Sitting of 16 March 1904

Preamble
The House met at Two of the Clock.
UNOPPOSED PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Littlestone-on-sea and District Water Bill; as amended, considered; to be read the third time.
PETITIONS.
  LICENSED PREMISES (HOURS OF CLOSING).
  Petition from Woolwich, for alteration of Law; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENCES (RENEWAL).
  Petitions against alteration of Law: from Aberdeen; Upton Cross; Bridge of Weir; Grantham; Ysbytty Ifan; Pontygwaith; Derby; Dean Row; Boston; Llanelly; Trehcrbert; Styal; Ferndale; Cardiff; Bethania; Merthyr; Fall; Llantwit Vardre; Gyfiylliog; Falmouth; Hove: Cheadle; St. Albans; Machen; and Birmingham; to lie upon the Table.
  PARLIAMENTARY FRANCHISE.
  Petitions for extension to women; from Cradley Heath; and Leicester; to lie upon the Table.
  SALE OF BUTTER BILL.
  Petitions against: from Stratford; Canton; Cardiff; Glasgow (four); Coventry; and Hull; to lie upon the Table.
  SAVINGS BANKS ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Montrose, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  TRANSVAAL (CHINESE LABOUR ORDINANCE).
  Petition from Shanklin, for withdrawal; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  FACTORY AND WORKSHOP (FLAX AND LINEN MILLS).
  Copy presented, of Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department by Commander H. P. Smith, one of His Majesty's Superintending Inspectors of Factories, upon the conditions of work in Flax and Linen Mills as affecting the health of the operatives employed therein [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3126 and 3127 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL).
  Copy presented, of Colonial Report, No. 414 (Jamaica, Report for 1902–3) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Accounts of General Lighthouse Fund.
  SIR JOHN LENG: To ask the President of the Hoard of Trade when the accounts of the General Lighthouse Fund, to which attention has been directed by the hon. J. C. Burns, the Chairman of the Advisory Committee, will be presented to Parliament.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) The account of the General Lighthouse Fund for the last year (1902–3) was presented to Parliament on 2nd February last.

  London County Council Electorate.
  MR. H. C. RICHARDS: To ask the President of the Local Government Board if lie can state approximately the number of electors qualified to vote for tin; County Council in the county of London; males; females; ratepayers who pay their rates directly to the local authorities; and residents and lodgers whose rates are paid on their behalf by the landlord or other person respectively: and if such figures cannot be supplied, will he give facilities for such a Return

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  to be made so far as the county of London is concerned.
  (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) According to a statement published by the London County Council in May, 1903, the number of electors qualified to vote for county councillors in the county was 723,080. A Return presented to the House of Commons in 1897 shows that at that time the number of women electors in that county was 85,075. I have no later information on this point. The number of electors registered as lodgers on the register now in force in London appears to be 70,549. I am unable to say what number of the electors pay their rates directly to the local authorities or what is the number of those whose rates are paid on their behalf. There would be a considerable difficulty in obtaining this information.

  Aid Grants for Scotch Schools.
  MR. BUCHANAN: To ask the Secretary for Scotland how many schools earned money out of the Aid Grant under Section 1 (a), (b), and (c), of the Minute of 28th May, 1903; how much money was earned by them; and in what counties the schools were situated.
  (Answered by Mr. A. Graham Murray.) Up to the present date, 347 schools have earned grants under Section 1 of the Minute. These grants amounted to £13,850, and the only counties in which none of the schools are situated are Bute and Clackmannan.

  Shanghai and Nanking Railway.
  MR. BAIRD: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the conditions under which the concession for the Shanghai to Nanking Railway was extended to the British and Chinese Corporation have been fulfilled, the work begun, and the capital provided.
  (Answered by Earl Percy.) The British and Chinese Corporation are at present discussing with the Chinese Board of Commissioners the necessary arrangements with a view to the flotation of the loan and the commencement of contruction.

  Foreign Ministries of Commerce
  MR. LOUIS SINCLAIR: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is now in a position to lay before the House the reports as to the constitution and functions of Foreign Ministries of Commerce.
  (Answered by Earl Percy.) No, reports will be laid in a few days.

  Postal Cash-on-Delivery System.
  MR. HENNIKER HEATON: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he has reason to anticipate that if a postal system of cash-on-delivery were introduced, it would be found to be of sufficient use to the community to ensure the creation of any large amount of traffic, and whether he can give any estimate of the traffic expected.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley). I am unable to furnish the hon. Member with any estimate the accuracy of which could be relied on. The statistics, however, relative to the working of the system in the various foreign countries in which it has been established, furnish some rough indication. Thus it may be stated approximately that— In Germany, with a population of about 56,000,000, there were, in 1902, 37,500,000 postal packets, letters, and parcels dealt with under the system. The total of the trade charges on this traffic amounted to 648,500,000 marks, or about £32,000,000. In Belgium, with a population of about 7,000,000, there were in 1901, 128,000 letters and parcels dealt with under the system. The total of the trade charges on this traffic amounted to nearly 2,000,000 francs, or £80,000. In Switzerland, with a population of about 3,000,000, there were dealt with about 9,250,000 letters and parcels, on which the trade charges amounted to nearly 68,000,000 francs, or about £2,720,000. In Austria-Hungary, with a population of about 46,000,000, the number of trade charge letters and panels dealt with in 1902 was over 12,000,000, and the trade charges exceeded 204,000,000 crowns, or over £80,000,000. In India, the number of trade charge articles of all kinds dealt with during the year 1902 was about 3,340,000, the total

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  trade charges being over 40,000,000 rupees.

  Duties of Telegraphists at Leeds.
  MR. BARRAN (Leeds, N.): To ask the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to the recent practice of altering the duties of telegraphists in Leeds at a moment's notice, and to the fact that clerks performing early duties have been directed, at the expiration of a few hours work, to leave the office and return to complete their eight hours in the evening; and, if so, whether, seeing the inconvenience thus caused, he will direct that this action shall be discontinued.
  (Answered by Lord Stanley.) My attention has not been called to the practice at Leeds to which the hon. Member refers; but I will have inquiry made, and let him know the result.

  Sea Carriage of Grain.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will state how many vessels registered in the United Kingdom are fitted for the carriage of grain in accordance with Board of Trade regulations.
  (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) There are at present 1,051 vessels on the British register for which plans of grain loading have been approved by the Board of Trade under Section 453 of the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894.

  Rent Aid for Metropolitan Police.
  CAPTAIN BALFOUR: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will consider the expediency of revising the scheme of rent-aid for the Metropolitan Police, in view of the inequalities which arise under the present system, and of the difficulty experienced by constables in finding suitable accommodation for themselves and their families within convenient reach of their stations.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers Douglas.) This subject has engaged the special attention of the Home Office (luring the recess, and after prolonged inquiry and consideration I have, on the recommendation of the Commissioner of
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  Police, decided on a revision of the existing system. The result of the inquiries which I directed to be made was to prove clearly the existence of the inequality which the present system endeavours to remedy—the rents paid by the police for poor accommodation in the centre of London being considerably higher than those paid for good accommodation in the outer district; but it also appeared that the boundary within which the rent-aid is now given is not satisfactory and gives rise to striking anomalies and cases of hardship. I came to the conclusion that it would be fair to fix a certain proportion of pay which an officer might reasonably be expected to afford for rent, and to allow rent-aid to all who have necessarily to pay a rent in excess of that proportion. I propose, therefore, to give rent-aid to all constables and sergeants (below the rank of station sergeant) who are occupying suitable quarters near their station and who are necessarily paying rents exceeding one-fifth of the average pay of their rank, i.e., rents of 6s. or more in the case of constables and of 7s. 6d. or more in the case of sergeants. On this basis the rent-aid system will be extended to the whole Metropolitan Police area, and nearly all the married men in the force will receive an allowance. At the same time I propose to increase the rent-aid allowance in the centre—giving an allowance of 2s. 6d. a week in the four congested central divisions, and 2s. in certain other districts where the prevailing rents are high. For the rest of the police area, including all the outer districts which have hitherto been excluded, the rate will be 1s. 6d.

  Equipment Allowances for Military Officers on Tibetan Mission.
  MR. BUCHANAN: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether allowances for the necessary equipment could be given to the military officers on the Tibetan Mission similar to those paid to the civilian members of the staff.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) I am informed by the Government of India that the officers of the escort have received and will receive all the advantages allowed under the regulations. A special outfit allowance was granted, as an exceptional measure, to the small body of officers, both civil and military,

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  who were originally attached to the Mission, but there is thought to be no sufficient reason for extending this concession to the much larger number of officers of the escort which was subsequently added.

  Forestry Education in Ireland.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state how much money the Board of Agriculture for Ireland has spent for the furtherance of forestry education and on the development of afforestation in Ireland under Section 30 of the Act constituting that body; how much, if any, it is intended to spend in these matters during the coming financial year; if it is proposed to acquire any land for these purposes; and if the Department would consider the desirability of purchasing waste lands for planting under the operation of Section 4 of the Land Purchase Act.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The Department has expended about £900 on a survey of the conditions of woods and plantations in Ireland and the prospects of forestry development. This survey, which is supplementary to the recent inquiry by the Committee on Forestry of the Board of Agriculture, on which the Department was represented, is intended to guide the Department in its policy with regard to forestry work and education. As a result of the information obtained the Department has selected and purchased an estate in county Wicklow, specially suited for the purpose, as a nucleus for a school of practical forestry. It is not yet possible to say what sum will be devoted to forestry education in the coming financial year. The question of acquiring as trustees parcels of estates containing land suitable for tree planting which may come into the hands of the Estates Commissioners under the Act of 1903 is engaging the attention of the Department in consultation with the Estates Commissioners.

  Licence Duties for Conveyances in Dublin.
  MR. NANNETTI: To ask the Chief Secretary to
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  the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, if he will state what was the gross amount of licence duties paid in the Dublin Metropolitan Police district for the current year for licences for hackney cars and cabs, for trams, for stage coaches, job carriages and horses of same, for drivers and conductors, the amount paid in respect of each class, and the funds to which such licence duties are applied.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) The proceeds of the Carriage Revenue, applied in aid of the expenses of the Dublin Metropolitan Police establishment, amounted to £3,640 7s. 6d. in the year ended 31st December, 1903. The receipts under each heading were as follows: —Stage carriages, £1,040; job carriages (two-horse), £460; job carriages (one-horse), £132 10s.; job horses, £20; hackney carriages, £1,077; cabriolets, £673; supplemental licences, £115s.; transfers of licences, £10 10s.; Dublin plates, £11 2s.; drivers' and conductors' licences, £214 10s. 6d.; Total, £3,640 7s. 6d.

  Salary of Principal Teacher in Berrings National School.
  MR. SHEEHAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the principal teacher of the Berrings Male National School obtained second class in 1897, subsequently entered training in 1899, and passed with special distinction in column 3 in 1900; will he say if this teacher was then entitled to first class; and, if not, when would he had the old rules remained in force, and would he be entitled to first class salary now; and whether, seeing that the new rules state expressly that teachers in training during the session 1899–1900 would be specially considered when their salaries came to be revised, and that this teacher has suffered substantial pecuniary loss by the introduction of the new rules, he will give his case special consideration.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) This teacher was placed in the second division of second class in 1897; he entered training in 1899, and in 1900 was advanced to the first division of the second

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  class in accordance with rules then in force. Under these rules he would have been entitled to rank in the first class after the lapse of two years of highly efficient service. He became a principal teacher from 1st May, 1903. Consideration of the question of an increase to the salary he had been previously receiving was deferred until he had served a year's probation as principal in conformity with the regulations on the subject. It will be reconsidered at the termination of that period.

  Irish Land Act—Prices of Land.
  MR. LAMBERT: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what has been the highest and lowest prices in years purchase of first and second-term rents respectively sanctioned for the purchase of Irish land, under the new Land Act; also the average number of years' purchase sanctioned for first and second-term rents respectively.
  (Answered by Mr. Wyndham.) Under Section 23 (14) of the Act of 1903 periodical reports of the proceedings of the Estates Commissioners will be laid before Parliament. The form of the report and the date of its publication must be determined in consultation with the Treasury. I am considering the question of publishing an interim Return containing information on the matters referred to.

  Indian Army—New Field Guns—Proportion to be Contracted for by Private Firms.
  MR. J. F. HOPE: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can state what proportion of the new field guns for the Army in India included in the Estimates of the present year will be manufactured in the Royal Arsenal, and what proportion will be contracted for by private firms.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) This matter is under consideration.

  Leather Bandoliers for Volunteers.
  SIR JOHN LENG: To ask the Secretary of State for War why the
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  Volunteer Forces in this country are still equipped with the old Crimean ball pouches; whether there is any intention to supply them with leather bandoliers instead of the cotton bandoliers which proved so wasteful of cartridges in the South African War and when this is to be done.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The question of the abolition of pouches and the introduction of bandoliers or other means of carrying ammunition in clips or chargers will be considered when the new rifle is introduced both for Regulars and Auxiliary Forces. The equipment of the Volunteers is supplied by the corps out of its Capitation Grant.

  Troops Controlled by Departments other than War and India Offices.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can state what, apart from the special arrangements of the Somali campaign, is the number and cost of the forces having an organisation in troops or battalions or gun detachments, now under the control of the Colonial Office and Foreign Office respectively, or under the control of His Majesty's Government exercised otherwise than through the War Office or the Government of India.
  (Answered by Mr. A.J. Balfour.) According to the latest available information the figures are as follows: —

  Number.

  Cost.

  Officers, Noncommissioned Officers, and Men.

  (Estimated.)

  £

  Under the control of the Colonial Office

  17,193

  2,078,650

  Under the control of the Foreign Office

  4,900

  198,500

  Under other Departments (excluding forces under War Office or the Government of India).

  Nil.

  Nil.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  Army Schools.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the Chaplain-General to the Forces or the General Officer in command of a District is the recognised authority for detailing a chaplain or officiating clergyman to give specific religious instruction to children attending Army schools; what are the powers of the Chaplain-General in regard to the attendance of children; and whether Inspectors of Army Schools are responsible to the General Officer Commanding or to the Chaplain-General for the subjects on which instruction is given and for the appointment of the instructors.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD-FORSTER,): In reply to the first point raised, the General Officer Commanding is the authority. As regards the second point raised, the Chaplain-General has no powers. As regards the third point raised, the collective Bible lessons are given by the Army schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, who are appointed by the Director of Army Schools; a printed course of these lessons is issued for their guidance by the War Office.

  Protection of Scotch Fisheries.
  MR. AINSWORTH: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty what Admiralty vessels are at present employed in patrolling the fisheries on the coasts of Scotland, and what are their instructions as to enforcing the observation of the three mile limit.
  *THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. PRETYMAN,): There are no vessels exclusively employed in patrolling these fisheries at the present time, but after the 1st April the special service vessel "jackal" and her tender "Daisy" will revert to this special duty. Other vessels, both gunboats and coastguard cruisers, are also available when their services are required. The steps taken, when occasion requires, to ensure the observation of the three mile limit are those laid down in the Sea Fisheries Act 1883.

  Transvaal Labour Ordinance-Leave Regulations.
  MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that, under the Ordinances governing indentured Asiatic labour in Trindad and British Guiana, the labourers are entitled by law to leave of absence for one day and one night in every fortnight upon their earning certain wages within that time, and that the employer may give the labourer seven days leave at a time and twenty-six days in the year; and seeing that, under the Transvaal Ordinance. Chinese labourers are entirely dependent for leave of absence upon the will of their employers, whether provision will be made for their enjoying the same right to leave of absence as that provided by the Ordinances in Trinidad and British Guiana.
  *THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON,): I am aware of the terms of the Ordinances of Trinidad and British Guiana. If it is found by experience that under the provisions of the Ordinance the labourers are dissatisfied in this respect, the necessary remedy can be applied by regulation.

  Civil Rights Limitation for Asiatic Labour.
  MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether in any of the Laws or Ordinances providing for Asiatic immigration into other parts of the British Empire, there are restrictions similar to those contained in Section 14 of the Transvaal Ordinance debarring Chinese labourers from holding any liquor, mining, trading, general dealer's, importer's, hawker's, or other licence whatever, and making it unlawful for Chinese labourers to acquire, lease, or hold any house, land, building or fixed property, or any claim or any right whatsoever to minerals or precious stones; and, if not, why these precedents are not followed.
  *MR. LYTTELTON: If the hon. Member wishes for an exhaustive answer I shall have to ask him to postpone his Question; but so far as I am able to answer it at present, I am informed that

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  there are two recent Australian Acts of Parliament which do restrict Asiatic labour from certain employments. The latter part of the Question in regard to precedents is therefore not exactly in point, bat there is no precedent for the exact condition or even the general condition of the present Ordinance.

  Gold Production of the Rand.
  MR. BUCHANAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies what is the gold production of the Rand for February in quantity and value; and what are the corresponding figures for February, 1903.
  *MR. LYTTELTON: The gold production of the Rand for February is given as 282,436 ounces, value £1,199,712. The figures for February 1903 are 186,913 ounces, value £793,955.
  MR. BUCHANAN: An increase of 50 per cent.

  Crown Colonies and the Sugar Convention.
  MR. CHARLES MCARTHUR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that bounty-fed sugar from the United States is admitted into Bermuda without a countervailing duty and is superseding British and German sugars exported from the United Kingdom to that island, to the detriment of British trade; and whether he will take steps to have due effect given by the Government of Bermuda to the provisions of the Brussels Convention.
  *MR. LYTTELTON: I am aware that there has for some years been a tendency for the exports of sugar from the United States to Bermuda to increase, which, however, is probably due quite as much to the intimate commercial relations existing between the two countries as to any bounties given in the United States. As at present advised, I do not propose to press the Legislature of Bermuda to take any special measures to check such importation, the colony not being a party to the Brussels Convention.
  MR. CHARLES MCARTHUR: Has the Government not guaranteed the adhesion of the Crown Colonies to the Convention?
  MR. GIBSON BOWLES: Did not the Government assume for all the Crown Colonies all the obligations of the Convention? I must really press for a reply.
  *MR. LYTTELTON: I quite agree that my hon. friend is entitled to press for a reply, but will he be good enough to put the Question down?

  Alien Labour in Southern Rhodesia.
  MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if any regulations now exist as to the employment of alien labour in Rhodesia; if so, will he state their purport.
  *MR. LYTTELTON: I am not aware of any rules having been framed under the Southern Rhodesian Ordinance, which has not as yet come into operation.

  St George's Channel, Bermuda.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will confer with the Lords of the Admiralty as to the best means of widening and deepening the waterway of St. George's Channel, Bermuda, in the interest of the commerce of that island.
  *MR. LYTTELTON: Tenders are being invited by the Colonial Government for deepening, widening, and improving the channel leading into St. George's harbour. The views of naval officers on the station have been obtained as to the best means of carrying out the work, which is not, however, one in which the Admiralty are directly interested.

  Employment of Natives in Indian Administration.
  COLONEL NOLAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if the late order issued by the Governor-General of India, which curtails competition, applies solely to natives of India; and whether by this order competition is in any way reduced for those offices usually held by Europeans; also if he can state in what departments the new order applies.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. BRODRICK,: I understand that the orders

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  issued by the Government of India refer only to appointments made in India, which are, generally speaking, reserved for natives of that country. They do not apply to offices to which appointments are made after examination in England. In the case of the Indian Civil Service, as the hon. Member is doubtless aware, the procedure of appointment is regulated by Statute (21 and 22 Viet. cap. 106, sec. 32).

  Indian Coolie Labour for the Transvaal.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to an enclosure contained in Lord Milner's despatch of the 25th January, 1904, page 15 [Cd. 1941], in which, in a quotation from the Times of Natal, it is stated that it was at first hoped that the labour would be forth coming from India, but the foolish and obstinate attitude of the Indian Government has made that hope a vain one, and that the colony had been forced back, as a last resort, upon the China man; whether he can inform the House as to what was the attitude of the Indian Government which is described as foolish and obstinate; whether there has been any correspondence between the Secretary of State or the Indian Government with reference to the immigration of Indian coolies into the Transvaal Colony; and, if so, whether he will lay the same upon [the Table of the House.
  MR. BRODRICK: The extract from a: Natal newspaper referred to in the Question is entirely unjustified by the facts. The Government of India has never been invited to allow coolies to be recruited for labour in the mines of the Transvaal. Correspondence is proceeding with reference to the position of Indian subjects in the Transvaal and the possibility of recruiting Indian coolies for work on Government railways in that colony, but it has not reached a point at which it would be laid before Parliament.
  SIR HENRY FOWLER: Do I understand that no communications have passed between the two Governments with reference to the importation of
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  Indian natives into the Transvaal for mining purposes?
  MR. BRODRICK: No correspondence whatever has taken place between the two Governments with reference to the recruitment of Indian coolies for employment in the mines of the Transvaal.

  M. Leopold Blairiaux and the Egyptian Government.
  MR. BRYNMOR JONES: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that M. Leopold Blairiaux, formerly a judge of the Native Tribunal of First Instance at Cairo, having sued the Egyptian Government for damages for wrongful dismissal from his office in the Mixed Tribunal of First Instance at Cairo, obtained judgment in that Court for £12,000 damages; and, if so, will he say whether, before the dismissal of M. Blairiaux, Lord Cromer was consulted by the Egyptian Minister or the Judicial Adviser; and, whether Lord Cromer advised or concurred in the dismissal of M. Blairiaux.
  *THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Earl PERCY,): The answer to the first paragraph of the Question is in the affirmative, but an appeal has been lodged against the judgment. The action taken by the Egyptian Government with regard to M. Blairiaux was approved by both Lord Cromer and the Judicial Adviser.

  Shanghai and Nanking Railway.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that, under an agreement signed by the British and Chinese Corporation, Limited, and the Chinese Government on the 9th July last, the Corporation undertook to provide a capital of £3,250,000 for the construction of the Shanghai and Nanking Railway; will he state whether any steps have yet been taken with a view to raise the required capital; and will he ascertain when the work of construction is likely to be proceeded with.
  EARL PERCY: His Majesty's Government are aware of the terms of the

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  agreement as described by the hon. Member. The British and Chinese Corporation are at present discussing with the Chinese Board of Commissioners the necessary arrangements with a view to the flotation of the loan and the commencement of construction.

  Balkan Reforms.
  SIR JOHN KENNAWAY: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can state on what date the demands of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Ambassadors for the reorganisation of the gendarmerie in the Balkan Provinces were presented to the Porte; if he has any official information showing that an early and favourable answer will be returned; and, in the contrary event, will His Majesty's Government, in view of the urgency of the situation and the continuance of outrages, use their utmost influence with the Porte to obtain it; and whether any progress has been made with the appointment of Assessors in Macedonia.
  *EARL PERCY: The demands formulated by General de Giorgis for the reorganisation of the Macedonian gendarmerie were presented to the Porte by the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Ambassadors on the 1st of March. His Majesty's Ambassador has strongly urged upon the Turkish Government the immediate acceptance of these demands which have been declared to be the minimum that Great Britain could accept. The Austro-Hungarian and Russian Civil Assessors were appointed in the month of December last and have been engaged since January in elaborating with Hilmi Pacha, the Turkish Inspector-General, the details of the scheme of administrative reforms.

  Russia and Persia.
  MAJOR EVANS GORDON: I beg to ask the under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any official information regarding a Russian expedition to Persia to survey the means of communication between Teheran and Bushire from a standpoint of the transport of merchandise; and, if so, whether he pro-
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  poses to publish any Papers on the subject.
  *EARL PERCY: We have no official information on the subject mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member.

  Protection for British Subjects at Newchwang.
  MR. CHARLES MCARTHUR: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether it is intended to recall His Majesty's Gunboat "Espiegle" from Newchwang; and, if so, what steps, if any, is it proposed to take to protect British life and property at that port in the event of the foreign settlements being raided in the act of, or subsequent to, a withdrawal of the Russian croons now located there.
  *EARL PERCY: It is intended to withdraw His Majesty's Ship "Espiegle" from Newchwang as soon as the river opens as she would be in considerable danger in the event of serious hostilities and her presence there would afford no effective protection either to life or property. The British and American Consuls have requested all women and children to leave the port, and will, no doubt, if circumstances render it necessary, give similar advice to other British and American nationals. Representations will be addressed by His Majesty's Government to the belligerents, requesting them to take such measures as circumstances may permit of, to safeguard the interests of British subjects.

  Somaliland Expenditure.
  *SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can say what is the meaning of the proposed grant in aid of military expenses of £24,600 for Somaliland contained in the Estimates for the coming financial year; to what purposes the corresponding grant of £50,000 in the present financial year was applied, and what proportion it proved to be of the total military expenditure incurred.
  *EARL PERCY: The grant of £24,600 is to cover (a) the cost of the 6th battalion King's African Rifles which forms the normal military force of the

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  Protectorate (£20,000) and (b) Charges for pensions and gratuities (about £4,000) to officers and officers' wives and relations, who were killed or wounded in the recent operations. The grant of £50,000 made in 1903–4 covered (a) the cost of the above battalion (about £19,000,) and (b) the repayment to India of the amount of expenditure on buildings, works, etc., and other charges (£31,000) for which the Foreign Office became liable on taking over the administration of the Protectorate in 1898.

  The Budget.
  MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the approximate date of the introduction of the Budget.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN,): I am unable to state exactly the date at which the Budget will be introduced, but it will not be until after the Easter recess.

  Electrification of Metropolitan Railways.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will state what progress is being made with the works requisite for the equipment of the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways with a system of electric traction; and can he state when this system is likely to become generally adopted on these railways, and when the time limit for the completion of the work of electrification will expire.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,): Both the railway companies referred to have informed me that the equipment of their lines for electric traction is progressing rapidly, and that they expect to be able to run trains electrically early in next year. There is no statutory limit of time for the completion of the works.

  Fishing Industry and Railway Rates.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the hon. Member for North Huntingdonshire, as representing the Board of Agriculture, whether he is aware that
  1256
  the fishing industry is hampered by the rates charged for the carriage of fish; and will he consider the expediency of addressing a circular letter to the various railway companies with a view to secure a reduction in their charges.
  MR. AILWYN FELLOWES: Our concern with matters affecting the industry of fishing is limited to England and Wales, but some evidence has been laid before the President affecting the through rates for fish from Scotland which is receiving the attention of my noble friend.

  Mr. Hooley's Bankruptcy.
  MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General if his attention was drawn to paragraph 55 of the Report, dated 16th January, 1899, of Mr. H. Brougham, Official Receiver, alleging that the bankrupt, Mr. E. T. Hooley, had been guilty of fraud in connection with the Beeston Tyre share deal, with a view to moving the Public Prosecutor to action; if so, can he state upon what grounds no prosecution was initiated.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir ROBERT FINLAY,): This Report formed the subject of very careful consideration in 1899 by the Attorney-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions. Full inquiries were made and the grounds on which proceedings were not taken was that the necessary evidence could not be obtained.

  Government Grants to Training Colleges.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Education can he state when did the Treasury cease to make building grants to training colleges in Great Britain; and at that date how many training colleges in England and Ireland respectively had received building grants from the Government.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON,): The Committee of the Council on Education on 21st January, 1860, announced their intention of receiving no

  1257
  further applications for building grants in aid of the erection of training colleges in England, Scotland and Wales. The last grant was actually paid in 1864. Building grants were paid to twenty-nine English training colleges, four Scotch, and three Welsh. I am afraid I have no information as to Ireland.

  Domestic Instruction for Highland Girls.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland, in view of the fact that in the Highlands of Scotland there are no manufacturing industries for the employment of single women, and that a large proportion eventually engage in domestic service, will he consider the desirability of making such arrangements as will enable every girl to pass a course of instruction in domestic work, including plain cooking, during the last few months of her attendance at school.
  *THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON,): The Code already offers ample opportunities for such instruction as the hon. Member desires, in connection with the supplementary courses. One of the courses suggested in the Sixth Schedule to the Code expressly takes that form.

  Irish National Teachers.
  MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland can he say how many teachers under the Irish National Board of Education were promoted to the first grade last month; were any teachers who obtained an increment last July thus promoted; on what reports were the promotions made; and were any teachers passed over without promotion who, during the past three years, had higher reports than those who came off more favourably.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): Eighteen, of whom three had already received partial increments. The promotions were based upon the reports of the inspectors during the past three years, the Departmental records, and the special recommendation of the senior inspectors. No teachers were passed over who were eligible for and merited promotion. If any
  1258
  particular case in which it is considered that a teacher should have been promoted is brought under the notice of the Commissioners, it will be inquired into.

  Rifles for the Royal Irish Constabulary.
  MR. FLYNN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is intended to supply the Royal Irish Constabulary with a new pattern rifle and bayonet; and, if so, what will be the estimated cost of the change, and from what Vote will it be defrayed; and whether he can say how many changes in the pattern of the Royal Irish Constabulary rifle have been made since the old Enfield rifle was in use.
  MR. WYNDHAM: Arrangements are being made to supply the constabulary with Lee-Enfield Cavalry carbines fitted to take sword bayonets, in place of the Martini-Henry carbines at present in use. The cost of the change is estimated at £4,766, which will be borne by the Constabulary Vote. The present is the third change in the pattern of rifle since the old Enfield rifle was adopted.
  MR. FLYNN?Are these weapons intended for police duties?
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: Have the Irish Government considered the desirability of disarming the force and putting it or the same level as the English police?
  MR. JOYCE: Are you going to issue Mark IV bullets to the police?
  CAPTAIN DONELAN: For what purpose are these arms used?
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The original Question was as to the pattern of rifle, and that has been answered. Notice must be given of any other Question.

  Dublin Training Colleges.
  MR. BOLAND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state what were the terms of the arrangement by which the present First Lord of the Treasury, in

  1259
  the year 1890, established equality between the Government Training College in Marlborough Street, Dublin, and the training colleges under private management, and since that time from what source has building expenditure been met in the case of Marlborough Street College.
  I beg also to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can state whether, since the settlement made by the present First Lord of the Treasury in the year 1890, any building grants or their equivalent have been made to any training college, denominational or undenominational, in Ireland; and, if not, will he explain why it is proposed now to grant £50,000 for buildings to Marlborough Street College without any corresponding grant to any other college.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The decision arrived at in 1890 by the Irish Government, with the consent of the Treasury, was to place the three Denominational training colleges in Dublin (two Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland) on an equality of treatment as to building grants, with that previously accorded to the Undenominational training college under the management of the Commissioners. The arrangement took effect from 1st April, 1892, and provision has since been made in the Annual Estimates for payment of a sum, calculated at 5 per cent, upon the capitalised value of the buildings, to cover the cost of housing of the three colleges mentioned. The provision for this service in the current year's Estimate for Public Education is £3,580. The effect of the arrangement, paradoxical as it may seem, has been, however, to place the Undenominational college under the management of the Commissioners, in a position of marked inferiority in the matter of both buildings and equipment, as compared with the Denominational colleges. Repeated complaints have been made as to the unsuitable and insanitary conditions of the residence for students at the Undenominational college, and in order to provide a remedy for an admitted grievance it is proposed to make a grant of £50,000 for new buildings for their accommodation. Provision is also made
  1260
  in the same Estimate for an annual grant of £5,000 for additional scholars attending the Denominational colleges.; The capitalised value of this sum is £142,855. Building expenditure in the; case of the Marlborough Street Undenominational College has been met, since 1890, out of the accumulated savings on the Fixed Grants voted under Sub-head C. of the Vote for Public Education. These grants are of the nature of capitation grants made to all, training colleges alike, and are not surrenderable to the Exchequer.

  Land Purchase in County Clare.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can say why the sittings of the Sub-Land Commission for Ennis and Ennistymon for March have been delayed; and whether, in view of the inconvenience caused by these delays, he will see that they do not take place again.
  MR. WYNDHAM: A number of Assistant Commissioners having been transferred to the work of land purchase, it was necessary to postpone the sitting, originally arranged for the 9th instant, to the 11th May.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I hope the right hon. Gentleman will point out the great inconvenience caused by this long delay.

  Preferential Railway Rates.
  MR. NANNETTI: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the statement made at the meeting of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, that serious injury was being done to the Port of Dublin by the action of the Great Southern and Western Railway in giving preferential rates for goods sent to England via the Milford route; whether, in view of the promises made to; Parliament when amalgamation with the Great Western Railway of England was sanctioned with the Great Southern and Western Railway of Ireland, he will take such steps as will secure for traders a uniform rate over all routes by which goods or live stock may be despatched in Ireland to England, and vice versâ.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The matter appears to have been referred to a special Committee of the Port and Docks Board for consideration. The Great Southern and Western and Waterford and Limerick Railway Companies Amalgamation Act of 1900, contains special provisions for the protection of the Port of Dublin, in which it is provided that any disputes arising under these provisions shall be determined by an arbitrator appointed by the Board of Trade on application, as therein prescribed.
  MR. NANNETTI: Are the railways carrying out their agreement made at the time of the amalgamation to give equal facilities to all parts of Ireland? Will the right hon. Gentleman see that that promise is carried out?
  MR. WYNDHAM: Under the Act, the company undertook to do certain things, and in the event of failure the matter has to be referred to an arbitrator.

  Labourers' Cottages in Ireland.
  MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received from the Mill-street Rural District Council a resolution drawing attention to the hardship inflicted on the ratepayers of the rural district in being taxed up to nearly the limit of one shilling in the pound on account of improvement schemes under the Labourers Acts, and requesting that clauses should be inserted in the proposed new Labourers Bill by which local taxation would be relieved of some, of this burden; and, if so, does he intend to give effect to the terms of this resolution.
  MR. WYNDHAM: The hon. Member appears to have overlooked the fact that an annual grant of public, money amounting to £40,000 has been made available for some years, and will continue to be available, towards the cost of providing labourers' cottages in Ireland. The Labourers Bill now before the House contains provisions in respect of the distribution of this grant on a new basis.

  Irish Trade Statistics.
  MR. LOUGH: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer at what
  1262
  date and by what authority the Customs ceased to collect statistics of the exports and imports between Ireland and Great Britain; and whether, seeing that the chief import from Ireland consists of great articles of food which have to compete with similar imports from foreign countries and the Colonies, will he consider the desirability of enabling Ireland to furnish herself with the same information as to the value of her export products as is available for the other parts of the Empire and all civilised countries.
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The answer to the first part of the hon. Member's Question, is that the trade between Great Britain and Ireland was declared to be a coasting trade by Treasury Warrant of the 4th November. 1823, issued under the authority contained in Section 6 of the Act 4, Geo. IV., cap. 72, which assimilated the Customs tariffs of the two countries. As to the second part, I may repeat what I said in answer to a similar Question from the hon. Member—that no machinery exists for collecting complete statistics of goods removed from port to port within the United Kingdom; and any attempt to set up machinery for the purpose of these records would, I think, subject the shipping trade to restrictions quite out of proportion to the advantage that might result from them.

  Cork Postal Staff.
  MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General if he will state how long the revision of the Cork indoor postal staff is overdue; and whether, seeing that the despatch of the parcel office night mail depends now on the same number of clerks as it did fifteen years ago, though the number of parcels dealt with has increased six-fold, and the number of separate despatches two-fold, he will consider the desirability of providing the extra assistance which has been represented as necessary in this department.
  THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Lord STANLEY,): The Revision of the Cork indoor staff has now been sanctioned, and will be carried out without delay.

  Roscrea Post Office.
  MR. KENDAL O'BRIEN: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether the house in the Square, Roscrea, county Tipperary, owned by Mr. W. J. Menton, and from which Mr. T. M. Ryan was evicted in July 1902, has been taken over by the postal authorities; and, if so, for what term and on what conditions; how much does the Department intend expending on the premises; is it proposed to transfer the post office from its present situation; what are the reasons for so doing; have the wishes of the towspeople been consulted; and for what length of time have the existing postal promises been used for such purpose.
  LORD STANLEY: Some inquiry is necessary before I can answer the hon. Member. I will communicate to him, as soon as possible, the information for which he asks.

  Church Discipline.
  MR. DAVID MACIVER: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, in view of the continuance of illegal practices in the Church of England, His Majesty's Government, having regard to the pledge given live years ago, will, in the present session of Parliament, introduce legislation for the better enforcement of discipline in the; Church of England; or, failing such intention, will give facilities for the progress of the Church Discipline Bill introduced by the hon. Member for the Everton Division of Liverpool.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,): I would remind my hon. friend that I was prepared to give a Parliamentary day to deal with the two Bills which came before the House last session in connection with this subject. That suggestion was, I think, perhaps acceptable to the House in general, but not to some of those who were responsible for one of the measures then before us. I think, however, that a great deal of light would be thrown upon this subject by the Report of the Royal Commission which I announced a few days ago, and I hope my hon. friend will wait till he sees that Report before pressing for any further action on the part of the Government.
  MR. AUSTIN TAYLOR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will state what will be the precise terms of reference to the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Disorders; and whether he has any communication to make to the House as to the composition of the said Commission.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I hope to be able in a very short time to give my hon. friend the information he desires, but I cannot do so at the present moment.
  MR. AUSTIN TAYLOR: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of placing on this Commission a strong judicial element, as apart from any elements which may be either clerical or partisan, or both?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The point raised by my hon. friend has not escaped me, and the matter will be carefully considered from that point of view.

  Government Licensiag Bill.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, having regard to the widespread interest in the matter, he can now say when the Licensing Bill will be introduced, or whether this will, or will not, be before Easter.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: As I stated in answer to a Question a few days ago† I am not yet in a position to give any information on this subject.
  MR. JOHN ELLIS: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether it will be before Easter, which is rapidly approaching?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: No, Sir, I cannot.

  Legal Terminology.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, although the King has been advised not to disallow the Labour Importation Ordinance of the Transvaal Legislature, the act of the Governor in giving the Royal Assent to that Ordinance is not final and conclusive; and whether it is competent for the King in Council within two years after the transmission of a copy thereof from the Governor to
  † See page 591.

  1265
  the Secretary of State for the Colonies, to disallow the said Ordinance.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I would not venture to give any pronouncement upon the constitutional question which the hon. Gentleman has raised, but there is no precedent for the Crown, having announced that it does not raise any objection to an Ordinance, reversing that decision, nor do I believe that His Majesty would ever be advised to sanction such a reversal.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the expression "not to disallow" is a technical expression frequently used in reference to a modified consent of the Crown to Colonial Acts, and that it means the Crown retains the power to veto the Act at any time within two years.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not agree with that.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Could not the Government follow the course adopted in Jamaica recently and obtain a majority by putting additional nominated members on the Council?
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order That does not arise out of the Question.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: What is the difference between the technical expressions "not disallowed" and "sanctioned?"
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: On all questions of legal terminology I feel I am perhaps the worst authority in the House. If the hon. Member will address his Question to the law officers ho will get a satisfactory answer.

  The Cabinet Memorandum.
  MR. LAMBERT: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, on the last day of the last session, he placed before the Cabinet a document containing proposals that he wished officially to put forward in the name of the Government, which included preferential tariffs and taxation of food.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I have already given the House all the information which I think necessary.
  MR. LAMBERT: Considering that this matter has been referred to in the country and in both Houses of Parliament, and has been the cause, or the indirect cause, of the resignation of one or more Cabinet Ministers, are we not entitled to a complete statement of the facts?
  *MR. SPEAKER: Order, order The right hon. Gentleman declines to give any further information.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Did the right hon. Gentleman get the letter I addressed to him?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes.

  Scottish Education Bill.
  MR. CROMBIE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when the Scotch Education Bill will be introduced; and whether he will allow sufficient time between the First and Second Readings to admit of the Bill being fully considered in the country.
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I hope the Bill will be introduced with very little delay, but I cannot give the hon. Member the precise date at present.
  MR. CROMBIE: Will it be before Easter?
  MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I hope so.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—EASTER HOLIDAYS.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I beg to ask what will be the forthcoming business of the House, and whether the right hon. Gentleman can give any indication in regard to the coming and passing of the Easter Holidays.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It was a cheering element in the right hon. Gentleman's Question which gave an indication that there are holidays to come, but I am afraid I cannot give him any dates. I find that before the holidays begin I am always pressed to make them long, I and that after they are over I am always abused unless I have made them short.

1267
As to business, to-morrow I propose to take the Reports of the Army and Navy Votes, on Monday the Report of the Supplementary Estimates, and as soon as those are concluded we shall, of course, proceed with the stages of the Consolidated Fund Bill.

PUBLIC PETITIONS COMMITTEE.
Third Report brought up, and read; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
NEW BILL.
  COLLEGIATE CHARGES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  "To confer additional powers on the Court of Teinds in Scotland, with reference to Collegiate Charges," presented by Mr. James A. Campbell; supported by Sir James Fergusson, Mr. John E. Gordon, Mr. Maxwell, Sir Mark Stewart, and Sir Walter Thorburn; to be read a second time upon Friday, 6th May, and to be printed. [Bill 103.]
  SUPPLY [14TH MARCH.]
  Resolution reported.

  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1904–5. VOTE ON ACCOUNT.
  "That a sum, not exceeding £21,500,000, be granted to His Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the Charges for the following Civil Services and Revenue Departments for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1905, viz.:—

  CIVIL SERVICES.

  Class IV.

  £

  Board of Education

  7,000,000

  £

  Miscellaneous Legal Buildings, Great Britain

  30,000

  Art and Science Buildings, Great Britain

  15,000

  Diplomatic and Consular Buildings

  20,000

  Revenue Buildings

  160,000

  Public Buildings, Great Britain

  160,000

  Surveys of the United Kingdom

  90,000

  Harbours under the Board of Trade

  10,000

  Peterhead Harbour

  10,000

  Rates on Government Property

  260,000

  Public Works and Buildings, Ireland

  110,000

  Railways, Ireland

  60,000

  £

  Scotland:—

  Secretary for Scotland

  25,000

  Fishery Board

  8,000

  Lunacy Commission

  3,000

  Registrar General's Office

  2,000

  Local Government Board

  5,000

  Ireland:—

  Lord-Lieutenant's Household

  2,000

  Chief Secretary for Ireland

  12,000

  Department of Agriculture

  80,000

  Charitable Donations and Bequests Office

  1,000

  Local Government Board

  25,000

  Public Record Office

  2,000

  Public Works Office

  18,000

  Registrar General's Office

  6,000

  Valuation and Boundary Survey

  7,000

  £

  Dundrum Criminal Lunatic Asylum

  3,000

  Revenue Departments.

  £

  Customs

  350,000

  Inland Revenue

  830,000

  Post Office

  3,800,000

  Post Office Packet Service

  250,000

  Post Office Telegraphs

  2,100,000

  Total for Revenue Departments

  £7,330,000

  Grand Total

  £21,500,000"

  Resolution read a second time.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND MR. JOHN REDMOND (Waterford) moved to reduce the Vote by £100 in respect of the Ireland Development Grant in order to protest against the non-appropriation of this grant to the purposes of primary education. In the first place, he said, he wished to call attention to the fact that this Estimate stood on an entirely different footing from any other Estimate. In the year 1902, when the English Education Act was passed, a sum of £1,400,000 was appropriated for primary education in this country, and Ireland then became entitled to an equivalent sum, but former precedents dealing with equivalent grants were put entirely on one side. First of all equivalent grants in the past had been calculated upon a certain basis laid down several years ago, giving a proportion of eighty to England, eleven to Scotland, and nine to Ireland. The Irish Members protested against this appropriation as unjust, and in the case of equivalent grants in respect of the Education Act of 1902 that proportion was for the first time put upon one side, and Ireland's equivalent was calculated on the basis of population. It was thus ascertained to be £185,000 a year. Under former precedents for equivalent grants that would have been available for primary education in Ireland, but, by the Development Grant of last year, it was provided that this money could be expended upon other subjects than the particular subject for which it was an equivalent grant. It was also provided, however, that Ireland should not, in any case, lose a single farthing of this money, because any portion of it not voted in one year would be carried on to the next year, and that the unexpended balances of
  1272
  £185,000 a year should accumulate for the benefit of Ireland. These changes, in their opinion, were most useful and valuable. The Estimates they were considering therefore stood in a peculiar position. As a matter of fact, it did not propose the voting of any new money at all; it dealt, so far as this discussion was concerned, with the allocation of money which had already been put by Statute at the disposal of Ireland. It would be noticed that from the unexpended balance from this grant of last year, and the sum of £185,000 this year, they had now at their disposal a sum of £233,000 odd. On this sum the first charge was a statutory one of £75,000, placed upon it by the Land Act of last year, viz.: £20,000 for the Congested Districts Board, £5,000 for Trinity College, and £50,000 in respect of loss attendant upon the working of the Act. Of course, it was profitless at this stage to make any criticism at all on this charge being placed upon the Development Grant, though there was one very grave matter connected with it to which he desired to direct attention. They agreed last year that a sum of £50,000 a year, for four years, should be charged upon this Development Grant, on the clear understanding that this sum was to meet the expenses connected with the flotation of the loans for the purpose of land purchase. Those expenses were clearly explained by the Chief Secretary, in his speech on 25th March last year, in introducing the Land Bill. He said they arose from three causes, viz.: (1) discrepancy between the dates of the quarterly dividends on stocks and the dates of half-yearly instalments of repayment; (2) the loss that might be due to flotation in temporary excess of the amount underwritten in Ireland; and (3) the loss through issuing stock belowpar.
  These losses were all agreed to last year, and he was not going to go back upon that bargain in the slightestdegree, but they were told by the Chancellor of the Exchequer about a week ago that the last of the three classes of losses, the most serious of all, was not to be met by this £50,000 a year for four years, but was to be an additional charge upon the Development Grant.

  1273
  He said deliberately that this was not understood by them when they agreed to put £50,000 a year for four years upon the Development Grant. They all understood that this sum was to meet all the losses consequent upon the flotation of stock. He wished to point out what a serious matter this was. In the present state of the money market it was calculated that it would cost something like £26,000 for sixty-eight-and-a half years to provide interest and sinking fund on the additional stock which must be issued to enable purchase transactions to the extent of £5,000,000 to be paid for in this first year. If the money market remained as it was, next year there would be £26,000 more, and so on, year after year, until the whole of this Development Grant would absolutely disappear. Now what did he suggest? He suggested that the £50,000 a year for four years was ample at present, at any rate, to meet all possible losses. Out of this £50,000 for this year, let them take £26,000 to meet the discounts, and they would leave £24,000 for other losses. What were the other losses? Why, everyone knew that the other contingent losses that the Chief Secretary mentioned could not possibly eat up £24,000; and he did suggest and ask that the £50,000 voted for this year should be used, as far as it would go, to meet all the losses consequent upon the flotation of stock, and in 'his way £24,000 more of the Development Grant would be available this year for other purposes. He had a number of matters connected with the Estimates which he must briefly touch upon, and therefore he would leave this question of the £50,000, simply saying that he regarded it as a very great grievance indeed that the Treasury, in addition to taking this £50,000 a year to meet the losses in flotation should come down and say they wanted £26,000 more to meet the discounts consequent on the state of the money market.
  Turning to the Estimates themselves, he found that in these statutory charges, amounting to £75,000, the first item was £1,000 for Bann drainage. He confessed that when he saw this first it occurred to him that it was a very poor joke at the expense of their friends opposite. If
  1274
  their good will were to be purchased at so small a price as this he fancied it could not be considered of very much value. He had the greatest possible sympathy with the case of the Bann drainage, and he would be delighted to see large drainage works set on foot; but this £1,000 was put in in this way. It was suggested by the Government that it would take £100,000 to carry out this work, and they were willing that £50,000 should be provided out of this fund, if the locality would provide £50,000 more. He did not know whether this were a likely contingency or not, but by way of an earnest of good will they put in this £,1000 this year. What he had to say about this Bann drainage applied to other items in the Estimates, and he wished to say at once that until something effective was done to remedy the glaring and disgraceful defects in primary education in Ireland, he should object to schemes of this kind being undertaken by this fund. The Bann drainage was a deserving object, the continuation of the present state of things there was a disgrace to the Government. If they had had a Government of their own in the last 100 years, no in the how poor and how small their resources might have been, everyone knew, and no one better than the right hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite, that matters of this kind would not have been left as they were. Therefore, he was in complete sympathy with the Bann drainage, but he said that the money required for that ought to come from the Treasury, and should not be filched away from this little fund which was the equivalent for the Education Grant in England, and one half of which had already been collared by the Treasury for land purchase. He could not conceive, unless it was upon the ridiculous supposition that it would conciliate hon. Gentlemen opposite, why the Bann drainage was selected to be put in this Estimate. There were other drainage works in Ireland just as needful—the Barrow, the Suck, and the Shannon, and he did not know how many other cases equally meritorious. He rather fancied that the right hon. Gentleman opposite would support a scheme for the Barrow drainage, or the Suck drainage, just as much as he would support it for the Bann. Was the Bann put here for the purpose of

  1275
  trying to conciliate hon. Gentlemen with £1,000 and a vague promise in the future? He passed from the Bann drainage.
  The next thing was a grand of £10,000 for the building fund of Marlborough Street Training College. Those Gentlemen who were Members for Irish constituences would have read, he had no doubt, a letter that appeared in the Irish newspapers yesterday or the day before from the Catholic Bishop of Limerick on this question of training colleges in Ireland. He desired to refer to that letter because, in his opinion, it made out a conclusive case for his view. The way the matter stood about the training colleges in Ireland was this. In 1890 there were four training colleges in the country. One of them was the undenominational college in Marlborough Street, Dublin, which had been built and equipped by the Government. In addition to that there were three denominational colleges, not all Catholic, which had been built by private funds, towards the support of which the Government were contributing nothing at all so far as building or upkeep were concerned. That was a state of inequality which caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the present Prime Minister, in 1890, applied himself to this question, he admitted the inequality, and made a declaration that, in his opinion, all these training colleges ought to be put on an equality, and ought to have what he called a free home. The result was what the Chief Secretary mentioned in answer to the Question of Lisbon, friend the Member for Kerry just now. The result was that the three denominational training colleges were put en a footing of equality with the undenominational one by the Board of National Education being obliged to give them every year a sum to cover the interest and sinking fund upon their building loan. A state of equality in that respect was established in these training colleges. The decision of 1890 was carried out, as they were told, fully in 1892. But the need for training colleges naturally and properly increased, and what happened? The Board of National Education, with the approval and sanction of the Treasury, agreed to sanction the building of three additional training
  1276
  colleges in the country. These training colleges, therefore, were not started by private individuals on their own responsibility. They were started with the sanction of the Board of National Education and the approval of the Treasury. They were build in Waterford, Limerick, and Belfast at enormous expense. He was very familiar with one of them, the De La Salle College in the city of Water-ford, and he did not suppose that in any part of the three Kingdoms there was a more magnificent pile of buildings, or a better equipped college than that built by the brethren of that community. After these colleges had been built, naturally they made a claim that something should be contributed towards the building fund in their case as in the case of others. How were they met? They were told "this was settled once and for all by the decision of 1890." It was stated by successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, in answer to himself, who raised the subject year after year, that the question was settled in 1890 that building giants were only to go to the colleges then in existence, and that no further building grant whatever was to be made. He could quote declarations of successive Ministers to that effect: and yet they had here a proposal to put upon the Development Grant the sum of £50,000, the first instalment being £10,000, for the building of one of these colleges—the Marlborough Street Undenominational College. He submitted, therefore, that the question which was said to have been settled and decided in 1890 had been reopened. The decision to give no more building grants had been broken, and surely, if that were so, they were entitled to come and make a claim that some assistance should be given for these three additional denominational colleges. The sum that was necessary-was comparatively small in view of other expenditure. A sum of about £4,000 a year would provide, he thought, for interest and sinking fund on the buildings of these colleges. He did think that, for the sake of that comparatively small sum, it was wrong to keep alive in Ireland this rankling fee-ling of injustice and inequality. He knew that he would have no case whatever if these colleges had been built without the authority and sanction and approval of the education

  1277
  authority and the Treasury, and if he were not justified in saying that these colleges were necessary, and that they were doing most admirable work.
  The other proposal with reference to training colleges which appeared on this Estimate was a sum of £5,000 for the three colleges he had been speaking of, but it was not in respect of building expenses. It was to enlarge their certificate so as to enable them to take in more Kind's scholars, and fill up the space at their disposal. That was a matter that he had repeatedly brought under the attention of successive Ministers also, and he was exceedingly glad that the claim at last was being met, but it was being met in an exceedingly shabby and mean way. This charge ought not to be on the Development Grant at all. It ought to be on the ordinary Estimates. It ought to be an increase of the Estimates for King's scholars. Why was it not put there? Why was everything that the Government felt it their duty to do in Ireland to be thrown on this little Development Fund Grant, whose primary object was to provide schools for poor children in Ireland? While he was glad that the certificate of these colleges was to be enlarged so that they could receive more scholars, he thought it was an exceedingly shabby and mean thing to insist on the small cost being thrown on that small fund, instead of being cast on the ordinary Estimates for that purpose.
  Let him take the next item—the Tralee and Dingle Rail way, amounting to £20,000. He must repeat here what he said with reference to the drainage question. He objected upon principle to putting charges of this kind upon this fund when they were not spending a single farthing on the primary schools of Ireland for which this money was primarily voted. Apart altogether from the merits of this particular scheme, he objected to the allocation of this money. He would deal with the merits in a moment. Let him say in passing that he knew of several railway schemes, all of the most valuable character, which really ought to be undertaken and carried through in Ireland. There was the Ready and Armagh Railway which, if carried out, would, in his opinion, confer upon that part of Ireland at any rate a very great boon. He certainly thought that the
  1278
  Government ought to provide money for schemes of that kind, but whether the merits of the scheme were good, as in that case, or bad, as in one sense, at any rate he should show they were in the particular case chosen, he equally objected to their being thrown on this fund so long as the interests of national education were absolutely neglected and thrown on one side. Let him deal with the Tralee and Dingle Railway. He knew that there had been a grievance in this connection endured by certain persons in county Kerry. They had had a serious burden on them for this railway, which was almost derelict or of little value, and he had been in complete sympathy with his hon. friends the Members for Kerry in the efforts they had made to get this railway into the hands of some people who would be likely to work it at a profit, and in that way relieve the people of Kerry from the burden thrown on them. He repeated the expression of his sympathy again to-day. But the scheme of the Government, put forward now was a scheme which, in its essentials, was bad and dishonest, because, if he understood it aright, it was not a scheme for benefiting and relieving the ratepayers of Kerry so much as it was a scheme for benefiting and relieving the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. The scheme was, as he understood it, that the Great Southern and Western Railway Company were to be asked to buy this almost derelict railway. He heard a description of it the other day by a high authority who told him that in a strong wind the railway carriages were liable to be blown off the line. He hoped he was not libelling county Kerry. He was told that the railway was in a very bad condition. The proof of this was that the first part of the scheme was that if the Great Southern and Western Railway Company bought the railway, they were to receive from the Development Grant £20,000, or as much more as might be necessary, for the repair of the line; secondly, that the county council was to raise certain loans from the Board of Works; and thirdly—and this now was the real secret of the whole transaction— that the Great Southern and Western Railway Company were to perpetrate

  1279
  what he did not hesitate to call a swindle of public money and a gross violation of faith to this House in connection with the Rosslare and Fishguard line—a swindle which in 1901 they attempted to palm off in this House and which they succeeded in temporarily palming off on the Treasury, because the Secretary for the Treasury, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, told them he had agreed to the arrangement, and they succeeded in palming it off on the Chief Secretary, because the Financial Secretary told them that the Irish Office also approved of it. These were the conditions under which the Great Southern and Western Railway was willing to buy the Tralee and Dingle line, and from the fact that £20,000 was put upon this Estimate on the responsibility of the Government, he supposed he was justified in coming to the conclusion that the Government had agreed. What sort of a Government had they in Ireland?
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOE IRELAND (Mr. WYNDHAM,): I have an open mind.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid he could understand having an open mind, but what was the meaning of having an open mind and still putting £20,000 upon the Estimates? If the right hon. Gentleman had not agreed, what did he want the money for? The thing was absurd and ridiculous; the fact that they were making a proposal of £20,000 for this purpose was a clear indication that if a final decision had not been come to the Government had gone a long way to agreeing to the arrangement. By the Rosslare and Fishguard Railway Bill, passed after investigation by a Hybrid Committee of which he himself was A member, the Great Southern and Western Railway were bound by Act of Parliament to construct a line between Fermoy and Cork and also connect the South-west of Ireland by a bridge over the Lee. On these two conditions the Treasury and the Committee of the House of Commons agreed that the Great Southern and Western Railway should be given a sum of £93,000 which was due to the Treasury on a mortgage of one small line
  1280
  they had bought as part of the amalgamation. They failed to fulfil these conditions, and the Treasury, very properly, called up the money and it had to be paid. Then in 1901 they had the audacity to go to the Treasury and ask to have the money paid back to them if they built the bridge over the Lee at Cork, even though they abandoned the second condition; and they made the utterly dishonest pretext that these conditions were alternative. They were not alternative conditions. The money was to be paid only if both conditions were fulfilled. They, however, actually induced the Treasury and the Irish Government to agree to give them the money if they fulfilled this one condition, and it was not until the Irish Members raised the question by a very vigorous protest that the present Prime Minister, by listening impartially to the facts, said that this country would not be guilty of a violation of faith and that the agreement with the Treasury should not be completed. But hope sprang eternal in the breasts of railway directors. Apparently these gentlemen were quite determined to get their hands on the £93,000, and now under the pretext of the announcement of this ancient proposal of buying the Tralee and Dingle Railway, they were making another effort to carry out the same arrangement attempted in 1901, and defeated by this House. He was greatly surprised that the Chief Secretary had had anything whatever to do with the transaction. The right hon. Gentleman must know that the railway company made it a condition that the purchase of this line should be regarded as part of the Rosslare and Fishguard scheme, and that they should be allowed to give up the Fermoy and Cork line. He was surprised that the right hon. Gentleman had had anything to do with this attempt to collar this money now. This £93,000 was originally given by the Treasury for the development of that part of Ireland where it was spent, and as far as it rested with him, at any rate, it would certainly not be allowed to be collared by this railway company and diverted from the purpose for which it was voted. There were many railway schemes, including the Dingle and Tralee one, which he would be glad to see carried out; but even if this

  1281
  scheme were in every sense a good and practicable one, he would protest against this charge being put upon the Development Grant, when it ought, in the ordinary course of events, to come from the Treasury on the Estimates.
  He came now to his chief complaint against the Estimate; and it was that out of this money, an equivalent grant for an education grant in England, not one single farthing—unless they included what was going to be spent upon training colleges— was going to be spent on primary education in Ireland. It was quite true they agreed that this fund should be treated in a different way from equivalent grants in the past. They agreed on both sides of the House that some of the money might be spent upon other matters than education; but already more than half of it had been taken for land purchase, and certainly no one who agreed to that arrangement ever thought for one moment that none of the money, not a farthing, was to be spent on primary education. He thought that amongst Irish Members there would be probably absolute unanimity that the proposal to spend money on land purchase, Bann drainage, and God knew what, and yet not a farthing upon primary education, was not a proposal which should be accepted in any quarter of the House. Last year what really amounted to a promise was made by the Government, that one particular expenditure in connection with the national schools should be made. He did not know whether English Members were aware of the fact—it was familiar to Irish Members, of course—that in Ireland they could not get a second teacher in a school unless there was an average attendance of over sixty. In England he thought it was certainly not more than fifty. Mr. Dale, the Government inspector, who had just issued his report on the schools of Ireland, offered the opinion that the limit ought to be from forty to fifty; and Mr. Starkey, the Resident Commissioner of Education in Ireland, put the limit down as low as thirty-five. It must stand to reason that a school with an average of sixty pupils, which meant an attendance very often of between eight and ninety, could not be taught by a single man. Well, managers
  1282
  and teachers and people in Ireland put forward a very moderate demand that the limit should be reduced from sixty to fifty. His own opinion was that the limit; of fifty was too high, but this was the demand put forward, and as to it there was complete unanimity among all classes interested in education in Ireland. It would require an expenditure of £24,000 a year. Was it not a monstrous thing that when Parliament gave £185,000 a year to Ireland for education as an equivalent grant of £1,400,000 given in England for the same purpose, that the whole money should be spent upon discounts, land purchase, commission to brokers, drainage, dishonest railway schemes, and so forth, and that this modest sum of £24,000 required for this purpose should be refused? The right hon. Gentleman, as he had said, last year made what amounted to a practical promise that this should be done: and he wanted to know why it had been violated in this way? The right hon. Gentleman might say that there was a difficulty with the Treasury; but, after all, from the Treasury point of view they did not care on what the money was to be spent. No doubt the Treasury would like this money to be accumulated as a happy hunting ground on which they could make raids from time to time. They did not care whether it was spent in providing the necessary teachers in the schools of Ireland or for arty other purpose. He wanted to know why the promise of the Government had been schools of Ireland or for arty other purpose. He wanted to know why the promise of the Government had been violated in this way? He made a strong plea that a considerable portion of this money should be spent upon the necessary repairs, equipment, and heating of the schools in Ireland. They all listened to the debate the other night on the Education Act, and no one could help being moved by the picture drawn by the Prime Minister of the sufferings that would be inflicted on Welsh schools in certain: contingencies. The right hon. Gentleman said that if they would not put the Act into operation the children would suffer; they would not be able to get books, I the schools would not be put into j a state of repair, and that there would be I a shortage of fuel to keep the children warm. Why! this was a chronic state of things in a large number of the schools all through the poorer parts of Ireland.

  1283
  He would read to the House a few words from the report of Mr. Dale. He said that as a result of his investigation he had no hesitation in reporting that, both in point of convenience for teaching and the requirements necessary for the health of the teachers and community the average school building in Dublin and Belfast was markedly inferior to the average school in English cities of equal size. Then, comparing the worst of the two countries as well as the best, he was forced to the conclusion that it was difficult to give in words any adequate conception of the buildings; in point of unsuitability and unhealthiness they far exceeded any premises it had been his lot to visit in England. What did he say with reference to the country schools? He said they were generally dirty, small repairs were neglected, and the out offices were rarely clean and at times indescribably filthy; out of 100 schools he had inspected in England he had never seen any kept with such utter disregard of care and decency as in Ireland. This neglect, he said, prevented these primary schools accomplishing their main object in training children in habits of cleanliness and order. He himself might pause to say in this connection that there was no fund for repair, upkeep, and heating of these schools; it had to be done by the teacher out of his own miserable pittance. Mr. Dale further said that the complaint of inspectors as to the complete inadequacy of the heating of the schools was only too well founded. Fuel was provided in turn by the pupils with occasional help from the teacher, manager, or parents; and the supply was not often obtained sufficiently early in the morning, or it ran short at times when it was most needed. The inspector went on to point out that in the country as in the towns there existed schools which fell far short of the standard attained even by the worst schools in the rural districts of England or Scotland. Then take the question of equipment. The children in Irish schools had to purchase their own schools books. He had seen it suggested that this was a very good thing, because when the child went home he could spend his leisure in study. But when they considered the poverty of Ireland he thought it was
  1284
  nothing short of a scandal that little children had to provide their own books. With reference to equipment, he was speaking the other evening to the teacher of a school in an important district, who said that the maps in his school were over twenty years old and were falling to pieces and that he could not afford to buy new maps. The floor was broken, and he had no money to put new flooring down, so that he had actually himself to engage in laying down pieces of soap boxes and tea boxes and things of that sort here and there over the holes to prevent the little children from falling through. If the windows were broken there was no possibility of getting money to mend them. Mr. Dale reported that the cost of maps fell upon the teachers, and that apart from the supply of absolute necessaries of reading, writing, and geography, the equipment of the ordinary national school was most meagre and that the average school was really below the poorest of voluntary schools in this country. He reported that there was no proper provision for equipment, and wound up by saying that the deficiencies commented upon were due in most of the districts to want of funds. That report was only issued a few days ago; it was made by a special inspector sent over to examine the country schools. In the face of that report was it not something little short of criminal that this money was to be squandered? He would substitute for the word "squandered" the word "spent" upon schemes of railway development and so on. Railway extension and facilities of transit no doubt were necessary to the future of Ireland, but over and above all things the greatest necessity was the provision of clean, healthy, and decent schools for the young children of Ireland.
  This report, from beginning to end, was a wholesale condemnation of the present system of primary education in Ireland. Possibly that would be the answer he would get. Possibly the Government would say, "Yes, the system is so bad that it must be revolutionised." That was his own view, but the Government would doubtless add, "Therefore we must not spend any of this money at present on education and we must give it to railways

  1285
  and so on. "He had two objections to that argument. If the money was not spent on education it would either go to schemes, many of which would be faulty, or else it would probably be collared by the Treasury. The most powerful answer to that argument was this—when would this necessary reform of primary education be carried out? For thirty, years the Irish Party had been claiming in that House that the system was rotten and bad and should go; for thirty years Irish public opinion had held that view. Archbishop Walsh did his best. He went on to the Board of National Education and endeavoured to effect some reform. His attempt failed, and he left the Board in disgust. Public opinion was now unanimous against the present system of primary education, yet they were not to spend money on giving fair play to little children or on maps and books or on providing decent floors and clean out-offices for the schools—they were not to do that until some English Government had the time or the inclination to introduce a new scheme and revolutionise primary education in Ireland. Yes, they had similar treatment over the University question. The right hon. Gentleman's answer on that subject was that he ought not to introduce a Bill to give them a University until there was practical unanimity on the subject in Ireland, knowing, of course, that upon that question there would never be unanimity, and that nothing would therefore be done. That answer would be made on the present occasion. It would be mocking the poor children and their wants to say that money could not be spent for that purpose until they had come to a conclusion to radically reform the system. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to a Question put by him and in several of his speeches list year, promised to consult Irish opinion as to the allocation of this fund. He did not know what the right hon. Gentlemen meant by consulting opinion in Ireland. He should like to know how many resolutions the right hon. Gentleman had read from public bodies in Ireland, from the North, East, South, and West, of all creeds and parties, demanding that some of the money should be spent at once upon these schools. The answer would be instructive, because the right hon. Gentleman must have received them by the
  1286
  hundred from every part of the country Had he received a single resolution from any representative public body in Ireland saying that he should spend the money on other schemes to the exclusion of primary education. The right hon. Gentleman asked him for his opinion and he gave it, objecting to the Tralee Railway expenditure and urging him to put on £24,000 for the increase in the number of teachers. But the right hon. Gentleman had left the Tralee Railway expenditure on and the education money off. That was the way the right hon. Gentleman consulted public opinion in Ireland. Last year the original proposal of the right hon. Gentleman was that there was no need to consult anybody, because the fund was not to be on the Estimates at all, but was simply to be voted to the Irish Government. After discussion, however, it became necessary to bring the matter before Parliament, and now even though the money was on the Estimates, it did not appear that Irish opinion would have any influence at all. By public speech in this House, by private representation, by the declaration of every public body in Ireland, one course had been pressed upon the right hon. Gentleman, and yet he had taken the exactly opposite course. In these cases consultation on these matters were useless and some, indeed, might be said to be humiliating.
  Finally he asked the right hon. Gentleman to give them some general statement as to his views respecting the future of this fund. What did he intend to do with it? Did he intend to pay other sums into this fund? What was he going to do with the savings in the administration of Ireland? He had never told them what those savings amounted to. During the discussion on the Land Bill he said he would make a saving of £250,000 which would go towards meeting the charge on the bonus, although the charges on the bonus would not reach £250,000 for many years to come. What was he going to do with those savings? Was he going to put them into this fund? So far as the savings to the extent of £250,000 were concerned, he was pledged to provide that amount whenever it was necessary. That did not mean that because he promised £250,000 towards the bonus he would have

  1287
  to pay the £250,000 to-day. If so, he would have to provide for the bonus twice over before he was done with it.
  MR. WYNDHAM: One of the elements in the arrangement was that the £250,000 of savings would accrue at an earlier date than the charges in respect to the bonuses, which would ultimately amount to £390,000.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that was the case, but the £390,000 was the total amount of the chargeability to the bonus which, in the end, when it was all paid, would fall upon the Exchequer. But the right hon. Gentleman had already made about £250,000 savings.
  MR. WYNDHAM: I undertook to institute economies in the case of the Irish Government which would reach £250,000. With the savings effected in the course of five years the charge for the bonus was to be set off. The accrued charge for the settlement of the bonus will ultimately amount to £390,000.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid his point was that if, as he believed, the right hon. Gentleman had made savings amounting to £250,000, and he commenced to pay the £250,000 now, in the long run he would have paid a great deal more than the charges on the whole bonus. The right hon. Gentleman was ambitious about these economies in his speeches on the Land Bill. He said that they would amount to a larger sum than £250,000, and spoke of £400,000 or £500,000. What was he going to do with the balance? Was the balance to go into the Treasury, like other balances that happened to accrue in Ireland which were collared by the Treasury? He wanted to know about the unexpended balances under the Labourers Acts. There was £50,000 in the hands of the counties now. Was the right hon. Gentleman going to rob the labourers of the counties? Was he going to make that sum a present to the Treasury? These were matters of vital importance to Ireland, and he had gone into them at some length and with some elaboration, because it was the first opportunity they had had of dealing with the Development Fund. He thought everyone
  1288
  interested in Ireland would see the vast importance of seeking some explanation as to the real position of the facts and as to what the policy of the Government really was. He ended, as he begun, by protesting with all the vehemence at his command against this money going to the Treasury on the one hand for the Land Act charges, and to railways and other objects on the other hand, while the poor little children of Ireland were being left poor, miserable, and neglected.
  SIR THOMAS ESMONDEsaid he cordially agreed with all that had been said by his hon. and learned friend. He cordially agreed with the view expressed that the Irish Development Grant should not be mortgaged to the operation of the Irish Land Purchase Act, and also that the first charge on the Development Grant ought to be a charge in favour of primary education. This was the first time this Vote had ever come before the House, and that being so it was only right that opportunity should be taken for discussing it on the Estimate. The Estimate seemed to be drawn up in a very loose and haphazard way. If the proposals put before the House to-day were part of a general well reasoned and well thought out scheme for the development of the country he would not have a word to say about them, but under the proposals submitted it appeared to him certain districts of the country had been selected for favoured treatment and other districts left out in the cold. With regard to the drainage of the Bann, no doubt the people living in that district deserved assistance from the Government just as much as the people of any other district, but why was this district selected especially and other parts of Ireland which required to be drained just as much left out? The people of Enniscorthy desired to have that place made a seaport and had as much right to have it done at the public expense as other people to have their district drained. With regard to the Tralee and Dingle Railway the same remark applied; he had no objection to them receiving the £20,000 which was put down, but he thought that amount ought to come from another source than the Development Grant. That railway had had its very fair share of attention, and he did

  1289
  not see why on the first occasion that this Vote was brought before the House, this railway should be selected for special treatment. If it were a question of putting £20,000 into this railway the money should come from the Irish Board of Works, for the reason that the railway was one of their creation and construction, and was handed over by them to the county of Kerry, with a guarantee that it was in a fit and proper condition for the objects for which it was destined, and the blame for the inefficiency of the railway was due to the Irish Board of Works alone. Hon. Members from Ireland would watch this question with a great deal of care, and would oppose every attempt on the part of the Government or the Great Southern and Western Railway to break the pledge given to the country when the amalgamation was entered into, which placed the whole of the railway system of Southern Ireland in the hands of that company. With regard to the £93,000 which the Great Southern and Western Company were allowed then to keep, that was for a line for the development of the county of Waterford and the surrounding districts, and hon. Members from Ireland would see that that intention was carried out. The toll bridge in the county of Waterford should be freed with part of that money. The ratepayers of these counties had an interest in the matter, and they would see to it that if it was proposed to divert this £93,000, it did not go into the coffers of the Great Western and Southern Railway.
  He did not intend to go into the question of technical education on the present occasion; the views of Nationalist Members on the subject were well-known to the Government, but there was one point to which he desired to call attention. Some time ago the Chief Secretary proposed to give Ireland a sum of £7,000 for technical education, and a few nights ago the Financial Secretary to the Treasury promised: o give £3,500. In the Vote under discussion there was an item of £3,500. Was that the money promised by the Financial Secretary or was it a portion of the amount promised by the Chief Secretary, or was it a separate sum altogether? In any case it would not affect his strong objection to this
  1290
  Development Grant being charged with any money for Irish technical instruction in view of the fact that money already due to Ireland had never yet been paid out of the Treasury or any explanation given in regard thereto. It had been recently stated that from 1890 to 1897 the average amount given to Ireland for technical instruction purposes was about £3,000. He objected to the statement at once, but the point had not been cleared up. According to the Returns of the Science and Art Department from 1890 to 1897 a total amount of £108,174 was voted for technical instruction in Ireland, whereas the amount spent was only £49,545. He was entitled to ask what had become of the difference of £58,629 between the amount voted and the amount spent. Was it still available for the purposes for which it was voted, and, if so, how soon would it be allocated to those specific purposes? A further point on which information was required was the effect of the Act of 1902 upon Ireland's claims under the Act of 1889. With regard to future transactions under the Development Grant, every Irish Member would naturally look at the matter from the point of view of the interests of his constituents, but there were probably some matters to which all would agree that some of the money should be devoted. Those matters of agreement could be found only by discussing the question in Parliament. With that object in view he would ask the Government to consider whether something could not be done to develop the fishing and boat-building industries outside the congested districts. It was always much easier to keep in existence established industries than to start new ones, and the industries to which he had referred stood in danger of extinction. Facilities were also required on the South and South-east Coast for the construction of piers and harbours. If Members were generally agreed, he would suggest that the Chief Secretary should consider whether a portion of the Development Grant might not be devoted to these purposes. He begged to second the Amendment.
  Amendment proposed—
  "To leave out '£21,500,000,' and insert '£21,490,900.'"—(Mr. John Redmond.)
  Question proposed, "That '£21,500,000' stand part of the Resolution."
  COLONEL SAUNDERSONsaid he had listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Waterford, and agreed with almost all he had said. This Development Grant appeared to be very similar to the Church Surplus Fund, which had always been a sort of much cow, from which anybody who wanted money for any purpose could easily obtain it. For seventeen or eighteen years he had done his best to induce successive Governments to take up the question of the Bann drainage. When the right hon. Gentleman took office, he believed—and he still held that belief—that they had a Chief Secretary who really desired to further the progress and prosperity of Ireland, but he would rather that that purpose was carried out at the expense of the Treasury than at the expense of the Development Grant. The Bann drainage presented a state of affairs which he did not believe could exist in any civilised country other than Ireland. It was not on all fours with other drainage questions in Ireland. He did not think there was any drainage area in the same position as that drained by the Bann which had suffered under so much absolute injustice. He would give a short history of the Bann drainage. In the year 1844, before he entered the House of Commons, the occupiers and owners in that area suffered from periodical flooding of the Bann, and they petitioned the Board of Works and lodged £1,000 for preliminary expenses, and the Board of Works consented to undertake the drainage. They sent down their engineer to get out a plan for the drainage of that area, and he did so, and after considerable time and a most elaborate examination of all the details, a scheme was produced. The Estimate was that it would take three years to carry out this plan and that it would cost £109,000. Upon those terms for drainage alone the owners and occupiers of the flooded lands consented to enter into the scheme, and what happened? The Board of Works in Ireland adopted their own method of carrying out this drainage scheme. Instead of engaging contractors bound to finish the
  1292
  work in a certain time they proceeded to do it themselves with their own engineers and surveyors, and engaged labour by the week, which was an extremely expensive method. The result was that I it was nobody's interest that this work should be concluded at any stated time, and the House would scarcely believe that instead of three years it took twelve years to complete. [An HON. MEMBER: That is Dublin Castle government.] At any rate that is the way it was done and it cost £162,000 instead of £109,000. Whose fault was that? Was it the fault of the owners or occupiers? They could not influence the Board of Works in carrying out their own system. To add to this misfortune the famine came which caused so much evil, and the Board of Works very rightly used those drainage works to give employment to the starving population. What they contended was that the extra expense involved in employing these labourers ought not to I have fallen upon the occupiers but upon the Government who used those works to assist the distressed. All these extra expenses were piled up upon the unfortunate owners and occupiers. Time went by and other drainage was carried out all over the country, with the result that lands which were never flooded before in this area became flooded. These unfortunate tenants and occupiers near the Bann and Lough Neagh had paid in cash from the time those works were started £166,000. He thought that I was a very large sum in order to prevent the inhabitants being drowned. He had heard of passive resisters in this country, but he thought this case showed how extremely patient the people of Ireland were. During the last fifty years these unfortunate people had gone on paying drainage rates, and they had seen, year after year, their farms under water and their houses invaded by the flood. If the Chief Secretary for Ireland had come down and visited the flooded districts and seen the houses with six inches and one foot of water in the kitchens and the bedrooms, he might have been influenced so much that he would have done something more generous than this "magnificent" proposal. No doubt his right hon. friend

  1293
  would say that he would do more but for that terrible person the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He would remind the Chief Secretary that yesterday the Treasury was enriched by £100, which was another injustice to Ireland, not inflicted this time by a Saxon, but by an Irishman. There was a very easy way of showing hospitality. If he wished to establish a reputation for hospitality, and he went out into the streets and met some poor man and said, "My friend, I will give you a dinner of the best kind if you will only pay half," he did not think that would be a very satisfactory dinner to a poor man, and yet that was the kind of proposal made by his right hon. friend to those tenants and occupiers who had boon ruined and partially drowned. The men survived, but their crops did not survive, and they had been ruined by these floods. After all this injustice under which they had suffered and the tremendous burden which the Board of Works and their mistaken scheme had inflicted upon them, the right hon. Gentleman now proposed to give to these drowned-out tenantry £50,000 if they would find another £50,000. The Government were prepared to give £20,000 to the I Great Southern and Western Railway, but they would give nothing to the North j of Ireland without asking for a quid pro quo. [An HON. MEMBER: They ask for a quid pro quid. Did his right hon. friend imagine for a single moment that; a solution of this pressing problem would be attained by this proposal. Could any body possibly conceive that these occupiers would consent to go on seeing their farms flooded year after year and paying drainage rates when they had already paid £166,000. Did the Chief Secretary imagine they would be content to pay £50,000 more in addition to what they had already paid I He called it a farce, and he hoped his right hon. friend would be able to give some satisfactory explanation and hold out some hope of a better proposal. They wanted a bonâ fide offer to the suffering population in the North of Ireland and not a delusion. He had no doubt hon. Gentlemen opposite would support him in this for they were all ready to support anything which was for the good of Irishmen. He hoped the Chief Secretary would in his reply enable him to go to the North of Ireland and say the Government did
  1294
  not really mean to make a joke of them. If he interpreted rightly the Estimate before the House, the people in the North of Ireland would say they had been treated with absolute levity.
  Referring to the technical buildings attached to the Queen's College, Belfast, the hon. and gallant Member said that ten or eleven years ago £8,000 were voted by the House for the erection of these buildings. About £4,000 were spent in digging the foundations, and after the walls were partially built nothing more was done. There the walls stood staring at the people of Belfast. He did not know what happened to the remainder of the money. He should like to know why the process of erecting those buildings had been suspended. A private offer had been made of £10,000 for the purpose of equipping them if the Government would finish them. IIe saw no mention in the Estimates of a sum for this purpose, and he thought it would have been much better employment of the Development Grant if the Government had proceeded with the erection of these buildings instead of giving the money proposed to the Great Southern and Western Railways Company. A large sum, amounting to £108,000, was to be devoted to the erection of a College of Science in Dublin. He did not grudge that expenditure. The people of Ulster were always delighted to see money spent in Ireland. [An HON. MEMBER: Our own money.] Partly Irish money, no doubt. While they were going to spend this money in Dublin, why did not the Government do something for Belfast, which, although not the capital of Ireland, was the capital of industrial Ireland, the largest city in Ireland, and the city which, to his mind, had redeemed the character of the Irish people.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: Loud cheers from Sloan.
  COLONEL SAUNDERSON: The Irish people had been accused broadcast of being incapable of taking their place beside the other great progressive nations of the world, and especially beside their great predominant partner. In Belfast they had shown they could do that. Why was it? He did not say

  1295
  that the intellects of Ulster men were keener or brighter than those of the Southerner. Certainly not. There was no brighter man, no man more capable of advancing along the line of progress and knowledge, than the Irish Celt in Ireland. But the difference arose through placing Irishmen under different conditions and in a different environment. In part of Ulster they had perfect freedom of thought, and therefore they had no bar to their progress. That was a condition of affairs not to be found in other parts of Ireland, and it would be the duty of the Nationalists, who said they loved Ireland, and he believed they did, to take away from their path whatever shadow rested upon it and which had hitherto prevented them, with all their natural ability and opportunities and living in a far more fertile portion of the country, from advancing as quickly and as far as the people in the North along the line of progress and prosperity.
  MR. EDWARD BARRYsaid he wished to refer to the matter of the Tralee and Dingle Railway. He was the representative of a seaboard constituency in which there was a thriving fishing industry. The establishment of that industry was largely due to the generous and philanthropic aid of an English lady. Owing to the want of transit facilities from the South of Ireland to England, and the failure of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company to carry out their promise to erect a bridge over the river Lee, the fishing community were placed at a great-disadvantage in the way of getting fresh fish conveyed to the market. If there was a bridge over the Lee transit would be greatly facilitated. At present the boxes had to be carted from the Bandon terminus to another station, and that wasted a great deal of time. In the South of Ireland in the last two years, and particularly in his own constituency, some experiments had been made in the growing of early potatoes, and this industry also was placed at a disadvantage for the same reasons. The experiments had so far been very satisfactory. While money might be expended to advantage in improving the transit facilities there and in other parts of Ireland, he sympathised too much with the condition
  1296
  of the primary schools to wish that this £20,000 should be practically given to the Great Southern and Western Railway Company. He urged that in the interest of the industries he had mentioned a bridge over the Lee should be provided in order that transit to the market might be facilitated. At the same time he was most anxious that this money should be devoted to improving the school accommodation and equipping the schools with proper apparatus. If they were to teach the young idea how to shoot they must provide a congenial atmosphere, and he hoped that some money would in future be spent in meeting the needs of the schools in the South of Ireland. It had always appeared to him that it must have a most demoralising effect not to provide sufficient accommodation forthe children. He was not claiming that this £20,000 should be spent in building the bridge over the Lee, but he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary would bear in mind that the directors of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company should carry out the obligation imposed upon them, and remove the grievance complained of in the South of Ireland.
  SIR JOHN GORST (Cambridge University)said he hoped he might be permitted to intervene in the debate for a few moments in consequence of what had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Waterford as to the cause of education in Ireland. He remembered the time when elementary education in Ireland was thought superior to that of England and that they in England might learn a lesson from Ireland. No doubt since those days very great progress had been made in England, and the schools here were now very much better; but corresponding progress had not been made in Ireland. He hoped, indeed, that it had not gone back. There were many things which, to his own knowledge, required improvement; and there was nothing more urgently required than a comprehensive scheme of Irish education. And when the Government brought in such a scheme it would be warmly supported from that side of the House for two reasons. First, because they had received very great support from the

  1297
  Irish Party in passing the English Education Bill the session before last; and gratitude would induce them to cordially help the Irish Members to obtain a better system of education for Ireland. Second, because he regarded the education of the Irish people not as an Irish question at all; it was an Imperial question. It was the interest, therefore, of every Member of the United Kingdom to see that the Irish people were well educated, and that they should enjoy the same educational advantages as the people of England and Scotland. The system adopted in England and Scotland of entrusting the obligation of providing education for the children to the local authorities would, he hoped, be extended to Ireland. That would be a part of self-government in Ireland which everybody would be only too glad to bestow on the Irish people; and he hoped that the Government would soon introduce a measure of that kind.
  MR. CLANCYsaid he was sure Irish Members on that side of the House had heard the announcement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University with great satisfaction. It was only right to say that that was not the first occasion in the right hon. Gentleman's Parliamentary career in which he had intervened in the discussions in this House in the interests of Ireland. He thought that Ireland might congratulate itself on the fact that the Development Grant had been ear-marked to the extent that this money was not to be wastefully spent for the purposes of corruption, instead of for purposes useful to the whole country. But the present mode of disposal of the money had this disadvantage, that English Members might come down to the House, year after year, and imagine that additional grants of new money were being made to Ireland, and might be horrified and shocked that these increased grants were being made to Ireland in the Estimates. He thought the right hon. Gentleman ought to take some means, either by an instruction or by some statement on the Estimates, to safeguard the Irish public and the English representatives in this House against misapprehension in this regard; that this was money; not voted for the first time, that it was
  1298
  a grant made in 1903, and was being disposed of as years went by. The present Estimate was exceptional; there was no precedent for it. The right hon. Gentleman in speaking on the Estimates before the House, made some observations which he did not comprehend, as to his responsibility for the item of £20,000 for the Dingle and Tralee Railway.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he would deal with that matter in his reply.
  MR. CLANCYsaid there ought to be no doubt as to whether the right hon. Gentleman was responsible or not. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in England was the right hon. Gentleman's master on this question, and the right hon. Gentleman looked at it, not from the point of view of Ireland, but from that of the Imperial Exchequer. If that were the case the interests of Ireland were greatly in danger. In connection with this matter he wanted to know why it was that so much money should be saved up and carried forward when there were so many needs in Ireland. He was suspicious of every transaction in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer of England had to do with Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Armagh, in his speech, with which most Irish Members on that side of the House agreed, referred to the use which had been made of the Irish Church Surplus Fund. Perhaps few hon. Members of the House had a recollection of the real moral to be derived from the distribution of that fund. £30,000 a year was to come to Ireland from chat fund, and there was the Maynooth Grant which was revised at the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church. Now these two grants were actually charged on Irish funds and the Treasury was relieved to that amount. He confessed he thought it was quite possible that Ireland was going to be treated in a similar manner in regard to this grant. If not, why was £118,000 to be hung up this year? What was it for? His own opinion was that the Treasury had forced the right hon. Gentleman not to allocate that amount, in order that they might be able to lay hands on it for Government demands which ought properly to be provided by fresh Votes; and it was hoped that the process would, from

  1299
  the very fact that it went on from year to year, become so familiar that the House and even the Irish Members would not remark upon it, and that Ireland might be safely cheated. If he could help it, he certainly would not allow the matter to be forgotten. They all recognised that this money was for all Ireland, not only for the South West and East of Ireland, but for the North also; and he thought they ought to insist on a full allocation of this money every year. They ought to insist on an explanation from the right hon. Gentleman as to what he intended to do with the £118,000. Money had already been drawn out of the fund and paid to somebody. It was provided by the Act of last year that two-thirds of the Development Grant should only be paid for the financial year 1903–4; but it appeared from the Estimate that out of that two-thirds, £48,000 had been already appropriated. There was no explanation as to what had been done with it. Surely that was an omission which ought to be supplied before the debate closed.
  Needless to say, when his hon. and learned friend the Member for Waterford spoke, he spoke for the whole Irish Party. It was his own personal opinion that the most universally urgent of all the demands from Ireland was the improvement of the primary schools. No one would deny that. The matter of drainage was of great importance. In fact, there were hundreds of objects on which every penny of this money might be usefully spent ten times over. But, after all, the matter on which there was the greatest agreement and the least objection was that a generous amount of this money should, for the next two or three years, be spent on the improvement of the primary schools; and he was glad to think that the opinion expressed by his hon. and learned friend the Member for Waterford was shared by every Irish Member in the House. If that were the opinion of the entire Irish representation, what moral right had the right hon. Gentleman to refuse that demand? What right had he, an Englishman, to dictate in a matter of this kind? The House of Commons had voted the money to Ireland; and the only question now was
  1300
  how it was to be distributed. The Irish Members of all shades of opinion had expressed the view that the money should be spent in a particular way, and what right had a stranger who governed the country against the will of four-fifths of its inhabitants to gainsay them? The right hon. Gentleman was not free from obligations on this matter. Last year he was asked if the question of primary education would receive consideration as well as other questions, and he replied in one emphatic word, "Certainly." [Mr. WYNDHAM: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman accepted that statement. Then he would ask the right hon. Gentleman who framed the Estimates, who did he consult as to the £20,000 for the Great Southern and Western Railway and for the other items? Last year, also, the right hon. Gentleman spoke with satisfaction of the fact that local councils were now in existence; and he said that he would be better able to deal with this matter in accordance with Irish views than if these bodies were not in existence. Did the right hon. Gentleman ask a single county council for its opinion as to any of these items? He did not. Yet those bodies were the creation of a Conservative Government. The right hon. Gentleman, during the last few days, gave a proof that they could be trusted to deal with the administration of the Labourers Acts; yet they were not to be consulted on the spending of this money, in which every one of them was deeply interested. Of course, the last persons the right hon. Gentleman would consult were the representatives of the Irish people. They were pariahs and outlaws. They might be good enough to put into gaol, but not for purposes of consultation with reference to the expenditure of public funds. The right hon. Gentleman placed the Estimate on the Paper without consulting a single representative of the people of Ireland. That was a bad sign as regarded the future.
  His hon. and learned friend the Member for Waterford sympathised with the demand for the drainage of Bann. They all did. But he wished it to be known that the question of the Bann drainage was not in a different position from the drainage of the Suck, Barrow, or Shannon. The right hon.

  1301
  Gentleman the Member for North Armagh complained that works had been instituted and left half finished for the drainage of the Bann. That was the case in connection with the drainage of the Shannon, Suck, and Barrow. The whole item really suggested to him that it was a mere piece of deception on the part of some humourist of the Treasury. A sum of £50,000 was to be voted for the Bann at the rate of £1,000 a year. Therefore, the work of drainage would extend over the period of the average life of an Ulster-man. In 1889 the right hon. Gentleman was formally or informally connected with the Irish Government. He was then acting as the writer of very able letters for the Prime Minister, who was then Chief Secretary, letters which possessed a great deal of literary ability but very little wisdom. At that period the Prime Minister dealt with the question of drainage, and brought in four separate Bills which he asked the House to treat as one scheme. That showed how many complicated questions were involved. One matter was whether there was to be local control or not, and another was whether the landlords or the tenants should pay for the improvement. If no provision were made for the repayment of these loans, the result would be that the landlords would derive the whole benefit in the increased value of their land. What did the light hon. Gentleman mean by putting this £1,000 on the Estimates this year before he had brought in a measure to deal with all these questions as they occurred? Was it intended that there should be no Bill, and that this £1,000 was to be handed over to the Board of Works to do what they liked with. Was the right hon. Gentleman going to revert to the old system that Parliament itself had condemned, or adopt the new principle which recognised the right of those who had to provide the money having some voice in the expenditure of it? He was concerned that this £1,000 was a political bribe, and if the Ulster Members consented to it they deserved to be sold into slavery. It was a piece of political corruption which ought to be inquired into, and he was glad that the hon. Members from Ireland had induced the Government to allow them to discuss this matter as it was being discussed at the present moment. This Vote would be discussed every year, and those who
  1302
  followed him in the debate to-night would make it plain to the right hon. Gentleman that the most humiliating thing which Irish Members had to endure under the Union was the necessity of appealing to the right hon. Gentleman or any British Administration with regard to the disposal of Irish money.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELLexpressed his pleasure at the presence of the hon. Member for King's Lynn, who had rendered stalwart assistance to the Irish Members last year when they were endeavouring to get this Vote placed upon the Estimates. He agreed substantially with the general criticism of the hon. Member for Waterford, and, although he did not profess to represent all the Ulster Members, he thought he might say that that was the opinion of every Member on that side of the House. The first question he wished to deal with was that of the drainage of the Bann. He was interested in that question for more than one reason. The first Committee on which he sat in that House, in the year 1887, was one set up as part of the Unionist policy of the day, namely, the Committee on the Arterial Drainage of Ireland, and they inquired then very elaborately and with great minuteness into the whole question debated in the House to-day. He had no hesitation in giving his opinion now as to the reason why those labours came to nothing. The real truth was that it was the question of the rate upon catchment area which wrecked the whole proposal. The Chief Secretary had placed an Estimate of £1,000 on that Vote for the purpose of the Bann drainage. He wanted to ask him if he had made any arrangements with the local authority within the catchment area for the contribution of that; £50,000 of which he spoke. Was he quite certain that they would fall in with this scheme of £100,000, of which they would have to pay £50,000? The next question he had to ask was, what was to be done with that £1,000?. He thought he knew. Were they to have another engineering report? That would just be like the Board of Works all over. He could understand the Board of Works suggesting that their knowledge of the question was not quite ample enough, and it would be better to

  1303
  send down a couple of engineers to report on the whole question, and for that £1,000 would be of use. He hoped the Chief Secretary would tell them, and they should see what the answer was before voting. £1,000 was a sum which in itself was of no use and he had no belief and no faith in those drainage estimates. Hon. Members who had sat in the House twenty years would remember the drainage scheme for Lough Erne. An estimate was given by the engineer. That estimate was doubled, and then they had to comeback again for more money, and the result was that both landlord and tenant around Lough Erne had been saddled with a drainage charge which militated seriously against the purchase and sale of land at this moment. He wanted to ask the specific question whether the authority in the catchment area affected by the drainage scheme would contribute their share of the amount? If they would not, there was no use in spending even £1,000.
  The second Question he wished to refer to was the matter of the treatment of the training colleges. He was not quite certain that he agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Waterford's diagnosis of that part of the scheme. He was not sure that in 1890 absolute equality was agreed to between the denominational training colleges and the Government training college. There was no doubt that the denominational colleges received very liberal treatment—not more liberal than they deserved—although he opposed it at the time—one lived and learned, bat this Vote was rendered necessary by common decency. He agreed with the hon. Member for Waterford that the question being reopened in that way from sheer necessity, the whole question was open and not that part of it alone which concerned the housing of the King's scholars in Marlborough Street College. And what he had said in the House and to the Chief Secretary was this, that the question of principle having been established and settled, namely, that those colleges ought to be a charge on the nation and that they ought not to be left to private enterprise, he had no other interest in it save that the equipment of those colleges should be adequate for the great work
  1304
  that they had to do. Therefore, he made no objection to grants to those colleges in Limerick, in Waterford, or in Belfast. He thought they ought to be supported. He had claimed for the undenominational college in Marlborough St. proper and adequate treatment, and he thought that treatment ought to be extended to ill colleges honestly carrying on their work. He understood that the site would cost £15,000, and of course the site would have to be secured before the building could be started. Therefore, as only £10,000 appeared in the Estimate, unless the landlord was to be paid by instalments, the money now asked for would not even secure the site, still less commence the building.
  On the question of railways he entirely agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Waterford in principle. He knew nothing personally about the Tralee and Dingle Railway, but the impression produced on his mind by what he had heard was that it was one of those numerous railway "jobs" which were from time to time perpetrated. By placing this railway grant on the fund, the Chief Secretary at once aroused a desire for similar treatment in other parts of the country. He did not think these railway matters ought to be put on the Development Grant at all, but, if they were to be, he would state what was the desire of his constituents. Two sessions ago a Bill was passed authorising the construction of the Newry and Tynan Railway. His constituents were deeply interested in the matter, because it would make a connection between the Clogher Valley Light Railway and a seaport. The Clogher Valley Railway was run at a cost of a shilling rate to the ratepayers of Tyrone. This new line would give them about 68 miles of railway, one staff would work the whole system, the same rolling stock would suffice, a great saving of expense would be effected, and, inasmuch as they were guaranteeing a considerable sum on the Clogher line, the Treasury would reap considerable advantage from its increased prosperity. The Great Northern Railway Company were opposed to the line, and the difficulty of his constituents was that they could not get through rates between any station

  1305
  on the Clogher line and England. The whole cost of the new line was estimated at £225,000, of which the locality offered to raise £150,000. The modest demand of his constituents was that, if railways were to come on this grant, the balance of £75,000 spread over three or five years was not too much to ask for a line of railway which would develop a part of the country greatly requiring development, and materially enhance the value of the railway already in operation. The Development Grant was in many respects a good idea, but it had the great disadvantage that it enabled the Treasury to avoid legitimate burdens on the Exchequer by pushing them on to this fund. Year by year they would find that being done. All through Irish history the Treasury had been a hard stepmother, doing nothing generously, and the real objection to the idea of the fund was that it just enabled the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, "We cannot afford this or that; take it out of the Development Grant." He hoped the Chief Secretary would resist that tendency on the part of the Treasury, and the present debate would assist him in so doing. With regard to primary education and its needs, he agreed with all that had been said. Mr. Dale's report, over which he had glanced, was wholly against the sanitary condition of the schools, their equipment and everything else. Surely if that report had to be considered, the right hon. Gentleman could do something in the interim. Could lie not at once allocate a portion of this fund to the removal of the defects revealed in that report, so that the sanitary condition might be improved and the teachers relieved from the burden of providing practically the whole of the equipment of the schools? He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would say he was prepared to do that, for by so doing he would remove many of the difficulties which had beset Members in the discussion of the matter.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid that although many hon. Members wished to take part in this debate, he thought the time had come when he ought to reply. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford and his right hon. friend and all who had
  1306
  taken part in this debate had necessarily gone at length and with considerable detail into a great many separate subjects not simple in themselves and indirectly raising a number of financial questions of complexity and importance; therefore he should have to ask the House to bear with him if his reply was somewhat lengthy in character and if he had to advance certain views on finance which he gathered would not, in every case, be readily accepted by hon. Members who sat for Irish constituencies. He would like to make three general observations. If they took the forthcoming financial year 1904–5, it must be acknowledged, he thought, that were this grant not in existence the probability of the Treasury expending large sums of money in Ireland upon public works was extremely remote, so remote that they might legitimately leave it out of account. The second general observation was that in England and Scotland, if money was voted for education or other purposes and not expended, the unexpended balance returned to the Treasury. As the hon. Member for Waterford had acknowledged, by this plan of the Development Grant that was avoided and thus a benefit special to Ireland was given. There was one other general observation. It was this, that in England and in Scotland education was supported out of the rates, but that was not the case in Ireland. Therefore, although it was perfectly true that the condition of the Irish schools was not one which they could contemplate with satisfaction, it was also true there was no local assistance towards remedying their present condition. Therefore there was a need of scrutinising carefully any proposals for spending money upon this or that need in respect of education until, perhaps, a somewhat fuller consideration had been given to the whole matter. The hon. and learned Member for Water-ford said this Estimate stood on a different footing from any other Estimate with which they had to deal. That was true. It was so true that he had presented the Estimate in a form which was unusual, and which would be indefensible if it was in the least like any other Estimate. But it was not. He had deliberately presented this Estimate as a skeleton Estimate—that was to say,

  1307
  it left a large unexpended balance under this Development Grant. He had presented it not only as a skeleton Estimate, but as a tentative Estimate; that was to say, it would be subject to variation in the light of the discussion of that afternoon. Everybody agreed that it was very necessary to have a preliminary discussion. Some might say that, had he given more arduous attention to his duties since the last session, he could have collected all the opinions which might legitimately have been advanced. He might express regret for not having done so, but he offered no apology. He thought any one who had listened to the discussion that afternoon would feel that except for a discussion in which all who were interested could take part, it would be beyond the power of any man to collect the general sense of the Irish people. It should be borne in mind that this Development Grant was intimately connected with the finances of the Land Act, and that he had to devote the bulk of his time to the administration of that Act and to thinking out the financial provisions of that great measure. Therefore anything put into this grant ought in his judgement to receive the support of Irish opinion. There was, however, this other factor, that nothing could be put into the grant unless it was assented to, on financial grounds, by the Treasury, who in this matter did not attempt to interfere with the policy of the Irish Government as accepted by Irish opinion. The Treasury was entitled to see that no considerable continuing charges were put upon this grant without considering that this grant was connected with the Irish Land Act. In respect of education the Treasury and any person interested in the economic devotion of money to Irish needs, and in that category he included all Irish Members of Parliament, must feel that some regard must be paid to the use of monies which were now being divided in ways which he would not call wasteful but which were bringing in a very slight return. They could not proceed on the method of saying, "Here is an admirable object—I will give £24,000 in one case and £18,000 in another," without taking some weeks to consider such an important document as Mr. Dale's report. The hon. and learned member for Waterford was not to suppose
  1308
  that he was saying that nothing was to be done until he had a scheme revolutionising primary education. It was only reasonable, when a document of such importance had been presented only three or four days, to read it before putting it as a charge on the grant.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: There is nothing new in this report at all, and everybody connected with the schools knew these things before.
  MR. WYNDHAMdid not think that destroyed his argument. There were many other heads upon which expenditure was needed and some upon which economies could be effected, and that being so it was proper to consider the subject more or less as a whole. He would come to the education part of the hon. Member's speech later. He thought they would expect from him some observations in regard to what had been described as a grave matter, namely, that £50,000 a year should be placed as a first charge upon the Development Grant for four years, and the hon. and learned Member for Waterford had expressed the opinion that it ought to bear all the losses which might be inherent to the flotation and management of the stock. The hon. Member did not impute any breach of faith in any words he used on the First Reading of the Land Act, and the whole purport of his remarks was clear and he apprehended its meaning.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid the words seemed to him quite ambiguous and capable of two meanings.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid it was impossible to suppose that a charge only imposed for four years could meet losses which were continued for sixty-eight-and-a-half years, and it was obvious that something else was contemplated to meet losses if the issue was to start below par. It was to the interests of Ireland that this sum of £200,000, which was made up of four instalments of £50,000 a year, should be treated as a separate working balance, for if a sufficient working balance were not kept it would be necessary to have recourse at irregular periods to the guarantee fund for

  1309
  temporary advances to meet such charges as that on dividends and stock payable before the annuities came in. The retention of £200,000 as a working balance would buoy these temporary drafts, and the net charge on the guarantee fund of each year would enable the final charges to be taken out in a convenient manner in each year, thus ensuring a minimum of inconvenience to all concerned. He would give an example of what had happened. There was this working balance of £200,000, £50,000 of which had already been paid, accounting for the balance of the sum carried over from last year. The condition of the money market had been such as to render it expedient in the permanent interests of Ireland to delay the issue of this stock for a short period. The small initial advances which had to be made in respect of purchases completed had been made out of that £50,000. If there were no working balance available they would have had to float perhaps £150,000 worth of stock at an inconvenient period, and one prejudicial to the interests of Ire land. Keeping that margin they could issue their stock in a convenient amount. The other principal object for which that working balance was retained, was to meet the losses due to having to pay a dividend on the stock when issued before the instalments from the Treasury were received. It was impossible to administer a great fund like the Irish Land Purchase Fund, with payments into it and out of it taking place at different times, unless a considerable working balance was kept capable of being used at any time to tide over temporary difficulties. The hon. Member might wish the money came from another source, but he would scarcely dispute the necessity and advisability of having such a working balance. He might say in passing he thought the hon. and learned Member took a gloomier view than he was prepared to take of the loss likely to accrue from floating below par. The hon. Member mentioned £26,000. That would mean issuing at £5. He trusted they would do better then that.
  Now he came to the hon. and learned Member's second point. He illustrated it by speaking of the Bann drainage. He said that ought not to be done
  1310
  until something had been done for primary education, and that he for his part objected to every other item which appeared in these Estimates. Did hon. Members quite grasp what was the principle of this Development Grant? The hon. and learned Member himself had stated it quite accurately. It was that if they were not prepared with a mature scheme carrying with it the general Irish assent, they were not to lose the money. That was secured. But it was also stated very clearly last year that capital charges, not continuing charges, could be placed upon this grant whilst they were waiting to deal with some prominent question which would need a recurring grant. If the hon. and learned Member said be objected to the Bann drainage or to some railway scheme (as he did) that was valid, but there was no general ground for saying such expenditure ought not to be put on this grant until a considerable amount of it had been devoted to education. He freely admitted he was committed to the £24,000 a year. He had prepared these Estimates under the circumstances he had described.
  MR. SLOANasked if it was intended to provide a second teacher?
  MR. WYNDHAM: Yes, in schools with an average attendance of fifty, instead of sixty as hitherto. In this matter the Treasury agreed with him, and ho had endeavoured to alter it, but he was too late. He saw no difficulty in dealing with that in a Supplementary Estimate later on, and when he had also considered what economies ought to be effected. He would take the items which stood in the Estimates and consider the criticisms which had been passed upon them. The hon. and learned Member had referred to the Bann. He had an argument to adduce in favour of the Bann drainage which had not yet been put forward by any hon. Member who had spoken. He held, in considering the Development Grant, that some account might fairly be taken of the allocation of money under other grants, and he reminded hon. Members opposite of the undertakings given in respect of Bann drainage nearly two years ago

  1311
  when he was endeavouring to pass the Marine Works Act through the House. He did on that occasion undertake that the Bann should have the earliest favourable consideration of the Government. He referred to that in the discussion on the Education Estimates, and he understood that hon. Members opposite took no very grave exception to his view that there was a scheme due in respect of the River Bann. His hon. friend the Member for South Tyrone had asked what the £1,000 was for. It was a token Vote on this Estimate. [An Hon. MEMBER: What is that?] It was an indication that he had not given the go-by to his pledges. He would now answer the second Question of the hon. Member, which was whether this was going to be spent on plans for works. His answer was no. The Board of Works were engaged in studying this question, because they had a story to tell as we11 as his right hon. and gallant friend. The Board did not accept his view. The preliminary charges for any scheme for the drainage of the River Bann were not being paid for out of the Development Grant, they would fall on the Estimates for the Board of Works. It had been suggested by his hon. friend and specially by the Member for North Dublin that the Development Grant would be a kind of shield and buckler to the Treasury in defending them from any onslaughts by Members interested in Ireland, and preventing the general taxpayer from contributing to Irish purposes. That was not the case. Here was one example showing that the ordinary expenses of the Board of Works came upon the Estimates. There were other automatic increases on the Estimates, especially under the head of education. Yesterday the House passed a Supplementary Estimate which was not quite so large as he intended it to be, but still a very substantial Estimate of £29,400. It could not, therefore, be said that he was an accomplice of the Treasury in trying to put ordinary demands on the Development Grant. The ordinary expenditure for education under heads which had hitherto been sanctioned would of course come upon the Estimates, but he would remind hon. Members that this Development Grant must be held to be, as was stated
  1312
  by him last year, to be in the nature of an indemnity of the Treasury for perfectly new demands of an educational character. It would not be reasonable as between Ireland and Great Britain that Ireland should take the equivalent for the £1,400,000 paid in respect of English education, and also a further sum from the Treasury for education purposes. Primarily this £185,000 was available for education in Ireland. He had stated why he had put this in as a skeleton Estimate, and he would not repeat what he had said.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman indicate what the local authorities said about the contribution.
  MR. MACVEAGH: What will happen to this scheme of drainage of the Bann if the people along the river find themselves unable to pay the extra £50,000?
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he thought his hon. friend had put the question quite clearly. He was not prepared to say at present that the Government ought to pay the whole of this charge. If need be, he would go at almost any length into the Bann question, but he did not feel quite justified in taking that course before the whole House, therefore he would prefer only to state the view entertained by the Board of Works that it was not quite proper that the Government should pay for the whole of this scheme. The Board disputed many of the contentions put forward by his right hon. and gallant friend. He had referred to the Bills introduced in 1888 and 1889, but it was never contemplated in those Bills that the taxpayer ought to pay the whole of the charges. On the contrary the Bann was quite a small part. The total estimate was £60,000 and the public Exchequer was only going to contribute £20,000. His own proposal was a larger one, but it had broken down because the people in the area would make no contribution. His hope was that now that Ireland had got local self-government the bodies representing large areas might associate themselves with this House in carrying out schemes of a widely beneficial character. But if they

  1313
  did not, he could not disguise from his hon. friend that his task with the Exchequer would be such a difficult one that he very much doubted if it would be entirely a success. In Great Britain money was not expended on objects of this character at all. This was a special treatment of Ireland by which public money was spenton the drainage of rivers and the construction of railays—aspecial treatment which ought to be given to Ireland and which he had always advocated—but he thought it was treatment which must in future be forthcoming from this Development Grant as lie should proceed to explain.
  Dealing with the Marlborough Street College, he said that the site was estimated to cost £15,000, but he was informed by the Commissioners who had the management of education that they had £5,000 available for this purpose, and therefore he had only put down £10,000 in the Estimate. In reply to a Question put to him this afternoon, he gave his view of the Marlborough Street Training College question. He h id gone into the matter very carefully and had no doubt whatever in his own mind that when the compromise effected by the present Prime Minister was carried out, the other training colleges in Dublin would get a better grant than the Marlborough Street College. It was on grounds of sanitation and public decency that money was to be spent on the Marlborough Street College. He understood therefore that no objection was taken to this per se, but that in dealing with the Marlborough Street College they ought to deal with the provincial colleges. The hon. Member knew that that plea had been put forward before. He called these colleges provincial, not as a derogatory epithet, but as distinguishing them from the metropolitan training colleges. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford would see that that would involve a further charge of an educational character, and he must believe that any such charge must be considered in relation to other charges which he and the hon. Member advocated. He advocated that the charge of £24,000 a year should be placed on the Development Grant for the purpose he had described. Many
  1314
  people advocated some immediate expenditure of money on technical instruction. He would not go into that in detail. The hon. and learned Member for Wexford had repeated arguments to-day which no doubt he urged on the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the debate the other day. He would not reopen that debate, as he would only deal with the resources at his command. In his judgment technical instruction would have to be defrayed out of this Development Grant. He was told after very careful inquiry that at least £18,000 a year in addition to the £62,000 a year which the new Department could now demand for that purpose—taking the Development Grant into account—ought to be devoted to technical instruction in Ireland. That would make £80,000 in all. There was another important head upon which the best opinions held that some considerable expenditure should be made, but he said that in this the first year of the Irish Development Grant he should not be asked to commit himself to an indefinite number of proposals which involved considerable continuing charges on this grant. On the one hand, the fact that this grant was hypothecated to a certain extent under the financial provisions of the Land Act had to be considered, and in the second place, he had to look to the fact that a good many of the charges for education which ought to fall on this grant would fall upon it. Therefore, he would not pledge himself to anyone, and certainly not to two or three proposals until some account was taken of the other expenditure which would be demanded, and some attempt was made to effect economies pari passu. They knew that a great deal of money had been wasted in education in Ireland, and it was not in the interests of the country that that should continue. He claimed that they should proceed with some economic caution before they attempted to sanction any further expenditure at all. He believed the hon. and learned Member for Waterford took no exception to the provision made for the other training colleges.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: What I said on that point was that of course this fulfils the demand made for a long

  1315
  time, but that it puts the money on this fund rather than on the ordinary Estimates.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid that was foreign to his general argument, and whether the hon. and learned Member accepted the general argument he could not tell. This was a new charge never acceded to before, and if it was to be charged to the Treasury, clearly it must fall on the Development Grant and not upon the ordinary Estimates. A great deal had been said in the course of the debate about the Tralee and Dingle Railway, and he should like to say a few words on that head. The hon. and learned Member was mistaken in supposing that any communication he had had with the Great Southern and Western Railway Company had entered into the question of the £93,000. That was not so. He had nothing to do with that. That matter he left to the hon. and learned Member to fight out with the railway company and the Treasury, as it was not his business. Why did he interest himself in the Tralee and Dingle Railway? He felt bound to take some account of the allocation of other Irish moneys to the different parts of Ireland. The Marine Works had placed a sum of £100,000 and the savings upon other sums, at the disposal of the Government, for the purpose of assisting the congested districts of Ireland and also in Clare. He was trying to make an intelligent statement, but he admitted that the ramifications of the different funds and claims ran into each other and made it rather a desperate enterprise. He would not be led away into explaining why Clare was included. In the main the funds provided under that Act were for the western seaboard of Ireland. Kerry was on the western seaboard and that county had Tralee Harbour. It would not be proper to spend the money on the harbours in Kerry. It was well known that certain baronies were heavily rated in respect of that harbour, and also for the Tralee and Dingle Railway. The Member for Kerry and others had approached him and the Treasury again and again, asking that these baronial guarantees should be decreased. The
  1316
  Treasury had always refused, and, he believed, rightly, to deal with the problem in that way, on the ground that when any locality entered into binding contracts with the Government to pay a certain sum per annum on certain terms in respect of benefits received, they could not, without creating an unfortunate precedent, alter those terms at a later date. The only way in which the ratepayers' grievances in Kerry could be met was by the Government spending such a sum on the Tralee and Dingle Railway as would induce the Great Southern and Western Company to take over the working of the railway. The policy of this and every Government was, rightly or wrongly, not to take up the working charges of any railway, but to build the railway and then hand it over to a company to work. This had been described as a dole to the Great Southern and Western Railway. It was certainly not an adequate inducement, because the company maintained they would lose £1,500 a year by accepting the bargain. He maintained they would lose only £500 a year, but it was indubitable that they would not make but lose by the Tralee and Dingle scheme taken alone.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: May I ask if they have not also stipulated that it should be regarded as part of the Tralee and Dingle scheme that they should be relieved of obligations resting on them respecting the Cork and Fermoy Railway?
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he had never had that put to him before. If they proved that they would not lose money they would deal with it as a separate issue. If hon. Members for Ireland desired to see Kerry relieved in this matter he hoped the company would receive more lenient treatment from the hands of Irish Members. His business was to use the Tralee and Dingle Railway with the object of relieving the Kerry rates. In view of the allocation of money under the Marine Works Act he maintained it was fair he should prosecute that effort, provided it did not involve too large a charge on this fund. He would not pursue the argument about the £93,000 for the Cork and

  1317
  Fermoy Railway. They could not get blood out of a stone. If the railway had not got the money it could not construct both lines. It was worth while considering whether they should not be encouraged to do the one which the greater number of the people of Ireland desired, rather than the one which was desired by only 300 people on the proposed line. That, again, was a matter for the hon. Member and not for him. He should be very glad, if he were asked, to use his good offices with the railway directors concerned. His desire was to reduce the rates in Kerry and to see the bridge over the River Lee built, because, the fishing and early vegetable industries could not be what they ought to be until that communication was made.
  MR. NANNETTI: Is the railway to be handed over to the Great Southern and Western Railway without any obligation whatever as to the protection of trades in other parts of the country?
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he would not follow the interruption. His argument was that as Kerry did not benefit under the Marine Works Act there was a certain claim on the part of Kerry to preferential treatment. The Rosslare and Fishguard Line and the Dramahaire Railway scheme were proper subjects for consideration in the future; but in the first place he must admit the claim of primary education. He could not spend this money for any other purpose, but it was generally agreed after they had a flotation of the land stock and they were able to take a more favourable view of the financial future, if they could then find a plan for meeting the needs of primary education and there remained some sums over, they might be devoted to the Newry and Keady Railway. The hon. Member for North Dublin asked him about the sum of £118,000 of savings. They would be devoted in accordance with the general opinion of Ireland. The question of the Queen's College was also raised. The action of the Treasury was not so ludicrous as had been represented. The Treasury said they would pay half if somebody else would pay the other half. He understood that the late Mr.
  1318
  Harland, whose loss they all deplored, had intimated that he would pay the other half. Private persons had spent money on other buildings but not on this college, and the Treasury desired to complete this building before they went into other matters.
  MR. CLANCY: How is the right hon. Gentleman going to consult Irish opinion in regard to the future?
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid a debate such as they had that afternoon formed a very good method, and he should use every other means he could. He had been asked to make a general statement on the finance of this grant. The hon. Gentleman had asked him what was to be done with the savings. Well, he had always held that it was for the best interests of Ireland, and the true interests of the Treasury, that the savings effected in the course of Irish Government should presumably, as a matter of right and practice, be devoted to needs which might be felt in Ireland, but which were not felt in Great Britain, Exception was sometimes taken to his argument on that head. He had heard it said by hon. Members sitting for English constituencies, that considering the proportionate contribution of Ireland for Imperial purposes, she was not entitled to any exceptional treatment; but that argument would not bear the test of examination. He contended that the allocation of the savings effected in the course of Irish Government to Irish purposes was based upon economic facts—upon the fact that Ireland's arrested development was not only an evil for her, but deprived her of all financial elasticity, and it so happened that Ireland's proportionate contribution was smaller than it might otherwise have been. Few people felt that it was possible to differentiate the taxation as between the two countries. If the same taxes were imposed in both countries Ireland, being the poorer country, would produce a relatively smaller amount for these taxes, if they were maintained unaltered over a period of years, than they would produce in England. Again, if higher taxes were imposed, such as a war tax, the returns from England would quickly respond; but in Ireland they were beginning to

  1319
  reach the danger point at which taxation ought not to be increased. That being so, Ireland's proportionate contribution must be less than that of Great Britain. He proposed to realise as many savings as possible and to place them in the first instance on the Development Grant. That was merely an extension of the principle of the Development Grant, which he thought a useful extension. There was, for example, a saving of £150,000 now lying idle in Ireland to the credit of the Fines and Fees Fund. He proposed to bring in a measure which would carry that balance into the Development Grant Fund. There was another balance of something like £71,000 of the Local Taxation Account. That balance he should also propose to carry to the same account. There was also a sum of £50,000 which was the unexpended balance under the Labourers Acts. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had expressed the opinion that that sum should be preserved in some way to the labourers of Ireland. He should be glad to consider that opinion, but if that sum were also added to the Development Grant Fund, that would not preclude them from devoting it to the labourers at a later period. But if there was a suspicion as to the ultimate fate of that money it was not for him to press his opinion. It would not, however, go very far in effecting any useful object under the Labourers Acts. There were other savings which could be effected. The other day Mr. Justice Barton was transferred to a vacancy which had occurred in the Chancery side of the High Court of Judicature in Ireland, and it was not the intention of the Irish Government to fill up the vacancy created by that transferance. A saving of £3,500 a year would thus be effected. In the measure which he had mentioned they contemplated reserving the right of saving another £3,500 a year on a vacant judgeship, but regard must be had to the exigencies of the public service. There would be a saving of £7,000 a year, and possibly more, and that, he suggested, should also be carried over to the credit side of the Development Grant.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDasked how much had been saved on the constabu-
  1320
  lary and other services and what had become of it?
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he had undertaken to institute economies in the cost of Irish Government which would lead to a saving of £250,000 in five years. These economies had been mainly effected in regard to the Royal Irish Constabulary in accordance with a carefully thought out scheme framed with the entire concurrence of the Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He believed that they could make changes in the organisation of that force and benefit it at the same time. They would have fewer but better men if they had a smaller establishment. It would be necessary to work out the reduction of the establishment in such a way as not to inflict injury upon the existing members of the force. Nobody was being turned out of the force. The reduction would be effected by reducing the number of recruits taken each year. The saving last year was £18,000, next year it would be £61,000, the year after £97,000, the year after that £132,000 and so on up to £238,000 on the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1909. There was also a saving on the Dublin Metropolitan Police of £2,500; a saving of £3,000, and ultimately of £4,000, in law charges; and savings on reformatory and industrial schools of £1,100; on the Land Commission of £1,800; on prisons of £3,000, and on resident magistrates of £500. These savings must follow automatically on what had already been done and would give a sum of £245,900 in five years. But there were others, including some further savings on resident magistrates, which would bring up the savings in five years to £250,000. Two years later these savings would amount to £278,000. In respect of £250,000 the Treasury must have the full benefit of the savings, but when they increased above £250,000, then in accordance with what he had said, they might be treated as the other savings already realised were now being treated; that was to say, unless there was some cause shown to the contrary, they would be available for the removal of economic defects in Ireland, or for other Irish purposes. In his judgment it would be wiser, when such savings

  1321
  accrued, to put them into the Development Grant, have a discussion year by year, and devote them year by year to the needs of Ireland in accordance with the wishes of those entitled to them.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid he thought the House would agree that they had listened to a profoundly interesting speech from the Chief Secretary. It was a speech specially interesting to his hon. friends, because the right hon. Gentleman had been able to annonnce his entire conversion to some of the demands and to some of the principles which, for nearly a quarter of a century, they had been vainly urging on the Government of the day. His hon. friends who, like himself, had grown old in the Parliamentary fight, would know that one of the opinions they had endeavoured, during that period, to impress on the House of Commons and on the Government was that the Government of Ireland was extravagant, and that it was extravagant because it was corrupt. The right hon. Gentleman did not put it quite in that way; but when he announced that he had been able to make large reductions in the cost of the constabulary, the judiciary, and even the resident magistrates, it reminded him of Falstaff's proportion of bread and sack. He thought the right hon. Gentleman had set the seal of truth on the principle which they had always urged, that the Government of Ireland was one of the costliest as well as one of the worst in the world. He regretted that the House was empty during the early part of the sitting. It was always very regrettable that English Members, who because of their majority were mainly responsible for the government of Ireland, would not favour Irish debates with their presence until the time for voting arrived. Had English Members been present they would have learned a most remarkable and instructive lesson as to the attitude of Irish opinion towards the Government. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Armagh delivered an able and amusing speech, which was listened to with pleasure in all parts of the House. The right hon. Gentleman told the story of the drainage of the Bann, and
  1322
  he said it was a story which would not be possible in any other country except Ireland. He agreed, although it might be possible in Turkey and in some parts of Russia, where the supplies from the Treasury were great, and where the amount which reached the people was small. £167,000 had been spent on the drainage of the Bann; yet, in spite of that vast expenditure and the taxation which the people paid with exemplary patience, they had the satisfaction of seeing their lands submerged year after year. He had ventured to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman across the floor of the House, and had ventured to describe it as an object lesson of Dublin Castle rule, and he welcomed the right hon. Gentleman as one of the critics who had found the Dublin Castle form of Government in Ireland the most rotten form of Government in existence. The right hon. Gentleman had also said that while England could give a large return in taxation, it was because it was increasing in wealth and population, and that Ireland could only give a small return because wealth in Ireland was almost stationary and the population was decreasing. Those were the blesssings obtained by Ireland by this form of Government. He quite admitted that the right hon. Gentleman could not be expected to know the whole of the details of Irish administration when his attention had been so taken up with the administration of the Land Act. In fact he had not expected to see the right hon. Gentleman in his place this evening. Governments had gone out on smaller majorities on previous occasions, and on less important questions— ammunition for instance. He was reminded of the words of Macbeth—
  "The time has been
  That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
  And there an end; but now they rise again,
  With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
  And push us from our stools."
  Or, in other words, from the Treasury Bench. The right hon. Gentleman, in summing up the effect of the indissoluble union, of which he was one of the greatest advocates, had said that the predominant partner was increasing in wealth and population, whilst the country it was governing from this House

  1323
  was dwindling in population and stationary in wealth. The right hon. Gentleman had exactly stated the case for Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had stated this was a tentative Estimate. He advised the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw it now, and bring it forward in a more complete form later in the session, and then, after the instruction which he had derived from this debate —and nobody would deny that the debate had been very instructive—and after further consultation with those who were entitled to speak for Ireland, he might bring in a revised Estimate, and thus save a division this evening, which must occur if the Estimate were pressed in its present form. He objected to the fundamental principle of the Estimate. Money was given to England for education and an equivalent grant was given to Ireland for the same purpose. That was the principle which underlay the equivalent grant, yet in this Estimate they were dealing with money given to Ireland for education in Ireland which it was proposed to spend on everything except education. The right hon. Gentleman was not only acting quite in accord with the topsy-turvy system that regulated everything Irish under the rule of this Parliament, but justified his action by saying that certain works were required in different parts of Ireland. What guarantee had the Irish people that the educational money which was to be spent on the Bann would be better spent than the money which had already been spent in the past. What guarantee was there that ten or fifteen years hence they would not see another Chief Secretary coming forward with a demand for another £100,000 to be spent quite as improperly in this way. The proposal was an unjust proposal. It was never intended that the equivalent grant should be made a shield for the Imperial Exchequer and that by the expenditure of the equivalent grant the Imperial Exchequer should be saved from carrying out those undertakings which should be carried out by Imperial expenditure.
  Did the House realise the state of education in Ireland? It would be a revelation to English Members to hear that in Ireland at the present day poor
  1324
  boys and girls were going to school with sods of turf under their arms, to light the fires in the schoolrooms provided by a benevolent Government, and this was just as much a living institution as it was in his boyhood. Hon. Members opposite might think he was drawing on his imagination but he would support what he said by a reference to the Blue-book. Mr. Dale in his report stated that the complaints of the inspectors as to the inadequacy of the heating of country schools were only too well founded, and that fuel in the form of turf was in most cases supplied by the pupils. There was a picture of Irish schools! Sanitation practically did not exist. The right hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh claimed that Belfast had saved the credit of Ireland. As a great centre of native industry all Irishmen were proud of Belfast, though some might hold that its political opinions would be better if more rational, and that its Christianity would not be less perfect if it were of a less militant and aggressive character. But even in Belfast—again quoting Mr. Dale's report—the North Thomas Street School, containing about fifty children, was held in a most unhealthy room, seven-feet seven-inches high, lighted and ventilated by a few tiny windows about three-feet by one-foot six-inches in size. The worst schools in the most reactionary districts of England were far superior to the best schools in Ireland. What excuse had the right hon. Gentleman given for this state of things? Simply that the report was only three days old. But all these matters had been complained of year after year by the inspectors of schools. For two generations they had been calling attention to the evils referred to in the report. Everybody was agreed that the inner drainage of Ireland was as bad as it could be. Numerous speakers had referred to the deplorable intellectual condition of that country. Was there anything sound in Ireland? The extravagance and corruption of the Government had been brought before the House by no less a person than the Gentleman responsible for that Government. Was it not time for Parliament seriously to consider whether the present state of things was one which, for the safety and honour of

  1325
  the Empire, any more than for the benefit of the people of Ireland, should be allowed to go on? He believed that some of the facts stated in the debate would remain in the minds of those who had heard them, and that Members, at any rate on that side of the House, would be strengthened in the conviction that something required to be done to raise Ireland from her present position. It had been said that Belfast was more prosperous than the rest of Ireland, because of its intellectual freedom. Intellectual freedom! What Ireland was suffering from was intellectual starvation. What she wanted was an intellectual awakening, but how could that awakening be expected when the schools were such that the children themselves had to bring sods to make their own fires? If anything were wanted to mark more deeply this tragedy of the intellectual and material decadence of a country under alien government, it might be found in the fact that these people, starved of education, were the very people whose forefathers, centuries ago, before Oxford was able to teach, or Cambridge to instruct the people, disputed philosophy and theology in every University of Europe, from Paris to Bologna, where learning and religion had to be taught.
  MR. WOLFFwas understood to express a doubt whether Mr. Harland had offered to provide the remaining half of the cost of certain buildings connected with Queen's College, Belfast. It could not be denied that that institution had done a great work, and that it would do more if it were not starved in every way by the Government. More than ten years ago, he was a member of a deputation which endeavoured to induce the Government of the day to do something for the college, and they were then told that the Government were willing to assist if the people of the locality proved themselves to be sincerely anxious to improve the condition of the college by supplying certain funds. They had supplied £50,000 or £60,000, and still the Government had done nothing. They were now proposing to provide the highest class of technical education, and Belfast had; offered £10,000 for the erection of
  1326
  engineering buildings and the provision of instruction in the highest branches of the subject; but the scheme could not be properly carried out without assistance from the Government. It was hardly fair for the Government to urge the locality to make special efforts, and then, when the efforts had been successfully made, to decline to give the help that was necessary. As to primary education, everybody was agreed that improvement was absolutely necessary, and he believed the Government did not deny it. He could only regret that the Devolopement Grant did not propose to deal more liberally with primary education.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELLreminded the Chief Secretary that the report which had been referred to was presented in September last year, and therefore instead of having had this report for three days, he had had it for many months, and the right hon. Gentleman and the Government could have consulted about everything that was said in condemnation of the unsatisfactory conditions of education in Ireland. Did the Chief Secretary wish to devote this grant to this, that, and the other scheme? He had stated that he intended to add £24,000 to the grant in order that the schools might be better staffed. He was glad the right hon. Gentleman was going to do that, because nothing was more wanted than that the staff of teachers should be increased. He hoped the Chief Secretary would take into his consideration the subject which had been so fully described by every hon. Member who had spoken to-day, namely, the question of heating and sanitation in Irish schools. Any persons who knew anything of the condition of Irish schools would be ready to admit that if they were to improve education they would have to begin by making the surroundings of the children such as would instruct them in ideas of cleanliness. This change was essential if Irish education was to be improved. These reforms could be done at once if only a serious effort was made. There was no possibility of dealing with education properly until this, as well as every other subject connected with the government of Ireland, was placed in the hands of the Irish people.

  1327
  It had been said that the people of Ireland took no interest in technical education, but at that time they had no power to levy a rate for technical instruction. What had happened in Ireland as the result of the Local Government Act of 1898? A great change had been effected, and the Irish people taxed themselves for technical education, and they were now engaged in a scheme all over Ireland which, in five or ten years, would undoubtedly have very great effect in the condition of Ireland. They ought to do the same thing with regard to elementary education, and let the people have something to say in regard to it, instead of permitting it to be managed by Dublin Castle officials. He should welcome a scheme which would give the Irish people an opportunity of taxing themselves for that greatest of all interests, the education of their own children. No man had more strongly advocated that the whole of this £185,000 should go untouched to Irish education. The Chief Secretary had stated that works which urgently needed some help should be carefully considered. He asked the House to listen to a few figures with regard to the Dingle Railway. In the year 1900, for that railway alone, a tax of 2s. 10d. in the £ was imposed upon a district which at that time was wholly congested. In 1902 that rate was 2s. 8d.; in 1903, 3s. 10½d.; in 1904, 3s. 6½d. How could they expect a district like that to bear the burden of a railway? Was it fair that this congested
  district should bear such an enormous charge while money was lying idle and was not being devoted even to educational purposes.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid the right hon. Gentleman had told them that this Estimate, so far as it dealt with the application of the money, was only a tentative Estimate, and he admitted that it must be altered. Would he now consent to withdraw it and after further consideration bring up a new Estimate? [MINISTERIAL cries of "No, no!"] Hon. Members cried out "No, no," but they knew nothing at all about it, and the Chief Secretary would readily understand his point. He did not want to divide the House, but he should like to know if the right hon. Gentleman would carry out his suggestion to withdraw this tentative Estimate and bring up a new one.
  MR.WYNDHAMsaid he was afraid he could not accede to that suggestion. He had been obliged to put it in this form because it had to be in by a certain date. He agreed that it was tentative, and would be modified on those points he had mentioned, and he should bring in an Estimate in substitution for this one.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 239; Noes, 128. (Division List No. 57.)

  AYES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Bignold, Arthur

  Coghill, Douglas Harry

  Aird, Sir John

  Bigwood James

  Cohen, Benjamin Louis

  Allhusen, Augustus Henry Eden

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

  Colomb, Sir John Charles Ready

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Boulnois, Edmund

  Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Brassey, Albert

  Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

  Arrol, Sir William

  Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John

  Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Bull, William James

  Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.

  Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir. H

  Burdett-Coutts, W.

  Cripps, Charles Alfred

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Butcher, John George

  Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

  Baird, John George Alexander

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

  Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

  Balcarres, Lord

  Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.

  Cust, Henry John C.

  Baldwin, Alfred

  Cautley, Henry Strother

  Dalkeith, Earl of.

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

  Cavendish. V.C.W. (Derbyshire

  Dalrymple, Sir Charles

  Balfour, Captain C.B.(Hornsey)

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Davenport, William Bromley

  Balfour, Rt. Hn Gerald W. (Leeds

  Cecil, Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

  Davies, Sir Horatio D.(Chatham

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

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

  Denny, Colonel

  Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor)

  Chapman, Edward

  Dewar, Sir T.R. (Tower Hanlets

  Bartley, Sir George C. T.

  Charrington, Spencer

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Bathurst, Hon. Allen Benjamin

  Clare, Octavius Leigh

  Digby, John K. D. Wingfield

  Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

  Clive, Captain Percy A.

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

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

  Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

  Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex)

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Doxford, Sir William Theodore

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Ridley, Hon. M. W. Stalybridge

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T.(Denbigh)

  Ridley, S. Forde (Bethnal Green

  Burning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin

  Kenyon-Slaney, Col. W.(Salop.

  Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

  Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart

  Kerr, John

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

  Keswick, William

  Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Kimber, Henry

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

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

  Knowles, Sir Lees

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  Russell, T. W.

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George H.

  Lawrence, Sir. Joseph(Monm'th)

  Sackville, Col. S. C. Stopford

  Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne

  Lawson, John Grant(Yorks, N. R

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

  Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

  Samuel, Sir Harry S.(Limehouse

  Fisher, William Hayes

  Leveson-Gower, Frederick N.S.

  Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

  Fison, Frederick William

  Llewellyn, Evan Henry

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

  FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Lockwood, Lieut-Col. A. R

  Seton-Karr, Sir Henry

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward Algernon

  Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

  Sharpe, William Edward T.

  Flannery, Sir Fortescue

  Long, Col. Charles W.(Evesham

  Simeon, Sir Barrington

  Flower, Sir Ernest

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

  Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

  Forster, Henry William

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

  Foster, Philip S.(Warwick, S.W.

  Lowe, Francis William

  Smith H.C. (North'mb. Tyneside

  Fyler, John Arthur

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

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

  Gardner, Ernest

  Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft)

  Spear, John Ward

  Garfit, William

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

  Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk

  Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Stanley, Edward Jas. (Somerset)

  Gore, Hn G.R.C. Ormsby-(Salop

  Macdona, John Gumming

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs.)

  Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John Eldon

  MacIver, David (Liverpool)

  Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

  Goschen, Hon. George Joachim

  Maconochie, A. W.

  Stock, James Henry

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Graham, Henry Robert

  M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire)

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Cray, Ernest (West Ham)

  Martin, Richard Biddulph

  Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

  Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury)

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

  Thorburn, Sir Walter

  Gretton, John

  Maxwell, W. J.H(Dumfriesshire

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Greville, Hon. Ronald

  Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M.

  Tollernache, Henry James

  Groves, James Grimble

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

  Hain, Edward

  Milner, Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick G.

  Tuff, Charles

  Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

  Mitchell, William (Burnley)

  Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

  Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nderry

  Molesworth, Sir Lewis

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

  Hardy, Laurence(Kent, Ashford

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  Valentia, Viscount

  Hare, Thomas Leigh

  Morpeth, Viscount

  Walker, Col. William Hall

  Harris, F. Leverton (Tynem'th

  Morrell, George Herbert

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

  Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

  Morrison, James Archibald

  Warde, Colonel C. E.

  Haslett, Sir James Horner

  Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

  Welby, Sir Charles G. E. (Notts.)

  Hatch, Ernest Frederick Geo.

  Mount, William Arthur

  Wharton, Rt. Hon. John Lloyd

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

  Whiteley, HJ Ashton und. Lyne

  Heath, James (Staffords, N.W.

  Murray, Rt Hn. A. Graham(Bute

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Helder, Augustus

  Murray, Charles J. (Coventry)

  Willox, Sir John Archibald

  Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.)

  Newdegate, Francis A. N.

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

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

  Nicholson, William Graham

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Hickman, Sir Alfred

  Palmer, Walter (Salisbury)

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

  Hoare, Sir Samuel

  Parkes, Ebenezer

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

  Hope, J. E. (Sheffield, Brightside

  Peel, Hn. Wm. Robert Wellesley

  Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

  Horner, Frederick William

  Percy, Earl

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C.B. Stuart

  Hoult, Joseph

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Plummer, Walter R.

  Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham)

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  Hozier, Hon, James Henry Cecil

  Pretyman, Ernest George

  Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.

  Hunt, Rowland

  Pryce-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Pym, C. Guy

  Jeffreys, Rt Hon. Arthur Fred.

  Rankin, Sir James

  Jessel, Captain Herbert Morton

  Reid, James (Greenock)

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.)

  Bell, Richard

  Caldwell, James

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Black, Alexander William

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Allen, Charles P.

  Blake, Edward

  Cawley, Frederick

  Ambrose, Robert

  Boland, John

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Brigg, John

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Barran, Rowland Hirst

  Broadhurst, Henry

  Clean, Eugene

  Barry, E. (Cork. S.)

  Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson

  Cremer, William Randall

  Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire)

  Burke, E. Haviland

  Crombie, John William

  Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

  Burns, John

  Cullman, J.

  1330

  1331

  Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

  Lundon, W.

  Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

  Delany, William

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Robson, William Snowdon

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Roche, John

  Duncan, J. Hastings.

  M'Crae, George

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Ellice, Capt. EC(S. Andrw's Bghs

  M'Hugh, Patrick A

  Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland

  Emmott, Alfred

  M'Kean, John

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Farquharson, Dr. Robert

  M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Fenwick, Charles

  M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith)

  Markham, Arthur Basil

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Ffrench, Peter

  Mooney, John J.

  Sloan, Thomas Henry

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Murnaghan, George

  Smith, Samuel (Flint)

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Furness, Sir Christopher

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

  Spencer, Rt. Hn. C. R(Northants

  Gladstone, Rt. Hn. Herbert John

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Grant, Corrie

  Norman, Henry

  Sullivan, Donal

  Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Thomas, David Alfred(Merthyr

  Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

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

  Tomkinson, James

  Hammond, John

  O'Brien, Kendal(Tipperary Mid

  Toulmin, George

  Hayden, John Patrick

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Walton, John Lawson(Leeds, S.

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

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

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Holland, Sir William Henry

  O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W.

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Horniman, Frederick John

  O'Dowd, John

  Weir, James Galloway

  Jacoby, James Alfred

  O'Kelly, James(Roscommon, N.

  White, Luke (York, E. R.)

  Joyce, Michael

  O'Malley, William

  Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  O'Mara, James

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Langley, Batty

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  O'Shee, James John

  Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Parrott, William

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  Leamy, Edmund

  Partington, Oswald

  Woodhouse, Sir J. T(Huddersf'd

  Leese, Sir Joseph F.(Accrington

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Young, Samuel

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Price, Robert John

  Long, Sir John

  Reddy, M.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

  Levy, Maurice

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford

  Thomas Esmonde and Captain D melan.

  Lloyd-George, David

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  Question, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution," put, and agreed to.

  And, it being after half-past Seven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER, in pursuance of Standing Order No. 15, proceeded to put the Question necessary to dispose of the Report of the Vote.

EVENING SITTING.
  BARNET DISTRICT GAS AND WATER BILL (BY ORDER).
  Second Reading deferred till Wednesday next (Evening Sitting).

  WOMEN'S DISABILITIES.
  SIR CHARLES MCLARENsaid the subject of the Motion, of which he had given notice, was one which, although controversial in many respects, was happily free from Party controversy in the House of Commons, and he could say with confidence that it would be supported as much on the Conservative as on the Liberal side. This subject had not been
  1332
  brought before the House of Commons since 1897, when a Bill introduced by Mr. Faithful Begg dealing with the subject was read a second time by a majority of seventy-one, which majority represented all Parties in the House, and a majority of every section in favour of the Bill. He had no reason to doubt that having regard to the great interest which women took in political affairs, and the growing willingness which there was among politicians to avail themselves of the services of women, the House of Commons would be no less willing to grant them the Parliamentary franchise then they were six years ago. This question had been before the House of Commons for thirty-seven years. In 1867 it was introduced by Sir John Stuart Mill, who in the Reform Bill desired to substitute the word "person" for "man," but the entrance of women into political life was a startling proposition in those days, and the Motion was lost by a large majority. The political woman at that time was represented by her opponent to be an advocate of

  1333
  women's rights, unprepossessing in feature, badly dressed, obtrusive, a member of the shrieking sisterhood; in fact, possessed of all those qualities which are foreign to the feminine nature; in short, for a woman to enter political life was equivalent to unsexing herself. He ventured to think that point of view of this question had entirely vanished. Many other questions in which women had been interested daring the last thirty years had been met with similar arguments and treatment, and yet women had now an established position in social politics. They had rights in property, certain rights over children, access to higher education, in which its branches and most of the professions were now open to them. Having regard to the enormous development of women's status in this country socially, he thought it was a little late in the day to object on principle to giving her an interest in the political machinery. She had her place on boards of guardians and parish councils, and up till recently also upon the school boards and vestries in London.
  The time had come for a change. The doctrine of inherent incapacity of women had been put aside by the House over and over again. Notwithstanding the fact that women who had attained to great learning and high positions were made use of by candidates at elections to persuade illiterate voters to come, to the poll, they were placed behind the most illiterate class of men in regard to suffrage. A woman might be the owner of great estates or a prosperous business, and yet she had no right whatever to any voice in the question affecting her property or her interest in this country. In New Zealand and the whole of Australia, except Victoria, women had a vote for the State Legislature. Should the question of the consolidation of the Empire by colonial reciprocity come up for serious discussion it would be placed before the Australian Parliament, for which women had voted, and yet when it was placed before our Parliament, representing ten times the number of population, not a single woman in England would have a voice in the matter. On this point he quoted the opinion of Sir Edward Barton,
  1334
  the Premier of the colony, who, speaking to a deputation of ladies in London in 1902, said none of the anticipated evils had resulted from the granting of the suffrage to women in Australia, and that the success of the movement in the United Kingdom would tend to promote the unity of the Empire. The experience of the Colonies was convincing that we might with perfect safety extend the franchise to women. He also pointed out that among prominent statesmen in this country, the tendency was to appeal to the judgment of women on the great questions of the day. He quoted Lord Goschen, Mr. John Morley, and Lord Rosebery in illustration of this point, and argued that it was illogical to appeal to women to exert their influence in promoting the success of political principles unless they gave them the vote by which that influence could be made effective. He observed that among those who had appealed to women on the fiscal question was the Leader of the Opposition, while he claimed the Prime Minister, the President of the Board of Trade, and the Chief Secretary as actual supporters of women's suffrage. He contended that the extension of the franchise to women would leave the balance of Parties unaltered, asserting that this fact was demonstrated by the experience of the Australian Commonwealth. Our municipal elections, in which women voted, told the same tale. He combated the idea that this was a sort of fad on the part of a number of rich and active political women. The question had been taken up very largely by the working women, and especially by those women who were trades unionists. In the borough of Wigan the women trades unionists were supporting a candidate expressly in their own interests. He pointed out that since men had had the franchise there had been a steady growth in the wages of men, from 50 to 100 per cent. There had not been any similar rise in women's wages. They were paid far below the standard of men. The object of trades unions should be to prevent men's wages being dragged down to the level of women's wages, and the best way to do that was to level up the wages of women, which might be expected to follow the granting of political privileges to the sex.

  1335
  The Resolution had been drawn widely for the purpose of giving every man in the House an opportunity of voting for it, and he observed that he did not ask for universal franchise, but merely that whatever rights of voting wore now possessed by men should be extended to women. The Motion would enable any man to vote for it who had any belief whatever in the right of women to vote. He hoped that no attempt would be made by any of his hon. friends to draw a distinction and say that the Resolution was too wide or too narrow. He believed that by adopting the suggestion he had put forward they would very much simplify the register and very much simplify the elections, and, at the same time, be doing an act of substantial justice to women which would give them a very efficient representation. This Parliament had shown itself singularly free from prejudice. He did not think there had over been any Parliament which had attacked so many institutions and upset so many settled ideas. He did not think he would appeal to hon. Gentlemen opposite in vain. They had had some experience of late in what he might call heroic legislation, and surely it was not asking them to go very much further if he asked them to remove the last remaining disability of an electoral character on women and to admit them to the Parliamentary franchise.
  COLONEL DENNYsaid that in rising to second this Resolution, suggesting such a drastic alteration in our scheme of franchise, he quite realised that, technically speaking, he could add but little, if anything, to what had been so admirably said by the proposer. He welcomed the chance, however, of emphasising by his action the fact that this was not a Party question, but one on which opinion was much divided. In 1897, on the last occasion on which the Motion was brought forward — but in the concrete shape of a Bill — it was proposed by a Unionist, seconded by an hon. and learned Member still in the House, the rejection was moved by a Unionist, and seconded by an old and justly respected Radical Member, and men of all shades of opinion spoke for and against, including the right hon. Gentleman the Member for
  1336
  West Monmouth, whose approaching resignation of his seat was mourned alike by Unionists, Liberals, and Irish. The arguments then were very much what they were before, what they were now, and what he doubted not they would be, till this great and clamant reform was granted. Nobody but a hardened sinner, he was convinced, could resist the cogency, on the other hand, of the arguments for the proposal. Viewed historically, this was one of the solitary cases of reaction to be placed against this House. It was true that while women of a certain standing directly influenced the selection, not the election, of Members during the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, and down practically to 1832, the year of the first great Reform Bill, it was but in an odd case of course now and then; but it was also true that for the first time in 1832 women were specifically barred from any share in the choice of Members of the Legislature. When the great era of local effort and government came, women were recognised as, at any rate, capable of administrative work, of interpreting and carrying into effect laws of great complexity, in the passing of which, however, they had no share. Then came another period of reaction, and judge-made law barred them first of all front sitting directly on county councils, while two years ago they were barred again from sitting on the borough councils which replaced the vestries, on which they could be elected; while in 1902 Parliament again took away from them all powers of sitting on the educational bodies which replaced the School Boards. That was how the matter stood now, and he could not put his case better than in the words of a lady, capable not only of sustained devotion to the interests of her sex, but also of putting her thoughts into eloquent words—
  "In these days the trend of modern polities is setting always more and more strongly in the direction of social and domestic legislation, which affects the daily life and interests of women as much, and frequently more even, than those of men. In fact, there is no relation of our lives, whether as members of a family, as private citizens, or as wage-earners, which legislation does not touch, and women equally with men. Large sections of our legal statutes, such for example, as the Factory Acts, affect women and children almost exclusively, and is

  1337
  it not preposterous, then, to say that in respect to laws regulating their own most vital interests, and those of their children, not one woman, and not one mother, is to have any direct voice in the matter. To say that women have no rights or interest in the making of the laws is simply to say they have no rights or interest in the ordinary affairs of the family, or of life itself."
  Now, why was this reform not to be granted? Let him take first the ground quoted of general want of intelligence. He had been told that some Members had found the general body of existing women voters incapable of grasping the general points at issue and forming an opinion. If true, which he doubted, what could they expect? If they deprived people of any hope of taking a certain position, they discouraged many of them from devoting time and intelligence to the study of the question. But the great acumen tacitly granted to men only came gradually. It was not all at once that men became the peers of Pitt, of Peel, of Disraeli, of Gladstone, or of Labouchere. These great exponents of our life were of no mushroom growth with no very good grounds for existence, but the product of selection, of development and training. Give women the chance, and it would be found that those who, it could not be denied, were possessed of faculties and powers at least as good as men, were not exceptions, but samples of the bulk. The House had been told about petticoat government by the hon. Member for Northampton. No amount of holding back of women from the exercise of their undoubted rights would save the men who were under this species of rule, abhorred by the hon. Member, from remaining under it, proving at once, as it did, women's capacity, and in the particular case referred to, the feebleness of man. Not one single man more would be ground down by the hem of the petticoat should this proposal be translated into law. Until they treated women in the co-operative sense, and not purely in the possessory sense, they would keep them in one rank of life as drudges and victims, and in the other as the butterflies of society and the toys of men. He asked hon. Members not to class them as was done in America, as among the criminals, idiots, and imbeciles—there were no peers in America—who were not entitled to vote. Then the
  1338
  hon. Member for Northampton brought forward blood - curdling stories of men washing babies and cleaning rooms, and evidently doing both very badly, while their wives were out canvassing, which only convinced him that the opposition was sinking to poor arguments indeed. At the worst, if true, why should not the men help the women and learn to do work which, as far as he could make out from the hon. Member, they did in such a way as to cause the minimum of advantage to the children with a maximum of pain.
  Then there was the opposition of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Forest of Dean, who did not object, to this Resolution, but who differed from any Bill which did not grant manhood and womanhood suffrage; in other words, that a woman of means and intellect, possessed of much property and capable of managing it, was not to get a vote which was enjoyed by her own servants till every being, calling himself a man, who was not an actual criminal or an absolute lunatic, was to be enfranchised. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth stated in his speech in 1897 that the time granted was too short, that it was impossible on a Wednesday afternoon to bring this matter to a conclusion. If that be so, how much less hope was there to-night, when they could only speak for three hours instead of five and a half as under the old Wednesday arrangement. But he differed from the right hon. Gentleman, holding as he did that, as this matter had been discussed for sixty years, this evening's debate would only, as it were, form the lens of a great camera focussing the opinion and argument of all these years into a collected and understandable picture. Might he say in conclusion, that he trusted this House would not shrink from doing anything but absolute justice to a claim from a body of would-be electors much more numerous than their own sex, a body, moreover, actuated by the laudable desire to have some share in the formation of laws, which although affecting men, touched women much more, not only in proportion, but in the

  1339
  intensity of results upon their life and happiness.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the disabilities of Women in respect of the Parliamentary Franchise, ought to be removed by legislation."—(Sir Charles McLaren.)
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid this was not the first time that he had addressed the House on this subject. On every occasion he had come forward as the champion of women against those wild spirits among men and women who wanted to foist a privilege on the vast majority of women who did not desire it. His hon. friend the Member for the Bosworth Division said that he did not desire that all women should have the franchise, but that it should be the same for women as for men. They could not go by what the mover of the Resolution said when that was in antagonism to the Resolution itself. The Resolution was: "That the disabilities of women in respect of the Parliamentary Franchise, ought to be removed by legislation." He was sure that his right hon. friend the Member for the Forest of Dean would not say that he took the same view of the Resolution as the hon. Member for Bosworth. As far as he understood it the hon. Member for Bosworth, with Machiavellian tactics, moved a Resolution in certain terms in order to secure the widest support for it, and made a speech in another sense in order to capture the support of those who did not wish to go so far. Those were womanly tactics. He objected to them because they were not characterised by that amount of frankness that he liked to see displayed. What would be the effect of granting the franchise to all women? There were a great many more women than men in the country, and the preponderance was increased at election times owing to the fact that many men were occupied in work abroad. If the Resolution was adopted, therefore, the country would be absolutely in the hands of women. If there was a majority of women Heaven only knew; how far they would go when they had the power. It was said that women had no influence at present. He denied
  1340
  this, and maintained that they exercised an enormous influence. Something had been said about the views of Lords Goschen and Rosebery on this question in connection with the fiscal controversy. Those two noble Lords were not illogical in their appeals about women, for they appealed to women to use the influence they had on men to induce them by blandishments, conversation, and so on, to take a right view of the fiscal question. Did any hon. Member suppose that when women obtained the vote they would be satisfied until they were allowed to sit in the House?
  *SIR CHARLES DILKE: They have the right of sitting in the Federal Houses in Australia but do not avail themselves of it.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Yes, but does my right hon. friend not object to that?
  *SIR CHARLES DILKE: Certainly not.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Certainly not! Therefore they might take it as a necessary consequence of giving women votes that they would sit in this House. Why was the grille kept in front of the Ladies' Gallery? They were told it was because the sight of so much beauty would so disturb the minds of hon. Members that they would not be able any longer to continue their deliberations quietly. But if ladies were transferred from the gallery to the Treasury Bench and mixed hugger-mugger with hon. Members, it would be difficult to say what might happen. Personally ho was an old man, and the transference would not affect him very much. He was speaking more out of sympathy with the young men in the House, and he would not conscientiously submit them to such a temptation. Talk about "lobbying"! If his hon. friend the Member for West Southwark had a beautiful lady on each side of him urging him to vote in a particular way on a private Bill, he believed that his hon. friend would succumb. So far as he could prevent it there would be no such risk. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock said that women canvassed for him, or, rather, what he said was that he canvassed women.
  COLONEL DENNY: No I did not.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Well, there was another danger. Candidates would have to canvass women if they had votes. He saw an account the other day of a case in the North of England where a gentleman was found to be visiting a lady who was not his wife. But what was his reply? His defence was that he visited the lady because he contemplated becoming a town councillor, and that he went to see the lady in order to canvass for her support. Curiously enough that plea was not accepted, and the unfortunate man was condemned to pay damages.
  COLONEL DENNY: He was acquitted.
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid that that was worse. He did not know how domestic bliss was to be continued if a man was perpetually leaving his own wife and visiting another man's wife on the plea that ho wanted to be a town councillor. He thought that the hon. and gallant Gentleman would agree with him that that would be a very dangerous state of things. The fact was that though a small number of women wanted the franchise the vast majority of them did not. If women had really wanted it, with all the influence they possessed, they would have got it long before this time. Women were perfectly satisfied with the indirect influence they already exercised. It had been said by a great poet that "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." That was perfectly true, and the vast majority of women were perfectly happy in their homes, and had no wish to mix in the turmoil and rough work of elections. They preferred to be what they were; and it was as a champion of these women that he now appeared in this House. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said that they who were against giving votes to women talked about petticoat government.
  COLONEL DENNY: That was from the hon. Gentleman's own speech.
  MR. LABOUCHEREsaid that there was a good deal of petticoat government at the present moment. He remembered reading a speech of the right hon. Member for Croydon,
  1342
  who complained that there was a great deal too much of petticoat government in the War Office. That showed that it was not necessary for women to have votes in order to have petticoat government. There were many qualities which women had, and which men had not; but these qualities were not precisely those which fitted them to give votes, or to have a voice in this House. The fact was, women were too impulsive, they had too much heart, and were too good for political life. When an intelligent woman had got an idea into her head, it could not be knocked out of it. One might prove to her conclusively that she was all in the wrong, but she would simply repeat what she had said to commence with. It was said that perhaps women would develop if they had the franchise. According to Darwin they had all developed from worms, or monkeys, or other lower animals. How long did the hon. Gentleman opposite suppose that it had taken him to develop from a worm? Millions of years! And were they to give women votes in the hope that in some millions of years they would develop into intelligent voters and proper Members of Parliament? There were women's clubs in London, but he understood that they invariably failed, and were broken up. The members took different views; and they could not have a practical legislative Assembly like this run on the lines of a woman's club. His own belief was that, if they gave women votes, and particularly if they allowed them to sit in this House, the domestic peace of many households in the country would be destroyed. The Radical husband and the Conservative wife would be found standing against each other for the same constituency. The hon. Member opposite had said that women canvassed for him at Northampton. That was not true. He would never have a woman canvass for him, for in such work a woman did more harm than good. He thought that one of the worst things ever done for the Conservative Party, to which he did not belong, was the establishment of the Primrose League, and therefore he hoped that that Party would always support it. Ladies seemed of the to think that he was their special enemy; they did not believe that he was a friend

  1343
  of women. What happened at Northampton was that a number of women who were members of the Women's Franchise Association came down to that city, took committee rooms, and issued placards inviting his constituents not to vote for him, and they went about canvassing against him. At the meeting of the electors at Northampton he asked the men how they would like their "missises" to go about like these women, leaving their husbands at homo to feed and wash the baby, and the invariable answer was "No, we won't." The result was that these women were received everywhere with cries of, "Go home and look after the baby," and they soon indignantly retired from the field. The mission of a working man's wife was to look after the home, to mind the baby, to cook the dinner, and to do the household washing. She had no time for electioneering. The business of the husband was to take an hour off, go to public meetings, and if he were a wise man adopt the Radical principles addressed to him.
  His contention was that the vast majority of women did not want the franchise, and that men did not want them to have it. What happened was that at public meetings, some one got up and said, "Let us pass a resolution in favour of women." There was a certain amount of gallantry in that, and it pleased the ladies; and so the meeting passed the resolution. But they did so knowing full well that it never would be carried in this House. Working men particularly were entirely opposed to women having the vote. He went further, and insisted that those who voted in favour of the Resolution in this House were themselves opposed to it. [Cries of "No."] Yes, yes. Everybody knew what happened when this Resolution was to come on. Members were pestered by women in the lobbies, and asked to fulfil their pledge, and vote for the Resolution; but two-thirds of those who would vote in favour of it would infinitely prefer it to be talked out. [An HON. MEMBER: No.] His hon. friend said no, but he was not everybody. What happened in the case of the Plumbers Bill which stood in front of the Women's Franchise Resolution? Everybody at once displayed a deep interest in the Plumbers Bill, and took part in long discussions upon it. Then on another occasion his friend
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  Mr. Hazell, then Member for Leicester, got his Verminous Persons Bill through its First and Second Reading, and through Committee, and it came on for a Third Reading; but it stood in the way of the women's franchise Resolution. Well, hon. Members discussed the Verminous Persons Bill at inordinate length. Someone asked, suppose he had a fox in his pocket, was he to be regarded as a verminous person? Then there were questions asked as to whether the bath was to be warm or cold, or of what temperature. Everybody knew that these discussions on the verminous question were a mere blind to talk out the Bill to prevent the other question of the Women's Franchise coming on. Was it not a positive fact that that sort of thing would not be allowed unless the sense of the House was in favour of putting off the question in that indirect way. There was a Bill down on the Paper that night about Barnet Waterworks. It was a Private Bill. He had studied it, and there were many interesting questions connected with it. He proposed to treat the Bill exhaustively. He was perfectly indifferent as to whether Barnet got that Bill or not, and if it had come on he would probably have taken the side of the minority. But, in some unfortunate moment the Gentlemen connected with the Bill put it off to next week, and so they had not an opportunity of discussing it. To return to the women's franchise, women did not want it, men did not want it, and many would vote for it because they were obliged to. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] Well, there were some who would vote for it who were fanatics on this matter; but hon. Members were not all fanatics. He stood to his views. So long as he had the honour to be a Member of this House he should defend the cause of women. He did not go for these political Boadiceas. He went for the angel of the hearth, who kept away from political turmoil; and in that view he believed he was supported by the vast majority of men and women of commonsense in the country.
  *SIR JOHN ROLLESTONsaid that while admitting the difficulties which might surround so sweeping a

  1345
  change as was sought for in the Resolution before the House, yet, if the ideal was right the difficulties ought not to be a bar to its realisation. They were led to believe that women already played an important part in the government of the country; that they had ready access to the War Office and perhaps other great Departments, and that they exercised a considerable influence in the appointment of those who were selected for the service of the State. If, therefore, such great consideration was given to the sagacity and acumen and experience of women of one class, he certainly thought that the simple vote for a candidate for this House, Membership of which was not one of the lucrative appointments of the State, might be extended to women of another class who naturally wished to have a voice in the appointment of those who were to represent them. He had the honour to present a petition in favour of this Resolution that afternoon from some thousands of women workers at Leicester and Hinckley, and yesterday deputations attended at the House from Bolton, Wigan, Cradley Heath, Leicester, Hinckley, and other places. Their purpose was to interview the hon. Member who was to introduce this Resolution and other Members interested in their cause; and they clearly and forcibly made out their case. Afterwards the hon. Member for the Loughborough Division and himself had a most interesting and instructive tea-party in the precincts of the House with the members of these deputations. One of their guests, with some reluctance he admitted, told them that she had worked ten hours a day at welding chains and received at the end of the week 5s. for that work. But it was fair to say that she also said that that was not the maximum wage paid to women workers in that trade, as some obtained as much as 10s. a week. Now what these women workers said was that men who had the franchise had a weapon, and could get their wants attended to, and that until they also got this weapon, the women of this country would doubtless have to continue to work under harsh conditions for starvation wages without being able to make their wants felt. That was briefly the effect of what the deputations said, and which he was glad of the opportunity
  1346
  of repeating these at first hand, and of urging upon the House with all the force at his command the acceptance of their plea. He most heartily supported the Resolution.
  DR. SHIPMANsaid he was compelled to speak because his colleague in the representation of Northampton did not fully represent that constituency on this great question. Of course it was well known to all in Northampton that his hon. colleague was idolised by the ladies; and if he was opposed by the ladies who came down from London at the election in 1895 he could assure him that ladies both spoke and worked for him in 1900. At the last election a beautiful young lady went to his colleague and began to argue with him on the question of the woman franchise. But the hon. Gentleman exhibited the wonderful and peculiar influence he had over women by cutting in and saving, "Do you believe in love?" At any-rate, he so got her thoughts away from the franchise that she told him she hoped some day to marry a baronet. The people of Northampton thought very strongly on this question, and they had an association which worked for it. He would strongly support the Resolution. Women held property in this country and they had interests as vital and as keen in the community as men had. They had been twitted with not being able to bear arms against the enemies of their country; but they had borne in their own arms those who became able to defend it. He did not forget that the strength of the country depended as much and more on its motherhood than on anything else. What had been the tendency of the law? It was to disentangle the personality of the wife from that of her husband. At one time a married couple were legally only one person. It had taken some years to disentangle the personality of the wife in regard to property, but women now held property practically in the same way as men; and if women bore the burden of the responsibility of property why should they not also have the right to join in guiding taxation? Then, again, women worked alongside men industrially and socially. Would anyone who

  1347
  knew the business capacity of women twit them with want of intelligence? He failed to see any reason, physically, morally, or mentally, why women should play an inferior part to that of men. It used to be thought that women were inferior; but when the Universities were thrown open to women they found that women were able to beat men in their own field of mathematics. It was because women had not the opportunity that they did not stand as high as men years ago. As to courage, he remembered reading not long ago a case in which a landlady heard suspicious sounds downstairs. A burglar was in the house; there were men lodgers there and the landlady was the only woman. She lighted a candle and went down and struggled with the burglar, the men above merely asking what was the matter, but they did not come down. Not only in those directions but even in strength woman could show not a superiority, of course, but an equality with man. In every way they looked at this question, free from the old semi-barbarous prejudice against women, he could not see any difference between men and women so far as regarded capacity to give light and guidance as to the government of the country. Women were asked to advise with reference to children and other matters in which they were concerned, and were of assistance in municipal and local elections. He was surprised to hear his hon. colleague talk about the turmoil of political elections. His hon. friend knew nothing of that. During the last election he spent most of his time reading a novel by James Payn entitled "By Proxy." He had now secured that volume and his hon. friend had inscribed it as follows:—"Read during the election." It was only necessary to mention the name of Labouchere in Northampton and there was no need to trouble further. It was only on this particular question that ho and his hon. friend did not see eye to eye; and he was sorry that his hon. friend was behind his humble self. He was, however, cheered by the remark of his hon. friend when he said that if two colleagues saw eye to eye one of them must be a fool. There was no doubt that if Northampton was polled on this particular question, it would
  1348
  say, as Northampton's greatest Member, Charles Bradlaugh, said, that they required the intelligence of women to help them to properly govern a country which consisted of women as well as of men.
  MR. ATHERLEY-JONESsaid he had listened with great pleasure to the amusing speech delivered by his hon. friend, but he could not help thinking that the subject was worthy of a little more serious consideration than that which he had bestowed upon it. They had heard from his hon. friend the Member for Northampton a rechauffé of some of the old familiar arguments with which this question had been approached. They had heard persiflage and badinage rather than argument. His hon. friend said that inasmuch as women were more numerous than men the result would be that the destinies of this Empire would pass to the control of women. That was, of course, a fallacy, because it assumed that there was no community of interest between men and women. Those who advocated women's suffrage rightly or wrongly took the view that there was no separate attitude of mind with regard to political questions inherent in women as distinguished from men, and, therefore, on all questions of Imperial or domestic policy they would find men and women showing as much divergence of opinion as was now shown among men. Ho could not regard that as a serious argument towards the solution of the question. His hon. friend advanced a very plausible argument when he said that if the franchise were conceded to women they would be obliged to go a step further and allow women to sit in this House. He was not prepared to go the length of his right hon. friend the Member for the Forest of Dean and give an off-hand assent to the suggestion that women should be permitted to sit in this House. But there were many other functions which, intellectually, they might be capable of performing, while there were other duties for which they were not physically constituted, such as active military service and so on, and which it was inexpedient they should attempt to perform. While conceding the franchise

  1349
  to women it did not at all follow that the right to sit in this House should also be conceded.
  There was another argument which was very formidable, and which he confessed he felt some difficulty in answering. It was said that women did not want the franchise. He was speaking in the presence of men, many of whom were older than himself, but he doubted whether that same argument was not used with almost equal force when it was proposed to enfranchise the working-classes. It was repeatedly stated that the working-classes did not want the franchise; and undoubtedly if it had not been for the advocacy of a great political Party in favour of the extension of the franchise it was very questionable whether the working-classes themselves would have advocated it in a sufficiently intense degree to ensure success. The case of women was different, because they had no facilities and no organisation which would enable them to agitate in the same way as men. However, the great majority of the thoughtful women in this country were in favour of the extension of the franchise to their sex. There were some very remarkable exceptions; but he was satisfied that intellectual women on the whole were in favour of the movement. Then his hon. friend said that women were intellectually inferior to men. He did not know on what ground that assertion was based. It was perfectly true that women as a rule did not manifest ability in the region of art, literature, or politics in the same degree as men did; but at the same time it should be recognised that the opportunities of women were singularly limited. They had not the same opportunities for education as men, and undoubtedly they were more the creatures of emotional impulse than men; but at the same tune he thought that very few would say that women were incapable of exercising the franchise with as much ability and with as much advantage to the State as the average man. If the average working-class man were compared with the average working-class woman he ventured to say that there was no such intellectual distinction between them as would form the
  1350
  basis of a case for the refusal of franchise to women.
  The final argument of his hon. friend was that if the franchise were extended to women it would break up domestic bliss. There are a great many concomitants in domestic bliss, and an additional one would not be a serious matter. There was no difference of opinion between husband and wife as to religion or the education of their children or other matters which entered largely into domestic life; and he had never heard of a case in which a woman came into collision with her husband owing to a difference in political opinion. He thought they would be quite prepared to agree or to agree to differ as to whether they would vote Liberal or Tory, if they could not convince each other. He agreed that, speaking generally, women had not attained the high intellectual standard which men had attained, but to anyone interested in the welfare of the country one of the most distressing aspects of the present situation was the indifference which women displayed to politics. That was due to the fact that they had no power; but given power, responsibility would follow, and with responsibility a sense of responsibility. His chief argument in favour of the franchise, which he would press very strongly, was that it would have a great educative effect. Over and beyond that they had to solve so many complex problems, such as the education of the people, the improvement of the social condition of the people, and many other aspects of domestic life, that it was desirable that women should enter a domain hitherto closed against them. He had no doubt that if women were allowed to have a voice in the selection of the Legislature, great progress would be made with the reasonable solution of many of the problems with which the country was confronted. A quickening influence would be given to the Legislature; and he had very little doubt that in regard to such questions as temperance, sanitation, and social reform, the extension of the franchise to women would be conducive to the best interests of the country.
  *MR. CREMERsaid that the appearance of the

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  House did not indicate that there was any strong feeling on the part of Members on this subject. Otherwise the Benches, instead of being practically empty, would have been crowded. It was about eighteen years ago since he listened to the first debate on this question; he had listened to every debate on the subject since; and he had heard the same kind of arguments used again and again. Not one new argument had been adduced to-night. His hon. friend the Member for Northampton had been twitted with using stale arguments in opposition to the Motion; but he might fairly retort that no new arguments had been brought forward in favour of it. He himself felt very strongly that if it were possible to take a vote by ballot on this subject, not more than fifty Members would be found in favour of it. It was the extreme pressure and the art of cajolery which women exercised at election times which induced Members to record their votes in favour of a proposal whether they sincerely desired to see it carried or not. Many hon. Members would vote for the Resolution because they were under the impression that it would never become law, but they were playing a very dangerous game, as some day or other it might be carried as a result of their indifference. A strong feeling was said to exist among the factory lasses of Lancashire in favour of the Bill, and he was not surprised, seeing that, according to the story just told to the House by the Member for Leicester, they were looking for ward to an increase of wages and shorter hours, should the change in the law ever be brought about which the women were advocating. He was an old trades' unionist, and he had heard various arguments adduced amongst trades' unionists and working men as to the best method of getting then-wages raised and their hours reduced, but he had never heard it adduced that by getting the Parliamentary suffrage their wages would be increased and their hours reduced. Yet this was the kind of argument employed to get up the steam of the lasses in Lancashire. Whoever put such an idea into the heads of these poor misguided women had incurred
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  a grave responsibility. What was the Motion they were asked to vote in favour of? It was very adroitly phrased, and it was framed in such a manner as to get the votes of Members without committing them to any clear and distinct issue. He declined to fall into the trap, because it was clear to him from having read very carefully and watched closely the efforts made by many of the ladies who advocated the extension of the suffrage to the women of this country that the one great burning ambition on their part was to get into this House. [Hear! Hear!] It was, ho admitted, impossible to do so, but, if they could by any possible means make it clear to the women who were in the forefront of the movement that under no circumstances whatever would they be allowed to enter that House as Members of it, the movement in favour of female suffrage would speedily collapse. This was the experience he had gleaned from a pretty intimate acquaintance with these ladies, some of them personal acquaintances. Some of them, he was satisfied, were perfectly honest in the opinion they entertained on the subject; but the majority of them, he believed, were animated by other considerations. He was not going to stop to inquire as to whether the conferring upon women the right to vote for Members of Parliament would affect the opposite or his side of the House. They ought to discuss the question quite separate from Party politics, but his own impression was that both Parties would have cause to regret the change. But it was an insoluble problem, and he did not intend to argue the question from this point of view. It was a very serious matter to once open the door, because, if they did once open the Parliamentary door, and let in however small a section of women, it would be practically impossible to ever again close it until the whole female adult population of the country was enfranchised. He therefore asked the House to pause and seriously consider for a moment where this was likely to lead. According to the census of 1901, he found there were something like nearly 800,000 more female than male adults in the. United Kingdom. He believed that there were very few people who doubted that before many years they would have manhood suffrage, and this,

  1353
  supposing the Motion was carried, would necessarily imply that the whole male and female population would be enfranchised. They would then have 800,000 more female than male voters. Talk about the swamping process, which used to be urged against extending the suffrage to working men! He merely pointed to this as evidence that if they enfranchised every man and woman—which was the logical outcome of the efforts made for a series of years past—they would have the male population of the country swamped entirely; they would have 800,000 more female than male voters in the United Kingdom. They all knew how liable women wore to be influenced by their spiritual pastors and masters. The parsons or the priests might be excellent men to guide them spiritually and to point to them the way to Heaven; but, in his experience, and he thought in the experience of most politicians, they were very bad guides to the polling booth. If they had 800,000 more women than male voters, however, they would practically hand over the government of the country to women and priests. ["No, no."] Well, this was his belief, and he believed the state of chaos in the Established Church was largely owing to the influence of women. He believed their spiritual guides had inoculated them with the priestly spirit and practices which prevailed in the Establishment. Hon. Members might smile, but this was his honest conviction, and he was not prepared even to open the Parliamentary door for the admission of women. He had not the slightest doubt that a majority of votes would be recorded in favour of the Motion, but this did not affect him in the slightest degree. He was simply urging that which he believed to be right; and, if nearly every Member went into the Lobby in favour of the Motion, he should feel just as strongly, and go into the opposite Lobby. But there was one point he thought they ought to keep seriously in view. The right to vote would give women the right to sit in that House. ["Hear, hear!" and "No, no!"] This the women knew perfectly well. If they had votes they would use them so effectively that
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  Parliamentary candidates would find to impossible to resist the next demand for admitting women to seats in the House. They were proceeding cautiously, cunningly, and stealthily in the course they had marked out for themselves and he believed there was no safe halting place except to keep them where they were. The hon. Member for Northampton quoted those beautiful words, "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," but these women were not content with making good men. How many of them owed what they were to their mothers! He proudly acknowledged that whatever he was and had were due to the devotion of a noble mothers and if women were to devote themselves to rearing good, sterling citizens and honourable men it would be far more creditable to them than to be seeking to possess themselves of the franchise, and to get into the House of Commons.
  This question of the right to vote giving the right to gain admission to the House was to his mind the most important to be considered before the House recorded itself in favour of the Motion. Why were they asked to make this change? What were the grievances under which women laboured? They had all sorts and conditions of men represented in the House; almost every shade of opinion was to be found there, and, differing as he did with the majority of Members in his political views, he yet believed that there were no real grievances which could be brought to the notice of the House that the House would not remedy. What grievances had women which they had brought to the notice of the House and which it had failed to redress? He did not know of one. He hoped those who followed him would give them a proof that this power was sought by the women for accomplishing, not some sentimental object, but because they had a real grievance which the House had refused to redress. They were, however, told that if women possessed the right to vote and assisted in the legislation of the House it would infuse into their legislation a humanitarian spirit. This was one of the reasons urged by those who advocated this claim. Some of them, however, had noted the remarkable headgear of women, to adorn

  1355
  which millions of birds had been destroyed, and although it had been pointed out to them that by this practice the most beautiful of the feathered tribe were disappearing, they still continued to wear feathers in their hats. Women had also been told over and over again by some nobler members of their own sex of the horrible sufferings undergone by the poor little seals, through their mothers being captured while in search of food for their offspring, yet nearly every woman who could afford to do so went on wearing seal-skin jackets. And these were the people they were asked to admit to the franchise because they would infuse into their legislation a spirit of humanitarianism. Then let them go to the courts of law and ask the officials there who, whenever there was a sensational trial, when there was anything in the shape of spicy evidence, besieged that court. These things were forced upon them by men and women who urged that the suffrage should be extended to women because of the high morality that would be imported into their legislation. The people who made the most desperate efforts to get into our courts of law were nearly in every instance women. ["No, no!"] If any Member doubted it, let him make inquiries of the officials of the courts. Our newspapers from time to time had teemed with reports of the desperate efforts made by women to get into courts of law during periods to which he had referred. He had another objection, and it was that women were already creatures of privilege. They were privileged all along the line. How many Members had been in an omnibus when it had been raining, and the conductor had appealed to them to get out and let a lady get in? Had any one ever heard a conductor ask one man to get out and let another man in? Nothing of the kind. Men stepped off the kerb into the gutter to allow a lady to pass clean shod. Whatever view they took of the matter no one could deny that ladies, because they were ladies, were creatures of privilege.
  There were other considerations which weighed strongly with him. He admitted it was very difficult in a question of such a delicate character to discuss it publicly,
  1356
  especially in the presence of ladies, but there were questions of a physiological character. Women unfortunately suffered from infirmities from which men were altogether exempt. He knew Members might complain, but who had forced them to argue the question from this delicate point of view? ["Nobody."] The Member who said that might take such a view of the matter, but he did not. He had said there were physiological considerations which weighed very strongly with him and which made it very difficult for women frequently to exercise their mental faculties and their judgment as clearly as they did at other periods of their lives. There were also sentimental and sexual considerations which unconciously led men and women to form judgments of a very different nature and character to that which men formed in discussing questions between themselves as men. It was no use disguising the fact. Men and women could not discuss a question without sentiment and sexual considerations coming in to influence them in their judgment, and this was an additional reason why he opposed the Motion. He knew some hon. Members did not like to hear what he considered to be home truths upon this subject, but they were forced into arguing the question from what he considered to be the philosophical and rational point of view. Nature had settled the question for him, and he did not want to fly in the face of Nature. Nature had made two sexes. One sex up to the present time had fairly well, with all its faults, managed to govern the world, and it would be a very hazardous experiment to admit upon an equal footing the other sex, which had not yet proved its capability for governing the world. He apologised for occupying the time of the House so long. He objected to the change first of all on physiological grounds; secondly, for political reasons; thirdly, for moral I considerations; and fourthly, and what I was perhaps as important, if not more important, than all, on religious grounds.
  MR. EMMOTTin supporting the Motion, said the arguments which had been advanced against it that evening were at least fifty years old and they absolutely contradicted each other.

  1357
  It was said that only a minority of women desired the change; well, did it stand to reason that a minority of women would be able to cajole a majority of men in that House? Much had been made of the "thin end of the wedge" argument, the contention being that if the franchise were given to one section it would have to be given to all women, who would then be in a majority and be able to elect the majority of Members of this House. But the fact was that the majority of women do not care to enter public life, and, that being so, why was it necessary to keep out those who were eminently fitted to perform, at any rate, some of the functions of public life? Many of the greatest monarchs known to history had been women. That was not an argument for saying that all monarchs should be women, but it was an argument against excluding women from being monarchs, and the same argument might be used—although he was not at present pressing the view—in favour of women becoming Members of Parliament. He did not believe that if women had the franchise it would cause any sudden revolution, but he did believe that in the course of time the effect would be considerable and entirely beneficial. The sphere of women's work had been considerably curtailed within recent years. Formerly they were able to sit on the vestries; they were unable to sit on the borough councils. Until this year they had been members of School Boards; they were ineligible for the county councils by which the School Boards had been supplanted. Neither of those changes could have taken place if women had been possessed of votes. The supporters of the Resolution had been chal-
  1358
  lenged to bring forward a single instance in which women had been treated unfairly and in which the possession of votes would have made any difference. In 1897, without the slightest warning, the commencing salary of women clerks in the Savings Banks Department of the Post Office was reduced from £65, with annual increments of £3, to £55, with annual increments of £2 10s., and at the same time the examinations were made more difficult. For the class of women required for these appointments £55 per annum was not a living wage. No such reduction had been made with regard to any class of men in the public service, and he did not believe it would have been possible in regard to women if women had had votes. Moreover, the possession of the suffrage would go far towards stopping the sweating to which women were subjected. In many cases women had more or less to compete with men, and they were often treated very unfairly as compared with men. The House would be startled if they had an opportunity of studying a, comparative table of the wages paid to men and women in the cotton mills of Lancashire. He granted that these matters could not be settled by the State, but there was an increasing tendency to settle trade disputes politically, and if that tendency was to go on it was grossly unfair that women should not have votes. Women's wages had not advanced nearly so much as men's, and he believed if they had votes they would in the long run be able to get fairer treatment than they at present received. The extension of the franchise to women would tend in the direction of that national efficiency which all desired; it would enable women to improve their lot; it would open the

  1359
  door of public life to those who were eminently fitted to take their part therein; and it would give the poor a better chance. He believed it would raise the standard of life amongst women, and thereby promote the physical and moral wellbeing of the whole community. He therefore warmly supported the Resolution.
  MR. BONDsaid it could not be denied that if the Resolution were carried and practical effect given to it it would constitute a grave and serious departure such as no European country had yet ventured upon. It was true that in some of the Colonies experiments of the kind had been tried without very serious effects, but the conditions of European life were so different that he did not attach much importance to that fact. Before so hazardous a course was ventured upon very sound and cogent arguments ought to be advanced in its favour. In essence there were two reasons which might lead to the adoption of such a policy. One was that there was so powerful and overwhelming a demand from an important section of the community for the granting of the franchise to women, that resistance thereto would cause such discomposure of social relations and disturbance of social life that it would be better to run the risks involved in acceding to the demand. Could it be said that any such demand existed at present? The exact contrary was the case. There was a small section which ardently and vehemently desired the change; there was a large mass of absolutely indifferent opinion; and there was a considerable body of opinion altogether hostile to the
  1360
  proposal. Never in this or any other country had it been proposed to force the franchise upon a class of people, a large section of whom were absolutely opposed to the idea. When the question was prominently before the public about fifteen years ago, a large number of the most intellectual and distinguished women of the day banded themselves together in a protest against the idea of the franchise being conferred upon their sex, and the House ought seriously to consider the matter before they lightly took a step which many of the most distinguished of those whom it was proposed to enfranchise had declared would be bad, not only for the country, but for their sex, and for the cause they represented. The only other reason which might justify the adoption of so hazardous a course was that some manifest and distinct benefit would be thereby conferred upon the nation, and that our social and political constitution would be appreciably improved. The arguments adduced by the supporters of the Resolution had not carried conviction to his mind on that point. It could not be to the general benefit that a large class of people, of whom the bulk were professedly indifferent and a large class absolutely hostile, should have the franchise conferred upon them. Women, much more than men, were swayed by the affections, the emotions, and the imagination, and in the absence of any such demand as that to which he had referred the House would be acting unwisely in adopting the proposal now before it.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMONDthought it was necessary that at least one Irishman should rise to dissociate himself and his countrymen

  1361
  generally from the unchivalrous, uncalled for, and unprecedented attack made upon women by the hon. Member for Haggerston.
  MR. CREMER,rising to a point of order, asked whether, in the opinion of Mr. Speaker, he had made any attack whatever on women. He repudiated altogether the interpretation placed upon his words by the hon. Member for East Clare.
  *MR. SPEAKER: That is not a point of order; it is a matter for the House to judge.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMONDsaid he would not prove the charge by referring in detail to the hon. Member's observations, but he would remind the House of one or two points to show that he was justified in the language he had used. The whole drift of the hon. Member's argument was that women were by instinct, nature, and everything else, unfitted to exercise the rights of citizenship, and that they ought not for a moment to be placed upon terms of anything like equality with men. The hon. Member had talked about the cruelty practised upon birds and seals in order that women might be adorned. But the hon. Member was silent as to pigeon-shooting and other so called sports which were indulged in by persons who certainly were not women. He also repudiated the argument of the right hon. Member in associating the great body of the womanhood of the kingdom with those women, lost to shame, who crowded the Courts to listen to unsavoury cases. If there was no English hon. Member prepared to resent that general descrip-
  1362
  tion of the fair sex, he felt sure he would be giving voice to the opinion of the majority of the entire Irish representatives in the House when he said that he most emphatically protested against the attack which had been made upon the noble character of womanhood, which certainly was appreciated in Ireland The hon. Member for Haggerston was almost the last person one would have expected to object to the extension of the powers and the rights of women. There was nobody in this House who was not aware of the efforts that had been continuously made by the hon. Member for Haggerston in the cause of international peace and goodwill throughout the world, and was it not admitted that, whatever effect the extension of the franchise to women might have, it would most certainly increase immensely the influences at work for the maintenance of peace throughout the world? Therefore he should have imagined that the hon. Member for Haggerston would have been glad of the assistance which a reform of this kind would have given to a movement with which he had been so conspicuously identified. He maintained that no real case had been made out against the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Leicestershire.
  They had had an amusing speech from the hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton, which, as far as it was serious, had been neutralised by the speech of the other Member for Northampton, who gave the House a totally different account of what was taking place in that Radical stronghold. The senior Member for Northampton ridiculed the idea of ladies canvassing at election time, and poured scorn upon it, but from what had been said he

  1363
  gathered that the senior Member for Northampton did not have sufficient canvassers to promote his interest. However much amusement had been caused, the case of the hon. Member for Leicestershire had not been seriously met. The hon. Member for Haggerston said that no fresh argument had been introduced in favour of the extension of the franchise to women. There was, however, to-day an argument which was not in existence when the last debate on this question took place, and it was that they had, in one of the greatest and most freely governed and enlightened portions of this Empire, an example where the experiment of extending the franchise to women had been tried with the very best possible result—he referred to the Commonwealth of Australia. Elections had recently been held in the Commonwealth of Australia. Women had voted there, with the result not only that men of good standing and character had been returned, but the cause of labour had been everywhere supported. This was not a question of what Party women might belong to; apart from any such considerations, women had the right to vote. What right had they to brand women as social inferiors or slaves? They would shudder at the idea of treating women as slaves. Slavery consisted in denying to any human being a legitimate voice in the control of the country where he lived, and that was what women were denied. By what right did they do that? Was it not an intolerable assumption to pretend that men were so much better than women? Hon. Gentlemen objected to the idea of women coming into this House, but, if
  1364
  so, why did they allow them to exercise the franchise in every part of the country in regard to local government. As far as Ireland was concerned, he knew of many women district councillors who gave great assistance to the neighbourhood in which they resided, and who were trusted and looked up to. Why were women denied the right of exercising the franchise? What they ought to seek in government was to get for the service of the State the best people they could. They wanted access to the best brains of the country, and nobody would deny that there were plenty of ladies in every walk of life who would fulfil their duties with at least as great credit as many hon. Members of this House. He was not going to mention names or draw distinctions, but, as there had been a certain amount of light humour imported into the debate, he would point out that if the Government had had in their service two or three ladies, suitable in every way to exercise the function of Whips, the incident of yesterday, so humiliating to the Government, would not have occurred, although he cast not the slightest reflection on the specimens of the male sex occupying that office, who no doubt did their very best.
  He had risen for the purpose of saying that at least there was one man in the House who resented the tone and temper which had been introduced into this debate in certain quarters and he hoped that the division would show that there was a considerable majority in the House which was not prepared to treat lightly the benefits resulting from the enfranchisement of women in Australia and other self-governing communities. He hoped they would have sufficient

  1365
  chivalry displayed on all sides to convince people outside that it was no spirit of prejudice or bigotry which prevented hon. Gentlemen from enabling women in this country and in Ireland to exercise the ordinary right of the franchise. It was perfectly absurd when all of them owed so much to women to treat them in this way. There was not a single Member in the House who either in his childhood or his manhood could not look back to some period of his life when his kindest friend, guide, and helper was a woman. Upon the broad principle of human freedom he contended that every one of God's human beings who was endowed with intelligence from Heaven, whether they were men or women, was entitled to have a voice and vote in the affairs of the country in which they were interested and in which they lived. At every period of the history of the world it had been the pride of poets and writers to sing the praises of womankind, and now, at the commencement of a new century, they were treating them as slaves. He did not know what the experience of hon. Gentlemen was who were opposing this
  Motion, but ho ventured to say that if this question could be settled by ballot, and every Englishman, Scotchman, Irishman, and Welshman were left perfectly free from any outside influence to say whether they considered it right or just that women should be treated as slaves, they would register a vote against it.
  MR. CREANsaid that ungallant as it might seem, he rose as an Irishman to assure the House that in this matter the hon. Member for East Clare did not speak for the whole of the Irish Party. He yielded to no man in his admiration for the fair sex, for he knew them well and knew their views, and he knew the influence they exercised over the male sex. He did not believe, however, that women were demanding this right, and if a ballot could be taken of all the women in the country, he felt sure they would be found to be dead against this proposal.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes, 182; Noes, 68. (Division List No. 58.)

  AYES.

  Abraham, William (Cork, N. E.

  Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

  Emmott, Alfred

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Causton, Richard Knight

  Eve, Harry Trelawney

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Cautley, Henry Strother

  Earquharson, Dr. Robert

  Aird, Sir John

  Charming, Francis Allston

  Fenwick, Charles

  Allen, Charles P.

  Chapman, Edward

  Ffrench, Peter

  Arrol, Sir William

  Churchill, Winston Spencer

  Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Firbank, Sir Joseph Thomas

  Bain, Colonel James Robert

  Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

  FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose

  Balfour, Capt. C. B. (Hornsoy)

  Crombie, John William

  Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

  Balfour, Rt. Hn Gerald W. (Leeds

  Crooks, William

  Flower, Sir Ernest

  Balfour, Kenneth, R.(Christch.

  Cullinan, J.

  Forster, Henry William

  Bell, Richard

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.)

  Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

  Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen)

  Freeman-Thomas, Captain F.

  Bigwood, James

  Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan

  Fuller, J. M. F.

  Boland, John

  Delany, William

  Furness, Sir Christopher

  Bousfield, William Robert

  Dickson, Charles Scott

  Fyler, John Arthur

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

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Gore, Hn. G.R.C. Ormsby (Salop

  Brigg, John

  Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

  Gorst, Rt. Hon Sir John Eldon

  Brotherton, Edward Allen

  Ellice, Capt. EC(S. Andr'wsBghs

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Brown, George M. (Edinburgh)

  Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

  Graham, Henry Robert

  Grant, Corrie

  M'Hugh, Patrick A.

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

  M'Kenna, Reginald

  Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

  Groves, James Grimble

  M'Killop, James (Stirlingshire

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

  Hain, Edward

  Markham, Arthur Basil

  Schwann, Charles E.

  Haldane, Rt, Hon. Richard B.

  Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

  Shackleton, David James

  Hammond, John

  Maxwell, W.J.H (Dumfriesshire

  Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.)

  Harris, P. Leverton(Tynem'uth

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Mooney, John J.

  Shipman, Dr. John G.

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Morgan, David J. (Walthamstow

  Skewes-Cox, Thomas

  Helder, Augustus

  Morley, Rt. Hon. John(Montrose

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, Fast)

  Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

  Worrell, George Herbert

  Smith, H.C(North'mb, Tyneside

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Moulton, John Fletcher

  Scares, Ernest J.

  Holland, Sir William Henry

  Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath)

  Spear, John Ward

  Hope, John Deans (Fife, West

  Nannetti, Joseph P.

  Stevenson, Francis S

  Horniman, Frederick John

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

  Sullivan, Donal

  Hoult, Joseph

  Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

  Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth)

  Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C.

  Norman, Henry

  Tennant, Harold John

  Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse

  Norton, Capt. Cecil William

  Thomas, David Alfred(Merthyr)

  Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex)

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

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

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Tomkinson, James

  Joyce, Michael

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

  Toulmin, George

  Kearley, Hudson E.

  O'Dowd, John

  Tuff, Charles

  Keswick, William

  O'Malley, William

  Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H.

  Langley, Batty

  O'Mara, James

  Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow)

  O'Shee, James John

  Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan)

  Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall)

  Parrott, William

  Webb, Colonel William George

  Layland-Barratt, Francis

  Platt-Higgins, Frederick

  Weir, James Galloway

  Leese, Sir Jeseph P.(Accrington

  Plummer, Waller R.

  White, Luke (York, E.R.)

  Leigh, Sir Joseph

  Price, Robert John

  Whiteley, George (York, W.R.)

  Long, Sir John

  Rankin, Sir James

  Whiteley, H. (Ashton und. Lyne

  Levy, Maurice

  Rea, Russell

  Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

  Lloyd-George, David

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

  Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine

  Reid, lames (Greenock)

  Willox, Sir John Archibald

  Lough, Thomas

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

  Lundon, W.

  Rigg, Richard

  Wilson, John (Glasgow)

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Woodhouse, Sir JT.(Huddersf'd

  Macdona, John Gumming

  Rolleston, Sir John F. L.

  Wrightson, Sir Thomas

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Rose, Charles Day

  Yoxall, James Henry

  MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

  Round, Rt. Hon. James

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Royds, Clement Molyneux

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES—

  M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

  Runciman, Walter

  Sir Charles M'Laren and

  M'Crae, George

  Russell, T. W.

  Colonel Denny.

  NOES.

  Acland-Hood, Capt, Sir Alex. F.

  Digby, John K. D. Wingfield-

  O'Connor, James(Wicklow, W.)

  Allsopp, Hon. George

  Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph

  Pilkington, Colonel Richard

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Dorington, Rt. Hon. Sir John E.

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Reddy, M.

  Balcarres, Lord

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Redmond, John E.(Waterford)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Elliot, Hon. A. Ralph Douglas

  Roche, John

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

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

  Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

  Bignold, Arthur

  Finch, Rt. Hon. George It.

  Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

  Black, Alexander William

  Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury)

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Blundell, Colonel Henry

  Gretton, John

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs.)

  Bond, Edward

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

  Stock, James Henry

  Boulnois, Edmund

  Hunt, Rowland

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

  Brassey, Albert

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Tollemache, Henry James

  Caldwell, James.

  Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool)

  Tomlinson, Sir Win. Edw. M.

  Cavendish V.C.W. (Derbyshire

  Lockwood, Lieut.-Col. A. R.

  Valentia, Viscount

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

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

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

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

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Welby, Sir Charles G.E.(Notts.)

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

  Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

  Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E

  Lucas, Reginald J. (Portsmouth)

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

  Craig, Charles Curtis(Antrim S.

  M'Arthur, William (Cornwall)

  Young, Samuel

  Crean, Eugene

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

  Cremer, William Randal

  Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr. Labouchere and Sir Lees Knowles.

  Cross, Alexander (Glasgow)

  Morpeth, Viscount

  Cust, Henry John C.

  Murnaghan, George

  Adjourned at ten minutes after Twelve o'clock.