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Murphy, John

Brigg, John

Hayden, John Patrick

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

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Healy, Timothy Michael

Murray,Charles J. (Coventry)

Burke, E. Haviland-

Heaton, John Henniker

Murray, Col. Wyndham(Bath)

Burns, John

Helder, Augustus

Nannetti, Joseph P.

Burt, Thomas

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

Nicholson, William Graham

Caldwell, James

Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

Cameron, Robert

Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

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

Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

Higham, John Sharpe

O'Brien,Kendal(Tipperary,Mid

Carson, Rt. Hon., Sir Edw. H.

Homer, Frederick William

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Causton, Richard Knight

Horniman, Frederick John

O'Doherty, William

Cavendish, V.C.W.(Derbyshire

Hoult, Joseph

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

Cayzer, Sir Charles William

Howard, J.(Midd., Tottenham)

O'Dowd, John

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Hudson, George Bickersteth

O'Kelly, James(Roscommon,N.

Chamberlain,RtHn.J.A.(Worc.

Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex)

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury

Chapman, Edward

Jordan, Jeremiah

Parkes, Ebenezer

Charrington, Spencer

Joyce, Michael

Parrott, William

Clancy, John Joseph

Kennaway, Rt.Hon.Sir John H.

Percy, Earl

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

Kennedy, VincentP. (Cavan,W.

Pilkington, Colonel Richard

Coddington, Sir William

Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T.(Denbigh)

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Colomb, Rt. Hon. Sir John C. R.

Kerr, John

Plummer, Walter R

Condon, Thomas Joseph.

Kilbride, Denis

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Crean, Eugene

Kimber, Henry

Power, Patrick Joseph

Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Price, Robert John

Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

Knowles, Sir Lees

Pym, C. Guy

Cullinan, J.

Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

Rankin, Sir James

Davenport, William Bromley

Law, Hugh Alex.(Donegal, W.)

Reddy, M.

Delany, William

Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Denny, Colonel

Lawson, JohnGrant(Yorks, N.R

Reid, James (Greenock)

Delvin, Chas. Ramsay (Galway

Layland-Barrat, Francis

Remnant, James Farquharson

Delvin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

Leamy, Edmund

Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

Dickson, Charles Scott

Lee, ArthurH.(Hants., Fareham

Renwick, George

Donelan, Captain A.

Lees, Sir Elliott (Pirkenhead)

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Doogan, P. C.

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Robinson, Brooke

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

Leigh, Sir Joseph

Roe, Sir Thomas

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

Leng, Sir John

Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

Doxford, Sir William Theodore

Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

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

Runciman, Walter

Dyke, Rt Hon. SirWilliam Hart

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Wilson, John (Falkirk)

Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

Thomas, DavidAlfred(Merthyr)

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

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Thompson, Dr. EC(Monagh'n, N

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

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

Wood, James

Sheehy, David

Tuff, Charles

Woodhouse, SirJT.(Huddersf' d

Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

Valentia, Viscount

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

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

Walker, Col. William Hall

Wrightson, Sir Thomas

Spear, John Ward

Wallace, Robert

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Stanley, Hon. Arthur(Ormskirk

Warde, Colonel C. E.

Young, Samuel

Stanley, Rt. Hon.Lord (Lancs.)

Welby, Sir Charles GE (Notts.)

Stock, James Henry

Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

Tellers for the Ayes—Sir

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Alexander Acland - Hood,

Stroyan, John

Wills, Sir Frederick

and Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.

Sullivan, Donal

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

NOES.

Clive, Captain Percy A.

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

Tellers for the Noes—Mr.

Corbett, T. L. (Down North)

Russell, T. W.

William Moore and Mr.

Craig, Charles Curtis(Antrim, S.

Saunderson, Rt. Hn. Col. Edw. J.

Lonsdale.

Harris, F. Leverton(Tynem'th)

Sloan, Thomas Henry

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

Tollemache, Henry James

IRISH LAND BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that under ordinary circumstances he should have supposed that the right hon. Gentleman would have made this Motion in a speech to the House. He had no right to complain that the right hon. Gentleman had taken another course. The right hon. Gentleman had intimated to him a few moments ago his desire to speak at the end of the debate, and in these circumstances it devolved upon him (Mr. Redmond) to move the Motion standing in his name upon the Paper. He moved this Motion as the outcome of the decision arrived at in a national convention held in Dublin a few months ago. That convention was an assembly which might fairly be said to be representative of the national sentiment throughout the whole country. These assemblies represented not merely branches of the political organisation with which the Irish representatives on those Benches were identified, but all the elected public bodies in Ireland— county councils, district councils, and so forth, all through the country. They were representative of the clergy of all denominations, or they were open to the clergy of all denominations, and, therefore, he felt it was only fair
1106
to say that the decision unanimously come to by an assembly of that kind was a decision representing the overwhelming sentiment of the Nationalists of Ireland. He therefore moved this Resolution as the outcome of that convention and on behalf of the Irish Nationalist Party in the House of Commons.
The first thing he desired to say to the right hon. Gentleman and the House was this. This Motion was not to be taken by the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else as an expression of hostility or unfriendliness to the proper working of the Land Act of last year or as indicating any departure whatever from the attitude they adopted on the Third Reading of the Bill at the end of last year. This Motion was a protest against the action of the Government in so framing this Bill as to preclude the possibility of discussing those various defects which had come to light in the working of the former Bill, and in so framing it as to limit discussion to one particular drafting defect which affected the payment of the bonus in certain cases. Now he might say that exactly this time last year, when speaking upon the Third Reading, he used the following words which he hoped he might be forgiven for quoting to the House. He said on that occasion—
"We cannot remain silent upon this occasion lest our critics may say that our silence was an indication of our satisfaction with the shape in which the Bill stands at this moment, and that we accept full responsibility for everything in it and for its successful working. I had better say at once this is not our Bill, it

1107
is the Bill of the Government, the responsibility for it rests not upon us but upon the Government. The Bill as it stands is marked by defects and omissions which make it necessary for us to emphasise the fact that after all the responsibility is not ours, the Bill is the Government's Bill."
He then proceeded to point out those various matters in which his friends and he considered the measure defective. He though the could truly say that upon every one of those points the working of the Act, so far as it had gone, had proved that they were right, and he moved this Motion as a protest against this manœuvre on the part of the Government whereby they were prevented from discussing on this Bill the various defects which had come to light and which urgently needed amendment.
The actual proposal in the Bill was simplicity itself; it was to rectify certain mistakes in the drafting of the measure whereby the admitted intentions of Parliament had been frustrated. One of those mistakes apparently prevented the possibility of payment of the bonus in certain cases on the sale of untenanted land, and he wished to say that nothing that they did or said upon this matter should be taken as indicating any hostility upon their part to the payment of the bonus for the sale of untenanted land. On the contrary, they all recognised that upon the rapid sale of the grass lands of Ireland, upon the rapid distribution of those lands in the enlargement of uneconomic holdings in the country, and in the provision for evicted tenants, depended absolutely the settlement of the most acute phase of the Irish! land question; and if through that extra-ordinary blunder on the part of the Government draftsmen, and through the extraordinary oversight on the part of the Law Officers of the Crown, who had charge of the legal portion of this Bill passing through the House, a mistake had arisen in the wording of the measure which destroyed one of the chief inducements to promote the sale of the grass lands in Ireland then no one would dream of taking the responsibility of preventing the rectification of that mistake. But they believed that the sale of the untenanted grass lands of the country had not been in the main stopped by the mistake. The right hon. Gentleman on the preceding night, in the very inter-
1108
esting speech that he made, explained that so far as the operations of the Congested Districts Board were concerned, that mistake did not operate because he told them that he and the Board had taken the responsibility of undertaking to pay the bonus, and that the sale of land up to the present, so far as the Congested Districts Board was concerned, had proceeded as if the mistake had not taken place. And what had been the result? He had not the exact figures, but in the nine months working of the Bill the amount of untenanted land purchased by the Congested Districts Board had been lamentably small, and the reason why it had been so very small must be looked for quite apart altogether from the mistake in the wording. That was exactly what they predicted during the Committee stage last year, and on the Third Reading also they said that quite apart from the question of the bonus, the measure as it stood would not lead to the sale of the grass lands of Connaught and the West of Ireland as rapidly as was necessary. He said at that time—
"We do not believe the Bill as it stands will be able to grapple successfully with the congested districts question. The constitution of the Board is such that we do not believe that it has any serious chance of being able to settle this question, and I am convinced that in a comparatively short space of time the Government will find that the advice which we gave them as the result of our experience, and which they have rejected, must be accepted if this question is to be settled."
And he said now that the failure of the Act to break up the grass lands of Connaught was due not to the defect with reference to the bonus, but to an entirely different cause. First of all he believed it was due to some extent, perhaps to a large extent, to the present constitution and policy of the Congested Districts Board. Last year they pressed strongly upon the right hon. Gentleman the necessity of amending the constitution of that Board. But he neglected their advice, and he believed himself that, until some radical amendment was made, its work would not be carried out with that vigour which was essential if this question was to be settled in a short space of time. But a great deal more important was the absence of all compulsory powers in the hands of the Board to acquire these grass lands. This was not a question of

1109
general compulsory purchase in Ireland. It was a limited question which came up for discussion in the land conference which initiated the Land Bill of last year, and there was no difference of opinion at that land conference between the representatives of landlords and tenants that, so far as Connaught or the grass lands in the West and Congested Districts of Ireland were concerned, compulsory powers were desirable and would be necessary, and a paragraph was put in the report which plainly indicated that that was the unanimous opinion. The opinion had been almost unanimous everywhere upon the subject. The Board itself, as the right hon. Gentleman remembered, in 1895 passed a unanimous resolution declaring that they could not satisfactorily carry on their work unless they had compulsory powers, and he could appeal to him himself, because last year in speaking of this question he declined to put compulsory powers into his Bill. What was the reason he gave? Not that he thought compulsory powers were wrong, but because he thought they were unnecessary. He said the inducements to sell under the Bill were so great that there would be no difficulty in acquiring the grass lands of the West. He clearly indicated the view that if his anticipation proved to be false and the inducements to sell were not sufficient, he himself would have no objection to the principle of compulsion as applied to this particular case. He (Mr. Redmond) and his colleagues protested against the form in which the Bill was drawn, because it prevented any possibility of raising the question of compulsory powers for the Congested Districts Board, and hindered the discussion of questions which were operating to prevent the successful working of the Act in the West of Ireland.
There were certain features in the working of the Land Act, so far as it had gone, which undoubtedly were causing the gravest possible anxiety, and which, in the highest interests of the country, ought to be immediately the subject of careful consideration and amendment of the law. The first—he put it first because he believed it was most urgent— was the question of the untenanted lands and of the enlargement of uneconomic holdings. If everything else in the Act
1110
were perfect, if it worked all over the country successfully and satisfactorily, and if this question of the breaking up of the grass lands were left out, the land question in Ireland would not be near a settlement. It was from the question of the uneconomic holdings that all the trouble, all the misery, all the crime, and all the emigration which had been caused by the land question had sprung, and it was futile to think that any measure—even although it worked satisfactorily elsewhere — would settle the Irish land war if that portion which related to the West of Ireland was unsatisfactory, and yet the Government had jockeyed them out of the possibility of effectively discussing this question, and of proposing any amendments in the law which in nine months working had been proved to be defective.
The second question which was exercising the public mind in Ireland and was causing the gravest anxiety, was the question of the evicted tenants. Again, he said with reference to the evicted tenants' question what he had said with reference to Connaught—there could be no settlement of the Irish land question which did not include a settlement of the evicted tenants question, and he was afraid the Estates Commissioners did not seem to realise how much of the success of the measure throughout Ireland depended upon their attitude with regard to the evicted tenants. He wished hon. Gentlemen to realise that there could be no peace, no settlement, and no end of the land war until these men were restored to their homes or were given farms elsewhere. Again, they were absolutely precluded from raising any question in Committee or any Amendment. But perhaps the most widely serious aspect of all was the action which had been taken by a large section of the Irish landlords themselves. He knew that the Bill of last year gave full power to the Land Commissioners to say what was an estate and what was not, and they had full power to say to the landlord, "We will not hold this to be an estate and will not allow the sale to go through unless you put in along with the tenanted land the grass lands which you have." He knew that they had that

1111
power; but he knew nothing of the exercise of that power by them. It would be satisfactory to the whole country if the right lion. Gentleman would give them an assurance that in cases of that kind the Estates Commissioners would decline to define as an estate any portion of tenanted land brought in where the landlord refused to sell the grass lands in his possession. They had knowledge of cases in which there had been a refusal to restore evicted tenants to their holdings, and they had particularly a case in which Lord Lansdowne had absolutely refused to consider the question of the restoration of an evicted tenant. His was not the case of an ordinary landlord. He was a member of the Government, the Leader of the House of Lords, and a member of the Government also that promoted the Land Act, and one of the landlords who approved of the land conference. Last year an Amendment was moved in the House of Lords by the Earl of West-meath, the object of which was practically to destroy the evicted tenants' clause in the Bill. That was resisted by the Government, and Lord Lansdowne said—
"If this Bill had in his eyes one recommendation more than another it was that they saw in it the possibility of the restoration of peace and goodwill between landlords and tenants in Ireland. Surely,
added Lord Lansdowne,
the Earl of Westmeath and Lord Barry-more must know that this provision for the restoration of the evicted tenants, or their representatives in suitable cases, to the holdings which they once occupied was an essential element in the compromise; and that if that element had been excluded the Bill might not at that moment be on the Table of the House at all."
That statement was quite inconsistent with the action which had been, as far as he knew, rightly attributed to Lord Lansdowne, and it was rather a serious matter when an example of that kind was set by a person representing the Government, and who himself was one of the authors of the Bill. Further than that, there unquestionably was on foot in many parts of Ireland an attempt by certain landlords to force their tenants to "buy on terms fixed by the landlords themselves, by calling up the hanging gale, and by proceeding for old arrears. That was a most deplorable thing if it were true. He took his information not
1112
only from the Press, but from his colleagues, who came there and spoke of what they knew in their own districts. Their statement was that hanging gales, some of which had been in existence since the famine, had been suddenly called up —in many cases simply to bring pressure to bear on the tenants to agree to any terms the landlord might propose. The result was that over a large portion of Ireland there was friction, and he was afraid there was trouble brewing; and just as the hopes and anticipations aroused by the Act of last year were great so would the trouble be serious and deep if those hopes were disappointed. Yet the Government, in face of that state of things, refused the Irish Members an opportunity on this Bill of discussing Amendments to the Act which had been shown to be necessary by the working of the last nine months. In taking that course, in his judgment, the Government was acting with unheard of folly. The Irish Party's attitude towards the measure had not changed. The hon. Member for East Mayo said last year—
"This Bill leaves the House with the goodwill of the Irish Party, and with a pledge from us that we will give it fair play, with an honest desire, according to our lights, to make it work."
That was their attitude then; it had been their attitude since; it was their attitude now. But they felt bound to protest against being deprived of the opportunity of a full and free discussion of those defects which experience had shown was marring the working of the Act, and of proposing Amendments which experience had proved to be necessary if the measure was really to secure the beneficent results to which they all looked forward last year. For these reasons he moved the Motion standing in his name.
CAPTAIN DONELANin seconding the Amendment, said it embodied the conclusion unanimously adopted at the recent National Convention, and might therefore be regarded as practically the mandate of the Irish people. The object of the Government Bill was merely to remedy certain defects in the drafting of the Land Act of last year, and, therefore, it was, of course, a matter of far more concern to the landlords than to the

1113
tenants. At the same time this Bill, under ordinary circumstances, would be useful and would have the support of Irish Members, because it would be very desirable to facilitate the working of the Land Act if only for the sake of the restoration of evicted tenants to their homes. But, under existing conditions and in view of the exorbitant prices demanded by Irish landlords, he thought it extremely doubtful whether it was desirable to accelerate the present pace. It was intended that the tenants should gain at least some advantage from the bonus; but experience showed that the bonus had only served to increase the price of land. It seemed to have whetted the appetites of the Irish landlords. The Chief Secretary seemed to measure the success of the Act by the number of sales that had been effected. He ventured, however, to think that the real point was whether the tenants were getting value for their money. If the terms on which the sale of land was taking place were equitable and just, the more speedily the land was transferred from the landlords to the tenants the better; but, on the other hand, if the tenants were paying more than the market value of the land, each transaction increased the risk of the Irish ratepayers, because undoubtedly it must place an undue burden upon the purchaser. The whole question turned upon the point whether the terms were fair or unfair, safe or unsafe.
What had happened during the past twelve months to boom the price of land in Ireland? While prices had gone up the value of Irish land had steadily gone down. That appeared to be a very unnatural situation. He was able to speak from personal experience and knowledge of the subject, because he was a practical Irish farmer, and although most of the land which he farmed was his own property, and no land in Ireland was farmed better, he found it more difficult each year to make any profit whatever. This was owing undoubtedly to increasing foreign competition and to the increasing cost of production. What, then must be the condition of farmers who were struggling to pay heavy annual instalments? He considered their situation most serious, and that fact ought to
1114
be recognised by the Chief Secretary. The terms would be too high even if the rents were fair rents; but how could judicial rents be fair when they were all fixed by landlords and not by tenants? The Attorney-General for Ireland had never packed an Irish jury as the present Government and the landlords between them had packed the Irish Land Commission. The question might be asked, why did the tenants agree to pay preposterous prices? He thought the chief reason was, as his hon. and learned friend had pointed out, that the last disastrous year left them at the mercy of the land-lords' combination because, although there were exceptions, the vast majority of the landlords in Ireland refused to recognise the disastrous losses their tenants suffered last year and pressed for the last penny of rent. Consequently the tenants very naturally took refuge in purchase at almost any price. The tenants were tempted to do this because under the Land Act of last year they were able to add the current year's rent to the purchase money and that no doubt gave them some temporary relief. He was afraid that in many cases the Irish tenants had clutched at this privilege as a drowning man clutched at a straw. The object of the landlords' combination had been to force up the price of Irish land to a fictitious value, and unfortunately that object had been attained. As the Chief Secretary knew very well, the current prices were far in excess of the prices paid under previous Acts, and in many cases they were far in excess of the prices of farms recently sold by the official inspectors and even by the landlords themselves. Therefore he thought it was absolutely essential to revert to the old system of inspection in order to safeguard the interests of the tenants.
As an illustration of how the present system was working in Ireland perhaps he might be allowed to mention as a case in point the instance of the Edlin tenants in his own constituency. Last winter he offered the landlord on behalf of these tenants twenty-two years purchase of second-term rents but that offer was curtly refused and under threats of pains and penalties the landlord demanded an impossible price and the immediate payment of all rent due. The tenants having offered the utmost

1115
farthing they could afford to pay very properly stood firmly to their offer, and what the result. On Saturday last, just as these farms were being put up for sale by the sheriff of the Court, the landlord yielded to firmness what he had denied to justice and fair play and accepted the terms which he (the hon. Member) had offered six months ago. In this instance, all had gone well, and "all's well that ends well." For this, however, the tenants had only to thank themselves. He thought the Irish tenant should be able to obtain justice without having to fight for it. For himself he had always been in favour of the Land Conference policy. He had invariably found tenants not only willing but anxious to meet their landlords in a liberal and generous spirit, but he regretted to say that he had very seldom found that spirit reciprocated by the landlords. He thought the time had come when this question should be looked in the face and if some change was not made, and very soon made, in the direction indicated in this Amendment it was very doubtful whether the Act of last year might not result in disaster instead of proving a blessing to the country. Compulsion was the only remedy and it had been recognised as the only real solution of the question. He begged to second the Motion.
Amendment proposed—
"To leave out from the word, 'That' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, 'no measure dealing with the Amendment of the Irish Land Act of 1903 can be accepted as satisfactory which deals only with facilitating Irish landlords in obtaining the bonus, and which provides no remedy for the grave defects of that Act affecting Irish tenants, particularly the creation of a system of zones leading to the unjust inflation of prices, and the absence of provisions for the compulsory acquisition of untenanted land essential for the enlargement of holdings, the restoration of evicted tenants, and the final settlement of the Irish land question' instead thereof." — (Mr. John Redmond.
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
MR. FLYNNsaid that all along the tenantshad been most anxious that the Land Act should work smoothly and rapidly and they had been most anxious to meet the landlords fairly.
1116
Speaking as one who had had a good deal of experience in one part of Ireland during the past nine months upon this question he had no hesitation in saying that that feeling had not been reciprocated by the landlords as a rule. He thought the hon. and gallant Member who had just spoken might have emphasised his argument in regard to the case he had alluded to by stating that that very property was actually offered at a lower price to the tenants—at a lower number of years purchase —before there was any talk of purchase. The unfortunate thing in regard to this bonus which was based upon the security of Irish funds and Irish rates was that instead of assisting the tenants it had been diverted to stimulate and raise the price to be paid for the land by the tenants. Nobody who had watched the com se of events since November last could deny that the Amendment and the arguments used by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford were the very quintessence of moderation. The tenants naturally expected some share of this bonus and had thought that it would make their terms of purchase easier, but they were mistaken. He challenged any representative of the landlords, or any landlord, to give one single case in which a tenant had asked for a penny or a single farthing of the bonus. There was property in his constituency which was valued at nineteen years purchase under the Ash bourne Acts for which the landlords were now asking twenty-two and twenty-three years purchase together with the bonus. That was a most unlooked for state of things. In this case appetite grew by what it fed on. The landlords' appetite had been spoken of as having been whetted, but in his opinion it had now become voracious. In the case he had mentioned the landlord was looked upon as one of the most generous landlords, but under the stimulus of this bonus his property had gone up to the most preposterous prices and what was intended as a blessing to the tenants had turned out to be a curse. Unless the reforms suggested in the Amendment were carried out a settlement of the land question was impossible.
MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL (Kerry, W.)said that the introduction of the Land Bill last year led them

1117
to hope that a final and satisfactory settlement of the Irish land problem would have been arrived at. During the past century that question had prevented proper attention being given to other great questions, such as education, industrial improvement, and the housing of the working classes, which had been awaiting settlement, and naturally they were I delighted at the prospect opened up. He recognised that the Chief Secretary had done everything in his power, with the forces behind him, to settle the whole of this difficult question. But having watched the administration of the Land Act during the past nine or ten months, he was bound to say that the hopes then formed were far from being realised. The blame did not rest with the Irish farmer, who was anxious to do everything in his power to become the owner of his land. But in Ireland land was not fetching its market value but a monopoly value, and even greater than a monopoly value. During the last eighteen years in which the Irish Land Acts had been in operation £22,000,000 worth of land had been transferred from landlords to tenants, and the average price had been not more than seventeen years purchase of the rental—the highest price not being more than twenty-one years purchase. It might be said that the system of agrarian agitation pursued by the Irish people was the cause of the landlords selling at so low a price, and that the Irish people had no regard to the rights of property. He denied that. Sir Alfred Milner, giving evidence before the Commission on the Depreciation of Land Values in 1897, said that the value of Irish land had enormously decreased, and that the value of English land had in the same period decreased from thirty years to eighteen years purchase in Schedule A of the income-tax returns. Sir Robert Giffen, and every other witness before the Commission said the same thing.
On the passing of the Land Act, the tenants of the estates in his own constituency formed a committee of advice and Showed that they were only too anxious to do everything in their power, consistently with their own safety, to meet the landlords
1118
fairly and reasonably, and had shown their willingness, not only to give the market value, viz., seventeen years purchase, but to give two years purchase more than neighbouring landlords had received under the former land purchase Acts—in addition to which the landlords would have got three years purchase by way of bonus. The Irish tenants had gone further than their own safety entitled them to go in endeavouring to meet the landlords. The landlords, had, however, disappointed the hopes of men who thought they would do something for the country they had robbed for centuries. They had shown themselves hopelessly incompetent to meet the overtures made to them by the Irish tenants. If the landlords' demands were to be accepted, the children and the grandchildren of the Irish tenants would be ruined, and Ireland would be in a condition of national bankruptcy. It was true that the tenants could not compel the landlords to sell; but it was not true that the landlords could not compel the tenants to buy. He had received a letter signed by ten of his constituents stating that between March, 1903, and January, 1904, they had paid three gales of rent, and that they had been asked in the first week of April for a fourth gale. That fourth gale was the hanging gale which had never been previously demanded. Those unfortunate tenants were being persecuted in this manner notwithstanding the scarcity of food and fuel, and after a bad harvest, in order to drive them to purchase.
The landlords contended that they ought to receive an amount which, if invested in trust funds, would produce their present net income. They were, however, pushing their demands a little too far. He challenged any landlord in Ireland to produce books which would show that his net income was 90 per cent., or even 70 per cent, of his gross income. If the landlords were prepared to sell at a price which would produce their genuine net income he would not object; but why should they, of all landlords in the world, demand 90 per cent, of their gross income. According to the Agricultural Depression Commission of 1897, the net income of the landlords in this country was only 51

1119
per cent, of their gross income. The English landlord had markets at his door; and yet his net income was only 51 per cent, of his gross income. The landlords on the western coast of Ireland, however, demanded 90 per cent, of their cross income. That was perfectly monstrous and absurd. The Irish tenant had shown his desire to facilitate the transfer of the land. The Irish landlords had, however, been true to their history; and would not be satisfied with what their colleagues in this country would accept. It had been said that the landlords were ready to help in a settlement; but he would ask how many evicted tenants, who had been living in squalor and misery, had been reinstated? There were over 400 evicted tenants in Kerry; and during the nine months the Act had been in operation not one of them had been reinstated. Neither had the Estates Commissioners taken any step in that direction. It was the duty of the Irish Members to secure justice for these men. One landlord in his constituency, Lord Ventry, had refused to sell at any price. 50 per cent, of his tenants were future tenants; and they had to continue to pay the old rack rents. They could not even have fair rents fixed. Having regard to all these conditions, it was time that the House took action in the interests of future tenants. He sincerely hoped—though he supposed the hope was vain—that the Irish landlords would at last consider the interests of their country, having regard to the advantages which the Act conferred on them and enable the Irish tenants to purchase their holdings at fair prices.
MR. LONSDALEdid not suppose that any Irish Member-Unionist or Nationalist—was entirely satisfied with the Land Bill which had been brought in by his right hon. friend the Chief Secretary. They all thought that it was too small, and that many points which might usefully have been dealt with, had been omitted from it. He believed, for example, that besides dealing with the bonus, the Chief Secretary would have done well to make an effort to remove another obstacle to land purchase. He referred to the cost of proving title of superior interests, which were now thrown upon the selling landlord. These superior
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interests were much thicker than was generally supposed. Where they existed it was seldom that a landlord who was willing to sell could make any calculation as to what he might get in the end; because he could form no idea as to the cost of proving the titles of perhaps two or three superior interests of which he might have had no previous knowledge whatever. This uncertainty was deterring many landlords from selling their estates, and he could not help thinking that there was no greater hardship in compelling the owners of superior interests to bear the cost of proving their own titles than there was in making the selling landlord prove his title at his own expense. That was but one of many minor difficulties which would have to be dealt with in another amending Bill if the Land Act of last year was to be completely successful. He did not think that the limited character of the Bill before them was a sufficient reason for its rejection. It would serve a useful purpose by facilitating sales, and therefore he would give it his support. He did not agree with the suggestion which was contained in the Amendment of the hon. Member for Waterford that it was merely a landlords' Bill. The purpose of the measure was to expedite sales under last year's Act, by making clear what was the evident intention of Parliament in regard to the distribution of the bonus. Therefore, it was designed as much in the interests of the tenant farmers as of the landlords; and it was for that reason he should vote for the Second Reading.
The hon. Member for Waterfordappeared to desire to upset the entire scheme of last year's Act and throw the whole question of land purchase once more into the melting pot. He could not think that such a course would be in the interests of the tenant farmers of Ireland; and he regretted that the hon. and learned Member had proposed an Amendment which could not fail to encourage agitation and discourage those friendly negotiations upon which the success of any scheme of voluntary land purchase must depend. No one regretted more than he did the attitude which had been adopted by some of the landlords in Ulster. He noticed that at a recent meeting of the Landlords' Convention it was argued that Ulster landlords should get a better price for

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their land because the security was better. But the landlords did not create the security. The security was good because the people were frugal, industrious, law-abiding and honourably mindful of their just obligations. To contend that because tenant farmers had paid rent regularly and without giving trouble they should now be expected to give a higher price for their land was—he ventured to say — altogether unreasonable. The attempt of some landlords to put a money value upon the sentiment of ownership— which they were called upon to relinquish under the Act—could not be justified; these were simply passing phases of a great movement of reform. He, for one, did not take a gloomy view of the future of the Land Act. On the contrary, considering the short time it had been in operation, he thought the results were very encouraging. He admitted there was a danger of the extremists on both sides bringing about a state of deadlock. He felt confident, however, that the good sense of the tenant farmers would prevail on the one hand to bring about the maintenance of a reasonable spirit; while on the other hand he had no doubt that Parliament would, if necessary, grant compulsory powers of purchase—to be applied in the case of landlords who, in spite of every inducement, refused to sell their estates. As the House knew, he was an advocate of compulsory purchase—as a last resource. He had voted for compulsion in the House, and he should be prepared to do so again should it be found necessary to introduce such a measure to complete land purchase. He believed, however, that a premature agitation for compulsion would simply delay the establishment of the system of occupying ownership of agricultural land in Ireland. The Land Act of last year must have a fair chance. Parliament could assist its operation by removing obstacles to negotiation where they were shown to exist. It would—in his opinion—be a great mistake to make any violent change, at this stage, in the principles or the methods of last year's Act; and, therefore, he trusted the House would reject the Amendment of the hon. Member for Waterford and agree to the Second Reading of the Bill.
MR. KILBRIDEsaid he rose with considerable hesitation and a full sense of his responsibility as a Member of that House, and as the representative of South Kildare, not only to support the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford but also to oppose the Bill of the Chief Secretary. Those who had been present at the land debates in that House in the previous year must have been impressed by the fact that the chief case the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary made out for the necessity of the Land Act was the state of the congested districts in Connaught. Let hon. Members refer to what had been done in the way of removing the congestion and restoring evicted tenants in Connaught. He defied anyone to say that the Act had been anything but an abject failure. It had neither relieved congestion nor restored evicted tenants. A good deal of criticism had been passed upon the Congested Districts Board because they had not bought up untenanted lands in Connaught and distributed them among the people, but it was neither fair nor honest to put the whole blame upon them, because they had been unable to purchase untenanted land. The moment the Land Act became law the landlords demanded of Mr. Doran, the representative of the Congested Districts Board in these matters, the unreasonable price of thirty or forty years purchase and the Congested Districts Board should not be blamed because they refused to pay this exorbitant price for land which, before the passing of the Land Act, the landlords would have been glad to sell at sixteen or eighteen years purchase.
The land in Connaught rose and fell in value in sympathy with the price of land in Kildare, Meath, Dublin, and the best parts of Ireland. He frankly admitted he did everything he could to prevent his own constituents from giving twenty-five years purchase I on second-term rents, because he believed that twenty-five years purchase on second-term rents reduced twelve and a half per cent, on first-term rents was not a sound bargain. Conditions were too onerous to enable the tenants to pay that price for sixty-eight-and-a-half years and to pay their instalments punctually and with regularity. In 1888, when agricultural

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produce was worth much more than it was at the present time and when the financial position of the tenant farmer was much better and stronger than it was to-day, the best land was sold for eighteen years purchase; now, with the existing state of affairs in Ireland and in view of the agricultural prices which existed, who could say that twenty-five years purchase on second-term rents was a sound investment? If twenty-five years purchase on second term rents was the fair price to pay now, surely those men who in 1888 purchased land at eighteen years purchase under former Acts, and who had received one decadal reduction in their rents, were going to receive another, and would very soon have a third—surely those people ought to be rich. If, however, hon. Members went among those who purchased in 1888 in Kildare on a portion of the Leinster property, or if they went to the banks to see if their bank balances had increased since 1888, they would find that not only had their bank balances not increased but those who were able to do so were only too glad to show the same balance in 1904 as they were in 1888.
This was a matter that affected England as much as Ireland. He never entered into the Irish land agitation for the simple purpose of improving the Irish tenant's position, but because he thought it was a step towards Home Rule; he believed that once the Irish tenant farmer became a free man he would be a far stronger Home Ruler than ever he had been before. The bargains that had been arrived at in Kildare, where they had twenty-six years purchase without the bonus and nearly twenty-nine with the bonus, had been brought about in this way. The inducement in every case was the fact that one year's rent was forgiven and in some cases an extra half year's rent would be taken off the arrears and added to the purchase money. The mere fact that they were in arrear with their rent, although they had second-terms rents, was proof positive that farming was anything but a paying business in Kildare, and they required large reductions in rent if they were to meet their engagements. The right hon. Gentleman had said that fifty evicted tenants had been reinstated by individual landlords and twenty-three by
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the Estates Commissioners, that large amounts had been given in grants, and other moneys had been advanced by way of loan, but the question he desired to ask was, had the Estates Commissioners no power to approach a grabber who was in possession of an evicted tenant's holding, who was willing to give up the holding if he was given compensation, and allow the evicted tenant to negotiate with his former landlord? Those were two important points which he should like to have cleared up. Ireland was anxious to know, and he hoped it would know from an authoritative source like the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary, what the exact powers of the Estates Commissioners were. Had they any powers at all, except to advance money, as they had done in the case of the Coolgreaney estate? Was that the full extent of their powers? Because, if so, this Bill would not settle the evicted tenants' questions. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the evicted tenants had no wish to be transplanted; they wanted no other land than that farm from which they had been evicted. All that every evicted tenant wanted was to be restored to the holding upon which he had been born and brought up, and where his forefathers had lived before him. It was the old associations which the evicted tenants wanted restored I more than anything else, and when the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh got up and spoke of the heartstrings of the Irish landlords being broken by having to part with their beloved tenants, whom for years they had denounced as rogues and vagabonds, he would ask those hon. Gentlemen to consider the broken-hearted condition of the evicted tenants. The evicted tenants did not want this land question to remain for ever open, and in order that a settlement might be arrived at, where they could not be reinstalled, they were willing to go on to other farms of approximately the same size as those from which they had been evicted, but, as he had said, their hearts' desire was to be restored to their old holdings. Their silence on the last Land Bill had not been properly considered in this light. It had been regarded as cowardice; but there was a limit to human endurance, and if the right hon. Gentleman continued to deal with this matter in the dilettante fashion

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in which he had been dealing with it, before he left the Irish Office his eyes and ears would be opened on the general question of land purchase.
The right hon. Gentleman had stated that the real security for the financial success of these transactions of land purchase was the difference of 20 per cent. between the future annuity and the second-term rent. He believed that was too slender a margin on which to build up the prosperity of Ireland for the next sixty-eight-and-a-half years. He wanted to see the Irish race raised out of the slough of despond in which they had been for so many years, and he thought that in all likelihood that this 20 per cent., especially on the large tillage farms of Ireland, would be eaten up by the increased price of labour. He believed that the Irish agricultural labourer in almost every instance in the past had not had sufficient remuneration for his labour, and it was because of that fact that they had left the country in such large numbers. They would never, in his opinion, succeed in keeping ambitious or intelligent labourers in Ireland unless the wages approximated somewhat to the wages earned in other countries. The average price paid for Irish land since the passing of the Land Act was twenty-one years purchase of first - term rents and twenty-three years purchase of second-term rents. The price had gone up in practically the same ratio as the price of agricultural produce had gone down. Irish land was one of the worst securities in the world. Yet it was bringing a much higher price than ground-rents in the best part of Dublin. That was a most anomalous state of affairs. It was a thing beyond his comprehension that the landlord should get more because the farmer earned less. He was told that the rate of interest on the annuity being 3¼ per cent., instead of 4 per cent., as tinder the Ashbourne Acts, would enable the tenant farmer to give a greater number of years purchase, but the decadal reductions under the former system were worth 20 per cent. Under this Bill there was no provision for decadal reductions. He submitted that the purchasers under this Act should be in the same position as the men who purchased under the Ashbourne Acts. It was because the
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acceptance of these terms gave him some temporary relief, because it put off the evil day for another year or two, that the tenant agreed to them. He would like to know of an English landlord who got twenty-six years purchase for agricultural land. There would be a great many English landlords who would be only too glad to get it.
It was because he was convinced that the transactions that had taken place under the Land Act were unsound financially that he should vote against this Bill. He could well remember that in his younger days he was fond of buying penny books which graphically described the exploits of such men as Grant and Frieney, two well - known highwaymen, who robbed the people of the country to their hearts' content, until friendly police appeared on the scene and drove them off. Well, he ventured to think that these men were not much worse than some of the Irish landlords to-day. He was justified in saying that, because under the Land Act, by the system of zones which took away the safeguard of inspection, they had got rid of the friendly policemen whose duty it was to beat off the hereditary plunderer. The Irish Members now asked that the system of inspection should be restored. Who were the inspectors appointed under previous Purchase Acts? They had been entirely taken from the landlord classes; they were landlords' sons, sons of landlords and land agents, and they over and over again reported that the prices agreed on were too high and did not give sufficient security to the Treasury. It was because he honestly believed these things that he would, with his whole heart, vote against the Bill.
MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid he had listened with great satisfaction to the moderate speech of the Leader of the Nationalist Party. Personally he looked upon the breakdown of the Act as a temporary phase, and he agreed that in dealing with any measure of the magnitude of the Land Act time and fair play must be given before judging the results; He for one had never expected complete and immediate results from a Land Purchase Act which necessarily contained many ramifications and was intended to

1127
apply to all time. He entirely agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Waterford also, that so far as the question of the untenanted land was concerned, so far as the evicted tenants were concerned, and so far as the question of the enlargement of the holdings was concerned—and these were very large items indeed—there had been a temporary breakdown, giving room for the gravest disappointment and for resolute action on the part of the Government, and of that House, if necessary. The breakdown, as regarded all three points, was largely owing to the decision of Mr. Justice Ross on the question of the bonus; that in his opinion was a most unfortunate decision. Of course, the Estates Commissioners now could not buy untenanted land without being ready to pay the bonus and Mr. Justice Ross had the satisfaction of having practically arrested one of the most philanthropic and beneficent parts of the whole Act. It was because he saw in the Bill a peremptory method of reversing that decision and allowing the Act to have free course that he welcomed a debate on the whole question. Those of them who had been in the House ever since the first Land Purchase Act came into operation and could look back, for instance, to the Act of 1885, were aware that during nineteen years, as the result of the Acts,£22,000,000 had been spent on land purchase in Ireland. The present Land Act had been in operation for eight months, and they heard from the Chief Secretary that applications to the extent of £8,000,0OO had already been before the Estates Commissioners. It was perfectly impossible for land reformers in Ireland or out of it to ignore that fact, and in his opinion it gave promise of a great future for this question. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: What about the prices?] He did not think this was a debate on which Members ought to speak without forethought, and hopes should not be raised or dashed by their discussion. The issues were much too serious for that. They had not only had the facts he had mentioned from the Chief Secretary but they had had the other fact that negotiations were going on all over the country, and estates coming in to the Commissioners every day in large numbers, which also gave them a ground for hope.
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Now he came to the question of the prices, and he was exceedingly glad to see the hon. Member for North Antrim in his place, for he had something to say in regard to that Gentleman's negotiations with his tenants. So far as second-term rents were concerned the average price paid under what was known as Wyndham's Act was twenty-three-and-a-half years purchase. That was the average price as shown by the returns which had come in, and he was prepared to tell any one to close with 20 per cent. reduction in addition to the reduction of 38 per cent, already effected, for he had consistently told his constituents in Ulster that such terms could not be deemed to be a bad bargain. The real difficulty was not here, but with respect to first-term rents and non-judicial tenancies. Landlords had made hay of the Act so far as those tenancies were concerned. The Land Conference had been assailed, but he believed no body of men ever did a better day's work for Ireland. The Conference proposed a certain reduction on second-term rents, with a fair equivalent for first-term rents and non-judicial tenancies. Instead of giving that, the landlords were doing nothing of the kind, first-term rents bringing much too high a price when compared with second-term rents, and as to non-judicial tenancies the terms were simply enormous. He was going to give an illustration of this from a letter written by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim.
MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid that was a private letter to a friend and not to a tenant. Although he could not prevent his friend reading it in the House, if he thought that was fair and honourable, if the hon. Member did so he must take the consequences in his own constituency.
MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid he would take any consequents in his own constituency or anywhere else. He would not read the hon. and learned Member's letter, however, but he would read the tenant's letter to the hon. and learned Member, which was not private and which the tenant had forwarded to him.
MR. WILLIAM MOORE: The letter I got from this gentleman was marked "private" and the answer also was

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private. It should be treated as confidential, and there was no right to show it to any one. It the letter was read he would ask leave to make a personal explanation.
MR. T. W. RUSSELLthen read the letter, dated 1st December, 1903, in which the writer said, hiving seen a letter of the hon. Member for North Antrim in which it was stated that he considered twenty years purchase fair, "I cannot understand on what grounds you have increased your estimate so much as to ask almost twenty-eight years, exclusive of the bonus." The hon. and learned Gentleman was typical of landlords all over the country. That they should have been willing to accept twenty years purchase before the Act was passed and now asked twenty-eight years exclusive of the bonus, was a gross abuse of the Parliamentary grant. This was a matter which English Members would do well to consider. After all it was their money which was being dealt with in this way. Yet this was what was going on all over the country, and it was this that he strongly objected to. The landlords under the circumstances had no right to exact such terms.
There was another point. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford had indicated that before much time had elapsed the principle of compulsion must be brought into play and that, so far as certain districts were concerned, it would be impossible to get the untenanted lands into the operation of the Act without compulsory powers. With that he agreed and, indeed, he held that compulsory powers should have been introduced into the Bill itself. What was going on, especially in the province of Ulster? A considerable number of sales were at present going forward, and he was much more hopeful than before because he was happy to think that the tenants were not being led to give too high prices. Those on the largest estate in South Tyrone had absolutely refused to give the landlord what they thought to be an unfair price. There were in Ulster, for instance, a very considerable number of landlords who would not sell at any price. It might be asked why they should be compelled to do so. Because it was the evident intention of the Government in passing
1130
last year's Act to make it a measure of national appeasement based upon broad grounds of national policy and upon the assumption that it was desirable for the land of Ireland to pass from owner to occupier. This was a landlords' Bill in the sense that it would secure to the landlord what the Land Act of 1903 attempted to secure for him, but it was more than a landlords' Bill, because if it were not passed it would be impossible to sell the land, and he, therefore, hoped it would be passed. He still believed that if the Irish land question were settled the principal difficulty would be removed from the path of Irish progress. He did not doubt that in many cases too much would be paid for the land and tenants would be taken in by wily and crafty agents, but he looked upon the Land Act of last year as an instrument of a great appeasement of the Irish difficulty. It was not a question with him as to the actual market value of the land, but a question of getting a great settlement of this question and clearing the way for other things almost as important.
MR. WILLIAM MOOREsaid he desired to make a personal explanation. He had only just heard in the lobby that the hon. Member for South Tyrone was going to raise a personal matter concerning himself. Had he known earlier he would have provided himself with the correspondence. The letter which the hon. Member had referred to was not addressed to a tenant of his (Mr. Moore) though it was true that the gentleman addressed was the minister of one tenant. It was a private letter. It contained an offer, which was never accepted, good or bad. He heard a year afterwards that the letter had been shown and he wrote protesting. He considered the whole transaction closed and had forgotten the letter was written, while the tenant had attended a meeting at which an offer was made of twenty-two years purchase. He had seen a letter fro n the minister since, and he then recognised an attempt by this gentleman to force him into giving him better terms than his neighbours. Nine-tenths of his tenants had accepted his terms as fair. He was determined, whatever it cost him, not to be driven. This gentleman would get the same terms as the others and no better.
THE CHIEF SECEETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,)said he was responsible for the introduction of the Bill, which only purported to give effect to the intentions of the Legislature last year. It was true that if the Bill were not passed the Land Purchase Act would be hung up and blame would be placed upon the House of Commons. He believed the Act was working well, but he was perfectly certain it could not continue to act unless this Bill were passed. The Act of last year did not embody all the resolutions of the Land Conference, but the interests of the two parties interested had been fairly well preserved. Both were shorn of some of their advantages, but the arrangements under the Act were in the main those arrived at by the Land Conference. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford had protested against the form of the Bill because, in his opinion, it precluded him at later stages from raising the question of compulsory purchase. If the Bill had been drafted in any other form, looking at the state of Parliamentary business, it would not be possible to pass it this session. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford had misconstrued an observation he had made the previous day with regard to the Congested Districts Board. He (Mr. Wyndham) said that the Congested Districts Board had been able to buy untenanted land, although the Estates Commissioners had not, but he did not say they had been able to buy as much untenanted land as they might otherwise have bought. Their income was limited, and they had gone as far as it was safe to go in the direction of purchasing land without the assistance of the bonus in respect of untenanted land. In that respect alone the Act of last year had made a great difference. From the year 1888 to 1903, fifteen years, the total amount of money expended by the Congested Districts Board in the purchase of land was only £441,000, whereas in the nine months since the passing of the Act they had almost concluded purchases amounting to £545,000.
The difficulty was not that landlords in the West of Ireland were unwilling to sell untenanted land. He did not think they would get land cheaper or quicker if they acquired it by compulsory means. It would be most inexpedient to intro-
1132
duce compulsory powers of purchase in congested districts. When they were dealing with people who were willing to sell it would not assist the matter to threaten to take the land by force. Apart from that, it would take longer to put compulsory powers in force. What was often described as a refusal on the part of the landlord to sell really meant that the transaction was a complicated one, and it was found an uncommonly difficult thing to bring back the evicted tenants. In such cases, he thought it was the better course for the whole estate to be sold to the Estates Commissioners, and for them to take the responsibility of dividing the untenanted land. It had been suggested that Lord Lansdowne opposed the provisions of the Act for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants; but Lord Lansdowne did more perhaps in the House of Lords than anyone to get these provisions carried as an element in the compromise. There was another element of the compromise, and that was that no pressure, direct or indirect, was to be brought to bear upon any person occupying a farm from which others had been evicted. He knew of no case of a landlord having proceeded for a hanging gale, but such a case would, in his opinion, involve a departure from the spirit of the Land Conference. On the other hand, he had heard that in some cases tenants had suddenly ceased to pay rent, or required a large reduction, coupled with other terms. Either of those departures from the spirit of the Land Conference was to be deplored, deprecated, and reprobated by those who trusted to the Act of last year was a solution of the land question. He had been asked whether the Estates Commissioners had power to buy the interest of farmers occupying holdings from which tenants had been evicted. He thought they had.
MR. KILBRIDE: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what initiative the Estates Commissioners take?
MR. WYNDHAM: The question of initiative is a question of fact and expediency. As I said before, it is not my intention to make a long speech upon this occasion. This Bill is only intended to confirm the decision at which Parliament arrived last year, and, if it is

1133
not passed, the whole of the operations of the Act of last year will, I fear, be largely impeded in the future, almost arrested, more particularly in respect of remedying congestion and of restoring evicted tenants to their holdings.
MR. T. M. HEALYsaid he had listened to the debate with much sympathy, but with some sadness. The Irish land question since the Act of 1881 had pursued a sort of normal course. They had endeavoured to improve Mr. Gladstone's legislation, and side by side with that they had endeavoured to improve the position of the tenant. That debate, however, seemed to him to have entirely ignored in many respects the basis on which the legislation of last year proceeded, and, to a certain extent, to give the go-by to Mr. Gladstone's legislation. The Amendment was put before the House as having the warranty of a National Convention. Let them contrast the terms in which it was proposed, however moderate, and some of the speeches which had been made in support of it, with the manner in which the Land Act was received by the responsible Members of the Irish Party in their organisation in September last year. He had just been out and got the resolution which hailed the passing of the Act which was now being criticised, and which was passed at a meeting presided over by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford and attended by twenty-one of his colleagues, some of whom had spoken in the House to-day. He was not finding fault with the speeches; he thought that there was great ground for the disappointment that had been expressed. But he would remind them of the resolution passed on 8th September, 1903, at a meeting of the National Convention, presided over by the hon. Member for Waterford, which was as follows—
"That we welcome in the new Land Act the most substantial victory gained for centuries by the Irish race for the reconquest of the soil of Ireland by the people, and the disbanding of the alien garrison which has been hitherto employed by England for the maintenance of a pernicious and irresponsible class ascendency, and we look to the successful working of the new measure for the creation of a new state of things in which all Irishmen, irrespective of class or creed, will have a hand in labouring unitedly for the national rights and happiness of our country."
1134
Here was another resolution—
"That, while the Act, as placed on the Statute-book, falls short in various important particulars of the recommendations of the Land Conference and the requirements of the national demand for the extinction of landlordism within a reasonable time, we cordially recognise that the Amendments demanded by the National Convention have been conceded in Committee to an extent to which no Government measure in relation to Ireland has ever before been modified in deference to the demands of Irish Nationalist opinion."
That was a recognition of the action of the House of Commons such as he had never known before on the part of any Irish Nationalist organisation.
"We think it a duty to make a free acknowledgment that, next to the exertions of the United Irish Party, under the leadership of Mr. Redmond and Mr. T. W. Russell, the happiest result is to he traced to the wisdom and active good will displayed by that section of the landlord leaders which made the Land Conference possible, to the loyalty with which Mr. Wyndham, and his associates in the Government of Ireland, endeavoured to make good his pledges to give legislative effect to the wishes of the Conference, as well as to the high public spirit with which the Liberal Party resisted the temptation to extract any Party advantage from the situation."
That was butter all round. That was the orthodoxy of September last, but what was the orthodoxy of July? Let them contrast the orthodoxy of September last with the orthodoxy of July, as voiced in this Amendment. What had brought about the change? When an Irish National Convention was given as the warranty for this Amendment, he could not forget that he had the honour to stand alone in that House in consequence of the mandate of a National Convention which expelled him from the Irish Party. In consequence of what had happened, he sincerely thanked that Convention. In his judgment, if he had been present in the Irish Party for the last three or four years, he should have saved the Irish farmers £20,000,000. [NATIONALIST cries of "No, no!"]
MR. LUNDON: What about the Morley prroperty?
MR. T. M. HEALYsaid the Resolution proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford declared—
"That no measure dealing with the Amendment of the Irish Land Act of 1903 can be accepted as satisfactory which deals only with facilitating Irish landlords in obtaining the bonus, and which provides no remedy for the grave defects of that Act affecting Irish

1135
tenants, particularly the creation of a system of zones leading to the unjust inflation of prices."
The system of zones, of which they now heard in the Amendment, was never heard of until the Land Conference made its report—never mentioned in Irish politics; yet it was on account of that system of zones, invented by the signatories of the Conference, that he was asked to vote against this Bill. He declined to do so; he intended to vote for this Bill, and he would tell the House why. He disliked the system of bonus, and believed it was working, so far as the Land Judge's Court was concerned, to the enormous enhancement of their property. He intended, therefore, when this Bill reached Committee, to endeavour to provide that no landlord selling his estate in Judge Ross's Court should get any bonus whatever. He thought that was the true solution of the enormous inflation of prices which had taken place. Hon. Members came forward there who were themselves taking their property out of Judge Ross's Court, where it would have been sold, under the 40th section, for eighteen years purchase—[NATIONALIST cries of "Order"]—instead of twenty-four-and-a-half. [Interruption.] He would like to know why the hon. Member for Kildare was not interrupted when he talked about headlines. Those Gentlemen who interrupted him evidently did not like that mention of twenty-four-and-a-half years purchase, yet these (pointing to his colleagues) were the Gentlemen who moved and supported the Amendment. ["Order."] It was the hon. Member for Waterford who had set a headline to the landlords of Ireland in asking twenty-four-and-a-half years purchase. ["Order."] He hoped Irish tenants would take note. [Loud cries of "Order."]
MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! I did not interrupt the hon. Member, because he has said nothing out of order. Anything short of that hon. Members should allow him to say.
MR. T. M. HEALY,who was greeted with renewed Nationalist cries of "Order, order!" said that in spite of the efforts of his colleagues to prevent him, he should say what he liked.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: You will not say what you like here.
MR. T. M. HEALY,proceeding, said he attributed and ascribed to these Gentlemen in the House of Commons—
MR. LUNDON: Who sold the Morley property for twenty-seven years purchase? [NATIONALIST interruptions and cries of "Answer that."]
MR. T. M. HEALYsuggested that a Select Committee should be appointed to inquire into this matter of how the Morley property was sold and how the Redmond property was sold. He should be quite prepared to defend his action before such a Committee, and the hon. and learned Member for Waterford could do the same. He had no fear as to the result, as far as he was concerned. Having dealt with this betrayal of the Irish Party—[Cries of "Order" and "Withdraw 'Betrayal.'"]
MR. O'DOHERTY: On the point of order, Mr. Speaker, there is an organised attempt to prevent the hon. Member from being heard. [Interruption.]
MR. SPEAKER: I have called upon hon. Members to listen to the observations made by the hon. Member with courtesy, however heartily they may disagree with them. It is the duty of Members of this House to do so—a duty which hon. Members on the Irish Benches themselves always try to exact from hon. Members sitting opposite.
MR. T. M. HEALY,whose remarks were almost inaudible owing to disorderly shouts from the Irish Benches, was understood to say that the policy adopted by the Irish Party would increase the rates and taxes in Ireland, and he was satisfied that it was only by a system of adequately taxing grass lands that this inflation of land values could be effectively prevented. The question of the grass lands in the West of Ireland was one which required immediate attention. He foresaw that whether it was done by this Government or some succeeding Government some attempt would have to be made to deal with the grass lands in Ireland. He strongly resented the action of hon. Members who, while condemning the exorbitant demands made on behalf of the owners of estates in Ireland in regard to the sale of their land, themselves approved and

1137
accepted high prices for their own land. [Renewed disorderly interruptions from the IRISH Benches and MINISTERIAL cries of "Order, order!"] One remedy for this difficulty could be found by the imposition of an adequate system of local taxation. [NATIONALIST cries of "Divide, divide."] In addition to that he held the opinion that an adequate stamp duty should be placed upon ejectments and notices to quit. He thought it was a monstrous thing that while a tenant had to pay from £2 to £3 on going into the Land Court a landlord should be able to obtain a notice to quit and only have to pay half-a-crown for the stamp duty. He was of opinion, therefore, that one of the most effective methods of dealing with the agrarian problem in the future would be by means of fiscal proposals in the Budget Bill. It was only by that means that they could ever hope to bring adequate pressure to bear on the landowners in Ireland. In the past the landlords had only been able to obtain from seventeen to eighteen years purchase and now the Nationalist Party were approving of twenty-four-and-a-half years purchase. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: You will get a job after this, and cries of "You will get a judgeship." and "Judge Healy."] By adopting this
course Nationalist Members had befooled their country and betrayed the Irish Party.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Why do not you go on the other side?
MR. T. M. HEALYsaid he had used exactly the same language before his constituency, and he should not shrink from repeating it in the House of Commons.
MR. CULLINAN: Why do not you go to Ireland and say that?
MR. T. M. HEALYagain addressed the House, but from this point the remainder of the hon. Member's speech was rendered nearly inaudible by disorderly cries from the Nationalist Benches, such as "Traitor," "Dublin Castle," "Omagh," and "Coward."
COLONEL SAUNDERSON (Armagh, N.)in supporting the Bill, said the debate had ended in a manifestation which illustrated the justice of their objection to an Irish Home Rule Parliament.
Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes, 203; Noes, 90. (Division List No. 215.)

AYES.

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Faber, Edmund B. (Hants., W.

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

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

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Chamberlain, Rt Hn. J. A (Worc.

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.

Chapman, Edward

Finch, Rt Hon. George H.

Bailey, James (Walworth)

Charrington, Spencer

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Bain, Colonel James Robert

Churchill, Winston Spencer

Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

Baird, John George Alexander

Clive, Captain Percy A.

Fisher, William Hayes

Balcarres, Lord

Coates, Edward Feetham

Fison, Frederick William

Baldwin, Alfred

Cochrane, Hn. Thos. H. A. E.

FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

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

Coddington, Sir William

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

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

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Forster, Henry William

Banbury, Sir Frederick George

Colomb, Rt. Hn. Sir John C. R.

Gardner, Ernest

Bartley, Sir George C. T.

Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

Garfit, William

Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

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

Bignold, Arthur

Craig, Chas. Curtis (Antrim, S.)

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

Bigwood, James

Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

Graham, Henry Robert

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

Cust, Henry John C.

Greene, Sir E. W (B'ry S Edm'nds

Bowles, Lt.-Col. H. F(Middlesex

Davenport, William Bromley

Greene, Henry D.(Shrewsbury)

Bowles, T. Gibson (King's Lynn

Denny, Colonel

Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

Brassey, Albert

Dickson, Charles Scott

Gretton, John

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Dimsdale, Rt. Hn. Sir Joseph C.

Greville, Hon. Ronald

Bull, William James

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

Burdett-Coutts, W.

Dixon-Hartland, Sir F Dixon

Gunter, Sir Robert

Butcher, John George

Dorington, Rt. Hn. Sir John E

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Campbell, Rt. Hn. J. A.(Glasgow

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Carlile, William Walter

Doxford, Sir William Theodore

Haslett, Sir James Horner

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

Duke, Henry Edward

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Cautley, Henry Strother

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

Healy, Timothy Michael

Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbyshire

Dyke, Rt. Hn. Sir William Hart

Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

Cayzer, Sir Charles William

Egertcon, Hon. A. de Tatton

Heaton, John Henniker

Helder, Augustus

Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

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

Hope, J. F.(Sheffield, Brightside

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Spear, John Ward

Hoult, Joseph

Murray, Rt. Hn. A. Graham(Bute

Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwich.

Hozier, Hn. James Henry Cecil

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

Stanley Edward Jas.(Somerset)

Hunt, Rowland

Newdegate, Francis A. N.

Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lanes.

Jameson, Major J. Eustace

Nicholson, William Graham

Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M.

Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

Stock, James Henry

Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred.

Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Kerr, John

Parker, Sir Gilbert

Stroyan, John

Kimber, Henry

Parkes, Ebenezer

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Pemberton, John S. G.

Thompson, Dr. E. C (Monagh'n, N

Knowles, Sir Lees

Percy, Earl

Tollemache, Henry James

Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

Pilkington, Colonel Richard

Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Lawson, John Grant(Yorks. N. R

Plummer, Walter R.

Tuff, Charles

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

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

Tuke, Sir John Batty

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Pretyman, Ernest George

Valentia, Viscount

Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Walker,-Col. William Hall

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

Pym, C. Guy

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Rankin, Sir James

Warde, Colonel C. E.

Lowe, Francis William

Reid, James (Greenock)

Webb, Colonel William George

Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Renwick, George

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

Ritchie, Rt. Hn. Chas. Thomson

Wills, Sir Frederick

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

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

MacIver, David (Liverpool)

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

Majendie, James A. H.

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

Wood, James

Martin, Richard Biddulph

Round, Rt. Hon. James

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Wrightson, Sir Thomas

Maxwell, W. J. H (Dumfriesshire

Russell, T. W.

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Melville, Beresford Valentine

Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

Wyndham-Quin, Col. W. H.

Milner, Rt. Hn. Sir Frederick G.

Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Moore, William

Saunderson, Rt. Hn. Col. Edw. J.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir

Morpeth, Viscount

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Alexander Acland-Hood

Morrell, George Herbert

Shaw-Stewart, Sir H. (Renfrew)

and Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.

NOES.

Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)

Helme, Norval Watson

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Ambrose, Robert

Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

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

Bell, Richard

Horniman, Frederick John

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

Black, Alexander William

Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Blake, Edward

Jordan, Jeremiah

O'Doherty, William

Boland, John

Joyce, Michael

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

Bolton, Thomas Dolling

Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W.)

O'Dowd, John

Brigg, John

Kilbride, Denis

O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N

Burke, E. Haviland

Labouchere, Henry

O'Malley, William

Burt, Thomas

Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.)

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Caldwell, James

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

Power, Patrick Joseph

Cameron, Robert

Leamy, Edmund

Reddy, M.

Channing, Francis Allston

Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Clancy, John Joseph

Leigh, Sir Joseph

Roche, John

Cogan, Denis J.

Lewis, John Herbert

Roe, Sir Thomas

Condon, Thomas Joseph

Lough, Thomas

Samuel, Herbert L.(Cleveland)

Crean, Eugene

Lundon, W.

Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

Cremer, William Randal

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Cullinan, J.

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Sheehy, David

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

Delany, William

M'Fadden, Edward

Stevenson, Francis S.

Devlin, Charles Ramsay (Galway

M'Hugh, Patrick A.

Sullivan, Donal

Devlin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

M'Kean, John

Thomas, D. Alfred (Merthyr)

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.)

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

Tomkinson, James

Doogan, P. C.

M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

Mappin, Sir Frederick Thorpe

Young, Samuel

Evans, Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Mooney, John J.

Farquharson, Dr. Robert

Murphy, John

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

Field, William

Nannetti, Joseph P.

Thomas Esmonde and Cap-

Flavin, Michael Joseph

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

tain Donelan.

Flynn, James Christopher

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

Hayden, John Patrick

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

Main Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes, 199; Noes, 82. (Division List No. 216.)

AYES.

Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

Flannery, Sir Fortescue

Palmer, Waiter (Salisbury)

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Forster, Henry William

Parker, Sir Gilbert

Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

Gardner, Ernest

Parkes, Ebenezer

Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H.

Garfit, William

Pemberton, John S. G.

Bailey, James (Walworth)

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

Percy, Earl

Bain, Colonel James Robert

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

Pilkington, Colonel Richard

Baird, John George Alexander

Graham, Henry Robert

Platt-Higgins, Frederick

Balcarres, Lord

Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

Plummer, Walter R.

Baldwin, Alfred

Greene, Sir E. W (B'ry S Edm'nds

Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

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

Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury)

Pretyman, Ernest George

Balfour, Rt Hn. Gerald W. (Leeds

Greene, W. Raymond (Cambs.)

Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

Banbury, Sir Frederick George

Gretton, John

Pym, C. Guy

Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

Greville, Hon. Ronald

Rankin, Sir James

Bignold, Arthur

Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

Reid, James (Greenock)

Bigwood, James

Gunter, Sir Robert

Renshaw, Sir Charles Bine

Blundell, Colonel Henry

Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

Renwick George

Boseawen, Arthur Griffith

Hare, Thomas Leigh

Ritchie, Rt. Hon. Chas. Thomson

Bowles, T. Gibson (King's Lynn

Haslett, Sir James Horner

Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

Brassey, Albert

Hay, Hon. Claude George

Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

Healy, Timothy Michael

Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye

Bull, William James

Heath, Arthur Howard (Hanley

Round, Rt. Hon. James

Burdett-Coutts, W.

Heaton, John Henniker

Royds, Clement Molyneux

Butcher, John George

Helder, Augustus

Russell, T. W.

Campbell, Rt. Hn. J. A.(Glasgow

Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

Carlile, William Walter

Hope, J. F. (Sheffield, Brightside

Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

Hoult, Joseph

Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

Cautley, Henry Strothor

Hozier, Hon. James Henry Cecil

Saunderson, Rt. Hn. Col. Edw. J.

Cavendish, V.C.W. (Derbyshire

Hudson, George Bickersteth

Sharpe, William Edward T.

Cayzer, Sir Charles William

Hunt, Rowland

Shaw-Stewart, Sir H. (Renfrew)

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred.

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

Chainberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A.(Worc

Kerr, John

Spear, John Ward

Chapman, Edward

Kimber, Henry

Spencer, Sir E. (W. Bromwioh)

Charrington, Spencer

King, Sir Henry Seymour

Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk

Churchill, Winston Spencer

Knowles, Sir Lees

Stanley, Edward Jas.(Somerset)

Clive, Captain Percy A.

Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs.)

Coates, Edward Feetham

Lawrence, Win. F. (Liverpool)

Stock, James Henry

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

Lawson, John Grant (Yorks, N. R

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Cohen, Benjamin Louis

Lee, ArthurH. (Hants., Fareham

Stroyan, John

Colomb, Rt. Hon. Sir John C. R.

Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

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

Thompson, Dr E. C (Monagh'n, N

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Tollcmache, Henry James

Craig, Charles Curtis(Antrim, S.

Lowe, Francis William

Tomlinson, Sir Win. Edw. M.

Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

Tritton, Charles Ernest

Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

Loyd, Archie Kirkman

Tuff, Charles

Cust, Henry John C.

Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

Tuke, Sir John Batty

Denny, Colonel

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

Valentia, Viscount

Dickson, Charles Scott

MacIver, David (Liverpool)

Walker, Col. William Hall

Dimsdale, Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph C.

Majendie, James A. H.

Wanklyn, James Leslie

Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

Martin, Richard Biddulph

Warde, Colonel C. E.

Dixon-Hartland, Sir Fred Dixon

Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

Webb, Colonel William George

Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

Maxwell, W. J. H (Dumfriesshire

Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

Melville, Beresford Valentine

Whitmore, Charles Algernon

Doxford, Sir William Theodore

Milner, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick G.

Wills, Sir Frederick

Duke, Henry Edward

Montagu, G (Huntingdon)

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

Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

Moore, William

Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart

Morrell, George Herbert

Wood, James

Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart

Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W.)

Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

Wrightson, Sir Thomas

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

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

Murray, Rt Hn. A. Graham (Bute

Wyndham-Quin, Col. W. H.

Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

Newdegate, Francis A. N.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Sir

Fisher, William Hayes

Nicholson, William Graham

Alexander Acland-Hood and

Fison, Frederick William

O'Doherty, William

Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.

FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens

NOES.

Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.)

Flynn, James Christopher

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Ambrose, Robert

Hayden, John Patrick

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

Black, Alexander William

Helme, Nerval Watson

O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.)

Blake, Edward

Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Boland, John

Jordan, Jeremiah

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

Bolton, Thomas Dolling

Joyce, Michael

O'Dowd, John

Brigg, John

Kennedy, Vincent P. (Cavan, W.

0'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.

Burke, E. Haviland

Kilbride, Denis

O'Malley, William

Burt, Thomas

Labouchere, Henry

Power, Patrick Joseph

Caldwell, James

Law, Hugh, Alex. (Donegal, W.)

Reddy, M.

Cameron, Robert

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Channing, Francis Allston

Leamy, Edmund

Roche, John

Clancy, John Joseph

Leigh, Sir Joseph

Roe, Sir Thomas

Cogan, Denis J.

Lewis, John Herbert

Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

Condon, Thomas Joseph

Lundon, W.

Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

Crean, Eugene

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Cremer, William Randal

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Sheehy, David

Cullinan, J.

M'Fadden, Edward

Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

M'Hugh, Patrick A.

Stevenson, Francis S.

Delany, William

M'Kean, John

Sullivan, Donal

Devlin, Charles Ramsay(Galw'y

M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

Tomkinson, James

Devlin, Joseph (Kilkenny, N.)

M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh.)

Mappin, Sir Frederick Thorpe

Young, Samuel

Doogan, P. C.

Mooney, John J.

Yoxall, James Henry

Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

Murphy, John

Evans. Samuel T. (Glamorgan)

Nannetti, Joseph P.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—

Farquharson, Dr. Robert

Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

Sir Thomas Esmonde and

Field, William

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

Captain Donelan.

Flavin, Michael Joseph

O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary Mid

Bill read the third time, and passed.

Bill accordingly read a second time, and committed for Thursday next.

SAVINGS BANKS ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment proposed [17th June] to the Bill on Consideration, as amended (by the Standing Committee).
Which Amendment was—
"In page 1, line 21, to leave out Clause 3."—(Mr. Caldwell.)
Question again proposed, "That the words of the clause to the end of line 24, page 1, stand part of the Bill."
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Other Amendments made to the Bill.

THE LICENSING BILL.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Sir A. ACLAND-HOOD,),in moving the adjournment of the House, announced that the Committee on the Licensing Bill would be the First Order on Monday, and that Monday would be the second allotted day.

CHINESE COOLIES IN THE TRANSVAAL.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILLasked the Secretary of State for the
1144
Colonies whether it was true, as stated in a telegram published that morning, that two coolies had escaped from the compound at Johannesburg, were captured at Pretoria, and bought back in custody; was it true that those men had tried to escape only a few hours after they had landed and had been placed in such favourable conditions as the right hon. Gentleman had described in his speeches; also what was the meaning of the word "captured"? It seemed a curious word in connection with indentured labourers.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): I have no information on the subject.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: You ought to have information. [Laughter and cries of "Order."]
MR.LYTTELTON: Neither do I consider it convenient that I should be asked to express my views about the terms of a telegram of which I have no knowledge.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Will you telegraph to Lord Milner?
MR. LYTTELTON: No, I do not think it necessary.
MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: That is just what I wanted you to say.
Adjourned at four minutes before Six o'clock till Monday next.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:— Rotherham Corporation; Selby Urban District Council.
"The same were ordered to lie on the Table.
Strabane, Raphoe, and Convoy Railway Bill. A witness ordered to attend the Select Committee.
Lytham Improvement Bill, Reported, with Amendments.
Ulster Electric Power Bill [H.L.]. The Lord BALFOUR informed the House 8 that the Promoters do not intend to proceed further with the Bill. The order of the 21st of April last discharged. Ordered, That the Bill be not further proceeded with.
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (Steam Vessels) Bill; Barnet District Gas and Water Bill. Leave given to the Select Committee to adjourn over Monday next.
North Western Electricity and Power e Gas Bill. Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
Southport and Lytham Tramroad (Extension of Time) Bill [H.L.]. Returned from the Commons agreed to, "with Amendments.
Clyde Valley Electrical Power Bill [H L.]. Returned from the Commons agreed to, with Amendments. The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
Birkdale Improvement Bill; Crystal Palace District Gas Bill. Returned from the Commons with the Amendments agreed to.
Strabane, Raphoe, and Convoy Railway Bill. Message to the Commons for
1050
the Right Honourable George Wyndham, Chief Secretary for Ireland (a Member), to be examined as a witness before the Select Committee of this House.
Hamilton Gas Order Confirmation Bill [H.L.]. Committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday next.
Tramways Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [H.L.]; Water Orders Confirmation Bill [H.L.]. Amendments reported (according to order), and Bills to be read 3a on Monday next.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [H.L.]; Gas and Water Orders Confirmation Bill [H.L.]; Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [H.L.]. Read 3a (according to order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.
Education Board Provisional Order (Cardiff) Bill. House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without Amendment. Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a on Monday next.
Leith Corporation Tramways Order Confirmation Bill. Brought from the Commons and read 1a; to be printed; and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899), deemed to have been read 2a (The Lord Kintore (E. Kintore), and reported from the Committee. (No. 137.)
Drainage and Improvement of Lands (Ireland) Provisional Order Bill. Moved, That the order made on the 14th day of March last, "That no Provisional Order Confirmation Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after the 16th day of June next," be dispensed with, and that the Bill be now read 2a"; agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday next.

GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY BILL.
Moved, "That the Bill be now read 3a."—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
On Question, Bill read 3a.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (The Marquess of LONDONDERRY): My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed, in moving an

1051
Amendment to this Bill, to say a few words on behalf of the Post Office. My noble friend the Postmaster-General considered that it would be disrespectful to your Lordships' House if his Department did not explain why they have taken the course followed in regard to this Bill. I gather from the Postmaster-General that a mutual agreement has been arrived at between the Post Office and the Great Eastern Railway Company with regard to the proposed Amendment, but my noble friend the Acting Chairman of Committees holds the opinion that it might have been possible for the Post Office to have proceeded in this matter by means of a public Bill. If they had considered it possible to get a Bill passed in their interests on these grounds during the present session, they would undoubtedly have taken that course; but they considered that at this stage of the session, and in view of the various important matters before Parliament, it would have been futile to have proceeded in that way.
But I would point out on behalf of the Postmaster-General, that it is very important that his Department should assert their rights in connection with traffic of all sorts and kinds. The Department fully recognise that in all probability it will be some time before the motor system is developed to its fullest extent, and until that is the case it may not be the duty of the Post Office to take advantage generally of that system of transport for their mails; but they also feel that they should lose no time in asserting the rights they undoubtedly have of making use of all kinds of locomotion. The Postmaster-General is extremely anxious that every respect should be paid to your Lordships' House, and has asked me, therefore, to make these few remarks in moving the following Amendment—
"And whereas it has been agreed between the Company and the Postmaster-General that the following provisions shall apply with respect to the conveyance of mails by omnibuses, coaches, carts, and other road vehicles, be it therefore enacted that—
(1) The Company shall convey by any omnibus, coach, cart, or other road vehicle provided, worked, or used on a regular or periodical service in connection with, or in extension "of, their railway system, and habitually moved by mechanical power, all such mails (with the
1052
officers of the Post Office in charge thereof) as may be tendered by the Postmaster-General for conveyance by such vehicle, and shall receive and deliver such mails from or to any Post Office or officer of the Post Office on the route of such vehicle."
Then follow conditions with which I do not think I need trouble your Lordships. I beg to move the Amendment.
Amendment moved—
"That this clause be there inserted." (The Marquess of Londonderry).
THE ACTING CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Lord BALFOUR of BURLEIGH): My Lords, I think it would be right for me to say a few words as to the reason which has induced me to insist that this Amendment should be moved in the House rather than be put in before me when presiding over an Unopposed Bill Committee. One of the clauses in this Bill provides for the running by the Great Eastern Railway Company of certain motor-car services supplemental to the services on the railway, and though this proposal is novel, I believe that it will be generally speaking, a convenience to the public in those parts of the country where it is found suitable to adopt it. It will be mostly with the object of meeting the requirements of excursionists and others, and it will be very often only an intermittent service. But in consequence of this power being taken by the Great Eastern Railway Company, the Postmaster-General suggested to me, through one of the officers of his Department, that the provisions of the Act of 1893 should be extended to this Bill, and that it should be made compulsory upon companies, and this company amongst them, when providing motor services to carry in those vehicles the mails and the servants of the Post Office in charge of them. That was proposed as a compulsory obligation. It is, as your Lordships know, compulsory now upon the railway companies to carry mails and servants of the Post Office either upon their ordinary trains or upon their light railways "or tramways.
The company in question contested the justice of making the Act of 1893 apply to motor-car services of-railway companies upon the ground that the circumstances were essentially different

1053
They were seeking for no monopoly, they were not laying down special tracks or getting Parliamentary powers to make roads; they were simply, as members of the public, using the roads which were provided by the community, and they argued that the only object of Clause 41 of the Bill—the clause now before your Lordships—was to legalise their doing a thing which they wanted to do in the interests of the company. I took that view, and I told the Postmaster-General that, in my opinion, if he wanted legislation of this kind it should be by a public Act, and not by making a precedent in what was otherwise an unopposed Bill.
I took that view mainly on the ground that the motor-car service which it is proposed to establish is essentially different from the general service of trains, inasmuch as there is not the same accommodation, certainly not the same accommodation to spare. Secondly, there is no monopoly given to the railway company for this service, and under those general conditions under which this traffic is carried on the granting to the Postmaster-General of this compulsory power might be placing a very unfair burden on the railway company. On these grounds I refused to insert the clause, but the railway company and the Post Office, I will not say behind my back, but after the decision I had given, agreed between themselves that the clause which is now before your Lordships—an agreement clause—should be inserted in this Bill. I then said that I thought, as this was the first occasion that such a proposal had been made, it should not be accepted by me even though it was agreed to by the parties, but should be moved in the House so that your Lordships should know what was done.
I do not offer any objection to the insertion of this clause, but I think your Lordships will agree with me that when a new precedent of this kind is made it should be done on due notice, so that the whole House may know what is being done. I do not altogether agree with some of the statements made by the noble Marquess. He stated that the Post Office had undoubtedly power to insist on this service under the existing law. It is precisely because they
1054
have not that power that they are seeking the insertion of this clause. All I wish to say is that as this is an agreement clause it must not, of course, be taken to form a precedent to be compulsorily imposed on all railway companies who come to Parliament for these services. As the clause in question is an agreement clause and the House has had an opportunity of considering it, I do not propose to offer on this occasion any opposition to the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to; Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.

PETITIONS.
  SUPPLY OF ELECTRICITY BILL [H.L.]
  Petition to be heard by Counsel against; of Association of County Councils in Scotland; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  COLONIES (ANNUAL).
  No. 419. Wei-hai-Wei (Report for 1903).
  JUDICIAL STATISTICS (IRELAND) 1903.
  Part II. Civil Statistics.
  SLAUGHTERING OF ANIMALS.
  Report of the Committee appointed by the Admiralty to consider the humane slaughtering of animals; together with minutes of evidence, appendices, and index.

  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  No. 3209. Brazil (Porto Allyre).

  No. 3210. Portugal (Pete).

  No. 3211. Portugal (Chinde).

  No. 3212. Japan.

  Presented (by Command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

NEW BILL.

  PUBLIC HEALTH BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to enable regulations to be made for carrying into effect conventions with

  1055
  respect to the prevention of danger arising to public health from vessels, and the prevention of the conveyance of infection by means of vessels—Was presented by the Earl Waldegrave (for the Marquess of Lansdowne); read la; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Tuesday next. (No. 138.)

  LIGHT RAILWAYS BILL [H.L.]
  Read 3a (according to order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.
  HALL-MARKING OF FOREIGN PLATE BILL.
  House in Committee (according to order); Bill reported without Amendment; and re-committed to the Standing Committee.

  STAFF APPOINTMENTS.
  LORD HENEAGErose to call attention to the present Army Regulations in regard to staff and extra-regimental duties, the non-seconding of officers above the rank of captain in the artillery and cavalry, and the retention of officers in successive appointments on the staff for unlimited periods; and to move to resolve: "That, in the opinion of this House, the present system limits the number of officers duly qualified for staff appointments, is most unfair to regimental officers, and is prejudicial to the best interests of the Army. "He said: My Lords, in bringing this question again before the attention of your Lordships I do not propose to retraverse the whole ground, because the late Under-Secretary of State for War, in reply to me last year, did not attempt to answer any of the statements I then made, but simply entered a non possumus attitude on the part of the Secretary of State. I intend to-day to call your Lordships' attention to the very unsatisfactory reply given me last year, and which was entirely based on erroneous facts and figures. The questions which I asked your Lordships to consider last year were whether it was not advisable (1) that more officers should be allowed to pass through the Staff College for shorter periods; (2) that all officers on the staff should be seconded, especially in the cavalry and artillery, and (3)
  1056
  that there should be more frequent interchange of duties between regiments and the staff.
  Now, my Lords, what was the reply that I received from the noble Earl, Lord Hardwicke, last year? He first of all said that as the whole Staff College question was under Sir Henry Hildyard's consideration he could say nothing, and I admit that that was a perfectly fair and reasonable reply. He then went on to say that they could not increase the number of staff officers as they would not have staff employment for them, and that though my Motion would, in the opinion of the military advisers of the War Office, very much increase the efficiency and discipline of the Army, the cost rendered it prohibitive. Now, my Lords, I desire to call your attention to facts and figures, all of which ought to have been known to the War Office at that time. First, I will deal with the question of the increase in the number of staff officers. The evidence of Lord Roberts and of other generals before the War Commission proved clearly three facts:—(1) That there were not sufficient staff officers; (2) that whilst some were efficient others did not know their work; and (3) that the regimental officers who were commandeered for the staff did their work very well, soon became efficient and were in no degree inferior to the general body of Staff College men. That, I think, is a very strong argument in favour of a greater interchange between the regiments and the staff, and of a larger number of officers being passed through the Staff College to qualify for staff work.
  The Royal Commission considered the evidence of Lord Roberts of such importance that in Paragraph 95 of their Report, page 53, they gave his evidence textually. They state that after referring to an absence of a definite system of staff duties, leading sometimes to neglect of indispensable precautions, the gallant Field-Marshal went on to say that—
  "Officers were often called upon to take up duties of which they had no previous knowledge; but whilst it was remarkable in the great majority of cases how quickly they became efficient, the mistakes that were made by the staff had most serious consequences. Many instances of indifferent staff work might be quoted, and it seems clear that the whole staff should be thoroughly trained, that a definite

  1057
  system of carrying out staff duties should be laid dawn, and that we should have enough trained staff officers to supply, in case of emergency, a large Army."
  That was precisely what I asked for in my Motion last year. The noble and gallant Field-Marshal went on to say—
  "Staff officers cannot be improvised, nor can they learn their duties like the rank and file in a few weeks or months, for their duties are as varied as they are important."
  And the noble and gallant Earl further said—
  I am decidedly of opinion that we cannot have a first-rate Army unless we have a first-rate staff, well educated, constantly practised in manœuvres, and with wide experience."
  This was supplemented by Lord Kitchener, who said—
  "The officers on the staff were very mixed. Some were excellent, whilst others had no staff training and had everything to learn. There was no reserve of qualified staff officers to fill vacancies."
  Now, my Lords, I will only quote one more passage from the evidence of Lord Roberts. It is in reference to regimental officers, who have come in for so much unmerited censure, and his opinion is amply endorsed by other general officers. Lord Roberts said—
  "There were certain failures among them in South Africa, but, so far as my knowledge of history goes, the general standard of practical knowledge, of devotion to duty, and of readiness under difficulties, was at least as high as in any army which I have known or of which I have read…. It was seldom that they displayed any want of initiation, and their knowledge of their duties in the field left little to be desired."
  It requires no further words from me, after these quotations, to urge the importance of more staff officers; but I would further point out that both Lord Roberts and General Nicholson represented that there was no adequate body of staff officers trained in the work of intelligence, study of country, strategical or tactical dispositions, direction of movements of troops, choice of camps, water, and sanitary matters. I think your Lordships will agree with me and also with these gallant officers that these are matters of the highest importance, and matters that ought not to be left to be learnt after an Army is in the field.
  I think it is clear, from what I have read to your Lordships, that more staff officers are required, and that, if given the opportunity, the general body of regi-
  1058
  mental officers would qualify for the staff. Why not give the opportunity to all those recommended, without competitive examinations, for one year's training in the Staff College, or even six months? There are many staff duties which do not require exceptional ability in languages or strategy. At the end of the year let there be a competitive examination, and retain specially good men for a second year. I will not trouble the House with any arguments as to unlimited service on the staff. It has become a by-word that staff officers once on the staff were always on the staff, notwithstanding the regulation that every officer was to go back to his regiment at the end of his five years term of service. But recently, during the period when Lord Roberts was Commander-in-Chief, I understand a new Order was issued enforcing that regulation, and, I believe, in many cases limiting the staff appointments to a term of three years. This will promote a greater interchange between the staff and regiments to the advantage of both and give more officers the opportunity of staff service and of becoming efficient.
  Now, I come to the question of seconding, and to the reply which was given me last year by the noble Earl the then Under-Secretary that it would increase efficiency and discipline but that the cost was too great and the money could be better expended in other ways. I would venture to ask your Lordships in what better way can money be expended than in promoting the discipline and efficiency of our Army? Notwithstanding the non possumus attitude taken up by the Under-Secretary last year, events have marched along with very rapid strides, and the position is much altered. A new Order has been issued to the effect that officers joining the Staff College shall be seconded, and that commanding officers of regiments and seconds-in-command shall not go to the staff unless they resign their regimental appointments. Again, I am told that within the last few weeks it has been decided that artillery battery majors in future are to be seconded when employed on the staff; so that the only officers who will now be left un-seconded if they serve on the staff will be majors commanding cavalry squadrons. I ask why, when justice has been done

  1059
  to all the other majors, justice should not be done to majors commanding squadrons of cavalry?
  There were during the war, and there are even at the present moment, large numbers of captains commanding cavalry squadrons who have never had major's rank or major's pay. At the time when Mr. Childers was Secretary of State for War there was a great change made in the cavalry. Up to that time the troop system had obtained in those regiments, with a captain and two subalterns, whilst the colonel, adjutant, and riding master bossed the show. But Mr. Childers brought about the squadron system. When that system was adopted, it was decided that the squadron should be under a major with a captain and three subalterns, and Mr. Childers considered that the officer commanding a cavalry squadron should have the rank, as he had the responsibilities, of a major. The major of a cavalry squadron is practically the commanding officer of his squadron, with an appeal to the colonel. He is entirely responsible for the pay, drill, mounting, uniform of men, saddlery, discipline, leave of men, and recommendations for promotion, and he is responsible to the colonel and to no one else for the efficiency of his squadron. Therefore, when a squadron major is taken away and placed upon the staff, a captain has to perform all those duties and take all those responsibilities without the rank or the pay of major.
  It is a very small question at the present moment, but I would mention that when a major is removed to the Staff he gets his pay practically doubled. He has sometimes under £300 a year as a regimental major, but he gets from £600 to £700 a year the moment he goes on the staff. A staff captain receives £500 a year, but the captain who undertakes all the responsibilities of the major when the major is put on the staff only receives the pay he had before. The War Office and the late Commander-in-Chief have done a great deal to promote justice in regard to this matter, and I would ask the authorities, having swallowed the camel, not to strain at the gnat.
  I have been careful to look through the number of officers who would be affected at the present moment if
  1060
  justice was done in this matter, and I find that it is only a question of a dozen captains, and the difference of pay, 2s. a day, would only amount to £36 10s. per annum. The sum of £500 would pay the lot and give them major's rank. I do not say that there are not more than a dozen majors on the staff, but the other majors are either students at the Staff College, in colonial employ, or they are majors who have been allowed to continue as adjutants of Yeomanry after they have been promoted, and, therefore, they do not come within the same category. Nor do I include vacancies of those who are seconded, but whose places are not filled. Those I have deducted. I conclude by moving my resolution and asking the noble Earl the Under-Secretary of State for War whether he can give the House any information with regard to the new Staff College regulations, with regard to the new rule about staff service and whether it is to be enforced, and with regard to the seconding of officers on the staff; and I would express the hope that since justice has been done to the artillery it will not now be withheld from cavalry captains in a like position.
  Moved to resolve, "That, in the opinion of this House the present Army Regulations in regard to staff and extra-regimental duties, the non-seconding of officers above the rank of captain in the artillery and cavalry, and the retention of officers in successive appointments on the staff for unlimited periods limits the number of officers duly qualified for staff appointments, are most unfair to regimental officers, and are prejudicial to the best interests of the Army."—(Lord Heneage.)
  LORD LOVAT: My Lords, I desire to associate myself with the remarks which have fallen from the noble Lord who has just sat down, and, with your Lordships' permission, I would particularly like to point out the great deficiency in the trained staff of our Army as at present constituted. The fact is again brought to our minds that the War Office does not march with the times. Five years ago few, I think, would have suspected the latent power which lay in our Auxiliary Forces and in the untrained patriotic

  1061
  thousands in the country. There is hardly a Minister, to whatever Party he may belong, who, in after dinner speeches, has not congratulated the country on its extraordinary patriotism, but only one Minister has taken any trouble to see that that patriotism, if it is to be called upon again, is directed on proper lines. I refer to Mr. Brodrick. He is the only man who has brought forward a really workable scheme.
  We in England have the smallest Regular Army of any European nation, but there is the certainty that if we called upon them we should have probably the largest number of Volunteers which any nation in Europe could produce. Yet we have got no means of working this body into anything which could be called an Army. We are in that position because we have no adequate staff. May I point out the actual number of trained staff officers we have in England at the present time. I am not including those who are already employed, nor those who are at the present moment in service abroad; neither am I including those who are first or second in command of their battalions, because they could not be taken away without seriously interfering with the efficiency of their regiments. In respect to the cavalry we have only two officers who are free, so to speak, to do staff work. We have on paper one cavalry brigade. The second cavalry brigade is on paper, but there are no names below it. Therefore, we should start, if we filled this second cavalry brigade, with a deficiency of cavalry staff officers. Again, when we come to the infantry, we have only seventeen majors and captains who are qualified —that is to say, we have only two officers in the cavalry and seventeen in the infantry who are ready at the present moment to take up staff appointments, a id this at a time when we ought to have thoroughly learned the lesson taught by the late war.
  The inequality of the staff work in South Africa, as pointed out by many witnesses who gave evidence before Lord Elgin's Commission, arose from the fact that the majority of these officers were taken direct from the regiments without any staff education. We all know that before two divisions had left these islands
  1062
  for South Africa the Staff College men had run out. Messengers were sent to various regiments asking them to supply staff officers, and the officers supplied were sent at once to the front. What happened? The staff work was most inefficient at times of utmost crisis, and the work of the Army throughout was seriously hampered. I would like to point out the hardships which occur in regiments whose officers ale taken away in time of war. A regimental commanding officer is ordered to send out a couple of captains or majors for staff work. Naturally he does not send his best men, because he cannot afford to lose them. He sends in all probability the worst officers in the whole of his corps; but when these men return to their regiments, although they are not the best officers and were sent to the staff on that account, they will be for all time above the heads of better men and above the very men who were not sent to the staff because they were better men. That is not justice, and it spoils the work done by the brigade, because the second-class or third-class men sent by the regimental commanding officer for staff work are not up to their duties.
  It is a well-known theory, laid down by Moltke and other writers on the subject of military work, that it is essential to have some consecutive pattern of ideas for staff work; but this is quite impossible if you get men in this haphazard manner. Now, with regard to the Auxilary Forces. The Imperial Yeomanry have two majors upon whom they can rely for the whole of their staff work, they had a captain a short time ago, but, unfortunately, he has gone to learn Japanese and has had to be struck off the list; so that at present there are only two staff officers for the whole of the Yeomanry— some 25,000 or 27,000 men. We cannot have our own Yeomanry officers for staff duties because they have not the knowledge. I command a Yeomanry unit, but I should not dream of sending one of my best officers away. It is unreasonable to expect us to do so simply because they do not take care at the War Office to have these things arranged in readiness for mobilisation in time of war.

  1063
  With regard to the Militia, we know that a large number of the junior officers are merely birds of passage, who only come in for a short time. It would be impossible for a Militia colonel to part with his senior officers. The discipline of the Militia is not such as to enable it to stand much knocking about. We had during the war orders and counter-orders. That may be all right in the case of Regular troop's, but Volunteers will not allow themselves to be messed about by men who do not know their work. I certainly think Mr. Brodrick's Army Corps scheme was a good one. It gave us a skeleton on which we could graft our various battalions, and in dropping that scheme we have, in my opinion, gone back. This scheme could only come into force if we had more staff officers. We have not got a sufficient staff, and surely now is the time to remedy that deficiency. Previously when the War Office took men for the Staff College they took them more or less in the dark, and were only able to judge of their capacity as the result of an examination, but here we are at the end of a war. We know who are the good men and who are the bad men; we know who were good staff officers in South Africa and who were bad staff officers. Surely now is the time to get hold of them, and to put them through the Staff College.
  Why should we not at the present moment put 100 or 150 officers through the Staff College? They could be given one year's course, as the noble Lord who preceded me suggested, and this large number of trained men would constitute a reserve of staff officers on which you could rely in the event of mobilisation. The argument against this increase of staff officers is one of cost. Could anyone imagine that this cost, if ever we had a war again like we had in South Africa, would not be recovered over and over again if we had efficient staff work? You have only to read the Report of Lord Elgin's Commission to see how money was thrown away broadcast through inefficient staff work in South Africa. I think the extra cost of educating more men at the Staff College ought not to weigh at all in considering this matter. With regard to the argument that there will not be sufficient employ-
  1064
  ment for them, I would say that you want, in the first place, to get your staff in touch with the Auxiliary Forces. The whole question of concentration at a critical point is entirely a matter of the close study of distances, and the time that men will take to travel over distances; and if you have not got a staff capable of calculating this, how can any general be expected to do well or to get his men at critical points at the right time? Therefore, I think that if the principle of extra staff officers is admitted there would be plenty of work for them to do. They could be attached to the infantry and Yeomanry brigades, and would be most valuable in bringing the troops up to a greater state of efficiency.
  Of course, a very large proportion of the staff, in case of mobilisation, will have to come from the Auxiliary Forces, but I think it will be admitted that it is absolutely essential that, at all events, a nucleus of a staff, as given by Mr. Brodrick's Army Corps scheme, should be there to point out the lines on which the Auxiliary staff would be able to work. There were at the end of the war three great lines of reform, and I venture to think this one of staff is quite equal to the other two. First of all, there was reform of the War Office, which His Majesty's Government have gone into in no half-hearted manner. Secondly, there was the question of the training of officers, which they have gone into by the appointment of an Education Committee; and, thirdly, they have this great question of the staff. I hope that His Majesty's Government will see their way to obtain a reserve of staff officers, so that if the nation has to fight again and to produce 300,000 men for defence, we shall at all events have some nucleus of a Staff who can be relied upon to educate the staff officers from the Auxiliary Forces who they will have to help them.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (The Earl of UONOUGHMOEE): My Lords, the noble Lord who initiated this discussion made one general observation with which I should like to deal at once. It was to the effect that the figures produced by my noble friend behind me last year were entirely erroneous. I should have been very interested to know in what

  1065
  particular they were erroneous. I have still those figures. They were, I am sure, most carefully worked out at the War Office at the time, and I have not seen or heard any statement by the noble Lord seriously impugning them. We have a body of trained actuaries at the War Office whose one business it is to make calculations of this kind, and I think that without some very strong proof it is rather a sweeping statement to make to say off-hand that the calculations were inaccurate.
  LORD HENBAGE: I took exception to the figures immediately after the noble Earl's speech. A great number of other subjects were brought in to make up the amounts which had nothing whatever to do with the pay of cavalry majors.
  THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: I have read last year's debates carefully, and the impression I got was that the noble Lord did not make it clear on the first occasion that he was not considering the case of all majors.
  LORD HENEAGE: My Question was on the Paper, and it distinctly stated that I was only dealing with cavalry and artillery majors.
  THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: I am quite prepared to accept that. The figures given by my noble friend Lord Hardwicke did include the infantry and my noble friend opposite did not, I think, say anything at that time which would convey the impression that he meant to exclude the infantry. But he did say a few days afterwards that that was his intention, and my noble friend then corrected the figures he gave on the first occasion. The noble Lord, in raising this question to-night, suggested a scheme by which we should take a larger number of men into the Staff College for one year and a smaller number for the two years course. I admit at once that that is a very alluring proposal; but the difficulty in the way is a practical one. The course at the Staff College is very carefully thought out, and that for the first year is very different from the course in the second. It is a different style of
  1066
  thing altogether. The first year's course deals with military history, artillery, and fortification, staff duties, military administration, and other subjects. The second year's course goes into bigger questions, what I might call general staff questions—questions of Imperial defence, practice in reconnaissance, practice in training of troops, and tours of inspection—and it is quite impossible to tell at the end of the first year whether a man will be any use at the things he is going to study in the second year until after he has entered on the second year's course. It would make things very much easier to pass a larger number of men through the one year course and a smaller number through the full two years; but I am afraid the system would not benefit the Army in the end, and we might lose the services of many men who might not be so good at the work in the first year, but who might turn out useful staff officers in general staff work.
  I am entirely at one with the two noble Lords who have spoken as to the necessity of more staff officers for the Army; and I am glad to see that they recognise that the Staff College training is absolutely necessary in order to turn out efficient staff officers. The output of staff officers at the present moment is not anything like large enough for our requirements. Our requirements are growing every day. It is not quite germane to the subject, but it may interest your Lordships to know that in the organisation of the General Staff at the War Office we intend to employ sixty-five officers to do the work that has hitherto been done by thirty-two. That at once creates a large number of staff appointments of very great importance, for which we have got to find the very best candidates. In the Intelligence Branch, which is now under the Director of Military Operations, and in which we have hitherto employed twenty-seven officers, we shall find plenty of work for forty-three, and the remainder will be employed in the other branches of the department performing work for which only a very small staff has hitherto existed. This fact alone has vastly added to the necessity for turning out more staff officers, and we are fully alive to the fact that we have to meet these necessities.

  1067
  Lord Tweedmouth made some strong remarks the other day as to the Government's unsettled convictions in this matter. He said that we were unable to make up our minds as to the reforms recommended by the Esher Committee. The noble Lord displayed an innocence of knowlege which did him infinite credit, bat I think the statement I have made will convince him that we are not moving so slowly as the outside world seems to imagine, because we do not always talk about what we are doing. With regard to the suggestion that we should enlarge nomination and pass a great many more men through the Staff College, I would point out that our experience is against too great an extension of the system of nomination. The late Commandant at the Staff College has said that when a limited number of officers were selected by nomination it was frequently found that amongst them were some of the best officers of the College, but that when a large number were selected it resulted in the whole falling below the normal. We are fully alive to the need for further staff officers, and the matter is being most seriously considered. Your Lordships have no doubt read the recent Army Order issued by Lord Kitchener. You will see that Lord Kitchener is contemplating the establishment of a Staff College in India; this matter is now the subject of discussion between the War Office and the India Office, and I hope a decision will be come to at an early date.
  Now I come to the second point raised by Lord Heneage, as to the non-seconding of officers above the rank of captain in the artillery and cavalry. The noble Lord does not include the infantry, and, therefore, I will say nothing about them beyond stating that the case for the non-inclusion of the infantry is very strong. It has been decided that artillery majors extra-regimentally employed are to be seconded, that is to say, they are to be succeeded in their appointments by majors. The first objection of the noble Lord's therefore falls to the ground. The noble Lord's point I think is that an artillery major commands a unit — a battery — and therefore ought to be seconded on going to the staff, and that a cavalry major commands a unit—a
  1068
  squadron—and ought therefore to be also seconded. I should like to say first that it would be much more difficult to work in the cavalry with small regiments than in the artillery where there are a lot of officers. There are 1,100 officers in the the Horse and Field Artillery, and 900 in the Garrison Artillery. We cannot recognise that a squadron is exactly the same unit as a battery. The squadron is a third of the cavalry regiment, and the regiment is commanded by a colonel who has authority over the majors, which does not exist in the case of the artillery.
  It is true, as the noble Lord has said, that since 1887 the major eommands the squadron, and that since that year his authority as squadron commander has been to a certain extent increased. In 1897, however, we added sixteen majors to the cavalry, with the result that promotion already in the cavalry is faster than it is in any other branch, and any alteration in the direction which the noble Lord suggested might very reasonably be argued to be unfair to the officers in other branches of the service. I now come to a point on which I really do lay stress. It is this, that we do now want the squadron majors away from their regiments and on the staff. We recognise that they are approaching the time when they will have to command the regiment, and we do not wish to encourage them to go away on the staff during those years. We want them to remain and get fully in touch with their regiments preparatory to assuming command a few years later. That is our great objection to seconding. There is a contention at the back of this that it is unfair that while the major is away the captain should do his work and not get full major's rank and pay.
  LORD HENEAGE: That is my whole point.
  The EARL of DONOUGHMORE: My first answer to that is that we do all we can to prevent the majors going away, and the second is that though, in some cases, it may cause hardship, it is not an unknown thing in other walks of life for men to do the work of a higher post while occupying the lower one. Officers are glad of the opportunity of

  1069
  showing that they are capable of doing the higher work, and at the same time they gain experience which is bound to be of use to them in their future career. I do not wish to pretend that that entirely does away with any hardship, but, if I may use the expression, it materially gilds the pill. In conclusion, I would only repeat that the reason we cannot meet the noble Lord on this point is that we do claim that the main cavalry unit is the regiment and not the squadron.
  I entirely agree with the noble Lord that after a period of staff service the officers should return to their regiments. There is an unwritten law at the War Office to this effect, and I have made careful inquiries and find that it is strictly enforced. There have, however, been exceptions during the last few years, but they were cases in which it was to the advantage of the Army that exceptions should be made; and although exceptions are always unpleasant things, we must have a free hand sometimes to dispense with rules. I can assure the noble Lord that there are no two opinions at the War Office that this rule ought to be enforced in every case where it is possible. I hope I have shown that in the main I am not antagonistic to the noble Lord, and I trust that in the circumstances he will not find it necessary to press his Motion to a division.
  LORD HENEAGE: My Lords, I shall be very glad to withdraw my Motion after what I think is a very satisfactory explanation given by the noble Earl. I do not wish to say anything more with regard to the erroneous figures than that a lot of other calculations connected with the infantry were brought in last year by the noble Earl which largely increased the amount. With regard to the seconding of cavalry officers, I did not base my argument entirely on the question of a cavalry squadron being a unit. I do not see why cavalry majors should be the only majors in the whole service who are not seconded when they go away for staff work.
  LORD TWEEDMOUTH: My Lords, I do not intend to rise to the fly thrown by the noble Earl the Under-Secretary and to state my opinions as to the
  1070
  convictions, settled or otherwise, of His Majesty's Government. But, plausible as the speech of the noble Earl was, he entirely failed to touch upon the most important point raised by the noble and gallant Lord behind me, Lord Lovat. My noble friend pointed out, I thought with great force, that from the fact of our having been at war for three years the War Office had attained very good and complete knowledge of the relative merits of the men who served on the staff throughout that long campaign—a campaign that involved the employment of a large number of men on the staff and a continual shifting of those men. The point my noble and gallant friend urged was this, that having got this information the War Office should make use of it, and not allow to drop back into obscurity those men who had proved themselves good staff officers Whatever arrangements may be made for securing a sufficient supply of men to serve in His Majesty's Army, we are obliged to keep ready a set of officers capable of taking charge of the men who come forward; and it does seem to me that we have a right to ask from His Majesty's Government some more definite answer than the Under-Secretary has given on the points raised by Lord Lovat. Most people who take any interest in the fortunes of the British Army recognise that a good supply of the very best class of officers, instructed in the latest methods of warfare, brought up to the highest state of efficiency, is one of the most pressing needs of the country. I hope His Majesty's Government will take note of my noble and gallant friend's speech, and may even now tell us they have ready at hand, some scheme for dealing with his suggestions.
  Motion, by leave of the House, withdrawn.

  NAVAL INTERPRETERS.
  LORD ELLENBOROUGH: My Lords, I rise to call the attention of the House to the fact that, according to the June Navy List, out of 123 naval interpreters only two officers on the executive list have passed in Russian, that the only executive officer who has passed in

  1071
  German is on the Reserve List, that no officer of any branch of the Naval Service has passed in Japanese; and to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty if he will consider the advisability of giving a certain number of selected officers further facilities and inducements for the study of the German, Russian, and Japanese languages; also to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty how many of the 123 officers who have passed as interpreters, and how many of the eighteen executive officers who have passed as French interpreters, are in receipt of the extra allowances payable to naval interpreters.
  According to the June Navy List there are 123 officers in different branches of the service who have passed as interpreters in various languages. Sixteen of these have passed in German, and eight in Russian. But although fifty-five have passed in Oriental languages, not a single officer of any branch of the service "has yet passed in Japanese. But what is still more extraordinary is that not one of the sixteen officers who have passed in German is on the regular executive list. Lieutenant Simpson-Baikie, who has passed in that language, is an officer in the Merchant Service and is on the list of the Royal Navy Reserve. Thirty-seven officers have passed in French, of whom eighteen are on the executive list. Surely the French Navy is not eighteen times as important as the German? From the little that I know about the latter service, I consider that its methods are worthy of the most careful study. Yet such studies can scarcely be undertaken except by those who, in addition to a knowledge of the language, are well acquainted with technical details, with the manœuvres of fleets, and who have done duty on the bridge. If we were acting in alliance with the German Navy we should not be able to derive the full benefit of such an alliance, as more than a usual number of misunderstandings would take place.
  I am, however, glad to see that eight Marine officers, one Engineer officer, and six officers of other branches of the service have passed in German. Executive officers have less leisure than those in other branches, are more likely to be disturbed at odd hours, and have had in
  1072
  consequence fewer opportunities. Of the eight officers who passed in Russian, only two—Commander Kemp and Lieutenant Duncan—are on the active list of executive officers. Naval men have not neglected the Oriental languages, for I find that eight have passed in Persian, nine in Arabic, twenty-eight in Hindostani, twenty-four in Swahili and two in Chinese. Yet no officer of any branch of the service has passed in Japanese, though one has passed in Chinook. I heartily congratulate the noble Earl on the addition he has lately made to the number of officers employed in the Intelligence Department, and though I have no doubt that that department is carefully studying the war in the East, still I consider that this ignorance of the languages of naval Powers of importance may be the cause of mistaken expenditure in time of peace, and a source of danger to the State in time of war.
  Every naval officer is now studying the Russo-Japanese War. To do this thoroughly he must have translations before him. The ordinary civilian writer will not help him much. The translator must have technical as well as literary knowledge. The tactical arrangements of the Japanese, the means they have adopted to protect their convoys, how they make use of the secondary and improvised bases, such as the Elliott Islands, and how they repair most of their ships without sending them back to Japan, should be thoroughly studied by officers acquainted with their language. The systems used on both sides as regards telegraphy, wireless or otherwise, the methods of laying down and removing anchored explosives, of blocking and clearing the entrances of harbours, ' the details of the fittings of turrets ' and gun-carriages, the sighting of guns both for day and night firing, the plans adopted for torpedo attack and defence, and how far original fittings have had to be discarded or altered under the stress of actual warfare, are also well worthy of attention. I am aware that a large number of both Russian and Japanese officers are acquainted with our language, but that is not quite the same thing as our officers knowing theirs. We require officers with technical knowledge, able to translate whatever either side may publish. At the close of the war we may

  1073
  expect to find that a great deal of literature is available if we are prepared to take advantage of it. Unsuccessful or superseded officers will find some means of defending themselves, even in countries where the Press is muzzled.
  At the close of the Franco-German conflict a large number of our military officers undertook the study of French and German for the sole purpose of being able to master the details of that struggle. Until the conditions of war had been altered by improvements in the weapons, I do not think that they could have employed their time better. While the Russians and Japanese are fighting, some of our executive officers ought to be studying their languages, so as to be able to take advantage of their experience directly the war is over. In the next great struggle for the supremacy of the seas, our success or failure may depend upon our having rightly read the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War.
  I will give your Lordships an instance of the foresight of the Japanese themselves, as regards this very question of learning languages. In 1858 Lord Elgin made a treaty with Japan, and several ports were it consequence opened to the British. In 1859 I was on board the ship that brought the British Consul to Hakodadi. £To our astonishment, shortly after we had anchored, a letter, written in English by the Governor of Hakodadi, was handed to our captain. It was on foolscap, in exact conformity with our Admiralty rules and regulations for correspondence, but written with a paint brush instead of a pen. There were only two "slight mistakes in it, which might have escaped notice had it not been carefully examined. The Governor of Hakodadi had been told off to learn English because his harbour was about t" become a treaty port, and I hope that the noble Earl at the head of the Admiralty will at once tell off a few of our executive officers to learn German, Russian, and Japanese.
  I am not at all an advocate of making languages compulsory throughout the whole of the service. Some officers have a facility for learning languages, others, have not. The latter will be better employed in learning something else. But when a man has learnt another language besides his own he learns a second foreign
  1074
  language with much greater facility. On Monday last an excellent circular was issued by the Admiralty which goes far towards meeting the necessities of the case. It greatly increases both the facilities and the inducements for learning foreign languages. For instance, the number of officers who are to be allowed to study languages while on full pay is to be increased from ten to twenty. I think that that number may be a normal one. But we have great arrears to make up, and as the necessity for a proper study of the Russian and Japanese languages is immediate, I would suggest to the noble Earl that it would be desirable that executive officers studying the German, Russian, and Japanese languages should be considered as additional to the limit of twenty, until at least twelve of them have passed in each language. We ought to have a minimum of interpreters in certain tongues.
  I hope the Treasury will not object to the slight additional expense that will be incurred if my suggestion is adopted. Taking the difference between full and half pay at an average of 8s. a day for the various ranks, the extra charge for thirty-four officers would amount to less than £5,000 a year, for one year only. I put the number at thirty-four, because we have already two executive officers who have passed in Russian. It is false economy to employ an insufficient number of officers to criticise this war. Next year millions will be spent on the Navy. Whether they are rightly or wrongly spent depends entirely as to whether we shall have learnt aright the lessons to be derived from it or not. The £5,000 that I ask for is a trifle as compared with the expense of our autumn manœuvres, and there is far more to be learnt from a real war than from any manœuvres. During manœuvres the complaint is constantly made that in a real war the result would have been different. But when a ship is put out of action by being sunk in battle, there is no use in complaining of the rules, or of the stupidity or partiality of an umpire. There is no getting over the fact that she has been put out of action in accordance with the stern realities of war.
  There is another point in the circular to which I wish to draw attention. I

  1075
  regret to see that technical terms do not form part of the lower standard for Japanese. In the higher standard it is stated that some acquaintance with terms used in the naval service will be required. I have great doubts if one year is sufficient to allow for the study of Japanese. But if the Admiralty set twelve officers to commence their studies at once we shall be more certain about that in twelve months time. The candidate should certainly be made to translate a few pages from a gunnery book, and from text books on steam and torpedoes. Exact knowledge of the construction of sentences in Russian and Japanese classical works may be safely left to the gentlemen of the Foreign Office, who have to interpret treaties and protocols, and who are not expected to be naval interpreters. The exact construction of a gun or of a torpedo is of more importance to naval officers than the construction of a complicated sentence.
  I have the liveliest recollection of the first time that I ever acted as a naval interpreter. I was a naval cadet on board one of our three-deckers which touched at Brest for coal when on her way back from the Crimea. The master —that is, the navigating officer—told me to tell the French officer in charge of the moorings that he was going to get a hauling-line out of the starboard hawse-hole so as to be able to bouse in the bight of his cable. I know that many of your Lordships are well acquainted with the French language, but I doubt if even the noble Marquess at the head of the Foreign Office would be able to translate such a sentence at short notice. Ten years later I passed in French as naval interpreter. Had our parts been reversed I should certainly have rejected my examiner. He was a French Professor utterly ignorant of any technical terms. The question arises in my mind as to how far the Civil Service Commissioners are competent to examine officers in nautical terms. The term "maritime idiom" which appears in the circular is very vague. It appears in a former circular, in which 100 marks out of 1,200 are assigned to it, but I have no recollection of seeing it in any other document. It has been supposed by some persons to include words that are unfortunately still occasionally made use of by
  1076
  some nautical men when suffering from impatience. Whether this be so or not, I should suggest that in future out of the 1,200 numbers mentioned in the circular seventy-five numbers should be given for nautical terms, seventy-five for words used in steam, and seventy-five for words used in gunnery and torpedo work; and I further think that the Civil Service Commissioners would do well to call in nautical experts to assist them at these examinations. I have alluded to these matters because I am afraid that if the literary and grammatical standards are placed too high, officers may be deterred from studying these languages.
  What I suggest to the First Lord is that, while retaining a high technical standard, he should lower the literary standard required for Russian and Japanese interpreterships, and that he should give even more 'special facilities for the study of those languages, until we have at least twelve executive officers who have passed in each of them. The second part of my Question has been put because, hitherto, officers who have qualified as interpreters have been much discouraged by not receiving the pay that they considered to be due to them, on the plea that they had Dot been specially appointed as interpreters. But as the schedule attached to this circular says that—
  "Interpreters will be appointed to flagships,"
  and that an interpreter in French and German will be allowed in each ship carrying midshipmen, I hope that in future that grievance may be considered remedied.
  I heartily congratulate the noble Earl on his recent circular, which is, I think, well calculated to deal with the normal state of the Navy, when the arrears that I have referred to have been worked up. But I hope that he will ask the Treasury for that extra £5,000 and that he will at once appoint a number of officers to study the three languages I have referred to. It is a matter that might well be brought before the Committee for National Defence. I shall conclude by asking a favour of the First Lord of the Admiralty. When a person is suddenly surprised by being asked to do something unexpected and to pay some money, his first impulse is to say, no. I would therefore ask the noble Earl not to give a definite reply to

  1077
  my request for £5,000 and thirty-six interpreters at present, especially as I have given him no notice of it, but to think it over with his colleagues, and to consider the subject as an open one at present. I now put the Question that stands in my name.
  VISCOUNT SIDMOUTH: My Lords, before the First Lord of the Admiralty answers the Questions which have been put to him by the noble Lord who has just sat down, I should like to say a few words with regard to the difficulty which may exist in removing officers for a considerable time from their proper work. I am quite certain that no man can thoroughly acquire languages, especially those very difficult languages to which the noble Lord has referred, without sojourning abroad. He must mix with the natives of those countries before he can acquire the language in a conversational form; and what I wish to ask the noble Earl the First Lord is, whether he will consider the necessity of giving officers facilities for studying abroad, at the same time allowing them to retain their former position in the Service? By that I mean that no man should lose anything in consequence of his having remained abroad; he should not lose his chance, for instance, of commanding a ship because he had spent the requisite time abroad to make himself proficient in a particular language.
  THE FIRST LORD OP THE ADMIRALTY (The Earl of SELBORNE): My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord who brought this question forward for his kind words about myself, and I am very glad to be able to say what I think will not surprise your Lordships, that I agree with almost every word he has uttered. I do not pin myself to adhesion to exactly every detailed proposal he has made, but to the general spirit of his remarks I cordially adhere. This question of foreign languages has undoubtedly been sadly neglected in the Navy, and it is, I think, essential that there should be an adequate staff of officers of the executive as well as of the other branches who can speak all the important languages of the world if the Navy is in all respects to be equipped for its work in war and the study of its
  1078
  profession in peace. I can assure the noble Lord that the war now in progress is being most deeply studied by the Admiralty, both here and on the spot so far as the opportunities present themselves; and he will, I think, be glad to know that the first officers, in both cases a captain, attached to the Japanese and the Russian Fleets were both able to speak the language of the nation to which they were attached.
  Although the number of officers in the Navy List who speak certain languages is meagre as analysed by the noble Lord, and although I agree with him that the general linguistic attainments of the Navy fall far short of what we desire, yet there are, as a matter of fact, a considerable number of officers who do speak foreign languages but who are not registered in the Navy List because they have never thought fit to endeavour to register themselves as interpreters.
  LORD ELLENBOROUGH: They are afraid of the high literary standard, I expect.
  THE EARL OP SELBORNE: Not necessarily, I think. The officer who is at present attached to the Russian Fleet in the Far East is a captain who had spent a considerable time in Russia, and he speaks Russian, I believe, excellently, but he had never, for some reason I do not understand, registered himself as a qualified interpreter. The circular letter of the Admiralty to which the noble Lord has referred was issued last Monday, and therefore it is much too soon to say what its effect will be. The Board of Admiralty will naturally watch its working very carefuly, and I do not for a moment put it forward as our last word on the subject. If experience shows that changes in the regulations are necessary, and that the movement is not progressing fast enough, we shall be quite ready to endeavour to improve our machinery. The number of officers on the list of interpreters in the June Navy List is not 123, as quoted by the noble Lord, but 122—a correction of no importance; but of this number only twelve are appointed at the present moment as interpreters. Two of these are executive officers, and of them, one

  1079
  is an interpreter in French. Allowances are payable in the case of each officer appointed as interpreter to a ship.
  That is the state of things which we find in existence. It is not the state of things which we hope will exist when the new regulations have been working for a year or two. In the last few years there has been such a dearth of lieutenants, owing to the expansion of the Fleet, that there really has been no possibility of giving them leave to study languages on the Continent. But the list is now so rapidly increasing that I hope we shall shortly have a margin. Perhaps those noble lords who have not seen the circular will allow me very briefly to recapitulate the principal points with which we have endeavoured to deal and to comment a little upon them. In the first place, the number of officers who are to be allowed to study abroad at any one time is increased to twenty; that does not mean twenty in the year, but that every day in the year there may be twenty officers studying abroad—a very different thing. They will be on full pay the whole time, and it will count as "service."
  The full pay will also be granted without any condition as to subsequent qualification; that is to say, an officer will not go with the dread before him that he may fail in his examination and have to refund half his full pay. Whether he succeeds or fails he will get his full pay for the period he is studying abroad. The period during which study abroad on full pay will be allowed is regulated according to the language which the officer is studying. The reward of the successful officer is to take the form of a gratuity according to a scale, a distinction being drawn between officers who qualify in the higher standard and those who qualify in the lower standard. In the next place, the allowances to officers appointed hereafter as interpreters will be regulated according to the language or qualification. Officers on the list of interpreters will be required to requalify every five years, and for this purpose they will be allowed to go abroad to the country speaking the language in which they are qualified on one month's full pay, in order to prepare themselves for requalification. Again, officers who are qualified
  1080
  to give instruction in foreign languages to junior officers on board His Majesty's ships will receive 5s. for each lesson of one hour's duration, the number of lessons for which payment will be made being limited to four a week. That, of course, is in addition to their pay as interpreters.
  The prizes to midshipmen who attain proficiency have been increased to the annual value of £130. That is, of course, with the object of encouraging midshipmen to keep up the language they may have learnt previous to entering the service, so that they may start with some knowledge when they go abroad to qualify as interpreters. With regard to the study of foreign languages at the new Royal Naval College at Osborne, I believe we shall do more there in respect of French and German than could be done through these regulations, or through any efforts made by officers at a later period of their career to learn French and German abroad. This is, perhaps, a rash thing to say in your Lordships' House, where the experience of public schools is so universal, but I do thoroughly believe that we are going to succeed at Osborne where the public schools have so notably failed. We are going to teach the boys French or German, or both, in a way which will enable them to make themselves understood in France or Germany, and to understand what Frenchmen and Germans say to them, and be competent to study any literature in those languages.
  As regards Japanese, the arrangements in respect to that are quite special. In addition to the institution of a special scale in connection with the study of Japanese, we are going to appoint a Japanese teacher at Wei-hai-Wei. In normal times the China Fleet is constantly using Wei-hai-Wei as headquarters for months together, and a Japanese instructor will be stationed there, who will be at the service of any officers of the Fleet. Officers who are now holding appointments as interpreters or acting-interpreters under the old regulations will be allowed to retain their appointments until the expiration of the commission of the ship in which they are serving, and an interpreter qualified in French or German will be allowed to each ship which carries

  1081
  midshipmen. Candidates for these interpreterships will have the opportunity of being examined by the Civil Service Commissioners three times a year, in April, July, and October, and I think the noble Lord need not be anxious lest the Civil Service Commissioners should be incompetent to examine these officers in technical naval phraseology. After all, it is not a subject with which we are altogether unfamiliar. There is drawn up for the instruction of cadets on the "Britannia" as perfect a comparative table of French and English terminology as exists in the whole world, and what his been done in the case of French could be done in the case of other languages. At any rate, I can assure my noble friend that the importance of the special terminology will not be forgotten.
  In this examination a thorough knowledge of the language selected by the candidates will be required, and he will be examined orally as well as by written papers. I do not think the noble Lord need be afraid lest the examination should de generate into one purely of grammar. Of course, it is desired that these officers should have a real grasp of the language they are acquiring in every respect, but the main point to be aimed at is that the language should be an instrument which the officer can use from day to day in his rough service as a naval officer, and, therefore, that he should be able to understand it when it is spoken, and to speak it fluently, is of the utmost importance.
  Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to quote the scale which has been drawn up. In respect of Japanese, an officer will be allowed to reside in Japan for twelve months on full pay for the higher standard, or six months for the lower, and, if he succeeds, he will receive a gratuity of £200 for the higher standard, or £100 for the lower standard, and his pay as interpreter will be 2s. 6d. per diem. In the case of Russian, the duration of residence abroad will be nine months for the higher stipend and six months for the lower; the gratuity on qualifying will be £150 and £75 respectively, and the additional pay whilst employed as interpreter, 2s. 6d. per diem. In the case of German, Dutch, and modern Greek,
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  the duration of residence abroad will be six months for the higher standard and four months for the lower; the gratuity on qualifying, £70 and £35 respectively, and the additional pay whilst employed as interpreter, 2s. per diem. In the case of French, Italian, Spanish, and Portugese, the duration of residence abroad will be four months for the higher standard and three months for the lower; the gratuity on qualifying £50 and £25 respectively, and the additional pay whilst employed ls.6d. per diem.
  Noble Lords may think the period of four months in France very low, but it must, of course, be remembered that it is not expected that any officer will go to France with a complete ignorance of the language. The officers who will go are those who already have some knowledge of it, an when the cadets trained at Osborne are in the service they will be lieutenants who will really have had adequate instruction in the language already. I have only, in conclusion, to ask your Lordships to allow me to read the two concluding paragraphs of the circular, because they indicate exactly the point of view from which the Admiralty has studied this question—
  "In revising the regulations in the manner indicated my Lords have been influenced by a strong sense of the disadvantages attending the want of familiarity with foreign languages shown by officers of His Majesty's Navy, and of the importance of promoting among them a knowledge of the languages spoken by officers of foreign fleets, with whom friendly intercourse is of frequent occurrence. Their Lordships accordingly desire that these regulations may be made known generally in the Fleet, and it is their wish that officers should be encouraged to volunteer for study abroad in accordance with the provisions of the regulations.
  "It is further their Lordships hope that as the number of officers qualified to instruct in foreign languages increases, greater opportunities will be afforded to midshipmen to study foreign languages, especially French and German, while serving afloat. Advantage is to be taken, whenever possible, of the presence of a qualified instructor to form classes on board ship for this purpose."
  The object for which naval officers should study foreign languages is not only to enable them to converse with the officers of those fleets when they meet them, but to enable them to study the naval literature and the literature generally of those countries; because, great as is, I

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  hope, the field of study which the British Navy offers to the other navies of the world, I am quite sure there is not a single navy from which we cannot learn something ourselves if we study it adequately, and it is in that spirit that I believe and trust the officers of the Navy will approach all naval literature emanating from rival navies.

  THE DE MOKLEY BARONY.
  LORD HAWKESBURY: My Lords, I rise to ask the Lord Chancellor whether his attention has been called to the fact reported in the newspaper that the Judge of the City of London Court stated in Court that a suitor in that Court, a gentleman styling himself Lord de Morley, was a Peer of the Realm; and whether it was not the fact that the gentleman in question, who claims to be an heir or co-heir of that barony, has never had his claim considered by the Committee of Privileges, and therefore can have no claim to be designated a Peer. I should, perhaps, state that the barony is quite a different one from that in respect of which my noble friend Lord De Mauley sits in this House, and the title is spelt in a different way. I may say that I have no wish to criticise the claim of this gentleman to the title, which may, or may not, prove to be a good one when it comes to be considered by the Committee of Privileges, but it does seem to me that a statement made by a Judge in Court in this manner is very likely to be misconstrued by persons who are not conversant with the practice of the Committee of Privileges and of your Lordships' House, for they may attach to it a weight and authority it does not possess, and it is for that reason, and knowing how rightly jealous your Lordships are of the dignity and privileges of this House, that I have ventured to call attention to this matter.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (The Earl of HALSBURY): My Lords, I am sorry that I have not been able to verify the exact quotation from the learned Judge, chiefly because I suspect that he must have been misunderstood or misreported. It is probable that the learned Judge was endeavouring to disclaim, on
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  the part of this gentleman, with whom he seemed to be acquainted, that he was a mere impostor, the phrase used apparently being that the gentleman was "by no means a bogus Peer. "The Judge was evidently endeavouring to say that the gentleman was not claiming to be what he had no right to claim, but that he was a perfectly respectable gentleman. I believe that to be true; I know nothing against the gentleman. He appeared before me when I was presiding over the Court of Claims, and claimed to be a Peer, and I informed him that he must prove his case before the proper tribunal. No one can entertain any doubt as to the impropriety of a Judge, or anybody else, pronouncing judgment upon a matter which has not been heard, and which can only be heard by your Lordships' House. I think it extremely improbable, however, that the learned Judge actually used the words attributed to him, and that the misapprehension was due to an error in the report.
  House adjourned at twenty minutes past Six o'clock, to Monday next, a quarter before Eleven o'clock.