Sitting of 28 February 1905

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

  PRIVATE BILLS (STANDING ORDER 63 COMPLIED WITH).
  Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, Standing Order 63 has been complied with, viz.:—Great Berkhampstead Gas Bill; Norwich Union Life Insurance Society Bill; South Oxfordshire Water and Gas Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time.
  Metropolitan Pneumatic Despatch Bill; Morley Corporation Bill (by Order); Rhondda Urban District Council Bill (by Order), Otley Gas and Improvement Bill (by Order). Read a second time, and committed.

  STANDING ORDERS.
  Resolutions reported from the Select Committee:—

  1. "That, in the case of the Heckmondwike Improvement, Petition for Bill, the Standing Orders ought to be dis
  1446
  pensed with. That the parties be permitted to proceed with their Bill, provided that Clauses 10 and 11, and so much of the Preamble as relates thereto, be struck out of the Bill. That the Committee on the Bill do report how far such Order has been complied with."

  2. "That, in the case of the Wigan Corporation, Petition for Bill, the Standing Orders ought to be dispensed with. That the parties be permitted to proceed with their Bill, provided that the powers to construct Tramway No. 2 be struck out of the Bill, unless the consent of the Aspull Urban District Council be proved before the Committee on the Bill. That the Committee on the Bill do report how far such Order has been complied with."

  3. "That, in the case of the Coventry Electric Tramways, Petition for Bill, the parties have stated their intention not to proceed with their Bill."

  First Two Resolutions agreed to.
  Report to lie upon the Table.

  PETITIONS.
    DEORIKAR, KESHO RAO BALVANT.
    Petition of Kesho Rao Balvant Deorikar, for redress of grievances; to lie upon the Table.
    ILLEGITIMATE BIRTHS IN WORK- HOUSES.
    Petition from Bradfield, for legislation; to lie upon the Table.
  RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
    BRITISH MUSEUM.
    Petition of the Trustees of the British Museum (King's Recommendation signified), for grant in aid; to lie upon the Table.
    ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION.
    Copy presented, of Fifty - seventh Report from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England, with an Appendix [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
    PRISONS (SCOTLAND).
    Copy presented, of Rule made by the Secretary for Scotland as to the appointment of Visiting Committees to the Prisons at Barlinnie, Perth, and Peter-head [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 67.]
    AGRICULTURAL AND TECHNICAL IN- STRUCTION SCHEMES (IRELAND).
    Return presented, relative thereto [ordered 27th June, 1904: Mr. Sullivan]; to lie upon the Table.
    PIERS AND HARBOURS (PROVISIONAL ORDERS).
    Copy presented, of Report by the Board of Trade of their Proceedings under the General Pier and Harbour Act, 1861, and the General Pier and Harbour Act (1861) Amendment Act, Session 1905 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 68.]

    TREATY SERIES (No. 5, 1905).
    Copy presented, of Convention between the United Kingdom and France respecting Newfoundland and West and Central Africa. Signed at London, 8th April, 1904. Ratifications exchanged at London, 8th December. 1904 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

    County.

    Name of Deer Forest.

    Assessment.

    Acreage, 1883.

    Acreage,1898.

    Between 1898 and 1904—

    Remarks.

    Increase.

    Decrease.

    REVENUE (COLLECTION OF TAXES).
    Return ordered, "showing for each of the three Kingdoms (1) the amount charged for Income-Tax, Land Tax, and Inhabited House Duty for the financial years 1903, 1904, 1905; and (2) the amounts and percentage of same collected in each country by the 31st day of January and the 28th day of February respectively in each of the said years.";
    TREATY SERIES (No. 6, 1905).
    Copy presented, of Declaration between the United Kingdom and France respecting Egypt and Morocco. Signed at London. 8th April, 1904 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
    TREATY SERIES (No. 7, 1905).
    Copy presented, of Declaration between the United Kingdom and France concerning Siam, Madagascar, and the New Hebrides. Signed at London, 8th April, 1904 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
    CIVIL SERVICES (SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 1904–5).
    Estimate presented, of the Further Amount required in the year ending 31st March, 1905, for the Irish Land Commission [by Command]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 69.]
    DEER FORESTS (HIGHLAND CROFTING COUNTIES).
    Return ordered, "giving the name of each Deer Forest in the six Highland Crofting Counties, the amount of its assessment, its acreage for the years 1883, 1898, and 1904, and showing, the increase or decrease in the acreage between the years 1898 and 1904, in the following form:—
  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

    Report of the Royal Commission on London Traffic.
    MR. SCHWANN: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when the Report of the Committee which has deliberated upon the Street Traffic of London will be laid upon the Table.

    1449
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I am informed by the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the means of locomotion and transport in London that they are now considering their Report, but cannot state exactly when it will be presented.

    Sale of Surplus Discharged Soldiers' Clothing.
    SIR EDWARD STRACHEY: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether the 17,000 new suits sold or advertised for sale by Messrs. Spencer, Turner, and Boldero at 7s. 11d. each were made by Messrs. Buckley and Sons, Hollington and Co., S. Hamond and Co., and others, for the War Office as 11s. 9d. a suit; and if he will say at what price these suits were sold by the War Office to Messrs. Spencer, Turner, and Boldero, or to the persons from whose hands they passed to Messrs. Spencer, Turner, and Boldero.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) A considerable number of suits of discharged soldiers' clothing which were found surplus to requirements at the close of the South African War were sold by tender; but the firm mentioned in the Question did not tender for the goods. It is not known whether these are the suits in question, nor, if so, how these were obtained.

    Case of Private T. Coughlan, Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
    MR. PATRICK O'BRIEN: To ask the Secretary of State for War what was the charge upon which T. Coughlan, of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, was sentenced to death on June 28th, 1901, and the grounds upon which his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, and his release ordered after he served two and a-half years in prison.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The case of Private T. Coughlan, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, is as follows:—This man killed a comrade by shooting him with a rifle. He was tried on a charge of murder and convicted, but the Court recommended him to mercy "on the grounds that at the time he committed the offence he was beyond the power of self-control, owing to the liquor
    1450
    he had taken without any food, and exhaustion caused by galloping horse; about in the heat of the day, he being a man apparently physically and morally weak." The confirming officer thereupon commuted the sentence of death to one of penal servitude for life. The Judge Advocate-General in South Africa considered that ''it was a case in which a verdict of manslaughter might properly have been found. There appears to have been an absence of motive." The medical officer who examined Private Coughlan prior to the trial, while certifying him fit for trial, expressed some doubt as to his mental condition. In all the circumstances the Commander-in-Chief considered, when reviewing the case in August, 1903, "that this man might be released on the 21st December, when he will have been in prison two and a-half years." The release was ordered accordingly.

    Changes Necessitated by Adoption of New Guns.
    COLONEL NOLAN: To ask the Secretary of State for War, Why does the adoption of a new field gun necessitate the expense of new wagons; also, why does the change to a quick-firer necessitate a change in harness; and what is the difference between the new pattern and the old pattern harness.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The introduction of fixed ammunition for the new field gun necessitates a different arrangement in the wagons for carrying it. The new wagons are made of bullet-proof steel to enable them to be placed near the guns inaction and to facilitate rapid supply. As regards harness the change has been already adopted for present equipments, and no further change is necessitated by the new gun. The new harness has breast collar instead of the neck collar used with the old pattern and is lighter. Parts of the old harness are retained in the new.

    Brigading of Highland Light Infantry.
    MR. MALCOLM: To ask the Secretary of State for War why the Highland Light Infantry has been detached from the other Highland regiments and is to be brigaded with

    1451
    Lowland regiments at the Hamilton depot; why, if one Highland regiment had to be thus detached, the second senior regiment was chosen; and whether the distinction of wearing the trews, granted to the Highland Light Infantry for their valour in the Peninsular War, militates against their being brigaded with the other kilted regiments.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The organisation effected by the Special Army Order of January 6th has apparently been misinterpreted. The Highland Light Infantry has not been detached from the other Highland regiments, or brigaded with Lowland regiments. The 26/71 regimental district remains as hitherto with a double depôt at Hamilton. The Army Order does not brigade, but merely groups under one officer existing regimental districts which are conveniently situated.

    Abandonment by the Admiralty of Mine Fields and Quick-Firing Batteries.
    SIR CHARLES DILKE: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, having regard to the announcements of the representatives of the War Office on the Military Works Bills of 1897 and 1899 that the War Office had been obliged to propose the greater part of an expenditure of several millions, afterwards agreed to in those Acts, under urgent pressure from the Navy, the present Board of Admiralty propose to institute a change of policy leading to the abandonment of mine fields and quick-firing batteries; and, if so, when a statement will be made upon the subject.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) It is not proposed, so far as the Admiralty are aware, to abandon quick-firing batteries, nor is it proposed to abandon electric lights in cases where the latter are essential to the efficiency of the gun defence. The question of mine defence is under consideration.

    Cost of Sending Seamen from the United Kingdom to their Homes Abroad.
    MR. LAWRENCE: To ask the President of the Local Government Board what Department of His Majesty's Government, and
    1452
    under what Act, brought to Liverpool negro sailors who deserted from their ship in the Azores; and whether he has suggested or will suggest to such Department that it should reimburse the expenditure of the Liverpool Select Vestry incurred in sending them to their homes.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) These distressed seamen from the West Indies were relieved at Fayal and Lisbon, and were sent to this country by the Consul at Lisbon under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act administered by the Board of Trade. There were no opportunities of sending the men to the West Indies either from Fayal or from Lisbon, and there are no funds at the disposal of the Board of Trade to which the cost of sending seamen from the United Kingdom to their homes abroad can be charged.

    Channel Fleet—Suggested Visit to Portree.
    MR. JOHN DEWAR: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether arrangements will be made for the Channel Fleet to visit Portree, Isle of Skye, this summer, so that recruiting for the Royal Navy in the Western Highlands may be encouraged.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The suggestion to visit Portree will be kept in view in the event of the Channel Fleet proceeding on a cruise in Scottish waters during the year.

    Wei-hai-Wei—Expenditure.
    MR. BRIGHT: To ask the Secretary to the Admiralty what has been the expenditure to date on
    the naval station at Wei-hai-Wei; and what further expenditure is at present contemplated upon that station.
    (Answered by Mr. Pretyman.) The expenditure to date, in round figures, is £93,000. During the ensuing year 1905–6 it is estimated that a sum of £7,560 will be required, which is mainly for dredging operations.

    Audit of Irish Public Accounts—Transfer to Dublin.
    MR. FIELD: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether

    1453
    favourable consideration has been given to the question of the transfer of the audit of the Irish Public Accounts from London to Dublin; and, if so, when it is proposed to effect the change.
    (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) No change has taken place in the position of this matter since the replies to the Questions of the hon. Member for Limerick. East, on June 29th,† 1903. It is doubtful whether any saving could be made by transfer of the audit to Dublin; but if any should arise it would not compensate for the inconvenience of the absence of direct supervision of work and of personal conference with the officers engaged on it.

    Irish Post Office Accounts—Transfer to Dublin
    MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General whether favourable consideration has been given to the question of the transfer of that part of the Post Office Savings Bank dealing with Irish accounts from London to Dublin; and, if so; when it is proposed to effect the change.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) As the hon. Member was informed in reply to a Question on June 30th,† 1903, it is more convenient and economical to keep the Savings Bank accounts at one central institution; and greater facilities are afforded in this way for making or withdrawing deposits at any office in the United Kingdom than would be possible if the Irish accounts were dealt with in Dublin. It is not, therefore, proposed to make any change in the present system.
    MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the fact that the Irish postal orders paid in Great Britain, and vice versa, form a very small percentage of the whole, he will arrange, in the interests of economy, to have all the clerical work in connection with Irish postal orders done in Dublin.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The present system, under which all postal orders form a continuous series and are audited in London, is at once the most economical
    † See (4) Debates, cxxiv., 797.
    † See (4) Debates, cxxiv., 926.
    1454
    and the most convenient, and I see no reason to make any change.

    Printing of Irish Post Office Documents on Irish Paper in Dublin.
    MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General whether, in view of the fact that a stores branch already exists in Dublin, and that labour is as cheap, if not cheaper, and more required in Ireland than in England, he will arrange that all Post Office documents shall be printed on Irish-manufactured paper in Dublin.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) As I informed the hon. Member on February 4th.§ 1904, printing work arising out of postal business in Ireland is already done in that country so far as is consistent with economy and efficiency. As regards the paper used for such printing, I am informed by the Stationery Office that it is their practice to invite Irish firms to tender with others for supplies of paper required for the public service. Such firms have, of course, an advantage in tendering for paper for delivery in Dublin; and it is open to them to tender for the supplies needed for use in all parts of the United Kingdom. In response to a recent invitation for tenders for sixty different sorts of paper for the public service forty-five tenders were received, but only one was from an Irish firm.

    Delay in Belfast to Londonderry Telephone Extension.
    MR. O'DOHERTY: To ask the Postmaster-General if he will state the cause of the delay in the extension of the trunk telephone system from Belfast to Londonderry; has any progress as yet been made with the extension; and, if so, when may the citizens of Londonderry expect to be placed in communication with the trunk system throughout the kingdom.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) A considerable amount of work is involved in the extension of the telephone trunk system to Londonderry, but substantial progress has been made, and I hope to have the work completed about the end of April. I am informed by the National Telephone Company that they have
    § See (4) Debates, cxxix., 357.

    1455
    recently concluded an agreement with the Corporation of Londonderry which will enable the company to convert their exchange system in Londonderry into a double wire system suitable for use with the trunk lines, and that the company hope to complete the work of reconstruction in about three months.

    Reduction of Trunk Telephone Charge.
    MR. SLOAN: To ask the Postmaster-General if he will consider the advisability of reducing the present charge over the trunk telephone lines through the United Kingdom so that the commercial community of Great Britain may in this respect have similar advantages as received by Continental nations.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The average payment for a conversation over the telephone trunk system of the United Kingdom is less than 6d., and having regard to the cost of the trunk lines and to the difficult conditions to which the construction of those lines is subject in this country, I am not prepared to recommend any reduction in the present scale of charges. New trunk lines are tilled with traffic almost as soon as they are opened, and it is difficult to keep pace with the demand for increased facilities even at the present rates. The charges in other European countries are subject to conditions which do not obtain here. For instance, in most countries in order to obtain prompt communication the public have to pay three times the ordinary rate; and in one important country, at least, the capital for construction is provided without interest by local authorities or by commercial bodies and not by the administration which conducts the service. I may, perhaps, mention that in the United States the charges for the same distances are much higher than in this country.

    Post Office—Promption of Second-Class Engineers.
    MR. SCHWANN: To ask the Post-master-General whether he is aware that certain officers of the engineering department sat for an examination and passed for the positions of second-class engineers in April, 1904; whether these officers have received promotion, seeing that other persons examined on November 8th,
    1456
    for the same positions, have received appointments; whether he is aware that the men examined in April, 1904, have been in the Department for many years and have rendered good service to the Department, whilst the men promoted as a result of the November examination are juniors who have had to be taught their duties since their entry into the engineering department; and, if so, will he redress any well-founded grievance which he may find to exist.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) The officers to whom the hon. Member refers underwent a Departmental examination to test their eligibility for promotion within the service. This examination, unlike the examination of the Civil Service Commission, is conducted without reference to the number of vacancies in existence. After the officers have passed, they are promoted from time to time as suitable vacancies occur. The persons who are described by the hon. Member as "juniors" were outside the service, and passed a competitive examination before the Civil Service Commissioners for specific vacancies which had been reserved for open competition. I am not aware of any grievance created by these circumstances. Any of the officers in question who are duly qualified will be promoted as vacancies among the appointments reserved for persons in the service become available.

    Post Office Wages Committee—Alleged Failure to Comply with Terms of Reference.
    MR. SHACKLETON: To ask the Postmaster-General if there has been any correspondence between the Post Office and Sir Edward Bradford's Committee dealing with the question of the alleged failure of the Committee to comply with the terms of reference; and, if so, will he lay it upon the Table.
    (Answered by Lord Stanley.) There has been no official correspondence with Sir Edward Bradford's Committee on the subject mentioned by the hon. Member. I have had some private correspondence with Sir Edward Bradford on the subject, but I do not propose to lay this upon the Table.

    Inspection of Meat.
    MR. FIELD: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that a master butcher in Ealing recently purchased a number of pigs in the Central Meat Market, Smithfield, London, E.C., which he was informed were Norfolk pigs, slaughtered at Islington Market where they would undergo examination in the ordinary course, and having purchased these pigs at top market price they were delivered at Ealing, where the inspector condemned two heads as being affected with tuberculosis, as a result a summons is now pending with a view to secure a criminal conviction; and whether he will make inquiries in this case in order to ensure uniformity of inspection, and thereby safeguard a trader from criminal proceedings in respect of meat purchased bonâ fide, passed by one inspector and subsequently confiscated by the inspector in another district.
    (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I have made inquiry with respect to this matter. I understand that the pigs were not cut up at the Islington Market or at the Central Meat Market, and the medical officer of health for the City points out that it was quite possible that disease which would not show itself in the carcase would become apparent after cutting up. I am informed that proceedings in the case are now pending before the justices, and hence I cannot take any further action with regard to it. But I may state that one of the medical inspectors of the Department is engaged in inquiring into the methods of meat inspection in London with a view of reporting to me on the subject. I may add that the Ealing Town Council have issued a circular to the butchers in the borough, in which they state that the sanitary inspector may, at the request of a butcher, visit his premises and inspect any meat which has been delivered to him, as to the condition of which he may be doubtful, and that, in the event of any of it being found to be diseased, the inspector will take steps to have it destroyed in manner prescribed by law. The town council point out that in such a case the risk of exposing for sale meat unfit for human consumption would be minimised.

    Arsenical Poisoning—Adoption of the Recommendations of the Royal Com- mission.
    SIR CUTHBERT QUILTER: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is now able to announce the course it is proposed to adopt with a view to giving effect to the large and important recommendations of the Royal Commission on Arsenical Poisoning, more especially with regard to the appointment of a special expert officer to inquire into and advise upon all questions affecting the purity of manufactured, preserved, or prepared foods, whether of home or foreign origin.
    (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I have given consideration to this subject, and I am making arrangements with regard to the matter referred to in the latter part of the Question which I hope will take effect at the commencement of the ensuing financial year.

    Agricultural Rating Bill—Date of Introduction.
    SIR WALTER THORBURN: To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he can say at which period of the session the Government will introduce a Bill to renew the Agricultural Rating Act.
    (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I hope to introduce the Bill at an early date.

    Death Certificates for Members of Trade Unions and Friendly Societies—Assimi- lation of Charges.
    COLONEL SADLER: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, in view of the fact that the charge made for certificates of death for members of trade unions is 2s. 7d. each, while the charge made for a member of a friendly society is 1s., he will consider the advisability of making the charge uniformly 1s. in both cases.
    (Answered by Mr. Walter Long.) I will take note of this suggestion, but legislation would be necessary in order to give effect to it.

    Case of Mr. John Godden.
    SIR ERNEST FLOWER: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can explain the reasons which caused the Foreign Office, after their protest and demand in 1887, to accept as decisive in the case of Mr. John Godden, a British subject, the opinion of Mr. De Brauw, a Dutch lawyer moving in Government circles, although the Law Officers of the Crown had in 1887 declared that they differed from Mr. De Brauw.
    (Answered by Earl Percy.) On further consideration of the facts submitted to them the Law Officers saw reason to alter the opinion they had originally expressed.

    Countries.

    Quantities imported from the countries named.

    Quantities consigned from the countries named.

    Cwts.

    Cwts.

    Russia

    —

    —

    Argentine Republic

    —

    —

    Denmark

    —

    —

    Chile

    24,409

    —

    Peru

    1,017,537

    1,051,830

    British West India Islands

    705,248

    685,006

    British Guiana

    340,742

    282,819

    Cuba

    —

    349

    Price of Sugar in Great Britain, Argentina, and the Continent.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: To ask the President of the Board of Trade can he state the present price of similar kinds of sugar in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, France, Holland, Russia, Denmark, the Argentine Republic, and Great Britain respectively.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) If the hon. Member will move for a Return, specifying the date and the kinds of

    Sugar Imports.
    MR. GIBSON BOWLES: To ask the President of the Board of Trade can he say what were the total imports in cwts. of sugar into the United Kingdom during the year 1904, and what were the imports in that year respectively from Russia, Argentine Republic, Denmark, Chile, Peru, the British West India Islands, British Guiana, and Cuba respectively.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) The total imports of sugar into the United Kingdom in 1904 amounted to 32,289,443 cwts. The following shows the quantities imported from the countries mentioned in the Question, and also the quantities actually consigned to the United Kingdom from those countries:—
    sugar for which he desires the prices to be stated, and whether wholesale or retail, inclusive or exclusive of duty, I will see what can be done to supply the information.

    World's Production of Beet and Cane Sugar.
    MR. PARTINGTON: To ask the President of the Board of Trade if he can give the World's production of beet and cane sugars in weight and values for the last ten years,

    1461
    and the amount from each producing country.
    (Answered by Mr. Gerald Balfour.) Complete official information as to the quantities of beet and cane sugars produced is not available, and there is no information as to values.

    Attendance at Church as School At- tendance.
    MR. FREDERICK WILSON: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether, in cases where a school attendance authority makes by-laws counting the attendance of children at church as attendance at school, the Board of Education will recognise the practice.
    (Answered by Sir William Anson.) If a school attendance authority, by by-law or otherwise, signify their readiness to regard attendance of children at church as attendance at school, during the time allowed for religious instruction, either generally or on certain days, the Board would not withhold approval from timetables on which entries of such attendance appeared.

    Bishop's Stortford College—Dismissal of Mr. Kitchener.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether his attention has been directed to the dismissal of Mr. Kitchener, assistant master in The College, Bishop's

    Port.

    Net Amount of Coal Tax.

    Total Quantity or Exported Coal on which the Tax was remitted on the ground that its value was not exceeding 6s. per ton.

    £

    Tons.

    London

    4,977

    —

    Liverpool

    12,820

    42,437

    Blyth (including Amble)

    111,840

    886,849

    Boston

    4,833

    —

    Bristol

    684

    —

    Cardiff

    617,703

    2,173,281

    Chester

    13

    —

    Dartmouth

    5

    —

    Fleetwood

    10

    105

    Gloucester

    4

    —

    Carried Forward

    752,889

    3,102,672

    Stortford, formerly known as the Nonconformist Grammar School, on the ground of his having become a Catholic; and that, in the letter of dismissal, it is stated by the headmaster that the school was founded with very definite religious aims, that parents have been asked to send their sons there because those are the aims, and that the presence of a Catholic master was inconsistent with those aims; and, if so, whether seeing that The College, Bishop's Stortford, is aided by a contribution from the Hertfordshire County Council, he will state whether he proposes to take any, and, if any, what action in the matter.
    (Answered by Sir William Anson.) The College is not aided by the Board, and, as at present advised, I do not consider that this is a matter in which the Board can properly intervene.

    Coal Exports—Revenue and Exemptions from Coal Tax
    SIR WALTER PLUMMER: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will state the amount of coal tax at each shipping port in the United Kingdom in the year ending December 31st, 1904, and the total quantity exported in that year from each of such ports of coal on which tax was remitted on the ground that its value did not exceed 6s. per ton.
    (Answered by Mr. Austen Chamberlain.) The following table gives the information for which the hon. Member asks:—

    Port.

    Net Amount of Coal Tax.

    Total Quantity of Exported Coal on which the Tax was remitted on the ground that its value was not exceeding 6s. per ton.

    £

    Tons.

    Brought forward

    752,889

    3,102,672.

    Goole

    27,230

    151,325

    Grimsby

    44,757

    22,187

    Hartlepool

    27,153

    5,046

    Hull

    74,686

    140,047

    Ipswich

    73

    —

    Llanelly

    9,488

    65,607

    Lynn

    4,005

    616

    Manchester

    3,773

    14,103

    Maryport

    86

    —

    Middlesbrough

    2,907

    72

    Milford

    11

    —

    Newport (Mon.)

    146,703

    254,559

    Plymouth

    104

    —

    Portsmouth

    21

    —

    Port Talbot

    34,783

    71,827

    Preston

    79

    —

    Runcorn

    171

    —

    Southampton

    8

    —

    Stockton

    32

    —

    Sunderland

    114,253

    130,173

    Swansea

    66,319

    430,922

    Tyne Ports

    400,042

    681,755

    Weymouth

    —

    —

    Wisbeach

    9

    —

    Workington

    4

    —

    Aberdeen

    3

    —

    Alloa

    10,208

    —

    Arbroath

    5

    —

    Ardrossan

    2,052

    970

    Ayr

    134

    —

    Bo'ness

    24,155

    45,209

    Dundee

    99

    —

    Glasgow

    69,454

    66,819

    Grangemouth

    54,211

    113,212

    Granton

    3,970

    7,240

    Greenock

    1,218

    183

    Irvine

    51

    —

    Kirkcaldy

    96,358

    224,578

    Kirkwall

    5

    —

    Leith

    26,000

    69,100

    Lerwick

    1

    —

    Methil

    42,824

    99,602

    Montrose

    1

    —

    Peterhead

    1

    —

    Troon

    2,595

    2,929

    Limerick

    1

    —

    Total

    2,042,932

    5,700,753

    Closing of Cooper's Hill College—In- struction for Indian Forest Service.
    SIR JOHN GORST: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether, in view of the closing of Cooper's Hill College, it has been determined to give a temporary monopoly of the instruction of forest students to the University of Oxford; if so, whether this scheme is a strictly temporary expedient for one year only, and whether in a permanent scheme the graduates of all Universities in the United Kingdom will enjoy equal opportunities for entering the Indian Forest Service; and whether he will lay the correspondence on this subject and the regulations for entrance and instruction of Indian forest students upon the Table of the House.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) The details of the scheme are still under consideration, and I will ask my right hon. friend to repeat his Question shortly.

    Indian Army Reorganisation—Lord Kitchener"s Proposals.
    MR. BUCHANAN: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether Lord Kitchener's proposals for Army reorganisation in India have been adopted by the Government of India; what is their estimated cost: and will Papers on the subject be laid before the House.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Brodrick.) Lord Kitchener's proposals for Army reorganisation in India have been accepted in general principle, but details are not yet thoroughly worked out; it is therefore impossible to give their estimated cost, and at present Papers on the subject cannot be laid before the House. I have agreed to the Government of India making a provision for special military expenditure in the Budget of 1905–6.

    Dredging of Galway Docks.
    MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, when were representations first made to the Board of Works with respect to the docks at Galway filling up with sand and rendering access to steamers almost impossible; whether, seeing that complaints have
    1466
    been forwarded by the Limerick Steamship Company that their steamers cannot now enter at times, and in view of the fact that a dredger was promised two years ago, he will say when one will be available for the Galway Docks.
    (Answered by Mr. Victor Cavendish.) Representations were first made to the Board of Works in July, 1900, and the Board then offered to hire to the Harbour Commissioners a grabber steam crane and grab. The Commissioners declined the offer. The Board are unaware that any promise was given to lend a dredger, but an application for the hire of the dredger recently acquired was received from the Harbour Commissioners on the 22nd instant, and is now under consideration. Owing to previous applications, however, the dredger will not be available for work at Galway for some time to come.

    Swine Fever Dr. Gibbon's Herd—Com- pensation for Losses.
    MR. FFRENCH: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to correspondence published between Dr. E. A. Gibbon, of Sleedagh, county Wexford, and Mr. T. P. Gill, secretary to the Agricultural Department of Ireland, on the subject of an order given by the latter for the destruction of Dr. Gibbon's herd of pigs because his boar had been with a sow belonging to Mr. Stafford. Baldwinstown Castle, which was subsequently slaughtered for swine fever, and no disease found; whether he is aware that, in consequence of Dr. Gibbon's refusal to slaughter his herd, the Department quarantined his entire stock for three months, thereby putting on him a loss in respect of extra feeding of animals that were fit to sell; whether he is aware that, although the disease was suspected in Stafford's herd on December 16th, the suspected animals were not slaughtered till January 18th, a period of over a month, during which no quarantine was in force in his case; whether he is also aware that Stafford's labourers' pigs as well as his own were slaughtered, and no disease found; and, if so, will he direct an inquiry into these cases, with a view to give Dr. Gibbon compensation for his losses.

    1467
    (Answered by Mr. Atkinson for Mr. Wyndham.) The facts are substantially, as stated in the Question. Owing to the absence of regulations by the local authorities controlling the movement of swine generally in each county in Ireland, the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries of Great Britain recently passed an Order interfering with the free admission of swine from Ireland into Great Britain, and the Irish Department would not feel justified in relaxing any precautions which its professional officers advise as necessary to guard against possible extensions of the disease in any district where it may occur. The case has been dealt with in accordance with established practice. It is proposed to have a final inspection on or about March 9th of the swine belonging to Dr. Gibbon. The restriction period of three months deemed necessary will then have expired, and if the swine are certified by the veterinary inspector to be free from disease the restrictions will be removed. Loss stated to arise from the operation of restrictions is one of the ordinary risks attending the keeping of swine, and is not a matter in respect of which the Department can entertain a claim for compensation.

    Yeomanry Ammunition Allowances.
    SIR JOHN KENNAWAY: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether, in calculating the allowance of free ammunition to county Volunteer associations for their annual meetings, the Yeomanry within the county shall be reckoned as if they formed a part of the Volunteer force; and if he would issue a Memorandum to this effect.
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The question referred to by my hon. friend is under consideration, and it is not possible at present to give a decisive reply.

    Somaliland Field Force.
    MR. BUCHANAN: To ask the Secretary of State for War what is the military force at present in Somaliland, and whether he has any information to the effect that the Mullah is again active in the neighbourhood of Obbia.
    1468
    (Answered by Mr. Secretary Arnold-Forster.) The troops quartered in the Protectorate are:—

    Companies.

    Fighting men.

    —

    —

    33rd Punjab Infantry.

    8

    750

    6th King"s African Rifles

    5

    500

    Total

    13

    1,250

    The reply to the last paragraph is in the negative.

  QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

    Skye and Barra—Royal Naval Reserve Batteries.
    MR. JOHN DEWAR: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty if he will state the cause of the delay in proceeding with the erection of Royal Naval Reserve batteries in the Islands of Skye and Barra; and will he say when the work will be commenced.
    THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. PRETYMAN, Suffolk, Wood-bridge): As will be explained in the First Lord's Memorandum to be circulated with the Navy Estimates, the full numbers of the Royal Naval Reserve have been completed, whilst the growth of the Royal Fleet Reserve seems to make it possible that the further increase in the Royal Naval Reserve at one time contemplated will not now be required. Under these circumstances it is necessary for the Board of Admiralty to review afresh the whole distribution of Royal Naval Reserve batteries, and the particular batteries referred to in the hon. Member's Question will be fully considered with others.

    Flogging on H.M.S. "Berwick."
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether he is aware that in August last a boy named Thomas Jones was tried by Court-martial on board the cruiser "Berwick," and convicted of the stealing of two Post Office orders and of desertion, and was sentenced to dismissal from the service, and to receive twenty-four lashes of the birch; and that this flogging, notwithstanding the dismissal of the prisoner from the Navy, was

    1469
    actually inflicted; and, if so, what explanation can be given by the naval authorities, having regard to the defence and justification of the flogging of boys in the Royal Navy, in the interests of the service, and for the good of the boys themselves.
    MR. PRETYMAN: The facts are as stated in the first part of the hon. Member's Question. No explanation seems necessary, as the punishment was in accordance with the principles quoted by the hon. Member.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Is not the hon. Gentleman well aware that punishment of that kind cannot be inflicted by a civil Court, yet it was inflicted when this boy had been dismissed the Navy.
    MR. PRETYMANmade no reply.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I must press for an Answer. I am entitled to one.
    MR. PRETYMAN: The hon. Member made a statement, but did not put a Question.

    Bloemfontein Fire
    MR. WHITLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what is the estimated loss incurred by the fire in the military stores at Bloemfontein in the last week of January, and is the loss covered by insurance?
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. ARNOLD - FORSTER, Belfast, W.): The approximate loss sustained by the fire mentioned in the Question is £26,000, and the loss is not covered by any insurance. As the hon. Member is aware, in these matters the Government takes its own risks.

    Colonel Morgan.
    MR. CHARLES HOBHOUSE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether Colonel Morgan has denied that he had anything to do with the alleged improper sale of warlike stores in South Africa; and, if so, whether any responsibility attaches to Colonel Hipwell, or any other person in the depart
    1470
    ment of the Director of Supplies in connection with such sale.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: I cannot undertake to reply to any Questions connected with this matter until the case has been decided in the Courts.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Has the War Office placed any obligation on this gentleman to prosecute the action?
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The actions are being prosecuted. The War Office is satisfied of that.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: And what steps are being taken by the War Office to prevent the evidence against this man being destroyed?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Altcar Rifle Range.
    COLONEL PILKINGTON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the closing of the rifle range at Altcar by order of the General Officer Commanding the North-Western District, which will seriously inconvenience all the Volunteer corps in the Liverpool district, the majority of whom have no other range, and cannot, therefore, perform the stipulated course of musketry for the current year unless the range is re-opened at once; and, if so, whether he will state what prospect there is of the range being available this summer, if any; or, if it is to be closed this year, whether it is likely to become so permanently.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: The General Officer Commanding reports that the interruption of the use of the range, which is a private one, has been caused by the inability of the landlord to come to terms with the landlord of the property behind the targets; that the War Department has intervened to promote the continued use of the range; but that firing has been temporarily suspended pending the conclusion of arrangements for safety. He anticipates, however, that the range will be reopened at an early date.

    Volunteer Capitation Grant.
    MR. FULLER: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for

    1471
    War whether he will, in considering the abolition of the per capita grant for the Volunteers, at the same time consider the advisability of extending the proposed arrangement to the Imperial Yeomanry.
    MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: There is no intention of altering the present system under which the Yeomanry and Volunteers are mainly financed by means of grants-in-aid in the form of capitation allowances.

    Transvaal War Loan.
    MR. McCRAE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state whether the revenues of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony are large enough to meet the necessary annual contribution for the redemption of a first instalment of £10,000,000 of the proposed Transvaal loan.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. LYTTELTON, Warwick and Leamington): The figures which I gave in my reply to the hon. Member for East Perthshire on Monday last † of the estimated revenue and expenditure for June, 1904-June, 1905, and the results for the half-year ended December 31st, 1904, do not show a sufficient margin at present.
    MR. McCRAE: Has the right hon. Gentleman taken the Chancellor of the Exchequer into his confidence?
    MR. LYTTELTON: Yes, Sir
    MR. WHITLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he has addressed any communication to the Transvaal Government urging the desirability of an early payment of the first instalment of the promised war contribution.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have already stated, in reply to a similar Question on the 22nd instant,† that I am not prepared to make any statement on this subject.
    SIR ALBERT ROLLIT: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for
    † See page 591.
    † See page 891.
    1472
    the Colonies what, if any, were the conditions attaching to the South African War Contribution Loan of £30,000,000; were there any restrictions as to the period of issue; what was the exact nature of the guarantee, and who were the guarantors; and when is it proposed to issue the loan.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The offer to the late Colonial Secretary and the arrangement on behalf of the guaranteeing firms will be found at page 21 of Cd. 1552 and page 2 of Cd. 1895. As to the conditions, restrictions, nature of guarantee and names of guarantors, I would refer my hon. friend to Cd. 1895 and to the speech of my right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham on May 6th, § 1903. As to when it is proposed to issue the loan I am as yet unable to make any statement
    MR. McCRAE: Will the surviving guarantors be liable for the whole of the £10,000,000 if some of the guarantors, die, or are unable to meet their obligations?
    MR. LYTTELTON: I must ask for notice of that Question.
    MR. WHITLEYasked whether, in his speech of May 6th, 1903, the right hon. Member for West Birmingham did not say that the £35,000,000 which we had already advanced was conditional on and went along with the £30,000,000 which the Transvaal now showed no intention of paying.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The speech of my right hon. friend contained several conditions under which this war contribution was promised, and they appear in that speech. The suggestion the hon. Member has made is not a full or otherwise than a misleading account of the whole speech.
    MR. WHITLEY: Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that these words were used—"conditional on"—
    MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! The hon. Member cannot on this Question discuss what took place in a previous debate.
    §See (4) Debates, cxxi., 1522.
    MR. WHITLEY: But in his Answer the right hon. Gentleman refers to that speech.
    MR. SPEAKER: That is true, but it does not entitle the hon. Member to cross-examine a Minister as to its contents.
    DR. MACNAMARA: Will the Colonial Secretary recommend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to grant a similar indulgence to the income-tax payers at home.
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Transvaal Mining Profits
    MR. WHITLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state what were the declared profits of the Transvaal gold mines for the year ending December 31st, 1904; and what amount the Transvaal Treasury received on account of the profit tax for the same period.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The information desired for the calendar year 1904 has not reached me.
    MR. ROSE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state approximately the revenue derived by the Government of the Transvaal for the year ending December, 1904, from taxes imposed on gold mines and from taxes and its share of profits in respect of the Premier Diamond Mine, respectively.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The desired information for the calendar year 1904 has not reached me. The receipts from the profit tax on gold mines during the financial year July, 1903, to June, 1904, amounted to £343,014. No revenue has yet been derived from the Premier Diamond Mine. The Government is not entitled under the Ordinance to receive any share of the net produce of a mine for precious stones until the whole amount of capital with certain interest has been set off.

    Lascar Seamen's Conviction at Sydney.
    SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE: I beg to
    1474
    ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that, on the 22nd instant, ten Lascar seamen, forming part of the crew of the Orient Company's steamer "Ortona," were taken before a magistrate at Sydney, just as the vessel was on the point of leaving the port, on a charge of smuggling walking-canes valued at about sixpence each, which it was shown in evidence a Customs officer had induced them to sell him; that the magistrate, while obliged technically to convict them, imposed the minimum fine and denounced the charge as trivial; that the Orient Company, regarding the action as a malicious attempt on the part of the local authorities to compel it to desist from employing Lascar seamen on its vessels, paid the fine subject to appeal; and, if so, whether he will state what steps, if any, he intends taking in the matter.
    MR. LYTTELTON: I have no information as to the incident referred to by the hon. Member, but I will ask the Governor-General of Australia for a report on the subject.
    SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE: Will the right hon. Gentleman cable for information?
    MR. LYTTELTON: Yes.

    Lord Milner.
    MR. JOHN ELLIS: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Government have now decided to bring Lord Milner's tenure of office, as High Commissioner in South Africa, to a close; and, in that case, what date is it proposed to terminate it.
    MR. LYTTELTON: Neither now nor at any time have His Majesty's Government decided or wished to bring Lord Milner's tenure of office in South Africa to a close.

    Education in Ceylon
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will ascertain from the Governor of Ceylon whether it is practicable to adopt the suggestion of Mr. Howard, the present Director of

    1475
    Public Instruction, and establish central schools to serve more than one estate; and will he state the approximate cost of establishing schools under the grant-in-aid system on or near estates throughout the planting districts.
    MR. WEIR: I beg also to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will consider the expediency of recommending the Governor of Ceylon to appoint inspectors with a knowledge of Tamil to visit and report periodically on all existing schools on Ceylon estates, including the so-called line schools which received no Government grant.
    MR. LYTTELTON: The Governor has informed me that there is no intention of abandoning the proposal to group estates for school purposes where that is found to be a convenient course. He has appointed a Commission to deal with the whole subject of coolie education, and I have requested that their report may be submitted to me without undue delay. I have no doubt that the question of appointing inspectors with a knowledge of Tamil will be considered by the Commission.

    Lord Curzon.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who, on his departure from India, had, in accordance with statutory provisions, ipso facto vacated the position of Governor-General of India, was, for several months during his residence in this country and previous to his reappointment to the Governor-Generalship of India, practically discharging from this country the functions appertaining to the office of Viceroy, and directing and dictating the policy of the Indian Government in its controversy with the Imperial Government with reference to the Tibetan Expedition as to the terms of the treaty with Tibet; whether confidential communications between the India Office and the Acting Viceroy of India were open to the perusal of Lord Curzon when in this country; and whether there is any and, if so, what precedent for the active interference in the government and policy of India of a person holding no official position, and
    1476
    irresponsible to Parliament, and exempt from its criticism.
    THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. BRODRICK, Surrey, Guild-ford): It is not the case that Lord Curzon, while he was in this country, practically discharged the functions appertaining to the office of Viceroy. During that time His Majesty's Government were in frequent consultation with him on matters relating to India, including Tibet, and many confidential documents were shown to him; but as long as he held no official position he took no official part in the government of India. His Majesty's Government were glad to avail themselves of the experience which Lord Curzon had recently gained during the six years of his Viceroyalty, and it was obviously desirable that, as Viceroy-designate, he should be kept fully informed on current questions.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: When did Lord Curzon become Viceroy-designate? Before he did so, were not confidential communications between the Acting Viceroy and the Cabinet submitted to him?
    MR. BRODRICK: Lord Curzon became Viceroy-designate on the notification of his reappointment. I do not remember the precise date. His Majesty's Government are always glad to avail themselves of the experience of retired Viceroys, and the Viceroy-designate is kept fully apprised of all that is going on before he goes to India.

    Cost of British Garrison in Egypt.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of the fact that the charges made on the Government of Egypt for the maintenance of British troops have recently been increased from £E84,825 to £E97,000 (£100,000), will he state whether the British force has been in any way increased, and its present composition.
    THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Earl PERCY,): The Answer to the first paragraph is in the negative. The contribution from the Egyptian Exchequer

    1477
    has been fixed by agreement between the two Governments on the basis of the amount by which the cost of the garrison in Egypt exceeds the cost of its maintenance at home. Its present strength is as follows:—1 Battery Royal Field Artillery, 1 Battery Mountain Artillery, 1 Company Royal Engineers, 3 Battalions Infantry.

    Finance.
    MR. McCRAE: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what provision is being made to meet the balance of last year's deficit amounting to £1,500,000, for which no estimate was made in the Estimates of Expenditure for the present financial year.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, Worcestershire, E.): The hon. Member's Question cannot be answered until the accounts of this year are made up.

    London Unemployed.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he is now in a position to propose any steps whereby sufficient funds may be placed at the disposal of the Central London Unemployed Committee in order to enable that Committee to tide over the present period of distress.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. WALTER LONG, Bristol, S.): I am in communication with the Central Committee on this subject, and am awaiting some further information from them.

    Heavy Motor-Car Regulations.
    MR. GARDNER: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he has received from municipal or county councils, district councils, or other bodies or persons interested, objections to the heavy motor-car regulations; and, if so, from how many; and, in case of such objections having been received, what action does he propose to take.
    MR. WALTER LONG: Since the regulations were issued, I have received from the Board of Trade certain sugges
    1478
    tions for an alteration of the Order which have been submitted on behalf of some of the railway companies, and I am in communication with the Board of Trade on the subject. Besides this, the only objections that have reached me, since the issue of the regulations, have been from one county council, two metropolitan borough councils, two rural district councils, an association of jobmasters, and one private individual. These objections, so far as they have been stated, do not appear to me to be of a nature that I can entertain.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: Will the House have an opportunity of discussing these Orders?
    MR. WALTER LONG: I appointed a Committee, of which the right hon. Member for Somersetshire was Chairman, to deal with this question. They took evidence from the local authorities, and on their recommendation I issued the regulations.
    GENERAL LAURIE: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he has been requested by any municipal or other local authorities to receive deputations in reference to the regulations to be issued in regard to heavy motor-cars; if so, will he state whether he has consented to receive such deputations, and the date on which they will be received: and whether he will defer the bringing into force of the proposed regulations until he has ascertained the objections of the local authorities.
    MR. WALTER LONG: The Paddington Borough Council have recently asked me to receive a deputation on the subject of the regulations from various metropolitan borough councils. I have replied that in the first instance I shall be glad to receive the representations of the councils in writing. The regulations come into force to-morrow, and I cannot undertake to postpone their operation. A draft of them was circulated to the associations representing various classes of local authorities, and their observations were carefully considered before the regulations were issued.
    GENERAL LAURIE: Am I to understand that the regulations were circulated among the local authorities.
    MR. WALTER LONG: I did not say that. What I said was that the draft was sent to the associations representing the local authorities. As my hon. and gallant friend knows, municipalities have recognised associations to represent them, and it is our practice to send, not to the hundreds of authorities throughout the country, but to the representative body.
    GENERAL LAURIE: Am I to understand that deputations from the local authorities will still be received, and that their recommendations will be considered.
    MR. WALTER LONG: My hon. friend is not to understand that. After I have received the representations of the councils in writing, I shall, if I think it worth their while and mine, be glad to receive a deputation, but I make no promise.

    Australian Mail Service.
    SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAGGREE: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General what is the amount of the subsidy paid by Australia for the carriage of mails under the new contract; whether it has resulted in a curtailment of the postal service carried on previously, and, if so, for what reasons; and if the service is now carried on upon a reduced scale, is he prepared, in view of the prejudicial effect it must have on the volume of correspondence between Great Britian and Australia, both for commercial purposes and for the object of promoting the unity of the Empire, to take any, and, if any, what action in the matter.
    THE POSTMASTER - GENERAL (Lord STANLEY, Lancashire, West-houghton): The Australian Commonwealth makes no contribution to the subsidy payable to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company under the new contract which recently came into operation, providing, inter alia, for one of the two fortnightly mail services to and from Australia of which the other was formerly carried by the Orient Steam
    1480
    Navigation Company. Up to the end of last month the Australian Government; contributed its quota towards each of the two subsidies. But the Commonwealth Legislature decided not to support, under any fresh contract, any under-taking which admitted of the employment; of coloured labour on board the packets; and the Imperial Government has therefore provided its share of the Australian mail service in the shape of one fortnightly service to be paid for out of Imperial funds, leaving the Commonwealth Government to arrange for another alternating service, making its own terms with the contractors. His Majesty's Government has done all that I can rightly be demanded of it, and I do not think that any further representations would be of assistance to the colonial authorities at present, especially as I have no reason to suppose that they have abandoned the endeavour to obtain a fortnightly service. In the weeks in which no British Mail Packet starts for Australia, mails will be sent from this country by such other advantageous opportunities as offer, and due notice of them will be given to the public.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: Was it part of the bargain that the Australian Commonwealth should pay the whole cost of one fortnightly service and that we should pay for the other?
    LORD STANLEY: We were to contribute one-half of the cost, and we did so by sending a mail every fortnight.
    MR. CATHCART WASON: Is there no burden on them?
    LORD STANLEY: No.

    Court of Criminal Appeal.
    MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, as the results of inquiry in the case of Adolf Beck, he can state if it is intended to establish a Criminal Court of Appeal; and, if so, when.
    THE SECRETARY of STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. AKERS-DOUGLAS, Kent, St. Augustine's): A Bill has been introduced, in another

    1481
    place, to amend the law relating to the Court for the consideration of Crown Cases Reserved, which already exists as a Court of Appeal on questions of law in criminal cases. This Bill will carry out the recommendations of the Master of the Rolls Committee as to legislation.
    MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Why was not this Bill introduced in this House? Why was it brought in in another place the Members of which are triable in a different way and not subject to this grievance?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Employment of Children By-Laws.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state for how many and which towns the Home Office has given sanction to by-laws under the Employment of Children (1903) Act; and for how many and which towns proposed by-laws are now awaiting Home Office sanction.
    MR. AKERS " DOUGLAS: By-laws under the Act have been confirmed, and are now in force for the county of Gloucester, and for the following cities and boroughs:—Birmingham, Blackburn, Bootle, Brighton, Carlisle, Doncaster, Dudley, Hornsey, Hull, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Plymouth, St. Helens, Swindon, Walsall, Warrington, Worcester. Draft by-laws have been submitted by fifty other local authorities. In sixteen cases the by-laws have been provisionally approved, and are awaiting confirmation in accordance with the procedure prescribed by Section 4 of the Act. In nearly all of the remaining cases I am awaiting the replies of local authorities to my inquiries and suggestions.

    Boys in the Mercantile Navy.
    MR. CHARLES McARTHUR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will state the number of boys carried and the amount allowed out of the light dues for their carriage under the boy sailor scheme of the Merchant Shipping (Mercantile Marine Fund) Act, 1898, for each
    1482
    year during which that scheme has been in force; and whether, having regard to the national importance which attaches to the training of boys for the mercantile marine and as a reserve for the Royal Navy, he can state the intentions of the Government in pursuance of that object when the present arrangement expires.
    MR. CHARLES McARTHUR: I beg also to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will say what amount was allowed off the light dues in respect of boy sailors for the year which ended March 31st, 1904, and whether this amount has been deducted from £497,240 1s. 5d. shown in the last lighthouse accounts for dues collected; and, if so, whether, in view of the fact that the Lighthouse Fund will be increased by this sum after March 31st when the boy-sailor scheme expires, he would reconsider his decision with regard to making a reduction in the light dues.
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR, Leeds, Central): Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to answer his two Questions together. I regret that I am unable to state the number of boys actually carried each year under the boy-sailor scheme, as that information can only be ascertained by examining the record of each boy year by year. I shall, however, be happy to furnish my hon. friend with a statement showing the number of boys enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve, and the allowances paid in respect of them. The total number of boys enrolled up to the 24th instant is 4,326, and the allowances paid up to the end of 1903–4, the last year for which the figures are available, amount to £13,653 16s. 2d., the amount paid during 1903–4 being £4,533 10s. 3d. Those allowances are, in accordance with the provisions of the Act, paid out of moneys provided by Parliament, and are not a charge upon the General Lighthouse Fund, so that no increase in that fund will result from the cessation of the allowances. The Board of Trade, in conjunction with the Admiralty, have considered the question of making some other arrangements upon the expiration, on the 31st proximo, of Section 6 of the Act under which the existing scheme was

    1483
    inaugurated; but, as at present advised, I do not propose to take any further steps in the matter.
    MR. CHARLES McARTHUR: Is it not provided by Parliament that the abatement shall come out of the light dues?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: No, Sir.
    MR. CHARLES McARTHUR: May I ask whether any provision has been made to meet the case of the boys already enrolled, and who have entered upon certain obligations? Are they now to lose their employment?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: I must ask for notice of that Question.

    Underfed Children.
    DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Board of Education whether any local education authorities have either petitioned or forwarded resolutions to the Board of Education in favour of such an extension of their powers as would enable them, out of the funds at their disposal, to provide food for underfed children on the lines suggested in the unanimous recommendation of the Physical Deterioration (1904) Committee; and whether, if any, he will state the names of such authorities.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Sir WILLIAM ANSON, Oxford University): The Board has received resolutions on the lines referred to in the Question from the following three local education authorities; in May, 1904, from Reading County Borough, in December last from Sheffield County Borough, and in January last from Tottenham Urban District.
    DR. MACNAMARA: Will the Board of Education inform the local authorities that it is not proposed to take any action at present on the lines suggested in their memorial?
    SIR WILLIAM ANSON: It has not been suggested to the local authorities that any such action will be taken.

    Water Supply for Ross-shire Public Schools.
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate whether he is aware that the medical officer of health for Ross and Cromarty in his last report directs special attention to the necessity for a suitable supply of pure water for the public schools; and, seeing that out of fifty-three schools on the mainland of Ross-shire only thirteen have water laid on to the premises, will he consider the expediency of taking such steps as may be necessary to secure a suitable supply for the remaining forty schools.
    THE LORD-ADVOCATE (Mr. SCOTT DICKSON, Glasgow, Bridgton): The Local Government Board have this question fully in view, and have been in communication with the school boards through the local authorities concerned. The results are so far satisfactory and the matter will be further pressed.

    Norwegian Trawlers in Dornoch Forth
    MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Lord-Advocate whether he is aware that trawlers registered in Norway, but fishing from Grimsby with English fishing masters and crews, have recently been detected fishing within the territorial water of the Dornoch Forth, and will he state whether the fact of the captains of these vessels being Norwegian, though resident all the year round in Grimsby, places them on a different footing to purely British trawlers, and exempts them from prosecution for fishing within territorial waters, unless they are within the three-mile limit.
    MR. SCOTT DICKSON: I have had information to the effect stated in the first part of the hon. Member's Question, subject to the qualification that in certain cases the trawlers were fishing outside the three-mile limit. The legal point raised in the latter part of the hon. Member's Question is at present pending in the Scottish Courts, and I must, therefore, refrain from expressing any opinion upon it.
    CAPTAIN ELLICE: Will the right hon. Gentleman lay on the Table the correspondences last

    1485
    year between His Majesty"s Government and the representative of Christiania?
    MR. SCOTT DICKSON: I must ask for notice of that.

    Longford Magistracy.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state the number of appointments to the magisterial bench made in county Longford during the year 1904, and say how many of such appointments were conferred on Catholics.
    THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. ATKINSON, Londonderry, N., for Mr. WYNDHAM): Two, both of whom are believed to be Protestants.

    Expenditure on Police Removals in County Longford.
    MR. J. P. FARRELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state the cost put upon the rates of the county Longford for the past five years for charges incurred in the removal of policemen from one police station to another; what necessity there was for such removals on the ground either of disciplinary or other regulations; and will a direction be given that in future such removals will only be made for misconduct and at the expense of the police themselves.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): The Question appears to be based on a misconception. No expense to the rates has been incurred by the removal of policemen under the circumstances mentioned.

    Irish National School Teachers' Pension Fund.
    MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will explain why pension stock in connection with pension fund of national school teachers has been sold at a great loss, while the yearly income has exceeded the expenditure; and why, seeing that the Act of 1879 establishing the pension fund specially provided for quinquennial revision, and that the first revision occurred in 1885, when the fund was reported as flourishing
    1486
    and benefits to teachers increased, the next revision of which any authentic account was given did not occur until 1897–8, when the fund was reported as £1,200,000 to the bad.
    THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. VICTOR CAVENDISH, Derbyshire, W.): Pension stock is occasionally sold in order to enable payments to be made at a time when the receipts of the fund fall short of the amount necessary for such payments. No considerable loss has been incurred on such sales, and it is probable that the alternative of keeping large balances uninvested, with consequent loss of interest, would prove more expensive. The point raised by the hon. Member will, however, not be lost sight of. Quinquennial valuations of the find were duly made for 1890 and 1895. The hon. Member will find a reference to them in paragraph 1 of the Report of the Committee of 1897, which was laid before Parliament in that year (Parliamentary Paper C. 8471 of 1897).
    MR. SLOAN: Why has the national school teachers' benefit been reduced while this fund has been growing at the rate of £40,000 a year.
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: I must ask for notice of that.

    Dundrum Asylum Shoemaker.
    MR. MOONEY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he will state for what offence Shoemaker Attendant James M'Keough, of His Majesty's asylum, Dundrum, was called on to resign on July 11th, 1903 and why he was not allowed an opportunity of defending himself; and if, having regard to his state of health, he will grant him an inquiry to clear his character and obtain redress.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): Three inquiries on oath were held by the Inspectors of Lunatic Asylums into the conduct of this attendant, at each of which he was afforded every opportunity of defending himself. As a result of the third inquiry he was called upon to resign on the grounds of insubordinate conduct and failure to satisfactorily discharge his

    1487
    duties. He refused to resign and was dismissed. It is not proposed to direct a further inquiry in the matter as suggested.
    MR. MOONEY: Is it not the fact that this man, after ten and a-half years service, was dismissed on a secret report, and that he demanded a public inquiry which has not yet been held?
    MR. ATKINSON: I do not know whether the inquiry was public or private. It was held according to the rules of the Lunacy Department.
    MR. HAYDEN: What was the act of insubordination?
    [No Answer was returned.]
    MR. CROOKS: Was the man dismissed because he was physically unfit.
    MR. ATKINSON: No, for insubordination and improper discharge of his duties.

    Kerry County Council Audit.
    MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the county council of Kerry complained of the report and conduct of the auditor, Mr. Cyril R. Browne, in his recent audit of their accounts; that the auditor passed or approved of the assessment of the purchase price of the Limerick and Kerry Railway money received by the council, and subsequently made a private report to the Valuation Office with reference thereto, and that the county council has been refused a copy of the report; and, if so, whether it will now be furnished; whether the auditor's object was to bring under the notice of the Valuation Office the fact that this money was credited to the ordinary and not to the separate charges estimate for railway guarantees so that the Valuation Office might deduct these receipts from the assessment by the council for railway and harbour charges, and thus reduce the council's claim for refund under Section 58 (4) of the Local Government Act, 1898; and whether, seeing that the result so far has been to deprive this county of a sum of £480 already deducted from the Government
    1488
    grants, he will say what action, if any, he will take in the matter.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): The county council made a complaint of the character stated. When the first transactions concerning the Great Southern and Western Railway Company were before the auditor he found that a portion of the purchase price paid by the company was properly applied in relief of the separate rates in respect of railway and harbour charges. Subsequently, however, he found that the council had changed its procedure and had applied a further portion of this money, not in relief of the separate rates mentioned, but of the ordinary district rate leviable off the guaranteeing areas. This would have resulted in the council obtaining a larger sum from the local taxation account than that to which the council was legally entitled. The rate in consequence was wrongfully assessed. The auditor made no report to the Commissioner of Valuation, but he did bring the facts under the notice of the Local Government Board and a copy of his report to the latter Department was forwarded by the Board to the Commissioner of Valuation.

    Captain Caldbeck's Estate, Queen's County.
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the estate of Captain Caldbeck, Ballacolla, Queen's County, at present before the Estates Commissioners for sale, contains out of a total of 470 acres 241 acres of untenanted land, and that the landlord and his agent have parcelled out the untenanted land amongst business men occupying independent positions, large farmers, and the bailiff of the estate; and, if so, in view of the fact that there are a number of small holdings on this and adjoining estates requiring enlargement, he will state whether the Estates Commissioners are prepared to sanction this sale.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): This estate has been referred to the inspector, whose report has not yet been made. The Commissioners are not, at present, in a position to make any statement on the matters alleged in the Question.
    MR. DELANY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether an inspection of the Caldbeck Estate, Ballacolla, Queen's county, has yet been made; and, if so, will he furnish a copy of the report of the inspector.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): The inspector has not yet made his report on this estate. The reply to the second inquiry is in the negative. The inspectors' reports are confidential documents, made for the information of the Commissioners, and cannot be produced or laid on the Table of the House.

    New Irish Local Government Orders.
    MR. CULLINAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received resolutions from the General Council of County Councils and the majority of county, district, and urban councils protesting against the enforcement of the new local government Orders; and whether, in face of the opposition to their adoption, he will consider the advisability of conferring with representatives of those elective bodies with a view to so modifying those Orders as to make them acceptable.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): The resolution of the General Council did not protest against the new Orders being put in force. It merely took exception to the old Orders being rescinded without consultation with the bodies immediately concerned. But it has already been pointed out that this was not the case.
    MR. CULLINAN: Have not the urban and district councils throughout Ireland generally objected to this new Order? Are the Government going to enforce it in face of that?
    MR. ATKINSON: I have no further information on the subject.
    MR. CULLINAN: The right hon. Gentleman will hear a great deal more about it.
    MR. FLAVIN: Who is the Local Government inspector who drafted the Orders?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    Clause 6 of The Local Government (Ireland) Amendment Act, 1902.
    MR. CULLINAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received resolutions from the General Council of County Councils, county, and district councils asking for the repeal of Clause 6 of The Local Government (Ireland) Amendment Act, 1902; and whether, in view of this demand, he will take steps to have the clause repealed.
    MR. ATKINSON (for Mr. WYNDHAM): Such resolutions have been received. The necessity for this section of the Act was explained by my right hon. friend in the Committee Stage of the measure on December 12th, † 1902. The Government are not prepared, for the reasons then stated, to agree to the repeal of the section.
    MR. CULLINAN: Was not this important alteration made in an autumn session called for the special purpose of proceeding with the Education Bill and behind the backs of the Irish Members? Will the Government reconsider the matter?
    MR. ATKINSON: According to my recollection the Irish Members fully discussed this matter on the Committee stage of the Bill.

    Drainage of the Riffey.
    MR. J. P. FARRELLI beg to ask the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Board of Works, whether any steps have yet been taken by that Department to form a drainage board for the district of Cam and Clonwhelan, through which the River Riffey flows, in which in consequence of flooding in 1903 two men lost their lives, and which is a source of loss to the farmers of this district.
    MR. VICTOR CAVENDISH: The Board of Works have no power to take any steps in the direction of forming a drainage district except upon the receipt of a petition from persons interested, who must submit the necessary maps and plans. No petition has been received in the case of the localities referred to.
    † See (4) Debates, cxxi., 1038.

    Sir Antony MacDonnell.
    MR. WHITLEY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he will lay upon the Table the letter, following a (telegram, in which he signified to the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant his approval of the proposed appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell.
    THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.): As the hon. Gentleman very well knows, I should not think of laying any communication between myself and a colleague.

    Marine Insurance (Codification) Bill.
    MR. CHARLES McARTHUR: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether, having regard to the expressions of opinion which have been addressed to him by shipping, mercantile, and insurance bodies in favour of the Marine Insurance (Codification) Bill, he will re-introduce and endeavour to pass this measure through its various stages at an early period of the session.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes, Sir, I understand that the Lord Chancellor hopes to pass in another place this practically uncontroversial Bill. It may possibly be advisable to bring it in first in this House, but I will take the course which will give it the best chance of passing into law, and I really think that there ought to be no serious obstacle in the way.

    Aliens in Ireland.
    MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether the Royal Commission of 1903 on Alien Immigration took evidence with regard to the influx of aliens into Ireland; and, if not, will he, in view of legislation this session, take some means of obtaining evidence concerning Ireland before the introduction of the Aliens Bill.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: In answer to my hon. friend, I have to say that no special investigations were made by this Commission into the subject of alien immigration into Ireland, and I understand that no evidence was given before the Home Office which would indicate that there are evils connected with alien
    1492
    immigration in that part of the United Kingdom. But any evidence which my hon. friend has to give to the Home Office on that subject will be gratefully received.
    MR. SLOAN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that an offer to give evidence was made to the Commission, and they refused to accept it.
    MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Well, I was not aware of that, and my hon. friend is aware that I have no control over a Commission. What evidence they shall take or not take rests in their own discretion.
    MR. DELANY: Is it not a fact that the only undesirable aliens we have in Ireland are the men who are sent over from this country to govern Ireland against the will of the people of the country?
    [No Answer was returned.]

    NEW MEMBER SWORN.
    John Sutherland Harmood - Banner, esquire, for the Parliamentary Borough of Liverpool (Everton Division).

    SELECTION (UNOPPOSED BILL COM- MITTEES) (PANEL).
    Mr. WODEHOUSE reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had selected the following eight Members to be the Panel to serve on Unopposed Bill Committees under Standing Order No. 109: Mr. Brynmor Jones, Mr. Carvill, Mr. H. D. Greene, Mr. Paulson, Mr. Parker Smith, Mr. Worsley-Taylor, Mr. Crombie, and Mr. Bousfield.
    Report to lie upon the Table.

    SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES) (CHAIRMEN'S PANEL).
    Mr. WODEHOUSE reported from the Committee of Selection; That they had selected the following six Members to be the Chairmen's Panel and to serve as Chairmen of the two Standing Committees to be appointed under Standing Order No. 49:—Mr. John Ellis, Sir Thomas Esmonde, Sir James Fergusson,

    1493
    Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, Mr. Laurence Hardy, and Mr. Stuart-Wortley.
    Report to lie upon the Table.

    SELECTION (PRIVATE LEGISLATION PROCEDURE (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1899) (COMMISSIONERS).
    Mr. WODEHOUSEreported from the Committee of Selection; That, in pursuance of the provisions of The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, they had selected the following fifteen Members to form the Parliamentary Panel of Members of this House to act as Commissioners:—Mr. Charles Hobhouse, Mr. Brynmor Jones, Mr. A. K. Loyd, Mr. McCrae, Mr. William Maxwell, Mr. Pym, Mr. Parker Smith, Sir Walter Thorburn, Sir John Tuke, Mr. Levy, Mr. James Reid, Mr. Eugene Wason, Mr. John Wilson (Falkirk), Mr. Wylie, and Mr. Charles Douglas.
    Report to lie upon the Table.

    MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
    That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to amend the Law relating to the falsification of Seamen's and Soldiers' Certificates of Service or Discharge, and to false statements made, used, or given in connection with Entry or Enlistment into His Majesty's Naval, Military, or Marine Forces." [Seamen's and Soldiers' False Characters Bill [Lords.]
  NEW BILLS,
    MERCHANT SHIPPING ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.
    "To amend the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1900," presented by Mr. Louis Sinclair; supported by Sir Frederick Carne Rasch; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 67.]
    MINISTER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY BILL.
    "'To establish a Bureau for a Minister of Commerce and Industry," presented by Mr. Louis Sinclair; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 68.]
    TRAWLERS' CERTIFICATES SUSPENSION BILL.
    "To enable Courts to suspend the Certificates of Trawlers convicted of illegal trawling,"' presented by Mr. Weir; supported by Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Leveson-Gower, Mr. John Dewar, Mr. Harmsworth, Sir Arthur Bignold, Mr. Cathcart Wason, and Mr. Black: to be read a second time upon Wednesday, March 8th, and to be printed. [Bill 69.]
    CLOSING OF LICENSED PREMISES (CHRISTMAS DAY) (IRELAND) BILL.
    "To amend the Law as to the hours of closing of Licensed Premises on Christmas Day in Ireland," presented by Mr. Nannetti; supported by Mr. Harrington. Mr. Mooney, Mr. Field, Mr. Charles Devlin, Mr. Sloan, Mr. O'Shaughnessy, Mr. Joyce, Mr. Crean, Mr. Waldron, Mr. O'Mara, and Mr. John Gordon; to be read a second time upon Monday, March 20th, and to be printed. [Bill 70.]

    KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
    Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment [February 27th] to Main Question [February 14th], ''That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as followeth:—
    "Most Gracious Sovereign,
    "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the gracious Speech which Your Majesty has Addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. Mount.)
    Which Amendment was—
    "At the end of the Question, to add the words, 'But we humbly represent to Your Majesty that Your Majesty's Government in committing the country to the policy of the Brussels Sugar Convention have inflicted heavy losses upon trade, diminished employment of labour, enormously increased the cost of a necessary food to consumers, without any compensatory advantage; and we humbly submit to Your Majesty that these evil results call for an immediate remedy; and that the Convention should be denounced at the earliest possible moment.'"—(Mr. Kearley.)
    Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
    ME. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he did not think it would be a matter of surprise to anyone that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham deemed it to be his duty to come and defend the Sugar Convention Act. It was the first great object lesson of his policy—the new policy which he was trying to inculcate in this country. But there was one very significant fact, which was the most significant of all, and that was his attempt to disclaim the honour of initiating the Sugar Convention. A few years ago it was regarded as the inauguration of a new policy which was to revive our drooping industries. It was simply the first step to convince the country of the necessity for adapting it to other industries. Two years after the Convention, however, the right hon. Gentleman came down to the House, and at the beginning of his speech made it perfectly clear that he had absolutely nothing to do with the paternity of it. He offered the laurel wreath to the President of the Board of Trade, but apparently that right hon. Gentleman was not particularly delighted when the suggestion was made. On the contrary, he appeared to feel that the responsibility for the Act rested with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. It was he who was responsible for this monstrosity, and it was he who ought to have the scarlet letter on his breast. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman was in some respects very characteristic of his later methods. First, there was the scorn for statistics. He poured contempt on them, and especially on official statistics. They were not reliable. The statistics which the right hon. Gentleman believed in were bounty-fed statistics, and that was rather inconsistent with his position in regard to sugar. The Board of Trade statistics were crude, and it was necessary to set up a sort of statistical-refining industry. That the right hon. Gentleman had done in the name of the Tariff Reform League. Before presenting them to the country it was necessary to purify the statistics of the grossness of free-trade heresy which they naturally possessed when culled from the free-trade field of industry and commerce by Board of Trade officials. Again, the right hon. Gentlemen omitted from his facts every element which was
    1496
    relevant. He carried that so far as to omit a relevant part of his poetical quotation on the previous evening—after he quoted from "Rejected Addresses." He evidently regarded that as a congenial study at the present moment, and he quoted the line, "Who fills the butchers' shop with large blue flies?" but he omitted the most important part of that quotation, the line which preceded in, namely, "Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise?" As he treated his poetry, so he treated his facts. Let them take, for instance, the manner in which he treated the facts concerning the price of sugar. That went to the root of the whole matter. He said, "Why, the price of sugar on the Continent is not higher than it is here." What he omitted, however, was the very important fact that, since the Sugar Convention had been adopted, the price of sugar had gone down" one-half on the Continent, whilst it had been almost doubled in this country. One would have thought that that was a very important element of the fact. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about going to the country to talk to a working-class audience, but if it were his idea to present his case to a working-class audience in that fashion, he could quite understand why most of the members of the working-class audience arrived at the hall in motor-cars. The right hon. Gentleman said, "I am quite willing to present this thing to the country. I have a great belief in the common sense of the people." That belief was not shared in evidently by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, otherwise why were they postponing the appeal to the people?
    Let them take some more facts. Let them look at the arguments at issue when that Act was before the House. He would put them broadly. Hon. Members sitting on his own side of the House said that the result of the Sugar Convention Act would be to increase the price of sugar, while the Prime Minister denied that, and so also, he believed, did the President of the Board of Trade and the Secretary to the Board of Trade as well.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BONAR LAW, Glasgow, Blackfriars): No.
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he noticed that the hon. Gentleman repudiated it. He doubted whether the repudiation would have been so emphatic had the question been put to him when the Bill was passing through that House two years ago. At any rate, the Prime Minister denied that the effect of the Act would be to increase the price of sugar, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham also said so. He said, indeed, that the price of sugar would go down in this country. The second point at issue was that, while the Government and their supporters said that another result of the Sugar Convention would be to give increased employment, the Opposition, on the other hand, declared that it would decrease it. Now they had had two years experience of the working of the Act, and what did they find? As a matter of fact, could it be denied that as a result of the operation of the Sugar Convention Act employment had decreased in the sugar industries, and that something like 15,000 persons had been thrown altogether out of employment, while about 50,000 or practically 50 per cent. of the total of those engaged in the industries were out on half-time for some weeks at any rate? So far from the price of sugar going down it had increased by something like 100 per cent., and thus it would be seen that events had justified up to the hilt all the predictions made by hon. Members on his side of the House. What did that mean? (That a prima facie case was established by the facts against the Sugar Convention Act. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had endeavoured to explain away those facts, and, indeed, there was no one more competent at explaining or ignoring them than he was. The right hon. Gentleman said his explanation of the increase in the price was the drought, and that was the explanation which was current on the other side of the House generally. He, of course, did not deny that drought under certain circumstances—Convention or no Convention—was an element in raising the price, but all artificial restrictions upon trade aggravated the natural evils. He would take an illustration given by the right hon. Gentleman on the previous night. The right hon. Gentleman then
    1498
    took the case of corn. Corn last year went up 5s. per quarter, and the right hon. Gentleman said that was due to the short crop in the United States of America. Yes, but supposing there had been a Convention excluding Russian and Argentine corn from this country; supposing that, in addition to the American drought, they had had the Birmingham blight, the increase in price would not have been 5s.; it would have been nearer 50s. The same thing applied to other cases. Let them take the onion market. There was a shortage of onions, and this was really the reductio ad absurdum. No doubt there was an increase in the price of onions. But suppose there had been a Convention excluding Spanish onions from this country, surely prices would have gone up much higher than they had done. The same applied to cotton. There was a shortage in that crop which affected prices, but if we had excluded Egyptian cotton, would not that exclusion, in addition to the shortage in the American crop, have produced absolutely prohibitive prices which might have ruined the cotton industry?
    There was another circumstance which the right hon. Gentleman overlooked. The Convention had cheapened sugar on the Continent, and had thereby increased the consumption of sugar there. That was a not unimportant element when they were dealing with the great free-trade controversy. Cheapening an article meant increased consumption. The cheapening in the price of sugar had, he believed, increased the consumption by 800,000 tons on the Continent. In France it had practically doubled consumption, and prices had gone down from the very day that the Convention came into operation by nearly one-and-a-half. He did not think anyone could challenge the proposition that the Convention had decreased the price of sugar on the Continent, and that that depression of price had had the effect of increasing the consumption. Then he came to the second element. The price here had undoubtedly been affected. He knew it was stated that the difference amounted to only about £2,500,000, but that was a very considerable sum. It was £2,500,000 practically contributed by foreigners to a British industry; we had been,

    1499
    in fact, making the foreigners pay that amount. Let hon. Members look at the statistics for the present year. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said the increase in the cost was very largely due to the middleman. Of course that was one of the evils of increasing the cost of an article by artificial means; it meant increasing the profits all along the line. But the increase was not solely due to the middleman. Let them look at the statistics for the last month. According to the Board of Trade Returns, we imported into this country the same amount of sugar as in 1903 and 1904, but the difference in price represented a sum of £800,000 in one month. As he found that the quantity imported in January was practically the average for the whole year, it meant that if we kept sugar up to its present price—and it might, indeed, go up still higher—this country would actually lose something like £9,000,000 in the course of a year. Was not that a very important factor?
    It was not merely the increased consumption of foreign countries; it was the exclusion from our markets of the sugar from Russia and Argentina and some other countries. It was stated by a great authority on this subject that the amount of sugar that came from Russia—not merely directly from Russia but through German ports before the Convention—was 100,000 tons per year. The amount from the Argentine was something like 40,000 or 50,000 tons per year. What did the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham say? He said hon. Members forgot one elementary business principle, namely, that if we fell short by a small quantity in our supply, the increase of price was quite out of proportion to the shortage in supply. But the same thing applied to a small surplus. Supposing they wanted 1,000 tons and there were only 900 tons available the increase of the price might be double though the deficiency might be only one-tenth. There never was a greater free-trade argument, and why on earth so clever a controversialist should have introduced it into the argument in favour of the, Sugar Convention completely baffled him. In the very year in which there was a shortage
    1500
    in the crop they excluded 150,000 tons of sugar which they had been in the habit of getting from the Argentine and from Russia, and the result had been to increase the price enormously; it had, in fact, almost doubled it here while it had depressed prices abroad. That was what the Convention had done, and in doing so it had doubled the price of raw material for us, while it had halved the price of raw material for our competitors—that was to say, we were four times worse off in competing with foreign countries than we were before the Convention.
    And what had been the effect on employment? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said that in 1889 certain confectioners came to the Board of Trade and said "The price of sugar has gone up, and we ask you to abolish bounties if you can." The right hon. Gentleman was the last man who ought to taunt anybody with opinions he held fifteen or twenty years ago. He believed the right hon. Gentleman had changed every opinion he had held, except possibly his opinion of the Prime Minister. Having had fifteen years more experience of bounties, these confectioners had come to the conclusion that they were a benefit to their industry. He had in his hand a letter given to him by an hon. friend from a firm who, he thought, circulated toffee the other day to Members of the House of Commons. They said—
    "We employ one quarter less hands at present than previously, and both our factories are running short time. Last year our turnover dropped £30,000."
    The letter went on—
    "We are maintaining an export trade by selling without profit; that is to say, we are dumping."
    The same tale of reduced profits and reduced employment for workmen was told in regard to other trades dependent on sugar, such as jam factories and mineral water factories.
    SIR GEORGE BARTLEY: What is the price of sugar delivered next autumn?
    MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he was told by his hon. friend the Member for

    1501
    Islington that it was double what it was when the Convention came into force. He hoped that increase would satisfy the hon. Member, who would have done better not to ask the question. The Government had not abolished bounties; they had only secured a transfer of bounties which had benefited us by enabling us to get sugar cheaper than any country in the world. The surtax on sugar products had been practically turned into bounties to other countries. The sugar industries had been handed over to a Commission representing our great rivals—a Commission just as impartial as the Tariff Reform Commission—and we had armed that Commission with a power to destroy those industries. There never was such folly. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said the Opposition had characterised the Government's action in this matter as nefarious. That was not the word. It was "egregious." We had entered into a Conspiracy with our trade rivals to rob our own warehouses. That was an offence for which no jury would convict a Minister. They would more probably cause him to be detained during His Majesty's pleasure. It was not folly: it was stupidity—not perhaps wanton—but the Government were blind in entering into it. They had given way to pressure from the right hon. Gentleman. He was then in the heyday of his power. He had won two elections for them; they were looking forward to winning another. They thought he brought them luck. He was, in the words of George Eliot, their crooked sixpence. He made the mistake of insisting on being taken out of the Government profits and being put on the counter on his own intrinsic value, and, of course, he lost by it. The right hon. Gentleman said truly the Convention had stopped fluctuations. That was perfectly true. Price used to go up and down; there was now no fluctuation, there was a constant rise. Of four elements effecting price, crops, demand abroad, freights, and bounty, the last was the only one that was certain, and losing that, the right hon. Gentleman contended, would stop fluctuations.
    In suggesting that bounties on beet were destroying the sugar-cane industry, the right hon. Gentleman had not the slightest
    1502
    regard to facts. Cane sugar had doubled in the last twenty years, and in the last five had increased by 1,000,000 tons without regard to the Convention. It had not increased in the West Indies generally. It had increased in Java, where it was produced by Chinese labour. The right hon. Gentleman's partiality for Chinese labour, he thought, had led him into this blunder. What on earth had this to do with the fiscal question? asked the right hon. Gentleman. It had everything to do with it. It was a warning to the people of this country not to attempt interference with trade by artificial means of this character. He denied that the free-traders were supporting bounties. The bounties were not theirs. The right hon. Gentleman's policy was to tax the foreigner; but the free-trader, instead of taxing the foreigner, allowed him by these bounties to tax himself for our benefit. This Sugar Convention had exposed the miracles of a false prophet, and if the Prime Minister in partnership was to divide the profits he should share the loss. The hon. Member for Salisbury, on the previous night, said that nobody liked taxes. He feared the hon. Member was not an orthodox member of the Tariff Reform League, for the very essence of the policy of that league was that our industry should be manured with taxation, and that taxation was the real road to prosperity. The Secretary to the Board of Trade had asked, in his eloquent speech on the Second Reading of the Convention Bill, what consolation it was to the men thrown out of employment in Greenock to say that the jam industries of Dundee were prospering. Might he ask him now what consolation it was for the 15,000 men and women thrown out of employment in these sugar industries to know that a few hundreds had been added to those employed in the refining industries of Greenock and elsewhere? Every prophecy from the advocates of the Convention had failed. The Secretary to the Board of Trade, in his speech on the Convention, taunted the Leader of the Opposition and said—
    "Our industries are submerged by the waves of foreign competition, and in the interval, when there is a receding wave, he is found clinging shivering to the rock of free-trade principles."
    Had the waves subsided? Had competition gone down? There had been

    1503
    no receding of the waves; they were increasing; and the hon. Gentleman had helped in the blasting of the rock.
    MR. LAWRENCEsaid that the main argument of hon. Members opposite appeared to be that the prophecies made when the Sugar Convention was before the House had been falsified. The statement that there had been a rise in the price of sugar in consequence of the Sugar Convention was incorrect. The price of sugar at the time of the Convention was below the cost of production, and it was to remedy that state of things that the Convention was called into existence. What they said, and what he, knowing something of the matter, would reaffirm, was that ten years after the passing of the Convention the average price of sugar, taking one year with another, would not exceed the average price before the Convention [An HON. MEMBER: How do you know?] He did not pretend to say he was an absolute prophet, but he maintained that the Convention was certain to call into existence a greater area of land fit for the cultivation of sugar, and the greater the area the more certain would be the produce. To follow up this argument, the more the produce the better it would be for the consumer and the worse it would be for the "rings." Some hon. Members had departed from the strict wording of the Amendment, and had thought fit to tax the West Indian planter with various misdemeanours in respect of cultivation, impecuniosity, and lack of labour. There never was a more unjust analogy stated to the House than the hon. Member for Devonport's attempt to compare the planters of Java with the planters of the West Indies. It was perfectly well known that in Java sugar was grown under a system of serfdom, and was the product of forced labour. As to the American plantations in the Phillipines, Cuba, or Honolulu, did the hon. Member for Devonport know that the planters had a great advantage in entering the American market? Had he ever tried to import a ton of sugar into New York? Did he not know that the protective duty against the British planter was 40 per cent., while these American rivals
    1504
    were thriving under the genial influences of a wholly different fiscal system?
    The hon. Member for Carnarvon had laid stress upon the fact that Russian sugar had been excluded from our markets. He thought fit to compare the exclusion of Russian and Argentine corn from these markets with the exclusion of sugar. But whereas corn from Russia and the Argentine bulked largely in the whole import, the sugar from those two countries was quite infinitesimal. The hon. Member for Carnarvon lamented the exclusion of Russian sugar, but last year the drought prevailed in Russia as much as on the Continent, and the crop was short by 250,000 tons. Therefore, whatever figure imports of Russian sugar might have bulked at in 1903, the chances were that under a drought the quantity would not have bulked so large in 1904. Whereas the import of sugar into this country was commonly 6,500,000 tons, out of that big total no less than 5,448,000 tons had hitherto been beet sugar. Last year there was an extensive drought practically spreading over the whole of central Europe from where our beet supplies were drawn. Hon. Members opposite appeared to think that that was a satisfactory condition of things for the British consumer, but as a matter of fact we were practically putting all our eggs into one basket; quite independent of any injustice that might be done to our fellow-subjects beyond the seas.
    The hon. Member for Chippenham. he supposed, was so partially informed of anything beyond his own county that he thought the term "planter" meant merely a British farmer, and he taxed the planter with doing little to take advantage of the new arrangements under the Brussels Convention. But while in England a man might take a big farm, and in a fortnight stock and equip it with the best of implements, a planter on a sugar estate, in whatever part of the world he lived, had either got to create a big manufactory himself or else to combine with his neighbours in providing a central manufactory. It was not right for hon. Members opposite to criticise the planter beyond the seas who had laboured under the disadvantages to which he had

    1505
    alluded, and ask how it was, after thirty years of animal depression, that the planter had not been able within eighteen months of the passing of the Convention either to find money himself or to borrow if from his bankers to erect the necessary plant which alone could make his industry a success. The process would take a great many years, but already many of the estates were beginning to feel the advantage of an assured and stable market. [MINISTERIAL cheers.] If it was an assured fact that an industry was going to yield an adequate return money would never be found wanting. Now the bounties were abolished there would be certainty of a return for anybody who chose to lend money for sugar planting, and he had no doubt that money would be forthcoming at no distant date.
    The only accuracy that could be claimed for the Amendment was that, owing to the abolition of the Excise duty on the Continent, naturally there had been an increased consuming power on the part of the masses. Therefore there was probably a serious miscalculation in the figures by which they alleged that there was an increased production amounting to 54 per cent, on the Continent. There was another statement made which although accurate in words amounted to a suggestio falsi. It was said that the price of sugar had doubled since the Convention came into operation. It was perfectly true that since September 1st, 1903, the price of sugar had doubled, but that was a very disingenuous argument. If they referred to the figures they saw that in January, 1903, the price of beet was only 8s. 4¾d., and that that compared with the five previous years was less than in three of them; in the following February the price had dropped to 7s. 8¼d.; in March it had gone up to 8s. 2¼d., an enhancement which was owing to rumours that there had been reduced sowing. There were some authorities who thought there might have been a shortage of sowing of 3 per cent., but there was now a full belief that practically there was no shortage of sowing worth talking of. In the following March it was only 8s. 2¼d., which was even then below the cost of production. In May the price rose to 9s. 6d., and then there came an estimate that there really would be some
    1506
    shortage of crop. But even in May the sugar users, if they thought there was any risk, had the opportunity of buying for October at 9s. 6¾d., and that was a fact which absolutely traversed the statement that the action of the Convention was the cause of enhancing the value. Sugar users were quite sharp enough people to fix the value as far as they could forsee it, and if they had feared any risk as the result of the Convention they could have bought, and no doubt some did buy, in May over against October, at ¾d. more than in May. In the following June they still could have bought at 9s. 1¼d., so that even then the risks of the Sugar Convention had diminished according to the estimation of the market. It was only at the end of June that the price rose from 9s. 4½d. to 9s. 4½d. Then obviously there came above the horizon a very appreciable chance of a shortage, and at that time the price went up to the figures they had since had. They could follow the action of the sugar market as on a barometer, and they could trace the causes of the rises. He had no doubt that, owing to the enhancement of prices, if they allowed a few months to go by prices would come down as fast as they went up and even faster. There was no reason to think that the sugar industry would suffer more than any other industry which was liable to suffer from special fluctuations which might occur owing to inevitable circumstances such as had occurred on this occasion. The authors of the Sugar Convention, when they talked of fewer fluctuations, never thought that the arrangement they were making would interfere with the dispensations of Providence. What they said was that this was a fiscal arrangement which would modify the fluctuations that arose from fiscal causes. They never pretended that it would be able to produce two tons of sugar where none was produced before, or make any difference in the output of sugar irrespective of the acts of Providence. Hon. Members opposite were in the ridiculous position of endeavouring to bolster up an industry which, whatever its value—and no doubt it was very great, and he wished it God speed on sound and proper lines—claimed that it should have its raw material at less than cost price, that the foreign consumer never should

    1507
    eat more than he had done in the past, and practically that it should be the sole industry in the world free from outside competition. He wished hon. Members opposite every joy in maintaining propositions which were absolutely absurd and indefensible.
    MR. McKENNAsaid that so far as he understood the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down he appeared to think that the Convention had had no influence whatever in sending up the price of sugar.
    MR. LAWRENCE: Except in the way I say.
    MR. McKENNAsaid they would all admit that the drought had been an important factor in settling the price, but he understood the hon. Gentleman to say that even had there been no Convention, provided the drought had been what it had been, the price would have been the same.
    MR. LAWRENCE: I said that the only accurate, or partially accurate, statement made in support of the Amendment was as to the increasing of the consumption of sugar on the Continent.
    MR. McKENNAsaid he would take that from the hon. Member. This was a question of plain figures, and anyone was capable of following the increased consumption on the Continent. It amounted to 800,000 tons.
    MR. LAWRENCE: I do not admit that.
    MR. McKENNAsaid this was given as a fact on official authority. The decrease in the crop last year which was given again on the authority of the hon. Member's own friends, amounted in comparison with the previous good years to 750,000 tons, so that the hon. Member admitted that was a factor in sending up the price. But the 800,000 tons exceeded by 50,000 tons the whole diminution in the crop due to the drought. If the hon. Member seriously did admit the truth of the contention that foreign consumption had been a considerable
    1508
    factor in sending up the price he must admit that that factor had been more important than the drought itself. It was certainly this increased consumption of 800,000 tons, added to the diminished production of 750,000 tons, which had had the appalling effect of sending up the price to £16 per ton. Of course, outside the House nobody had suggested that the Convention had not had, or would not have, the effect of sending up the price of sugar. In a refiner's trade circular of a distant date he found the following—
    "If the Convention is to do the good for which it was promoted there must be a general readjustment of values, in process of which the tendency will be against the British consumer who has been paying too little, and in favour of those newly-liberated centres of consumption where the people have been paying too much for their sugar."
    That was the trade view at the time of the passing of the Convention. In the same circular the notion that the price would not rise was dismissed as all too ridiculous, and the increase in the European demand was given as the cause of the rise in price. There was another authority whose opinion he thought the Government would accept. He referred to Sir Nevile Lubbock. Speaking on September 8th, 1904, at a meeting of the New Colonial Company, he said—
    "If prices keep up, and there was every reason to expect they would, he thought he could promise them a very different state of things next year."
    Sir Nevile was not speculating on another drought, but on the effect of the Convention in increasing the consumption of sugar on the Continent. The hon. Member did not think anyone would seriously contend that the Convention had had no effect in sending up prices. Were they to understand that in spite of that having been the admitted result of the Convention, and in spite of the prophecies of the Government at the time of the passing of the Bill having been shown to be wrong, the Government, if their hands were free now, would once again make such a Convention as this? Did the President of the Board of Trade so far stand by his policy? Would the right hon. Gentleman signify that he was so satisfied with the Convention that he would again introduce a Bill to ratify the Convention?
    THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR, Leeds, Central): Quite ready.
    MR. McKENNAsaid there was no hope. The Government was incorrigible. Every prophecy they made and on which they founded the Bill had been falsified, and yet they assured the House that if they had the chance they would again enter into the Convention, would pass a Convention Bill, and would tie the hands of the House, and all in order to secure freer trade. What was the free trade they had secured under the Convention? As an illustration he would suppose that two ships came into the port of London, one laden with cheap Russian sugar, bounty-fed, and the other laden with confectionery made out of cheap Russian sugar. Under our new system of free trade the cheap raw material was not allowed to come into our port. The cheap sugar was shut out, but the cheap manufactured sugared goods made from Russian sugar were allowed to come in. Was that free trade worth fighting for? The other parties to the Convention to whom we had surrendered ourselves in the proportion of one to ten were all producers of sugar, and they were all anxious to secure a share, if not the whole, of the great trade we had built up in sugared goods. They had succeeded, and they would succeed still more because they were allowed to impose duties upon the import of sugar products into their countries while we were shutting out cheap raw material. Our manufacturers not having the advantage of free trade in getting cheap raw material were nevertheless handicapped in competition with manufactured goods made from cheap raw material. If we were to interfere with our present system of free trade it should be to allow all products to come into this country free. He did not wish to discriminate between raw material and manufactured goods, prohibiting cheap raw materials and allowing cheap manufactured goods to come in.
    What was the effect, measured by the well-known system of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, of this shutting out of sugar? We were paying now at the rate of £10,000,000 a year more for our sugar than was paid
    1510
    before the Convention came into force. The hon. Member for Salisbury referred to the fact that the imports of sugar in 1904 cost us £2,800,000 more than they cost in 1903. Those figures were perfectly correct, they were to be seen in the Trade and Navigation Accounts. But those same Trade and Navigation Accounts showed equally that at this moment we were paying at the rate of close on £1,000,000 a month more for sugar than in the corresponding period in the previous year. What did that mean if the present prices lasted over the whole year? Upon the calculation of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham £10,000,000 a year would mean employment for 120,000 men at 30s. a week, or a living wage and subsistence for 625,000 people. In the language of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham we had now got 625,000 people thrown upon the streets because the price of sugar had been raised by £10,000,000 a year. But the argument applied here was a far more real argument than as it was usually applied by the late Colonial Secretary, and for this reason. The increase in the price of sugar to us was a dead loss. Before the Convention, when the price was low, a man with 25s. a week gave one week's work in the year in order to pay for sugar for himself and family. He had now to give two weeks work to get exactly the same result, and consequently we had got to pay to people out of the country for what we formerly got free from abroad. We were therefore the losers of the proceeds of a whole week's work of each mechanic on account of the Convention. We were paying higher prices for our goods, spent more money in taxation, and had so many people out of employment.
    Figures had been quoted, but they could not be too often repeated because this matter was a real object-lesson in fiscal policy. He knew that the late Colonial Secretary disowned the authorship of the Convention. He remembered long ago when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham referred to Majuba he spoke of it as one of Mr. Gladstone's messes. He had no doubt that ten years hence the Sugar Convention would be described as one of Mr. Balfour's messes. But just as

    1511
    the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham was responsible for Majuba. so was he responsible, for the Sugar Convention, and he must take the blame for Majuba and the Convention for what it was worth in either case. That Convention in the injury it had inflicted on the people engaged in the manufacture of sugar-products, had probably done more harm than any other single Act, of Parliament in the recollection of any Member of the House. The figures given in the Census Returns were very clear. We had engaged in sugar refining in the whole country 3,100 persons. 41,000 were engaged in the actual industries which used sugar as a raw material. That statement did not include bakers and confectioners. It was not too much to say that 60,000 persons were engaged in other branches of trade in which sugar was a raw material. So that at least 100,000 persons were engaged in industries which used sugar as a raw material. Therefore, for the benefit of 3,000 men engaged in sugar refining—the right hon. Gentleman could only fix his mind on one industry at a time—there were 15,000 persons driven out of employment and 50,000 put on short time. If these statements were correct—and they could be verified by anyone from the official Returns—he asked, was it a wise policy for us to enter this Convention. Had we in fact secured the principles of free trade on the Continent, having regard to the refusal of the parties to the Convention to reduce the surtax, and having regard to the fact that sugar products made from bounty-fed sugar were being admitted into the Conventional countries? Admitting that the drought on the Continent had had—as it must have had—a serious effect in sending up the price of sugar, could it be doubted for a moment that the Convention had greatly aggravated the effects of the drought. He therefore asked hon. Gentlemen opposite whether they would be willing to support the Government in the policy of renewing the Convention, and if not, he asked them to vote for this Amendment.
    SIR WALTER THORBURNsaid he had been connected with this industry for a great number
    1512
    of years. He had listened to the speeches delivered that day and had read some of those made on the previous night, but so far as he could see the only argument adduced by hon. Gentlemen opposite was an argument in favour of the principle of bounties. They were told that the bounties were of great benefit to this country. He asked hon. Gentlemen opposite if foreign countries gave these bounties purely from philanthropy?
    MR. EMMOTT: Why did they want to take them off?
    SIR WALTER THORBURNsaid he maintained that these foreign countries did not give these bounties on philanthropic grounds. They had one object, and one alone; and that was to kill the sugar-refining industry in this country, and also to knock off the competition of cane sugar, and after that to get the market pretty much to themselves. The, hon. Gentleman who had just sat down referred to the comparatively small number of people engaged in the refining industry. If it had happened that a much larger number had been so employed hon. Gentlemen opposite would not have been such advocates of the bounty system. They had been told by the hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs about the exclusion of Russian and Argentine sugar; but he might inform that hon. Gentleman that the bulk of Russian sugar formerly exported to Great Britain was now going to Egypt, which latter country was now sending cane sugar to this country. The Egyptians preferred to import beet, which cost less, and export cane sugar to England, which brought a higher price. Russia had now a market for all her surplus sugar products in Egypt and the Balkan States, Persia and other Eastern markets. Java had been referred to; but he would point out that we had a colony which could produce the finest cane sugar in the world, and but for the insane objection to the employment of tropical labour it would do so. viz., in North Queensland. Although white labour could not be employed in North Queensland in sugar cultivation, the objection to tropical labour was so great that only a small quantity of cane sugar was produced there now; that was consumed in Australia itself, and

    1513
    the great bulk of the land was practically left derelict from cultivation.
    He hailed with the greatest satisfaction the Amendment brought forward from the opposite bench. He thought it was remarkable evidence of the sincerity of those gentlemen on the question of free trade. For months past they had denounced the Government from every platform in the country for their policy which was to make free trade freer. But in this Amendment they asked the Government to revert to one of the worst forms of protection ever devised by the wit of man. During the last session there were various occasions on which hon. Gentlemen opposite raised the question of Chinese labour, which they thought they might use in the country with some advantage to themselves. Chinese labour had become rather stale now, and when a debate upon it took place not one of the right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Opposition Bench got up in his place to take part in it. He did not know whether they would follow the some course in regard to sugar. Now, they were told by this Amendment that heavy losses had been inflicted on some classes of trade. He submitted that the present price of sugar was not so great as it had been in past times, and although confectioners may have had to submit to reduced profits as compared with the period when bounties were in existence, he denied that actual losses had been incurred. He happened to see the reports of two confectionery companies; and one of them paid 12 per cent, and the other 10 per cent. What, then, of the statements of hon. Gentlemen opposite? The reduction in labour had also been grossly exaggerated; but even if it were not, there was a shortage in employment in almost every other industry as well. Why should the confectionery trade be exempt?
    The question, however, was whether the Convention was responsible for the present price of sugar. He was convinced it was not the result of the Convention, but of an act of God, Who had sent a drought over Central Europe unprecedented since the middle of the eighteenth century. There was a rock in the Elbe which had not been seen since that period, but it was visible last year.
    1514
    That showed that there was an enormous drought, the result of which was that the beet crop showed a shortage of 1,200,000 tons. There had been a very considerable increase in the price of wool, which was also produced by a great drought in Australia, during which millions and millions of sheep perished; wool became scarcer; and according to the laws of supply and demand the price increased until it was now nearly double what it was before the drought. He would, however, tell the House what the Convention had done. It had stimulated the growth of cane sugar in the West Indies and elsewhere, with the result that 400,000 tons more of cane sugar were imported into this country than last year. Were it not for that the price of sugar would be £4 or £5 a ton greater than it was. Before the abolition of the bounties the cane growers had no inducement to improve their land and better their machinery. Now that was all changed. According to Mr. Lamont, the Radical candidate for Bute, whose testimony hon. Gentlemen opposite would accept, immediately the Convention was signed a wave of prosperity passed over the West Indies. He was told that such was the scientific skill that was being applied to the cultivation of cane sugar that eventually it would be grown at a less price than beet sugar could be produced, He was convinced that in a very few years sugar would be cheaper in this country than it had ever been before. The Convention would put the sugar industries of the world on an equitable basis. Neither the grower nor the refiner asked for anything but fair competition and to be put on a level basis with the foreign producer; and they were not afraid to fight the world either in connection with the sugar industry or any other industry. The confectioners were not content because they were not given protection. Under the bounty system undoubtedly many large fortunes had been amassed, but if these gentlemen now said that they could not exist without protection, then they must go under. Their policy was a very short-sighted one, for had the bounties not been abolished, it was only a matter of time when refining would cease to exist in this country and the competition between cane and beet sugar would have

    1515
    been killed. Then they would have realised what the price of sugar would have risen to He himself had been connected with the refining industry, and he had known the price of sugar to be far higher than it was at present. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham pointed out that the present price was clearly temporary. At present it was possible to buy in that market sugar for delivery in October at £4 a ton below the existing quotations. He was afraid that a great many of the arguments of hon. Gentlemen opposite were used for the purpose of influencing votes in the country. He could not however, understand hon. Gentlemen opposite who professed to be free-traders supporting protection of the worst kind. They were throwing consistency to the winds. If they could only secure a temporary advantage for their Party consistency might go by the board. He was sure that all the monstrous statements of hon. Gentlemen opposite would not, however, delude the country in the long run.
    MR. BRYCEcommented upon the position which the hon. Member occupied as a champion of free trade. It was a novel position for him and one to which he hoped the hon. Member would adhere.
    SIR WALTER THORBURN: I have been nothing else all my life.
    MR. BRYCEhoped, then, that when the proposals of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham came before the House they would meet with the hon. Member's strenuous opposition.
    SIR WALTER THORBURN: Yes; I have never supported the position of the right hon. Member for West Birmingham.
    MR. BRYCEsaid that if they had succeeded in eliciting the opinions of one Member on that side on this point the debate would not have been in vain. There was just one remark which fell from the hon. Member which he would at once refer to lest he overlooked it later. The hon. Member said the whole object of the bounties was to kill the sugar refiners of this country, and that when that end
    1516
    had been attained the bounties would disappear; but did not the hon. Member know enough of protectionist countries to know that the great mainspring of protection was their own direct interests, and that if they thought they could get any benefit from their Governments, either by way of bounty or duty, they asked for it?
    SIR WALTER THORBURNsaid that what he said was that these bounties not only killed the sugar refiners, but, if persevered in, killed the cane producers as well, because it was impossible for them to compete with bounty-fed sugar.
    MR. BRYCEsaid that the hon. Member at the latter end of his speech showed that it was perfectly obvious that the cane-sugar industry could not be killed, that cane sugar was bound to come into, competition with beet.
    SIR WALTER THORBURN: Not against bounties.
    MR. BRYCE: Yes. [An HON. MEMBER: Impossible] The hon. Member would have an opportunity of proving that it was impossible later, but he (Mr. Bryce) would give some reasons why he thought it was possible. The hon. Member had spoken of a rock in the Elbe and had said that when it was exposed to view Germany wept, but in this case it would, be the other way about, because Germany was using more sugar than ever before, and instead of weeping the people would be smiling, as instead of one lump they would be sweetening their coffee with two.
    The speech of the Member for West Birmingham did not seem to him to have added much to what the House previously knew on the subject. The right hon. Gentleman's chief argument was that the rise in the price of sugar was not due in any way to the Convention, but to natural causes, and that it was ridiculous of them to complain of a Convention against foreign bounties. He admitted that the statistics they had had about sugar from all quarters had been conflicting End-difficult to deal with for anyone who was not an expert. But he thought there were some broad results which were incontestable, and which were not disputed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birminghm a

    1517
    Sugar was dearer, contrary to the predictions made by members of the Government. It was twice as dear as it was at the time of the Convention, and we were paying £8,000,000 or £9,000,000 a year more than we paid before, and from what he gathered the consumption was decreasing. The consumption of sugar, which three years ago had reached 90 1bs. per head of the population, had now decreased to 80 1bs. The prediction that employment would increase after the Convention had also been falsified, the balance of the changes which had taken place being towards the diminution of trade. True there had been an increase of labour amounting to 400 or 500 hands in the sugar-refining trade, but there had been a diminution in the other sugar-using trades calculated at about 12,000 men out of work and between 40,000 and 50,000 working half time.
    The Member for West Birmingham had contended that an explanation of the state of the sugar trade was to be found in natural fluctuation, as in the case of some other commodities. But in regard to cotton and grain there had been no State interference. Here we had a Convention which was intended to have effects, and which had had effects. It was inevitable that we should ascribe some of the alteration of price to a measure which was intended to produce that result.
    The House Was told that owing to the abolition of bounties less beet was planted in Germany, France, and Austria. That was at any rate a result of the Convention. In those countries, too, the price had fallen and the consumption had increased. Then there was the fact that we had excluded from our market certain exporting countries. The cutting off of the Argentine and Russian supply must have had an effect upon our markets. He had thus pointed out three causes directly due to the Convention, which had no doubt had the principal influence in raising the price of sugar. He was interested to see the Government in the new and unfamiliar character which they generally tried to fix upon the Opposition—that of being the friends of every country but their own. They had benefited the people of Germany and France by giving them cheap sugar,
    1518
    whilst our people had certainly suffered—not merely as consumers, but also as manufacturers using cheap sugar. Why when the Government were entering into these negotiations did they not carry out the policy of making commercial treaties, so strongly recommended by the Member for West Birmingham, and adopted by the First Lord of the Treasury, for the benefit of British sugar products? Instead of that, those industries were now in a worse position than before. Another result of the Convention was that we had lost the advantage of having open ports. Our system of open ports was one of the things that had made our mercantile marine the greatest in the world. For the first time within historical memory we had subjected ourselves to the control of foreign authorities. We had become members of a board, all the other members of which were more or less protectionist and had interests adverse to our own, and we had bound ourselves for the period of the Convention to submit to the deliberations of that board, in which we generally found ourselves in a minority. Then we had made it easier for what were called corners or syndicates to be formed in sugar. It would be obvious that the more the source of supply was restricted the easier it became for a trust or syndicate to create a shortage.
    What had been the object of entering into this Convention? First of all, it was suggested that it would stop dumping. After all, the sugar trade had benefited by dumping all these years, and if we suffered from protection in other countries in so many ways, might we not get what little benefit there was to be gained from it? We had been getting some little gain from the mischievous fiscal policy which prevailed on the Continent, but now we were to suffer all the evils and get none of the benefits. He knew the favourite argument was that if dumping was allowed to go on for a certain length of time it would ultimately crush our own industry out of existence; that if any kind of goods, was habitually and persistently sold in this country below cost price the foreigner would get a monopoly of the market and would be able to raise the price of those goods and sell them to us at any price he liked to fix.

    1519
    But sugar was not produced in this country, though it was produced in some of our Colonies. At any rate, English interest were not affected by this dumping. No one could say that it was doing any harm to England at all comparable to the benefit of getting the sugar cheap. The Convention might have been intended as a measure of retaliation. If so, the retaliation had taken the form of making sugar cheaper for the foreigner and dearer for ourselves; in fact, it had turned out to be a retaliation on ourselves, for the tangible result was the greater dearness of sugar in this country and the consequent damage to our own industries. He did not understand what hon. Members meant by saying that they, on his side of the House, supported bounties. They had never supported them.
    SIR WALTER THORBURN: You are supporting them to-night.
    MR. BRYCEdenied that they had ever said a single word in defence of bounties. They had recognised that the bounties enabled people in this country to get sugar cheaper than they could without them, but they had never advocated bounties. Liberal statesmen had always held that bounties were bad and would oppose them in this country, but they had never attempted to go as missionaries to other countries and ask them to abolish bounties. When the Liberal Government in 1881 or 1882 was urged to approach foreign Governments on the subject, no one opposed the suggestion more warmly than the Member for West Birmingham. In 1887 or 1888, when the late Baron de Worms urged the entering into negotiations with foreign countries with a view to stopping the bounties on sugar, Mr. Gladstone held that, although bounties were wrong, it was no business of ours to interfere.
    The real reason for entering into the Convention was the furthering of the interests of the West Indies, and the prime mover was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. Those who remembered the debates when the Act ratifying the Convention was passed would remember the strenuous vigour with which the right hon. Gentleman supported their case. But the House must not suppose that
    1520
    this was a question on which the prosperity of the West Indies turned. It was a question of importance only for a very few of the islands. If they had given bounties to those particular islands, it would have been far better business for this country than paying the additional price for sugar which we now had to pay. The reason why the West Indies had not succeeded with cane sugar was not solely owing to the competition of beet, but because they had neglected improvements in their methods of production. He had visited Jamaica and Cuba, and knew that wherever there were new plantations equipped with good machinery they were doing well and making a profit. He agreed that it was a wise policy to send out a competent botanist to see how improvements could be made in the cane. That was a decided benefit, and he hoped the Colonial Office would continue a policy of that kind. From what had been said the House might very well suppose that the cane-sugar industry, under the blighting influence of bounties, was dying out, but what were the facts? In 1882–3 the production of cane sugar in the world was 200,000 tons. In 1902–3 the world's production was 4,300,000 tons. The cane contained a greater quantity of sugar in proportion to the expenditure than could be produced by beet. All that was needed was to open up these tropical countries and give them the benefit of the best machinery and scientific appliances, because they already possessed great advantages of climate. What he had said of Cuba could be said of Java and other places, where the production of cane sugar was enormously increasing, and when American capital went into the Philippines the same thing would happen there. His complaint against the Government was not that bounties were a good thing or that the Government should have taken any steps to keep them up, but simply that they should have left them alone. They ought to leave trade and commerce alone, because nature was wiser than they were in these matters. The Government appeared now to be animated by a philanthropic desire to benefit the people of Germany and Austria and give them their sugar cheaper, and in this they had succeeded. He did

    1521
    not think, however, that that was a policy which any sensible commercial country should follow. There never was a case in which it had been shown so clearly that this country was receiving a maximum of inconvenience in return for a minimum of benefit to the West Indies. The whole moral of this was that they should leave trade alone.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid this was a subject which had been very much discussed, but there was a large number of arguments which could be regarded as stock-in-trade arguments. He would deal with them, but before doing so he would refer to some of the points brought forward in which individual hon. Members had more of a proprietary interest. The first point he would refer to was the remarks which had just been made about the West Indies. It was a familiar argument that what was wrong with the West Indies was antiquated methods and the want of improved machinery. If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen referred to the right hon. Baronet the Member for Berwick, who was a member of the West Indies Commission, he would learn that because of the bounties the manufacturers of beet sugar could afford to have the best machinery, and that by the abolition of the bounties the West Indies, being placed in a position of equality with their rivals, would be able to obtain the most improved machinery also.
    MR. BRYCEsaid his right hon. friend was opposed to the abolition of the bounties.
    MR. BONAR LAW: I think the right hon. Gentleman is mistaken. I think the right hon. Baronet was in favour of the abolition of bounties.
    MR. BRYCE: In the way of countervailing duties.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid the right hon. Gentleman opposite and the hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said to the Government, "Look what you have done! You have not only doubled the price of sugar here, but you have reduced it by half on the Continent." He never had the slightest desire to prevent any other
    1522
    country from getting an advantage if they could get it without doing us any harm. Now did the fact that they were getting sugar cheaper on the Continent do this country any harm? The hon. Member for Carnarvon thought it did, but he appeared to be under a misapprehension. What was the chief cause of the lower price? It was because the interval duty had been lowered, but that did not affect competition with this country. In all the countries concerned a drawback was given, and they all competed upon equal terms in regard to the price of sugar. England went into the Convention not merely as a consuming country but as a country producing sugar. If the effect, of the Convention was not to stimulate the production of cane sugar in the British Empire, it had been a failure, and if it did stimulate this production then it would be a success. Another point alluded to by the hon. Member for Carnarvon was that we had prohibited sugar from our ports, but the real apos le of this doctrine was the hon. Member for West Islington, who contended that three-fourths of the rise in the price of sugar was due to the shutting out of sugar from our markets. He wondered whether the hon. Gentleman realised what that argument came to. It amounted to this, that as far as three-fourths of the rise was concerned, if this country had done what other countries had done, that was to put on counter-vailing duties instead of prohibition, that rise would not have taken place.
    MR. LOUGH: I do not see that it follows.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid that other people saw it. The result of that contention was this, that owing to prohibition the Government had made the price of sugar dearer than it would have been had our markets been open to sugar from Russia and Argentina. But the largest market for Russian sugar was the East, where it went in very large quantities, and where it competed with Austrian and German sugar. Was it not obvious that when Russia was thus selling a large part of her production, all that was necessary to sell any surplus was to take a smaller price than that of her competitors? If the market had been open, Russian sugar

    1523
    would not have been sent here at a lower price than could be obtained in the East What object could they have in it? He could think of only one. If the Russian Government were as anxious as hon. Gentlemen opposite to turn out this Government they might have sacrificed the price of sugar, but that was the only reason he could conceive for a policy so completely unbusinesslike. There was another point. Switzerland was one of the countries which were open to receive the Russian sugar. It could go there if it was really capable of being sold at a price materially lower than our price. Why was it that sugar was not cheaper in Switzerland? That reminded him of a rather curious incident. The hon. Member for Devonport had made the strongest case hitherto against the Convention, but he was able to do so only by throwing overboard three-fourths of all the speeches and pamphlets which had been delivered on this subject during the recess, in every one of which it was stated that, owing to the prohibition, confectioners in Switzerland were able to get their sugar cheaper, and were so able to beat us in our own markets. The hon. Member for Islington wrote a letter to a newspaper in which he implied that sugar in Switzerland was 5s. cheaper than in this country, but did he only imply this on the platform or did he state it as a
    fact?
    MR. LOUGH: I have said nothing at all about Switzerland for three or four months.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid that illustrated in a most striking way a fact which he had noticed in the debate of the day before. With one exception, none of the hon. Gentlemen who spoke mentioned Switzerland, and when the hon. Member for Dundee, who did not know so much about his subject, incidentally mentioned that country he noticed a solemn frown gather on the faces of his friends. Why should the hon. Member for West Islington not mention Switzerland for months? It was because he had found that sugar was dearer in that country than here. Hon. Gentlemen opposite talked about the competition, or they did until three months ago, which we suffered from with Swiss manufacturers. What was the fact? If they competed
    1524
    with us in this market or in neutral markets they had to pay in this market not only an equivalent of the sugar duty which our manufacturers had to pay, but they had to pay their own duty of 3s. in Switzerland for which they did not get a drawback. In competing with us, either here or in neutral markets, the Swiss manufacturers were handicapped to the extent of fully 20 per. cent, on the price of their raw material.
    He would now refer to what were the common stock arguments on this subject. They were very eloquently put by the hon. Member for Carnarvon. The hon. Member said that in the Convention they had a working model of what fiscal reform meant. Whatever might be said about the Sugar Convention, he did not see how anyone could possibly say with truth that it was a step in the direction of protection. The fact that it was so described illustrated the great change which had come over the minds of those who considered themselves the representatives of free trade as to what free trade really is. It is just the difference between two opposing theories—the theory of free trade and the theory of free imports. To the free-importer cheapness was the one thing necessary, everything else was unimportant, whereas to the free-trader freedom of exchange was the one thing necessary, and everything else, even cheapness, was unimportant. Cobden said that cheapness was not the basis of his policy, but free exchange at natural prices. What, in the opinion of hon. Gentlemen opposite, was Cobden's idea in making that distinction? He did not think it was very difficult to find. Cobden knew, as everyone knew, that cheapness, though it might be a good thing, was not necessarily a good thing but was often a very bad thing. Take an illustration from the present time. If hon. Gentlemen were in the habit of reading the commercial journals, or the commercial articles in the daily Press, they would find a good deal of talk just now about the revival of trade, which, however, he thought was rather premature. In those articles they would see that the expectation of better trade was based on the fact that prices were a little higher than they had been—that there was a slight rise in the price of

    1525
    commodities. That meant that low prices meant bad trade and bad employment, and that a rise in prices was regarded as an indication of better trade and better employment. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down tried, he thought somewhat disingenuously, to show that Mr. Glad-s one looked on bounties as bad only for the countries that gave them. He knew that was not the view of Mr. Gladstone.
    MR. BRYCEsaid everyone knew that Mr. Gladstone condemned bounties as bad economically. He must ask the hon. Gentleman not to misrepresent him; he thought his language was discourteous. What he said Was that Mr. Gladstone always steadily refused to have anything to do with any negotiations for the abolition of bounties on the basis either of retaliatory duties or of prohibition.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid if he had said anything which the right hon. Gentleman thought was discourteous he was sorry, and withdrew it. He would quote the following passage from a speech of Mr. Gladstone's—
    "We do not regard with any satisfaction the system under which an artificial advantage is given in our markets to the products of foreign labour. Some people say it is a good thing because the consumer gets the benefit of it, but I do not think that any benefit founded on inequality and injustice can bring good even to the consumer."
    But it was not necessary to go so far back even as Mr. Gladstone. There was a debate on the subject in the House in 1899, when the Leader of the Opposition said—
    "These bounties appear to me to be bad."
    But he did not stop them. If he had done so, he might have meant what is his present contention that they are bad for the country which gives, and not for the country which receives them; but he added they are bad because—
    "They disturb trade and hinder the development of the country."
    It was, then, our trade which they disturbed, and our country whose development they hindred, so that even he had become a very recent convert to the new theory of what free trade was.
    The question for consideration was whether the Convention in itself was
    1526
    a good or bad thing. If it was bad it was bad only because and to the extent to which it had raised the price of sugar. If the Convention were the cause of the rise in price there were two questions which he would like to put. Why did not the rise occur earlier, and why was it not plain from the course of prices that the Convention was the cause of the rise? There were two periods in this connection which must be taken into account—the date when the Convention was signed, and the date when it came into operation. In regard to the first he was bound to say that in connection with any article the moment it became apparent something was going to happen to raise the price was the time when the increase would begin. What had happened? The Convention was signed in March three years ago. What was the average price of sugar for those three years as compared with the average price of the previous three years? The price had fallen in the last three years to the extent of more than 1s. per cwt. Many hon. Gentlemen opposite claimed that the Convention was the sole cause of the rise in the price of sugar. [OPPOSITION cries of "No, no."] Well, he had read a, speech of the Leader of the Opposition in which he had practically said so, and stated that the result of the Convention had been to add £8,000,000 a year to the cost of sugar. Well, he had wondered where the right hon. Gentleman had got those £8,000,000 from; but probably it was from a speech of the hon. Member for Islington, where he found the Increased cost was £16,000,000, and the right hon. Gentleman had divided that sum by two and thought that he would be comparatively safe.
    So much for the first period; he came now to the second period. The Convention came into operation on September 1st 1903. Did the price immediately rise? On the contrary, it fell; and six months after the Convention came in o operation the price had only risen to that figure at which it stood the day before the Convention came into operation. He repeated that if the Convent on was the cause of the rise, the rise must have occurred earlier; it would not have taken six months to bring about that change in the price. Now, as to the criticism of the hon. Gentleman opposite; he hoped to put it fairly.

    1527
    That hon. Gentleman's contention was that, as regarded the first period, there was a great deal of speculation in anticipation of a new duty being imposed here on sugar, and that when a new duty was not put on the price fell to counteract the rise which; would otherwise have been occasioned by the Convention. What were the facts? Immediately after the Budget there was a rise instead of a fall. On April 21st a large sugar broker's circular stated that since the Budget had set at rest the fear of an increased duty, a greater demand; had been experienced, and the consequent result was not a fall, but a rise of l½d. lb. He was surprised that the hon. Gentleman should have put forward that theory at all, because the hon. Gentleman knew better; probably than most Members of the House that sugar was an article in the, world's market, that the price was quoted f.o.b. Hamburg, and that the effect of an English duty could only be local. As a matter of fact, the duty was really a "bear" point against the market instead of in its favour, because it would have the effect of diminishing the consumption, and, therefore, a tendency to produce a fall rather than a rise. What possible answer was there to that? The hon. Gentleman told the House with a flourish of trumpets that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade had a very superficial acquaintance with the sugar business. He personally did not object to that; he did not pretend to a knowledge of all the details of the trade possessed by the hon. Gentleman. But the hon. Gentleman had omitted something; he had shown a want of knowledge of the general principles which affected every trade. The hon. Gentleman had put forward another argument, which he admitted was a better one, about the price not falling after the Convention came into operation. He admitted that there was something in that argument, which amounted to this, that the Continental Governments had ear-marked a large quantity of sugar to receive the bounty and to be shipped after the date the Convention came into operation. That, he admitted, would have an effect on prices; but he maintained, on the other hand, that is ought not to have had the effect
    1528
    of counteracting the expectation of increased prices owing to the bounty. He had had a large experience in other articles that fluctuated more than sugar. He had seen immediate statistics dead against a rise in price. He had seen stocks increasing month after month, and yet the price steadily rising. Why was that? Because people who knew most about the trade believed that better times were coming in the future, and were quite willing to lie out of their money in expectation of a rise and of the higher profits they would get when that, expectation was realised. He maintained that exactly the same thing would have happened in regard to sugar if there had been that belief in the Convention raising the price.
    What was the cause of the rise? There was no difficulty in answering that question. Admittedly there was an unexpected shortage in the beet supply of more than 1,000,000 tons. Did anyone for a moment deny that that shortage in itself was bound to produce a big rise in price? He did not say that it might not be possible that the rise had been accentuated by the Convention. He was ready to say something more; that before the Convention was carried out it might have seemed reasonable to anyone that, while the change was taking place, there would be a slight rise in price, but that the change would not have been a permanent one. It was therefore quite possible that some part of the rise was due to the Convention; but there was no evidence whatever of that. In fact, the whole of the evidence was in the contrary direction, for while the crop of beet sugar had decreased, the crop of cane sugar had increased to the extent of nearly 400,000 tons. He wanted the House to notice the way in which hon. Gentlemen opposite dealt with this matter. They said that whenever there was a rise in price, or anything favourable to their contention, that was due to the Convention; but that whenever there was a fall, that was due to other circumstances. Take jam, for instance. They knew that the price of jam was low, and they said that was not due to the Convention, but to the big supply of fruit; that the price of confections was high,

    1529
    but that was not due to the bad crop of beet, it was due to the Convention! In the same way hon. Gentlemen opposite now said that the Convention had nothing whatever to do with increasing the supply of cane sugar. He did not think they could get anyone to believe that. He insisted there was not the slightest doubt that the fact that the Convention was signed did encourage the production of cane sugar all over the world, and that, as a consequence, some part at least of the increase was due to the Convention, and that it counteracted the effect of the shortage in the beet supply.
    There was another aspect of this question which should be regarded. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had made a great outcry on behalf of the confectioners. It was said that they were going to be ruined by getting their sugar at the same price as other people. There was something he would like to say in regard to this question of the ruin which was falling on the confectioners. His right hon. friend the Member for West Birmingham had pointed out the previous night that so recently as May of last year the confectioners could have bought sugar for delivery at the end of that year at 9s. per cwt., or only 6d. per cwt. above the price the day before the Convention came into operation, or they could have bought it up to the end of this year at only 6d. advance on that price. Now, a gentleman had been writing very violent letters to the papers on this subject who signed himself as a managing director of a confectionery company. If he was as certain that the Convention was going to raise the price of sugar as he now was that it had raised the price, why did he not buy in advance? If he did not buy under such circumstances it showed he was not a very skilful managing director and was not likely to write any wise letters on that or any other subject. But why did he not buy? There could be only one answer to that question. He did not buy because he did not believe that the Convention would have the effect of raising the price, and neither did anyone else. The people who made their living by buying and selling sugar did not expect it, or they would not have been willing to sell at the lower price, and the fact that they were willing was proof that the rise was not due to something
    1530
    that could have been foreseen, but to something which was absolutely unforeseen—viz., the drought on the Continent. In this direction he wanted to deal with an argument used by the hon. Member for Monmouthshire. That hon. Member said that owing to the Convention sugar had been cheaper on the Continent, and that consumption had largely increased there, and that the supply available here had been in consequence diminished. He admitted that that, was an important consideration, but the answer was that in every one of the brokers' circulars as to the price of sugar issued during the months while sugar still kept low, reference was made to the increased consumption. That, therefore, was a factor that was taken into account, and yet did not cause an advance. He understood the hon. Member for Devonport to say that there was no rumour about the drought until August. In that the hon. Gentleman was wrong. He had looked into the circulars and found that the first reference was June 16th, and on July 14th it was given; as an explanation of the slight rise that had taken place. All these facts clearly bore out that the rise was not due to the Convention, which could be foreseen, but to the drought,which could not be possibly foreseen.
    The hon. Member for Carnarvon made a great point of his having said that in his belief employment in this country would be improved if the Convention were carried, and referred to the fact that there were several thousand people in the confectionery trade out of employment at the moment. Supposing they admitted that, did anyone on the opposite side of the House really maintain that the whole of that want of employment was due to the high price of sugar, whatever the cause of that high price, He would point out that employment had been bad for some time. At a time when there was a great want of employment the trades which suffered first were those which supplied the luxuries. Sugar for tea or cooking was a necessity, but confectionery was a luxury, and the trade which must suffer most was the trade which supplied luxuries consumed by all classes of the community. In 1889 the confectioners were suffering in exactly

    1531
    the same way as they were suffering now. There was want of employment, and they said they were being ruined by the high price of sugar. Then they attributed their misfortunes to the existence of the bounties. Now they attributed them to the abolition of the bounties. It was obvious that the present high price of sugar could not be a lasting price. Hon. Gentlemen who quoted the present price, and told them that it was exacting £10,000,000 a year from us, really knew that they were talking nonsense. If they read The Times to-day they would find that sugar could be bought for the last quarter of this year at 4s. per cwt. below the present prices. They knew that the present high price was temporary and that it could not permanently injure the sugar-users in this country.
    Hon. Gentlemen opposite looked at this matter as if our whole interest in it was as consumers—as if it did not matter to us where we got the sugar so long as we got it cheap. That was a very shortsighted policy. What would be the effect of the abolition of the bounties? The prosperity of the West Indies was admitted by every one. It was admitted that money was pouring into the West Indies to an extent which had not been experienced before. With new machinery and more scientific methods they would be able to produce sugar cheaper than they had ever done before. That was, no doubt, an advantage to the West Indies but hon. Gentlemen opposite imagined that in addressing working men they should appeal only to their direct personal interest. That, he thought, was a mistake. He recently addressed a large working-class audience on the subject, and he thought the working-classes had as strong a sense of fair play as any one in that House, and that they realised that Parliament ought to prevent injustice to our Colonies, just in the same way as it would prevent injustice to any trade in the United Kingdom. Another direct effect of the abolition of the bounties was that the sugar-refining industry in this country, which had suffered from unfair treatment for thirty years, was showing signs of reviving. It was said that the
    1532
    sugar-refining industry was small. It was; and that explained the attitude of hon. Gentlemen. If it were large, if it commanded more votes their attitude would be different. But it was reviving. At Greenock 25 per cent, more raw material passed through the refineries last year, as compared with the previous year. That was not bad for one year. One of the indirect effects of the abolition of the bounties would be the increase of employment in this country. What would now have been the increase of our trade with the West Indies and our Colonies if the enormous increase in our consumption of sugar had been supplied from cane-producing countries, from countries largely within the Empire, instead of from beet-producing countries, from which we got no advantage? In his own time machinery for the West Indies was one of the most important industries in his constituency. Look at the sugar machinery alone, which we would have supplied, but that was not the whole of it. In exchange for their exports of sugar, the sugar Colonies would have required supplies of all kinds, and our factories would have been busy and the men employed in them would have found work in producing these supplies. Consider also what the effect in our shipping trade would have been if ships had been required to bring home that sugar and take out those supplies. That indirect increase of trade would have given employment to an enormously greater number of people than the whole number employed in the confectionery industry. That increased trade we had lost entirely owing to the bounties. Now the bounties had been abolished, and we were gradually regaining it. He was told in Glasgow that the sugar machinery firms were working night and day. What had they gained by importing beet sugar from Germany and Austria? This country did not supply them with any of the machinery they required, and so far was it from being the case that, in consequence of our increased purchases of sugar from these countries they bought more manufactures from us, as a matter of fact, our exports of manufactured goods to Germany were less now that fifteen years ago.
    Any one, he thought, who took all those considerations into account would

    1533
    feel that Mr. Gladstone took a wiser and a more far-seeing view than the Gentleman who now sat in his place. They would feel that Mr. Gladstone was right, that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was wrong now but had been right in 1899 when he declared that bounties were bad because "they disturbed trade, and hindered the development of the country."
    MR. LOUGHsaid his only quarrel with the hon. Gentleman was his statement that he (Mr. Lough) had stumbled into a difficulty with reference to Switzerland. That was not the case, as he had visited the country and knew. The hon. Gentleman said that his hon. friends could not be free-traders and free-importers. He, himself, was willing to admit that he was as much a free-importer as he was a free-trader. The only object any Government could have in forming an exchange was to establish cheapness. Why should the Government object to cheapness? Cheapness meant plenty: dearness meant famine. The hon. Gentleman stated that trade was improving everywhere, and he attributed that to the fact that commodities were getting a little dearer. He denied that altogether. Improvement of trade occurred when the purchasing power of the people was increased. The hon. Gentleman was quite candid in his defence of the Sugar Convention, and stated that its main object was to improve a declining industry.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid that that was only one of the objects.
    MR. LOUGHsaid that the hon. Gentleman referred to the refining industry, but it was of a very limited character. Then the hon. Gentleman spoke of improvements in the West Indies; and he laid down the extraordinary: theory that this country did not receive anything in return for the sugar imported from the Continent. What nonsense it all was! The hon. Gentleman ought to remember that the House expected from him some economic doctrine; but if he suggested that imports from the Colonies paid for exports more than imports from foreign countries he was mistaken. Ministers would be
    1534
    judged more by their treatment of sugar than that of any other commodity. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham opened up a vista with regard to many commodities. His policy was vague and distant; but, so far as sugar was concerned, he had had his way. They had now an opportunity of considering the result; and many hon. Gentlemen opposite, who supported the Sugar Convention, would find themselves on a black list as the enemies of free trade when the general election occurred. Any free-trader who had helped forward the Convention might be likened to a soldier who secured an entrance to a beleagured fortress on the pretence of defending it, and then used his position to hand over the citadel to the enemy.
    He had been accused of making extravagant statements as to price, but who would now dispute that his view was correct? He did not think the House would agree with the Parliamentary Secretary's treatment of the question of price. To argue that if the Convention was signed to-day, and there was no rise in price tomorrow, the Convention had not affected prices was an absurd way of dealing with the question. Markets were not immediately effected by legislation. It was not until the people engaged in the business concerned had actual experience of the trend of events that the House could tell what results its legislation might have. The question of price should be looked at broadly. He did not quarrel with the list of prices the Government had put forward, for they admitted that in July, 1902, three months after the Convention was signed, the price was 6s. per cwt., and that was a good price to take. Fifteen months later, when the Convention came into operation, the price was 8s. 4½d., a rise of 40 per cent. After the lapse of a twelvemonth the price was 10s. 10½d., a rise of 80 per cent.; while at the end of last month the price had still further risen to 18s. 7¼d., or a rise of 160 per cent. An increase of one penny per 1b. on the sugar imported represented £15,000,000; therefore, as the increase was more than a penny, his estimate of £15,000,000 had been fully justified. In addition, there was the £6,000,000 of extra taxation, making a Total of £21,000,000 upon this commodity, which must necessarily have dealt a staggering blow to the

    1535
    industries affected. But while his statements as to price had been borne out by the event, how did the prophecies of the Government stand? The President of the Board of Trade declared that the Convention would bring about an era of moderate and comparatively stable prices, and expressed the belief that the average price would not be raised at all, while the right hon.Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said he had never admitted that a rise would take place, and denied also that Sir Henry Norman had ever made any such admission. He did not suggest that these statements were not made in good faith, but how extremely foolish the authors of the Convention appeared in face of the tremendous rise of 160 per cent. There had never been so long and so pronounced an upward movement in the price of sugar during the whole of the period over which these discussions had ranged.
    But were the Government quite as innocent with regard to the probability of a rise as they pretended to be? Did they really think the price would not go up? Incidentally he might express his belief that the Government were shaping their plans for a Colonial Conference on the model of the conference at Brussels. During the sittings of that conference the Cabinet held meetings at home, and were constantly telegraphing instructions to the British representatives in Brussels. Early in 1902, after urging that the Convention should be pushed forward, they stated that their main reason "for desiring to terminate a system which for a time had tended to cheapen the price of sugar," was their conviction of its injurious effects on the sugar-producing Colonies in the West Indies. That was a remarkable admission in the face of the Prime Minister's declaration that it was no part of his policy to raise the price of food. In February, Lord Lansdowne wired that if the Convention was not arranged the British Government would take steps to safeguard British interests, and, later on, that it was important that a decision should be arrived at without delay, Those despatches created a situation as dramatic as any recently seen. Publicly the Government were declaring against the taxation of food, while in the secrecy of the Cabinet they were working to terminate the period of cheap sugar, and
    1536
    demanding the right to subsidise the Colonies and grant them a preference. To complete the picture, the policy of the Government was now seen in full operation, and the people of this country were suffering grave evils owing to the experiments that had been made. In the face of these facts, it was impossible to come to any other conclusion than that the Government expected a rise in price to follow the Convention, that they did the whole thing deliberately, and that nothing had occurred except what they had anticipated and did their best to promote.
    The contention of the Government was that although the prices had gone up they had at any rate established a better system of trade and put the sugar industry on a sound footing. He had grave suspicion of any defence of free trade from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade or the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham. The position of the Opposition on this question ought to be clearly understood. They did not mix up the questions of the abolition of bounties and the Brussels Convention. The former could have been easily secured without the instrumentality of the latter. As free-traders they were and always had been in favour of the abolition of bounties, but that was a very different thing from supporting such an instrument as this Convention. The nature and effect of the bounties had never been really understood in this country, but the results of their abolition had thrown a new light on the question. There had been a great increase in consumption in every beet-producing country. Free-traders had always maintained that the abolition of bounties would result in great blessing to the bounty-giving countries themselves, and this contention had been abundantly borne out by the facts. What had occurred proved that bounties and tariffs were exactly the same in their incidence, nature, and effects, and should therefore be opposed by all free-traders. It had been too readily assumed that the bounties had made sugar cheap in this country. If a French importer produced sugar at a cost of £8 a ton, and received a bounty of £5 for exporting it to this country, would it be sold in Mincing Lane at £5 10s.? Not a bit of it. If the price was £11 the Frenchman would

    1537
    take every penny of it; he would not sell the sugar a farthing the cheaper because he had received a bounty. The object of foreigners in getting their Governments to organise a system of bounties was to put money into their own pockets, not to give anything to the British, but to enrich themselves The reason sugar fell was that the buyer always found some other sugar on the market which he would have taken if the other had not agreed to meet his wants. The price was settled by the law of supply and demand, and had never been settled by bounties or by any consideration given beforehand to the grower. If that were true, it was also true that the present rise in price was due, not to the bounties but to something else, and hon. Members, putting aside the sophistries of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, ought to search patiently for the real reason of the rise in this absolute necessary of life. Much had been made of the difference between the cost of production and the price at which the article was sold being met by a bounty. That was a most dangerous doctrine. What had we to do with the cost of production in any great market? Which cost of production did the Government mean—the highest or the lowest? Sugar was produced in forty-two countries, in some of which the cost of production was as low as £5 a ton. If that question were taken into account at all a stop would be put to all improvement in methods of manufacture, and there would be great difficult in preserving the commercial supremacy of this country.
    But what was the real reason of the great rise in price? The hon. Gentleman opposite had made out that it was largely due to the shortage in the beet crop. But to what was the shortage in the beet crop due? The reason was that when, instead of allowing the bounty system to die a natural death, the Government resolved to take part in the Brussels Convention, and to give a certain day for the termination of the system, they caused a diminution in the sowing of beet to the extent of 6½ per cent., which represented a falling off in the crop of about 400,000 tons. Then came a dry summer, for which of course the Convention was not responsible. But then
    1538
    there was the increased consumption in Continental countries for which the Convention was directly responsible, so that two out of the three great causes of the shortage of beet sugar were immediately due to the Convention. It was true there had been an increased production of cane sugar, but it could certainly not be traced to any effect of the Brussels Convention. For the last twenty years there had been a steady increase in the production of cane sugar, notwithstanding the existence of bounties, but we had been prevented from taking advantage of the last increase of 400,000 tons by the very arrangement made under the Convention. But the Convention had brought into operation something a great deal worse than prohibition. In the place of the free market which formerly existed in this country, the Convention had created the greatest combine the world had ever seen, and what hon. Members forgot was that this combine was working day after day in Brussels against the interests of this country. There were sent by each country and attached to the Permanent, Commission one or two gentlemen called "trade experts," whose business it was to discuss the quantities of sugar sent from every country, who knew exactly what we wanted in our markets, and who were fully aware that to send up and maintain prices it was only necessary "to feed us low," to give us a little less than we wanted. The Government had actually called those competitors together, and enabled them to form this great combination against this country. It might be asked whether our own expert was not protecting the interests of Great Britain. It was only necessary to mention the name of the gentleman to answer the question. The British expert was Mr. George Martineau, whose very name suggested sugar refining and producing, and he had joined with other producers to work out a plan by which prices should be kept up steadily. He did not make the slightest attack on Mr. Martineau. Sir Nevile Lubbock also was sent as an expert a year or so ago. He did not at all blame these gentlemen; they were producers; and it was their business to make dear the article they had to sell, and they had done it very

    1539
    effectively. The very words of the Convention stated its object as being "to equalise competition between producers." Why should we equalise competition? The object of buyers was to keep competitors apart, and to buy from the one who would sell the cheapest; whereas the object of the Convention was to bring the competitors together, and pan out the trade of the United Kingdom in this most important article between them. By the creation of this European combine the Convention had indeed been a most powerful instrument in raising the price of sugar in this country.
    Then there was prohibition. Prohibition was the invention of Great Britain and was her contribution to this precious instrument. The principle of the Convention was countervailing duties, to the merits of which the whole of the speech of the President of the Board of Trade on November 24th, 1902, was devoted. The House had never heard why that method was abandoned; he would now reveal to them the secret. About four months after that debate there was issued a White Paper, containing the names of forty-two countries from which sugar was exported to this country. It also showed that the value of Great Britain's export to those countries was £201,000,000 or 60 per cent, of her total exports, and seventeen of those countries had treaties containing the most - favoured - nation clause, and absolutely forbidding the policy of countervailing duties. That White Paper killed the first suggestion of the Government, and they then brought forward the idea of prohibition, which in his opinion was worse than countervailing duties. In the Court set up under the Convention there were eleven judges, ten of whom were appointed by foreign countries. What right had foreign countries to pronounce decisions as to where our commerce should go? Never in history had anything so undignified been assented to by Parliament as the position in which Great Britain was placed in this matter. A more wretched or contemptible mockery of a Court had never been set up. It had no rules of procedure; there was no system of cross-examination of witnesses; evidence was not sifted; everything seemed to be upside down, as the House would see from the decisions
    1540
    which had been arrived at. At its first meeting in June, 1903, its business was to examine the trade systems of the various countries. Why should this Court of foreigners examine our trade system? Their own trade systems were not pure, and they themselves were protectionists. Not only was this surtax retained, but three Powers were actually permitted to give bounties. The Court, under the Convention, had to pronounce decisions upon the purity of every trade system in the world. In June, 1903, this Court condemned six countries. Now the Convention contained a provision that the moment condemnation was pronounced it was the duty of each contracting party to act upon it. With regard to those six condemned countries this country only prohibited from three of them, and not the sugar from Japan, Spain, and another country. The Government said that we got no sugar last year from those countries, but then they might get some from them next year. They should either have prohibited the sugar from all those countries or else have expressed their contempt for the Convention by not prohibiting from any. The American Republic had been condemned, and in July, 1904, they started prohibiting from America. Later on twenty more countries were condemned by the Court, and why did the Government not prohibit from all those countries? Why was our own Government the first to set itself up in rebellion against the law the Government had created? Simply because the whole thing was ridiculous and intolerable. What evidence had the Government to justify their appeal against the decision of the Court in regard to those twenty countries? This question of appeal wanted some attention. The Convention provided that appeals must be heard within thirty days, and if any country included in the Convention took exception it had to appeal within eight days. Our Government appealed within eight days, but they never took any pains to get their appeal settled within the thirty days. The whole thing was an intolerable farce, and this postponement of the decision of the Court was a great injustice to British commerce. The intolerable nature of these proceedings was only realised when it was recognised that this

    1541
    nation was the only country in the Convention that did any trade with the condemned countries, and that was the reason why by a majority of ten to one the Court decided not against the trade of their own countries but against the trade of Great Britain. That was an ignominious position for the trade of this country to be placed in. Who were the judges? Why the people who were interested in the supply of sugar. It was very easy for them to tell us to close our ports against this sugar. At the present time we were paying £800,000 a month more for our sugar, and it was not costing any more to produce it. Where was this money going to? The sum of £400,000 a month was going to Germany, £200,000 a month to France, and £150,000 a month to other European countries. Those judges, therefore, had got very good reasons for closing our ports. He wished most seriously to ask the President of the Board of Trade why had they set, the decision of the Convention at naught? Why did they refuse to prohibit from certain condemned countries and not from others? Why did they not refuse in all cases and tell the Convention plainly that the ports of England would be kept open by Englishmen?
    He wished to say a word or two with regard to the treatment of Russia. Russia was one of the first countries condemned. The President of the Board of Trade rashly contradicted a figure of his, but the right hon. Gentleman had now admitted that he was entirely wrong, and if he was not absolutely right, at any rate he was much nearer the truth than the right hon. Gentleman. Russia was one of their best customers in the world, but they were ordered to prohibit from Russia. The Convention received a Russian deputation on the subject, and after the matter had been fully discussed there was nobody opposed to the Russian demands except Sir Henry Bergne. Why did he oppose? There was not a country in the world that it was more unwise for this country to oppose at the Convention than Russia. And what did Russia do? She immediately put a duty on our tea. The President of the Board of Trade had
    1542
    admitted that the Government did not know what sugar they got from Russia and what amount of tea we sent to Russia. Upon this the right hon. Gentleman had admitted that he was entirely wrong. The Government had not in every case taken into consideration the question whether a bounty was given or not. The Government claimed the right to judge for itself with regard to Russia, but it had no right to do so under the Convention. It was the Permanent Commission which was to decide these matters. Russia had been treated differently from Dominica by the Government. At this moment the decision of the Permanent Commission with regard to Russia had been postponed. Surely if the Government was disposed to open our port with regard to Russian sugar it could do so.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid Russia did give a bounty. The countervailing duty originally fixed was objected to by Russia, and it was subsequently reduced by the Permanent Commission to the amount at which the United States fixed the countervailing duty for Russia. The ultimate decision as to the amount of the countervailing duty had been postponed.
    MR. LOUGHsaid that was a perfectly candid statement, but he claimed that as the decision was postponed we also should postpone the prohibition. We should act as cautiously as possible before we closed our ports. He thought it was time that this country asserted itself in regard to this matter in order to get the whole thing put on a better basis. The results of the present policy were most alarming. It was all very well for the Secretary to the Board of Trade to say that sweetmeats were a luxury, but that did not help the people who were making a living by the manufacture of confectionery. It was difficult sometimes to draw the line between a necessary and a luxury. There were 3,500 factories, great and small, in the country engaged in this business, and £30,000,000 of capital was invested in it. The president of the Association of the Sugar-using Trades said that the mineral water trade had been brought to the verge of ruin by the increase in the price of sugar. The Aerated Bread Company in London was one of the companies engaged in the

    1543
    distribution of liquid refreshments, and it stated that the sugar given out in cups now cost £5,000 more than a year ago, and £10,000 more than ten years ago. As a result of the sugar policy there had been a decrease in the employment of the people of this country. He thought it had been shown clearly that all the forecasts which the opponents of the Convention made had been proved to be true and that everything the Government said had been falsified. He believed it was utterly impossible to administer the decisions of the Court set up; most important industries had been brought almost to the verge of ruin; and great distress had been caused among certain classes by the rise in the price of sugar. These were things they might expect when the freedom of the commerce of the country was interfered with. This Convention would, he believed, be a lasting monument to the want of foresight and wisdom of the present Government.
    MR. DAVID MORGANsaid there had been enormous speculation in sugar. There were a great number of people in this country who would raise their hands with horror if asked to go into the Casino at Monte Carlo, but who did not mind having a few tons of beet sugar in the Produce Clearing House in Mincing Lane. That speculation had been very heavy indeed. When the Sugar Convention was foreshadowed beet sugar was at a price below the cost of production. In July, 1902, it was 5s. 11d. The Sugar Convention came into operation in September, 1903. Beet sugar in Mincing Lane on July 3rd, 1903, was 7s. 8½d, and on the July 31st it was 8s. 0¼d. On August 7th, it was 8s. 3d. The total visible supply in Europe and America in July, 1903, was 2,696,296 tons; in Feb., 1904, 3,787,130 tons; in July, 2,594,335 tons, and in September, 1,527,613 tons. From February to July, 1904, the consumption abroad increased a million tons, causing a rise in price from 7s. 8d. in February, 1904, to 9s. 8d. in July, 1904, and 10s. 8d. in September. The sales of 88 per cent, beet sugar registered in London Produce Clearing House during August-January, 1903–4. were 3,261,000 bags; August-January, 1904–5, 11,188,000
    1544
    bags; but the quantity actually tendered in those periods was only, 1903–4, 630,000 bags; .1904–5, 744,000 bags. They had heard a great deal of the opinions of people on the political side of this question. He should like to quote the opinion of one who, he supposed, was the best informed gentleman on the sugar question in London, namely, Mr. Cæsar Czarnikow. Speaking at the yearly general meeting of the London Produce Clearing House he said—
    "Without wishing to introduce any controversial element, I should like to give you my opinion, as one who has had the closest connection with sugar all his life, that the much-abused Brussels Convention is not responsible for the rise we have had. I might as well add that the Convention came just in time to save the cane-sugar industry from ruin, not only in our West Indian Colonies, but in other parts of the world as well, and if it had not been carried through we should have had under present conditions an even greater scarcity and probably much higher prices."
    That was the statement of a man who had a lifelong experience of the sugar trade and whose views were infinitely better than the amateur opinions of many who had addressed them on the subject.
    SIR JAMES JOICEYsaid the gambling in sugar to which the hon. Member opposite had referred was very detrimental to the interests of the importers and the consumers. These gambling operations were in the nature of bets, there being no compulsion to deliver the goods. It was customary to have a clause inserted in the contracts to the effect that only the differences in the buying and selling prices must be paid. He would not trouble the House at any great length, but there were one or two general considerations which, as representative of a large sugar-consuming constituency, he thought he ought to allude to. He was an opponent of the bounties which were given in various ways by foreign countries. What he could not understand was, why the Government should have only dealt with one class of bounties, that on sugar, and should have ignored others which caused this country very serious harm. Take the bounties given by the French Government to shipping. Every French shipbuilder who built a ship in France received a bounty,

    1545
    and every French shipowner who sailed a French ship manned by a French crew received a bounty. These bounties affected the shipping industry in this country very prejudicially. A customer of his own had forty-three sailing-ships trading to Chili, and the bounties he received from the French Government amounted to £43,000 a year. Why did not His Majesty's Government, which professed to be very anxious to abolish the system of bounties as against the principles of free trade, try to get the abolition of these shipping bounties which injured this country very seriously instead of dealing with sugar alone from which we received very great benefit? Now, undoubtedly this Convention was intended to raise the price of sugar, because it was from the first seated that it was agreed to in the interests of the West Indian Islands. [MINISTERIAL cries of "No."] If it was not intended to raise the price of sugar he failed to see what was its object, or what good it could have done. But now the Government saw the evil effects of raising the price of sugar in this country, and they naturally wanted to show that it was never intended to raise but to reduce the price of that commodity. He confessed he had never been much against the sugar bounties, because he had always seen that they were a benefit to this country and injurious to those countries which gave them and placed huge tariffs against the goods exported from this country. He had always looked upon the sugar bounties as some sort of compensation for these high tariffs. He knew that for years the bounties given in Continental countries had been increasing, and that these countries had felt them to be a very serious burden on their population. They did not know how to get rid of them until they induced His Majesty's Government to give them their support. He was satisfied that when the five years for which the Convention was to last came to an end, that Convention would not be renewed by this country, and the Continental countries would not be very keen to renew the bounties. The result would be that instead of our getting the very great boon of cheap sugar, that article would remain cheap on the Continent and would enable their manu
    1546
    facturers to compete effectively against ours.
    He had listened very carefully to the speeches on both sides, and confessed that any rational line of argument—to use a favourite expression of the Prime Minister's—had been all on one side, and that against the Convention. He could not understand why His Majesty's Government, which was always anxious to got this House to give them the power of making their own bargains in regard to tariff questions—to give them a free hand in short—had handed over the control of the sugar industries of this country to a Commission of ten members, of which only one was an Englishman. Why should His Majesty's Government have tied their hands in every form, and practically handed the control of our sugar industries over to our commercial opponents? It was a mad policy they had pursued in regard to this Sugar Convention. There was no doubt whatever that the open ports which had been maintained in this country for the last fifty years had been a great advantage, had brought cheap food to our people, and given large employment to our workmen; and he could not understand why the Government should have given power to the Sugar Commission to prohibit the entry of sugar into this from other countries, such as Argentina, which was a very rich agricultural country, and would enormously increase its production of sugar if its sugar - growers could only get into our market. This country was entirely dependent on a foreign sugar supply, and why should the importation of sugar be prohibited from certain countries? The result would be that these countries would give up producing the very articles we were anxious to buy from them.
    He had been very much interested in what fell the previous night from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, but thought that the right hon. Gentleman was labouring under great difficulties, because he saw clearly that he had a very bad case. Consequently the right hon. Gentleman was not so clear and incisive in his argument as was his usual wont. However, the right hon. Gentleman had

    1547
    made as much of his case as he possibly could, although he did not answer a single one of the arguments put forward so strongly by the mover of the Amendment, the seconder, and the hon. Member for Islington. The arguments of these hon. Gentlemen were overwhelming in showing the folly of the Government in entering into the Sugar Convention. The increase meant an added expenditure of from twenty-two shillings to twenty-six shillings per annum to every householder maintaining a family; and that was important. He was very interested in a statement published by the President of the Mineral Water Manufacturers' Association; and he confessed he had no idea that the association represented such an enormous capital or had such a large number of employees. That industry depended largely on cheap sugar; and it would be a very serious matter if it were interfered with. He failed to see why the Government should have overlooked these considerations. He thought they had not been fully aware of the case in all its bearings. He was satisfied that as time went on the Government would begin to see, notwithstanding the eloquence of the hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, that they had made a mistake in this matter, and that they would have to retrace their steps. Whether that was the case or not, he was satisfied that when there was an appeal to the country there would be great difficulty in persuading large co-operative societies and other large consumers of sugar that the increase in the price of the commodity was not to a great extent owing to the Convention. Only 50,000 or 60,000 tons were sent from the West Indies; and it was amazing that the Government should have entered into such a scheme on their behalf. How could any such scheme benefit this country? As had been pointed out by his hon. friend the Member for West Islington, the great benefit which was being conferred by the Convention was given to Germany, France, and Austria.
    The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham alluded to the various fluctuations in the price of sugar which had taken place, and said that
    1548
    the Convention would have the effect of preventing them. He wished he could hope that that would be the case; but he was afraid that gambling in sugar would continue in the future as in the past. What the Convention would do would be to create a large stock of ready material, and if there was an enormous stock the price would be subject to very serious fluctuations. He thought, therefore, that the Convention would not prevent fluctuations. Again, it would be found that the countries to which this country sent large exports sent back large imports, and that this country sent large exports to the countries from which it received large imports. If, therefore, they prevented imports from any particular country, that country would take less goods from this country; and would take its supplies from other countries. The Convention was a most foolish thing; and it showed the great danger of a Government interfering with questions of tariff. If the Government obtained a free hand to interfere with other trades and manufactures in this country as they had interfered with sugar, the country would never know where it was. He believed, however, that the country would not allow the Government to gamble with its interests as they had gambled with the sugar industry. He protested against any such policy being carried out. He would prefer to trust the traders and manufacturers of the country whose industries depended on free sugar, rather than trust the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Blackfriars Division of Glasgow or the President of the Board of Trade. It appeared to him extraordinary that the Government should have handed over the control of sugar to competing countries and commercial opponents, whose interests it would be to control the trade to their own advantage. He hoped hon. Gentlemen would make clear to the constituencies the serious injury which the Convention inflicted on this country. They ought to have been satisfied with the old conditions.
    MR. JAMES REIDsaid there was one point which seemed to have been overlooked by every Member who had spoken in this debate, namely, that we had no guarantee that foreign nations would continue these bounties

    1549
    after they had crushed our sugar refiners out of the trade. What they would no doubt do then would be to keep their cheap sugar for their own consumption and send their dear sugar to us. The firms of Tate and Lyle had been referred to, but the House must remember that the trade of both those firms was exceptional; Messrs. Lyle struck a speciality in syrup, and Tate's in cubes. It was impossible to point to any other refiner in the country who had done such a trade, or anything like such a trade, as either of those firms. In Greenock ten or twelve sugar refiners had been crushed out of the trade, and the four or five who were left were, up to the time of the Convention coming into operation, living from day to day, although there had been some improvement since. The manufacture of sugar-refining machinery and the shipping trade with the West Indies, both good trades in times past, were now gone or almost gone, although it was to be hoped, with the resuscitation of the sugar-growing industry in the West Indies and the arrival here of cargoes of sugar from those islands, there would be a return of prosperity to those trades.
    He had no new arguments to place before the House with regard to the fluctuations in the price of sugar, but contended that the Convention could not be held responsible for them inasmuch as sugar, before the Convention came into operation, varied in price from 6s., a price which could not pay the producer, to more than 28s., and again fell to 10s. in the same year. The consumption on the Continent at the time of the drought was largely the cause of the small supply and the high prices. These, however, were temporary, and would pass away owing to the larger area which would be planted in the future. Switzerland had been said to have benefited by admitting Russian and Argentine sugar, but he did not know that sugar was cheaper in Switzerland than in other parts of the Continent. Jams were no doubt dearer, but he could not believe that trade was so ruined as had been made out, for he noticed that one of the firms engaged in the jam manufacturing industry distributed a dividend of 37½ per cent, in 1903. The confectioners wanted their
    1550
    raw material at under cost price, and he made bold to say that any trade which could not exist unless it could obtain its raw material under cost was a rotten trade and one which ought not to be allowed to survive. All the sugar refiners asked for was a fair field and no favour. They were quite prepared to meet fair competition, but said that so long as bounty-fed sugar was allowed to be imported into this country in competition with them they would clamour for relief. That relief they had now got, at all events for five years, by means of the Convention. The outcry of the confectioners was inconsistent, because in 1889, when sugar was 28s. 3d. per cwt., they said the high price was caused by the bounties put upon it, and now they were crying out that the bounties were killing them. No one could be blamed for the fluctuation of prices. Wool, for instance, had recently risen 100 per cent., there was no bounty there, and all that could be done was to face the difficulty and wait for better times in the hope that things would come round in time. He trusted that this Amendment would be rejected by a large majority, and that our sugar trade would be no longer crushed, for he believed that as a result of this Convention we should see a very largely increased supply of sugar both from Europe and the West Indies in the near future.
    MR. ASHTONthought the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, in his anxiety to prove that the Sugar Convention was not responsible for the rise in the price of sugar, had proved almost too much. If the hon. Gentleman's contention was correct, what became of the argument that the Convention was for the benefit of the West Indian planters? Various reasons had been given for the rise, and doubtless the drought on the Continent had occurred most conveniently for hon. Gentlemen opposite. But it was practically admitted that £11, the price of beet for future delivery as against the present price of £15, was a fair price after discounting the drought, and he submitted without hesitation that the whole of the difference between the former price of £6 and £11 was due to the Convention. The fact that the average prices

    1551
    for the three years preceding the Convention, and for the three years since, were very much the same, proved nothing. For years past, until the Convention, there had been a gradual decline in the price of beet owing to the bounty system, but from 1902 the price had steadily increased. Was it not probable that the rise was due to the discussion of the; question, and the introduction of the legislation which culminated in the Brussels Convention? It could not be a question of crop, as the crop was wrong only last year, and prices had been steadily rising for two years before. The various prices were as follows: July, 1902, 6s.; November, 1902, 7s. 7d.; February, 1903, 8s.; September, 1903, 8s. 6d.; January, 1904, 8s.; June, 1904, 9s. 3d.; September, 1904, 10s. 11d; and at present it was about 16s. He thought that was proof positive that the main part of the rise was due to the Convention. If the shortness of the crop had been the reason, why had not prices risen on the Continent as well as here? Prices on the Continent had declined just as they had risen in Great Britain. To what could it be owing but the altered circumstances brought about by the legislation complained of? Prices had gone down abroad because the duties had been lowered, and they had increased here because Great Britain was no longer a free market. Regularity of price was no doubt of enormous importance in all trades, but it was certainly not secured by the Sugar Convention. The Government ought to have left the foreigners to stew in their own juice. It was admitted that the system could not go on for ever, and that the abolition of bounties would have come without any outside interference. There would then have been a gradual rise, and little harm would have been done as compared with the destruction of industries caused by the sudden enormous increase of prices. It was an easy thing to get prices down, but a very difficult thing to get them up, and this Convention had greatly increased the difficulty.
    And, it being half-past Seven of the clock, the debate stood adjourned till this Evening's Sitting.

  EVENING SITTING.

    KING'S SPEECH (MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS).
    Order read, for resuming adjourned debate on Amendment [27th February] to Main Question [14th February], "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as folioweth:—
    "Most Gracious Sovereign,
    "We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament."—(Mr. Mount.)
    Which Amendment was—
    "At the end of the Question, to add the words, But we humbly represent to Your Majesty that Your Majesty's Government in committing the country to the policy of the Brussels Sugar Convention have inflicted heavy losses upon trade, diminished employment of labour, enormously increased the cost of a necessary food to consumers, without any compensatory advantage; and we humbly submit to Your Majesty that these evil results call for an immediate remedy; and that the Convention should be denounced at the earliest possible moment.'"—(Mr. Kearley.)
    Question again proposed, "That those words be there added."
    MR. ASHTON (continuing his speech)said when the adjournment took place he was endeavouring to develop an argument against that which the right hon. Member for West Birmingham had employed on the previous evening, namely that the abolition of the bounties would prevent the fluctuation of prices. With that view he agreed, always provided bounties were abolished and that the countries affected had free trade. But that was not the case with this country, because we were not allowed to have free trade within the Convention. Our liberty was largely restricted, and we were only allowed to deal with certain favoured countries for sugar. That being so we should not get the benefit of the reduction in the price of sugar. Theoretically, bounties were absolutely bad. They bolstered up industries by means of false protection, of

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    which they were themselves a form, and therefore he disclaimed entirely any desire to see bounties in this or any other country which studied its own interest. But that was a very different thing from saying that we ought to have assisted in this Convention to get rid of bounties in foreign countries, which, so far from being detrimental to us, were of enormous benefit. In consequence of those bounties we got our sugar cheaper by many millions of pounds sterling than we otherwise should, and there was no reason why we should not have gone on receiving that benefit so long as other countries were satisfied. The advantages were so great that we were enabled to start large numbers of new industries which depended for their prosperity on cheap sugar, and in that way get a start in the markets of the world, with our cheap goods, which it would be very difficult for other countries to overtake. We also gained a very cheap article of food, and sugar being so cheap was one of the great factors which permitted the Chancellor of the Exchequer to put a half-penny tax upon it during the time of war. It would have been extremely difficult for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have put the duty on sugar if the right lion. Gentleman had not at the same time been able to argue that we were getting our sugar at less than cost price and that, therefore, it was not a hard tax to bear. But now the policy had been altered and the price of sugar raised as it had been by the Convention, he was bound to say this tax had become a very hard tax for the people of this country to bear. Under these circumstances the Government might well be charged with a want of foresight and businesslike methods in conducting the affairs of this country.
    The argument that the Convention was entered into for the benefit of the West Indies did not hold good, because the benefit to the West Indies could only be a few hundreds of thousands of pounds, whereas the loss to this country was £8,000,000, taking the price of sugar at £11 a ton, the price to which it was expected to drop when the next crop came in. He quite admitted that there had been considerable hardship felt in our West Indian colonies in having to compete with bounty-fed sugar, but
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    at the same time the benefit to ourselves was so enormous and the loss to the Colonies so infinitesimal that it would have paid this country over and over again to give some sort of subvention to the Colonies, while the bounties lasted, rather than deprive itself of the vast benefit accruing from cheap sugar. If the condition of things had been met in that way the great free-trade policy of this country would not have, been interfered with. It would have been left intact. That could not be said under the present circumstances. This Convention had brought us to a condition of preferential trading. And to whom was the preference given? Not to our Colonies, but to the hated foreigner. That was hardly the thing to expect from the right hon. Gentleman, and those who supported him. This preference had already led to retaliation, and was in itself a splendid illustration of what the policy of retaliation would be. The innocent suffered for the guilty. Russia was prevented from sending sugar to this country and therefore had retaliated not by putting a tax upon this country, not even by taxing the sugar-growers of India, but by putting an extra tax on the unoffending tea-grower of India. One set of people had to suffer for the sins of another set of people. What a commentary that was on the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman for a policy of retaliation. America would not take South Wales tin plates, and therefore we were to tax nor American tin plates but American agricultural implements imported into this country!
    Were we quite sure that the West Indian Islands were in need of this policy of a Convention which had had such a disastrous effect on this country? There had hardly been a period in the history of those islands when the people had not been calling out about the distressed condition of their trade and expecting this country to go to their assistance. In private life the giving of doles was known to be a most dangerous proceeding, and it was open to question as to whether this policy of giving doles to communities did not sap the enterprise of the people. Want of enterprise was one very important factor in the economic history of the islands. How was it that the West Indies had been

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    unable to compete with sugar bounties when Cuba and Java had not only been able to compete, but had increased their production? The reason that Cuba was able to compete was because in that island the planters lived on their plantations and took an interest in them and were up to date in their machinery and methods. Nothing but indolence and want of enterprise prevented the West Indies from doing what Cuba had done. Were we quite sure these Colonies were going to make so much out of this Convention? Speaking for himself he was not so sure. If sugar fell to £11 a ton were these islands going to be much better off for it. Before the Convention came into operation the West Indies were admitted to the American markets, which were closed against bounty-fed sugars. That advantage had now gone. The bounties were now abolished, the Continental growers would keenly compete in the American markets, and he thought the West Indies would not have the advantage that they had before the abolition of the bounties. On the other hand there were the industries in this country which had been injured by this Convention, not only those directly concerned with sugar, but also those which were injured indirectly. We had excluded the sugar of certain countries from our ports. That was to say, we were going to restrict their exports to this country, and the natural result of that would be that they must restrict our exports to them. We could not restrict the imports of sugar into this country without affecting our exports to the countries whose sugar we did not allow to come into our ports. That was a very serious matter. Our exports to the Argentine amounted to £8,500,000, and it would be a most serious thing to the manufacturers of this country if the Government's action in this matter restricted their markets for the benefit of foreigners. Another great result of this Convention was that it placed the policy of the fiscal system of this country at the mercy of the foreigner. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham had admitted on the previous evening that he could not carry out the changes in our fiscal policy which he desired to carry out, and the reason for that was that we had bound ourselves to the
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    foreigners, and we had tied ourselves to the tail of certain interests in this country—the sugar interests.
    MR. SEYMOUR ORMSBY-GOREsaid he had always looked upon the Convention as a gross monstrosity, and he had voted against it at every stage during the last session. On this question, the Government had shown great precipitation. They had plunged headlong into the question without taking the opinion of their Party beforehand. Their supporters were not told before the last election that they would be called upon to vote for a measure so far-reaching. The Government had shown scarcely less impetuosity than another historic collective body which once ran down a steep place into the sea. They had gone into this alliance in haste, and were now repenting at leisure. The result of the Convention so far had been that works directly or indirectly interested in the sugar industry were shut in all parts of the country, and we were paying in increased prices of sugar no less than £8,000,000. [Cries of "No, no!"] He would refer those who differed from him to the Board of Trade statistics. They had heard the statement cited that evening that the people of this country were paying over £8,000,000 more for their sugar than they were before the Convention, and he did not think any answer had been given which actually refuted that statement.
    SIR FREDERICK BANBURY: It has been pointed out that the increase is £2,000,000 and not £8,000,000.
    MR. SEYMOUR ORMSBY-GOREsaid that was the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, but he appeared to have left out of his calculation the freights and the duties.
    Three reasons had been adduced by the Government in favour of this Convention. First of all, it was contended that the recent rise in the price of sugar had not been caused by the Convention, and that in any case the price of sugar would have risen to its present level. The second reason was

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    that the Convention would render assistance to the struggling sugar industry in the West Indies, but that had proved true only to an infinitesimal extent. The third reason advanced in support of the Convention was that it would rehabilitate the sugar-refining industry of this country. With regard to the contention that the Convention was not responsible for the rise in the price of sugar, he was not an admirer of the argument of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, but he thought an argument like that could be urged upon this occasion. He thought there was overwhelming evidence that the increased price of sugar had been produced by the Convention. They had been told that this increased price was largely due to an attempt to "corner" the sugar market, but no such attempt had been made. There had, of course, been a great impetus given to speculation that might be entered upon. The results of this Convention might have been fore seen by any business man. What happened on the Continent, with the abolition of the bounties and the surtax limited to 6 francs per 100 kilos for refined, and 5½ francs for unrefined sugars? The fence round our Continental neighbours broke down, and the price dropped heavily, consequently a great increase in consumption, and a restriction in production. In France up to the year ending August, 1904, consumption increased from 371,119 tons to nearly 700,000 tons, or about 90 per cent.; in Germany, from 740,000 tons to over 11,000,000 tons, or 52 per cent.; in Austria, from 380,000 to over 500,000 tons, or 37 per cent. The production on the Continent had decreased. This might, be due to last season's drought, but not to that alone, because the sowings of beet had largely diminished. The area under beet had diminished by over 100,000 hectares. The diminished yield was accounted for by the withdrawal of the bounties, but that only accounted for a minimum of the increased price, for present visible supply with sugar at 14s. 3d. per cwt. was 10,250,000 tons, against 10,750,000 tons in 1902, and 10,375,000 tons in 1903.
    Had the Convention benefited the West Indies? He had always questioned the great utility of the West Indies to this country as a sugar-producing colony. The people were very pig-headed. They
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    still thought they could grow sugar at a great profit. This country had given them doles, but what had they done with them? Had they improved their machinery or systems of production? No, their capital had been what was called "blown" and not expended on the importtation of machinery. Besides, the greater number of the islands in the West Indies were not adapted to sugar growing. They were hilly, whereas flat countries were required for the conveyance of the produce. Nor could he see that the West Indies had benefited by this Convention. The West Indies could only manage to distil 58 per cent, of their sugar, whilst in Honolulu they distilled 92 per cent. The West Indies had brought most of their misfortunes on their own heads. They had squandered the many doles and subventions that had been accorded them by the House. The hopes raised had prevented the West Indies from making arrangements with the United States. It would have been far cheaper for this country to have given them £350,000 per annum rather than to have imposed £8,000,000 on this country. Let them take Barbadoes as an instance. In 1902 the production of Barbadoes was valued at £301,602; in 1903 it was valued at £259,746. In 1903 the imports from the West Indies and British Guiana to this country were 522,907 cwts. In 1904 they were 809,929 cwts., or an increased value of only about £20,000 to the whole of the West Indies. The West Indies were not adapted to growing sugar except Cuba, Antigua, Barbadoes, St. Kitts, and British Guiana, which were now growing fruit instead. They were too mountainous and did not permit of the cheap construction of tramways to the central factories. With regard to sugar refining, there were just as many men employed in this industry as there were twenty years ago, and therefore there was not the slightest grievance on that score. Some twenty-three pigmies had been consolidated into two giant factories, and that was the only difference. Mr. Martin, a director of Tate's, said in a pamphlet—
    "Sugar refiners have never asked for more than fair competition, and if anyone has cause to grumble at the Sugar Convention surely it is the British refiner, who still feels the effect of

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    the surtaxes allowed the foreign refiner which give him a distinct protection in his own market."
    The increased price of sugar was due to the Sugar Convention, which had given a stimulus to speculation. Having been on the Stock Exchange he knew the game. We had almost wrecked certain industries through this disastrous legislation, and had made ourselves the laughing-stock of the foreigner. Why, having had this large sugar-plum put into our mouths, should we insist on rejecting it? We had shut Russia and Argentina out of our markets, and had given an impetus to Java only. The 250,000 tons of sugar from Russia and Argentina would have relieved the market. Speaking upon the subject of retaliatory duties in regard to Indian sugar, Lord Curzon said he thought that was indisputable. He imagined that that opinion was synonymous with that which was held by those on his side of the House who took the same opinion on this Convention as he did. He looked upon the whole Convention as a disaster. But, to speak metaphorically, they were "sucked" into this Convention and the foreigner was reaping the benefit. He thought he might be allowed to read what Monsieur Josef Caillaux said in "La Gironde" of September 22nd last—
    "Several years ago the impost on sugar was fixed at the exorbitant rate of 65 frs. per 100 kilos., 65 centimes per kilo. As everyone knows, a large portion of the product of this growing tax does not return to the Treasury. The annual consumption of sugar in France oscillating between 400,000,000 and 500,000,000 of kilos., the State ought to recoup 450,000,000 frs. yearly; it only receives 150,000,000 to 200,000,000, the surplus being employed in bounties distributed to the manufacturers of sugar. This custom has had the principal result of creating a disproportion between the production, which, roused by the stimulus of bounties, develops itself beyond all measure and the consumption which remains stationary, overwhelmed by the weight of the impost; above all, furnishing the English at the expense of the French taxpayers with cheap sugar. The laws of concurrence prevented, therefore, the producers retaining the greater part of the bounties which were paid, though they employed them to lower the price of sugar, and, as they sold in England about two-thirds of the goods which they manufactured, two-thirds of the bounties paid by the French reached the English. We were thus benevolently turning over to our neighbours across the Channel a subsidy of 50,000,000 or 100,000,000 frs. yearly. "Ah, my dear neighbours, what is so remarkable about your astonishment? What you have not
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    understood is that the imposition of bounties oil the powers of the Continent had the effect of diminishing the price of sugar to your advantage; that when the bounties disappeared, necessarily the tendency of sugar was to rise; that, however, was only to be expected."
    Now, Sir, that was a faithful witness as to the effect of the bounties in this country. Even had they wished to raise the money by the further taxation of sugar in this country that even would have been better than to have attempted to bolster up the West Indies at the price of the British taxpayer. But here they got nothing, and they gave £8,000,000 for nothing, and that was an act of the grossest stupidity which the Government could have been capable of. He had always voted against the Government on this question, but to-day a vote did not mean that the Convention would be repealed, and even if the Convention were repealed, they could not force the sugar-growers and manufacturers in Germany and Austria to reimpose their cartels. The Convention would continue in force for the next three years and a half. We had bound ourselves in this unfortunate alliance with nine other Powers, but if he were in the House two years and a half hence he should certainly vote for denouncing the Convention.
    MR. CROOKSsaid that he remembered the agitation in the old days when sugar refining first encountered foreign competition and its improved methods. He was then one of the injured working men whose trade had been taken away, and he remembered the masters getting up mass meetings of five or six in a public-house to protest against the bounty-fed sugar when an unanimous vote was easily secured after the champagne and cigars had gone round. He remembered reading a speech which the right hon. Member for West Birmingham made in Greenock, and in which, talking of the disappearing industries of the district, he pointed to the decadence of the sugar industry, and asked where it had gone to. If he had been behind the right hon. Gentleman he would have said that it had gone to Silvertown. In former days there were thirteen sugar houses in the Tower Hamlets, and they were now all shut up. But when they were working the number of men employed was only 300—all

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    Germans too. They never heard anything about aliens in those days. A firm which had to leave Greenock owing to the acquisition of the site of their premises for the extension of a dock came to Silvertown and started in this ruined industry there. This one firm now employed far more men than all the thirteen sugar houses did in their time. They might get an Englishman, or a Welshman, or an Irishman to invest his money in a ruined industry, but they would never get a Scotchman to do it. That gentleman knew all about bounties, and yet he started in Silvertown, where he put improved machinery in his works, and where he had convenient rail and river transit facilities. There was also the case of Messrs. Tate & Co. He could affirm that this particular firm—he did not know the technical name for it, but he would put it in his own rough way—was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1869 or 1870 when the duty was taken off sugar. That firm discovered a new method of refining sugar, and they went to the various refiners throughout the kingdom, and informed them of the discovery which they said would enable British refiners to fight their foreign competitors. They invited the other firms to co-operate with them in working on the new system, but their request was refused. Messrs. Tate & Co. went on with the new process on their own account, with the result that they had built up a great business which had prospered during the worst periods of competition with imported bounty-fed sugar. Why? It was because the quality of their sugar was better than that produced by the foreigner. This ruined industry enabled Sir Henry Tate, who was a philanthropist, and an exceedingly good sort, to present Liverpool with money to build a children's hospital, to present Battersea Polytechnic with £10,000, and to leave to the nation the beautiful collection of pictures in the gallery at Millbank.
    Was there any need for this Convention at all? We had suddenly discovered that our neighbours on the Continent were so immoral as to endeavour to improve their trade by means of bounties, and we had to teach them better manners by saying we would not have their cheap sugar. That was a new doctrine for Englishmen, who gener
    1562
    ally wanted all they could lay their hands upon. Was it because we were getting it for nothing that we would not have it? If £250,000,000 had been wasted on a war to make dividends for somebody, it would have been a different thing altogether. They were asked to look at the profits made in the confectionery business. Would not the mine-owners like to make such profits? Of course they would. But the confectioner was probably getting his 37 per cent, on his invested capital, while the others wanted to make it out of their watered stock, which was a different thing. The Member for West Birmingham claimed that the Convention had increased the growth of cane sugar, and also maintained that there had not yet been time for its effects to be felt at home. He could not have it both ways. A rise of £2,000,000 in the price of sugar had been spoken of as if it were of little importance; but it made the difference between having sugar in their tea and doing without it to many people whom he knew. An increased profit had been given to the sugar refiners of this country, but he would like to know where the working men had received increased wages. Confectioners had been obliged to dismiss hands. How could it be said that the cause of such a condition of things had made no difference? The fact was that cheap sugar gave us markets at home and abroad, and we were able to employ thousands of the humblest of the population in the sugar-using industries. The depression which the country was passing through was bad enough before, but it was worse now. How could it be said that the cause of this condition of things made no difference? Anyone who said so must live in the clouds. By this policy the value of the shares in the sugar-refining companies had been increased, but an irreparable injury had been done to the working men of this country.
    MR. LOUIS SINCLAIRsaid the hon. Member for the Chester-le-Street Division had stated in his speech that the Member for West Birmingham had made a bad case. If that was the hon. Member's opinion he did not think it was shared by anyone else in the House. He thought his right hon. friend had made a splendid case,

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    and that his arguments were absolutely unanswerable. He was convinced that if the Convention had done anything in the way of altering our fiscal policy and removing difficulties under which we laboured, it was a step in the right direction. It was patent to all that anything that was unstable with regard to raw material must be a bad factor so far as the manufacturer was concerned. Nothing could make the sugar industries more unstable than the fact that they were bolstered up by bounties. It was obvious that something had to be done in order to meet the difficulty in which we found ourselves as the result of the bounty system. It had been said that if the West Indies were in a good condition, they could easily compete. The fact was that there had been no confidence whatever in the investment of capital in the West Indies, and consequently no machinery went out to enable sugar-growers there to carry on their industry to the best advantage. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had introduced confidence, and the result had been that machinery was being set up for the purpose of producing sugar under more favourable conditions than had hitherto been possible. He considered that was one proof that the Convention had so far done good. They did not say for a moment that the best effects of the Convention had yet taken place, but he thought they would come in the near future. It was now realised that the principle of bounties was a bad one, and that foreign countries should be prevented, if possible, from giving them. If bounties were to be successful in destroying our sugar trade, foreign countries might be encouraged to attack our shipping and other industries by means of subsidies. That was not a good business policy. He did not think the hon. Member for West Islington would ask the Government to abolish the Convention and reinstate bounties. On account of the artificially low price of sugar a number of factories were established in this country for the purpose of producing confectionery, because the goods could be exported to the countries which sent us the sugar and sold there at lower prices than they could be produced at in; those countries. It was a peril to this
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    country to have factories which could not compete unless they were bolstered up by low-priced sugar. He thought the time had come when we should set our house in order by putting our commercial administration on a thoroughly sound basis.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTONsaid he had listened with very great interest to the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. He did not understand that the hon. Gentleman was altogether very happy about the Convention or that he was disposed to take the responsibility which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham seemed inclined to put upon him. The fact was that the rise in the price of sugar had been very annoying to the Government, because it had made it obvious that the Convention had not been the success which they anticipated it would be. The Under - Secretary and other hon. Gentlemen opposite had said that, because free-traders were averse to a system of bounties, therefore they ought to welcome this Convention. They did not appear to be able to appreciate the great difference between our proposing to abolish bounties to which we were opposed, and our coming to an arrangement with other Powers to abolish bounties which, in our opinion, were financially to our advantage. The Under-Secretary to the Board of Trade had quoted the authority of Mr. Gladstone and other eminent Liberals on this subject, but he was quite certain that if those great authorities had had to deal with the abolition of bounties which, in theory, were abolished by the Convention, their object would have been two-fold. In the first place, they would have endeavoured to effect it gradually and by degrees, without the violent convulsions of prices and trade which had attended the introduction of the Convention. And, further, they would have desired and obtained an absolute and complete abolition of all bounties. They would not have agreed to a Convention which retained the principle of cartels and surtax, which secured to each foreign country concerned ''efficient protection" in its own market against our sugared goods, and forced us to prohibit sugar from all other countries. The right

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    hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade in his original speech. looked upon the Convention as a diplomatic triumph, and seemed to think that the Government had been able to induce reluctant foreign countries to agree to the British proposal. The Undersecretary to the Board of Trade, following the right hon. gentleman the Member for West Birmingham, developed the idea that the bounties had been put on with the object of destroying our sugar industry in the West Indies and our refineries here, and that that being accomplished, they would secure a great monopoly. He did not think that the history of the sugar question justified that attitude. It was quite certain that the bounty-giving nations had not been able to come to any agreement to abolish bounties—the only result of their manifold conferences being that the bounties had been increased—until they found a Government, like the present Government of this country, to act as a cat's-paw for them, and to enable them to come to an arrangement by which they finally abolished the bounties. The fact was that these bounties had become a sort of Old Man of the Sea to foreign Governments, clinging round their necks and continually becoming tighter and heavier. They were consequently anxious to obtain relief from them.
    The point for us was what had been the financial result of the Convention, especially taking into account the attitude of the Government and the prophesies they had made in regard to it? A great deal had been heard in reference to the increased cost of sugar. He was not quite sure that too much had not been made of that particular point; for, putting it for the moment aside, he condemned the Convention on its merits. How did we stand with regard to this matter? The Prime Minister some time ago very rightly said that so far as he was concerned—
    "The riches of one nation conduced not to the poverty but to the wealth of another nation; and if we could double or treble by the stroke of some fairy wand the wealth of every other nation in the world but our own, depend upon it our nation would greatly profit by the process.
    He agreed with that statement, with this emendation, that the additional prosperity to other nations should not be carried out at the expense of this
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    country, or we be impoverished for the greater comfort of other countries. Now, it was admitted that the Convention had cheapened the cost of sugar in other countries, while it had raised it here. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had said that the price of sugar abroad was not cheaper than here. That was true, but what had happened was that relatively to the position before the Convention came into force, the price of sugar in this country was infinitely higher than it was before to the foreign consumer and competitor. The best evidence of that was that while in Germany the consumption of sugar had jumped up 25 per cent., in this country, if it had not diminished, it had not increased in the ordinary degree. Then our manufacturers were admittedly in a worse position than they were before. The Under-Secretary to the Board of Trade in his speech the previous evening had stated more than once that in consequence of the drawback given on the exports of foreign sugared goods, as far as our own markets were concerned the English manufacturers were not in a worse position than they were before. He ventured to dispute that position, because the mere fact that the foreign manufacturers got very much cheaper sugar than before would be a benefit to them. Then the hon. Gentleman forgot the very important element that when we had cheap sugar here, and dear sugar abroad, our manufacturers of sugared goods had not only been able to advance their position in our own markets, but to export, in increasing amounts, their manufactured goods to those countries in which bounties were given. But now the reduction of the Excise duty and the increased import duty very much prejudiced the foreign markets against our manufacturers, and, therefore, these would lose very largely in the foreign market.
    There was one point to which he thought no reference had yet been made, though it was important in his judgment. In this country we were going to pay a toll in the increase of cost to an extent variously calculated up to £15,000,000 a year, while our taxpayers would have to pay an additional price for their sugar. What had happened abroad in consequence

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    of the abolition of the bounty system? It was found that in France, Austria, and Germany the Exchequers had enormously benefited. It made a difference to the Austrian Exchequer of £800,000 a year, and had given the Austrian Chancellor a surplus instead of a deficit. Last December the German Chancellor stated that, in consequence of the increased consumption of sugar in that country, the sugar revenue had increased to the extent of no less than £700,000. That was a very different position to that in which we stood here. Our Chancellor of the Exchequer would be very glad to receive such a sum as that. While our consumers and manufacturers had suffered from the Convention, the taxpayers and consumers abroad had enormously benefited.
    He now came to the question, largely discussed, as to how far the additional cost of sugar in this country was due to the Convention or to other causes. They were in rather a remarkable position in regard to this matter. The previous night the right hon. Member for West Birmingham, in defending the Convention—although he would not admit it was due to him—said that the increase of price, be it two or fifteen millions, had "had nothing whatever to do with the Convention." He was glad to hear that afternoon that the Under-Secretary of the Board of Trade had practically admitted the whole of the case of the Opposition, because he started by saying that some of the increase in the price was due to the Convention. Nobody on that side of the House said that the whole increase in price was due to the Convention, but that the Convention had largely aggravated it.
    MR. BONAR LAWsaid that he had denied there was any evidence that the Convention had been the cause of the rise. So far as he could judge it was the drought.
    MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: Very well, but he could not understand why the Government and the right hon. Member for West Birmingham should be much annoyed at the suggestion that the Convention had raised the price of sugar, because the whole object of the Convention had been supposed to be to raise the price of sugar.
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    The President of the Board of Trade had several times said that the price of sugar before the Convention was unnaturally low, below the cost of production, and that the Convention would raise the price to £10 per ton, and enable the West Indian planters to make a profit. Why, then, should he be so much annoyed when it was said that the Convention led to an increase in price. He understood the Under-Secretary to the Board of Trade to argue, that if the rise in price were due to the Convention, that rise must have come earlier, and his argument was that the increase of price was entirely due to shortage of crop. But his hon. friend the Member for Devonport had shown by figures that there was a surplus of stocks immediately after the Convention came into force, which, under market conditions, kept down the price. This was entirely confirmed by a Question which on February 25th, 1904, was asked of the Secretary of State for the Colonies in reference to the operation of the Sugar Convention and its effect on the exports of sugar from the West Indies. That was at the period when the Under-Secretary said the price ought to have risen. In his Answer the right hon. Gentleman the Colonial Secretary said—
    "The existence of large surplus stocks of sugar in the home market necessarily retards the natural operation of the abolition of bounties."
    But "the natural operation of the abolition of bounties" was to increase the price, and it proved entirely the contention of those on that side of the House that the reason why the price did not rise earlier was because there were surplus stocks which kept values below their normal prices. He came now to the other point of the Under-Secretary, namely, that the whole of the increase in price was due to the short crop. Now, the shortage of crop in 1904 admittedly amounted to 700,000 tons, and the increase in consumption admittedly amounted to 840,000 tons. It seemed to him, therefore, clear that the greater effect on the increase of price was due to the Convention, which caused the increase of consumption, rather than to the shortage of crop. The Undersecretary and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had also argued that the

    1569
    considerable speculation which had taken place had driven up the price of sugar. Of course if 1,500,000 tons were taken off the market by shortage and consumption it afforded a greater facility to speculators to run up the price But his contention was that the restriction of the area to which we could go for our supply had had a very considerable effect also on the power of speculators to run up the price. It had been said that a very small amount of sugar from Russia, Argentina, and other prohibited countries had ever come into this country; but the point was how much would have come in if the price had risen from £6 to £16? He contended that if our ports had been open to the products of these countries there would have been a very large addition to the amount of sugar exported from them to this country, and that would have very much affected the question of price.
    It had also been argued by the Under-Secretary and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham that the great advantage of such a Convention as this would be that fluctuations in price would in the future diminish. If there were less fluctuations in the future it would only be because the price was permanently on a higher level. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said that they would not get so much fluctuation because they would stimulate the production of cane sugar. He confessed that he had listened with very great surprise to the development of that argument. The right hon. Gentleman had said that if there was a short crop of beet sugar last year, on the other hand, there was an increase of 400,000 tons of cane sugar, and that that was due to the Convention. He denied that because, with the very small exception of Java, all the other nations from which that increase had come were not under the Convention at all, but were in the prohibited area. But assuming that the Convention had stimulated the growth of cane sugar, he maintained that that was not the object of the Convention at all. The great sacrifice we made was not made to increase cane sugar cultivation in Argentina, Java, and the Philippines
    1570
    and other tropical countries. Its whole object was to increase the production of cane sugar in the West Indies. Had it done so? The Under-Secretary shook his head, but only a few months ago the Prime Minister said—
    "If it were not for the fact that in this case the proper investment of capital in the West Indian Islands, capital belonging to the Empire, was rendered impracticable and dangerous under our existing system, if it was not, in fact, for the case for the West Indies, there is no conceivable reason why we should not allow the foreigner to tax himself for the benefit of the British consumer."
    Surely, it was not intended that we should pay so many millions a year in order to benefit the cane sugar planters elsewhere than in the West Indies; yet the West Indies was the one spot in the world where the crop had been shorter than in previous years. Of course, the West Indies had benefited in that for the smaller crop they had got about £10 a ton instead of £6. But we had been told that as members of a great Empire and lovers of the Colonies we were to be benefited by being able, to consume West Indian sugar whilst the West Indies got a higher price. Whether they looked at the Convention from the point of view of the supposed advantage to the West Indies, the enormous disadvantages of our own consumers and manufacturers, or the increased price which had followed it, the words of the Amendment properly condemned it, and the judgment of the country would condemn it as well.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that after listening to the three speeches delivered from the front Opposition Bench, he was still at a loss to know what was the real attitude of the Liberal Party towards the Convention. First of all the hon. Member for Dundee told them that, so far as foreign bounties were Concerned, he would lie on his back, open his mouth, and ask for more. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen held that bounties were economically unsound, and said, if without any effort of ours we could see bounties abolished that would be a matter for rejoicing. Last of all came the hon. Member for Poplar, who told them if Cobden and Mr. Gladstone had had to deal with the problem they would have been quite

    1571
    ready to enter into a Convention for abolishing bounties, the only difference being that they would have objected to certain provisions in the present Convention, such as the penal clause and the surtax. He did not know which of these three views represented the view of the Liberal Party at the present time; but he congratulated the hon. Member for Poplar on having returned to the traditions of the old Liberal Party on this subject. Two questions had been asked by the hon. Member for Dundee as to the proceedings of the Permanent Commission. They did not appear to him to be particularly relevant; but as one involved a reflection on the action of the British delegate at Brussels he would answer them at once. The first question had reference to the resolution passed at the last meeting of the Commission as to the possibility of a bounty being given by any of the Governments, parties to the Convention, on sugar products; and the hon. Member asked whether a resolution of that kind had executive force. In a narrow and technical sense he did not suppose that the resolution would carry with it executive force. It was binding on the Commission, and in the case supposed the Commission would be under an obligation to express an opinion; but there was no clause in the Convention binding the contracting Powers to accept such an expression of opinion. He had little doubt, however, that it would be practically operative, nor did he think that the Governments, parties to the Convention, were at all likely to ignore a recommendation of the Permanent Commission made in accordance with the terms of this resolution. If they did it would be a justification for this country to take such steps as the circumstances might seem to require.
    AN HON. MEMBER: What would you do?
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid to the hon. Member: it was not the custom in this House to answer hypothetical questions. When the matter came up it would be time enough to decide what action should be taken. Next, a reference was made by the hon. Member to a further resolution of the Commission by which
    1572
    a countervailing duty was fixed in the case of about seventeen States outside the Convention; and the hon. Member asked whether the British delegate voted against this resolution. It did not appear that any vote was actually taken on the subject, but the British delegate did record his objection in the most formal manner against the action taken by the Commission. His Majesty's Government concurred with Sir Henry Bergne in the objection which he raised, and he had every expectation that the Permanent Commission would meet the views of the Government on the subject.
    He did not think it necessary to spend many words on any abstract question raised in connection with the Amendment or to discuss whether the Sugar Convention was a step in the direction of free trade or not. The general contention of hon. Gentlemen opposite appeared to be that the importation of bounty-fed goods was not inconsistent with free trade. All he would say was that it was inconsistent with free trade as understood by such authorities as Cobden and Mr. Gladstone. Trade was free when it flowed in natural channels, and it ceased to be free when diverted from those channels either by protection or bounties. As regards what, after all, had been the main subject of the debate—namely, the relation which the Convention had had to the great rise in the price of sugar—he would not contend for a moment that the Convention was not likely to have any effect on the price of sugar. It was the intention of the Convention to restore the natural price of sugar by restoring the natural conditions of demand and supply. The price during a considerable period before the Convention was such that the production of sugar in many parts of the world could no longer be carried on at a profit. A price below the cost of production could not possibly be a natural price; and if they started from a price of 6s., of course the tendency of the Convention would be to raise that price to one more nearly approaching the natural or normal price. At the same time, the Government had always contended that the Convention would have the other effect of preventing great and rapid fluctuations of price. In spite of the rise of price during last year, from which we

    1573
    were still suffering, he still maintained the soundness of this contention; but it was also necesary to add that they must distinguish between the policy of the Convention and the mere process of change from the old bounty system to the new system under which bounties were abolished.
    The real question was what, if any, effect had the Convention had in producing the great and rapid rise of price during the last five or six months of last year. Now, assuming for the sake of argument that the Convention was responsible for the rise, was it the abolition of the bounties which had been the cause, or was it some special provision in the Convention apart from the abolition of the bounties? In other words, was it contended that if the sugar-producing countries on the Continent had of their own accord abolished bounties without any action on our part, the great rise in price would have resulted, or had the rise in price been caused solely by some special provision in the Convention, and in particular by the penal clause? Various opinions had been expressed on this subject by hon. Gentlemen opposite. The hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said that the bounties were worth £6,000,000 annually to this country. Therefore, his view was that it was the abolition of the bounties that produced the increase in price. On the other hand, the hon. Member for West Islington advanced the view that the abolition of bounties had had no effect whatever on the rise in the price of sugar. The hon. Gentleman's contention was that three-fourths of the rise was entirely due to the action of the Government in excluding Russian and Argentine bounty-fed sugar from this country. During the last five months of the year the rise in the price of sugar was something like 4s. Therefore, if the view of the hon. Member for West Islington was correct, at least 3s. of that rise must have been due to the action of this country in applying the penal clause to Russian and Argentine sugar. Was that admitted? Very well. It happened that a practical test could be applied to the matter. If the application of the penal clause was the real cause of the rise in the price of sugar, it was clear
    1574
    that that rise in price must be a phenomenon peculiar to the country applying the penal clause. In countries which were not parties to the Convention the rise in the price of sugar, according to the view of the hon. Member for West Islington, should be at least 3s. less than it had been in the United Kingdom. But what was the fact in Switzerland? There the rise in the price of sugar was greater even than than it had been in this country.
    AN HON. MEMBER: France?
    MR. GERALD BALFOUR: The price had also increased in France more than in this country. Surely these facts blew the entire case of the hon. Member to the winds. The truth was that in all Continental countries, whether they applied the penal clause in the form of prohibition or in the form of countervailing duties, sugar had risen in price as much and as fast as in the United Kingdom. The Member for Devonport had attacked him with some vehemence in respect to certain statements which he had made on a previous occasion regarding the amount of sugar sent by Russia into this country. The statement he had made was in reply to a statement of the hon. Member for Islington that the amount of sugar sent into this country by Russia in 1902 was 100,000 tons. He had traversed that statement, and, quoting from Russian official statements, had said the amount was only 1,000 tons. He was prepared to admit that subsequent investigation had convinced him that the official document on which he relied did not give an accurate account of the facts. There was no doubt that a good deal of sugar formerly came into this country from Russia through Germany which was not shown in the Russian statement. On the other hand it was perfectly clear that in 1902 not more than 69,000 tons crossed the European frontier, and it was therefore absolutely impossible that the figure given by the hon. Member—100,000 tons—could have been anything near the mark. He was prepared to admit that he might have been wrong to the extent of 20,000 tons, but in that case the hon. Member for Islington would still be in error to the

    1575
    extent of about 80,000 tons. Even taking the higher figure of the hon. Member for Devonport, and allowing that 36,000 tons might come from Russia into the United Kingdom, it would be seen that, as the total imports into this country were something like 1,600,000 tons, the Russian contribution was a comparatively trifling affair. Putting the amount which might have come from Russia and Argentina together after the Convention at 50,000 tons, the absolute annihilation of this small quantity would not have been likely to cause a very great difference of price. But this sugar was not annihilated. Although Russian sugar was excluded from this country, it was not prevented from taking the place of sugar that did come to this country. Russia exported sugar in considerable quantities to Turkey Persia, Egypt, and the Levant generally, where she competed with Austria. The moment prices rose in the London market, Austrian sugar would be attracted here, and its place in the East would be taken by Russian sugar. He hoped that what he said would convince the House that they might really neglect absolutely any effect of the penal clause in producing the rise in the price of sugar.
    It remained to be considered whether the abolition of sugar bounties, as distinguished from the application of the penal clause, had had any effect on the rise of price and, if so, what effect. There was really no mystery about the cause of the rise that had taken place. Everybody in their candid moments would admit that it had been produced by two causes—in the first place, by a shortage in production, and in the second place by an increase in consumption. Price depended upon considerations of demand and supply, and in this case there had been at once a greater demand and a smaller supply. If the abolition of bounties had had any effect on the rise of price it must have been by affecting the demand or the supply or both. It was admitted on all hands that there had been a very great shortage in the supply. The best authorities put it at something very little short of 1,200,000 tons. Reference had been made to diminished sowings during the past season. These diminished sowings had
    1576
    been estimated at about 6½ per cent, of the whole, but the shortage in the yield of the beet crop was no less than 20 per cent., so that only about one-third of the shortage could be put down to diminished sowings, the remaining two-thirds, an amount which might be estimated at not less than 800,000 tons, being due to a drought of altogether exceptional character.
    MR. RUNCIMANasked what the diminished sowings were due to.
    MR. GERALD BALFOURsaid that if he granted that possibly the diminished sowings, representing a shortage of 400,000 tons, were due to the Convention, he was equally justified in assuming that the increased yield of cane, which came to almost exactly the same figure, was the result of the Convention too. Therefore, setting one against the other, both might be written off the account. The dominating feature of the situation, so far as supply was concerned, was the shortage of 800,000 tons, due entirely to climatic conditions, which neither this nor any other Government could control. The hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs had said that speakers on the Government side contended that the rise in price was due to the drought and to nothing else. At any rate it was better to insist upon what everybody admitted to be a real and a most important cause, than to omit mention of it altogether. He had read speeches made in the country by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Montrose, in which the rise of price was invariably ascribed to the Convention pure and simple, and in which no mention whatever was made of the drought. He put this question to those right hon. Gentlemen. If they knew of the drought, was it fair or honest to say nothing about it in the country? And if they did not know of it, what title had they to discuss this subject at all? So much for the question of supply.
    He now came to the question of demand. He did not dispute for a moment that in

    1577
    connection with the abolition of bounties there had been a great reduction of price in Continental countries. That reduction of price was caused partly by the reduction of internal taxes, which was certainly not due to any provision of the Convention. In fact, internal taxes had not been reduced at all in some countries that were parties to the Convention, as for instance Austria and Holland. Still he was quite prepared to admit that the abolition of bounties did afford a convenient occasion for the Governments of various countries to diminish internal taxation, and so to reduce the cost of sugar. But was the Convention to be condemned on that account? Hon. Gentlemen opposite, who had cosmopolitan sympathies, should rejoice that, the price of sugar had been reduced in those countries. [An HON. MEMBER: At our expense.] Was the excess of consumption as compared with production a permanent or a temporary effect? If it was a permanent effect, he could well understand that it would be fair enough to connect with the Convention; but there was a great difference between an increased consumption as compared with production that arose from the temporary disturbance in the relations of supply and demand incidental to the change from a bounty system to a non-bounty system, and one which would be a permanent effect of a system in which bounties did not exist. Was it the abolition of the bounty system, or the mere transition from one system to another that had produced that effect? He said it was a merely transitional disturbance, and it was not fair to attribute the effect to the Convention itself or to the policy of the Convention. He submitted that he had shown that the penal clause had had nothing whatever to do with the rise of price; that the most important element in the rise was shortage of supply caused by climatic conditions; and next to that the increased consumption: but this increased consumption was not directly the result of the Convention, but was due to the transition from one system to another, during which production had temporarily fallen behind the increase of consumption. Both these factors in the rise of price were of a temporary character, and if we had a favourable season next year it was practically certain
    1578
    that the prices would again resume their normal level. Even to-day the prices for delivery in the later months of this year were £4 or £5 below the current price.
    He desired to add a few words about the effect of the Convention upon the sugar-using trades. It had been said that unemployment in those trades had been entirely the result of the Convention. If the Convention had not been the cause of the rise of price, then, so far as rise of price had affected those trades, it was clear that the Convention could not be responsible for the depression which he was sorry to say existed. Then it was said that the sugar-using trades in foreign countries, especially in countries outside the Convention, had the advantage of cheap, and even of bounty-fed sugar, and were thus able to compete unfairly with our own sugar-using industries. So far as the countries in the Convention were concerned, it was quite clear that they were not in a position to use bounty-fed sugar in the manufacture of confectionary. Switzerland, as a matter of fact, did not use bounty-fed sugar, except to an extremely small extent from Russia. The import of sugar from Russia into Switzerland last year was less than 400 tons, he believed, or about 1–200th part of the entire amount of sugar that Switzerland used. Therefore it was clear that the depression in the confectionery trade was not due to serious competition arising from the use of bounty-fed sugar in Switzerland. There was no sign in the figures that our sugar - using industries were losing their position in the foreign markets. Our exports of sugared goods were almost exactly the same in the present year as they were last year. It had been asserted that sugared products of Continental manufacture were beginning to invade neutral markets, which had hitherto been supplied by this country, and even to invade our home market. The figures gave absolutely no sign to point to that conclusion. There had been a considerable increase in the imports of sugared goods, but this increase consisted exclusively of fruit preserved in their syrup, a class of goods with which our own trade did not directly compete. Confectionery imports, properly so called, were not increasing, but declining. In the face of these facts

    1579
    he submitted that there was no justification for the allegation in the Amendment that the policy of the Brussels Convention had
    "inflicted heavy losses upon trade, diminished employment of labour, and enormously increased the cost of a necessary food to consumers without any compensatory advantages."
    The Convention could not be expected to produce within eighteen months all the results which they ultimately anticipated would accrue from it. One of the declared objects of the Convention was to equalise competition between beet and cane sugar, and by that equalisation of competition to increase the sources of supply and give steadiness to the price of sugar. Such objects could not be secured in a day, and to judge the Convention by the results of a year's experience was altogether unreasonable. The Parliamentary Secretary had earlier in the evening quoted from a speech in which Mr. Gladstone declared that the bounty system with all its inequalities and injustice was not really to the advantage of either the consumer or the producer. The Government held the same opinion as Mr. Gladstone, and assuredly nothing had occurred since the Convention came into operation, or been said in the course of the debate, to shake their conviction that time would vindicate the wisdom of the policy they had pursued.
    MR. RUNCIMANsaid that the right hon. Gentleman had endeavoured to prove that the Convention had nothing to do with the rise in the price of sugar, If the right hon. Gentleman honestly believed that, he was the only man connected with the trade, either officially or unofficially, who did believe it. The right hon. Gentleman practically contended that it was possible to cut off important sources of supplies of raw material without that cutting-off of supplies having any effect on prices; in other words, that supply had nothing whatever to do with price. That might be very good special pleading, but it was uncommonly bad economics. The whole of the Convention was nothing but a gratuitous scheme for putting large sums of money into the pockets of foreigners, and a small amount into the pockets of the West Indian planters.
    1580
    The Government had intended to do the latter, though not the former, but they had succeeded admirably in both. According to the preamble of the Convention, one of the main objects was to increase the consumption of sugar. That object had been attained—on the Continent—but the right hon. Gentleman had overlooked the fact that increased consumption without increased supply must increase the price. It was true there had been a drought, but prices were rising long before the drought occurred. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that diminished sowing had something to do with the rise. That was an extraordinary admission on the part of one who was contending that the Convention had nothing whatever to do with the rise in price, as the diminished sowings were directly caused by the Convention. If bounties were abolished or diminished, it obviously meant less chance for the growers to make a profit on their commodity, and naturally they would sow less. Climatic conditions doubtless had something to do with the rise, but to cut off sources of supply simply accentuated the evils caused by the drought. There were two obvious facts which no amount of argument or special pleading would overcome. Before the Convention £20,000,000 a year were paid in sugar bounties, and those bounties were now practically wiped out. This country would never be persuaded that the wiping-out of those bounties had had no effect on the price of sugar. But one of the main arguments for the Convention had always been that it was to benefit the West Indies. If the Convention had not raised prices, how had it been a boon to the West Indies? The rise was due to the act of God; it was God, not the authors of this Convention, who had conferred the boon on the West Indies. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham had stated that the disadvantage under which the West Indies laboured before the Convention was about £5 per ton of sugar. If that statement meant anything, it meant that the Convention had resulted in a loss of something like £8,000,000 a year to this country. The Convention was certainly not the product of free-trade principles. The Parliamentary Secretary had supported it in an eloquent and ingenious

    1581
    speech, but he had ended by enunciating the most orthodox protectionist principles. The Convention was really a step in the direction of that retaliation of which the Prime Minister was an ardent advocate. Sugar had had a peculiar political history. It brought about the downfall of Lord Melbourne's Administration in 1841; it brought into peril Sir R. Peel
    in 1844, and Lord John Russell in 1846; and it had certainly not benefited the standing of the present Government in the year 1904.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes, 211; Noes, 276. (Division List No. 10.)

    AYES.

    Abraham, William (Cork,N. E.)

    Eve, Harry Trelawney

    Lundon, W.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Farrell, James Patrick

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Fenwick, Charles

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Allen, Charles P.

    Ferguson, R.C. Munro (Leith)

    MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

    Ambrose, Robert

    Ffreneh, Peter

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Ashton, Thomas Gair

    Field, William

    M'Crae, George

    Asquith,Rt. Hn.HerbertHenry

    Findlay, Alex. (Lanark, N.E.

    M'Fadden, Edward

    Atherley-Jones, L.

    Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond

    M'Hugh, Patrick A.

    Barlow, John Emmott

    Flavin, Michael Joseph

    M'Kean, John

    Barran, Rowland Hirst.

    Flynn, James Christopher

    M'Kenna, Reginald

    Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

    Freeman-Thomas, Captain F.

    M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North)

    Beaumont, Wentworth C. B.

    Fuller, J. M. F.

    M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin

    Bell, Richard

    Furness, Sir Christopher

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Benn, John Williams

    Gilhooly, James

    Mooney, John J.

    Black, Alexander William

    Grant, Corrie

    Morgan, J. Lloyd(Carmarthen)

    Boland, John

    Goddard, Daniel Ford

    Morley, Rt. Hn. John (Montrose

    Bolton, Thomas Dolling

    Griffith, Ellis .J.

    Murnaghan, George

    Brigg, John

    Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

    Murphy, John

    Bright, Allan Heywood

    Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton

    Nannetti, Joseph P.

    Broadhurst, Henry

    Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

    Newnes, Sir George

    Brown, George M. (Edinburgh)

    Hammond, John

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

    Bryce, Rt. Hon. James

    Harcourt, Lewis Vernon

    Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South)

    Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

    Hardie,J Keir(Merthyr Tydvil

    Norman, Henry

    Burke, E. Haviland

    Harmsworth, R. Leicester

    Norton, Capt. Cecil William

    Burns, John

    Harrington, Timothy

    Nussey, Thomas Willans

    Buxton, Sydney Charles

    Harwood, George

    O'Brien,Kendal(Tipperary Mid

    Caldwell, James

    Hayden, John Patrick

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Campbell, John (Armagh, S.)

    Hayter,Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur D.

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

    Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

    Helme, Norval Watson

    O'Connor, John (Kildare N.)

    Causton, Richard Knight

    Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H.

    O'Donnell, John (Mayo, S.)

    Cawley, Frederick

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    O'Dowd, John

    Channing, Francis Allston

    Higham, John Sharpe

    O'Kelly, James (Roscommon,N

    Cheetham, John Frederick

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

    O'Malley, William

    Churchill, Winston Spencer

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

    Cogan, Denis J.

    Horniman, Frederick John

    O'Shee, James John

    Condon, Thomas Joseph

    Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk.

    Parrott, William

    Crean, Eugene

    Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley)

    Partington, Oswald

    Cremer, William Randal

    Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

    Pease, J. A. (Saffron Walden)

    Crombie, John William

    Jacoby, James Alfred

    Perks, Robert William

    Crooks, William

    Johnson, John

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    Cullinan, J.

    Joicey, Sir James

    Power, Patrick Joseph

    Dalziel, James Henry

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire

    Rea, Russell

    Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan

    Joyce, Michael

    Reckitt, Harold James

    Delany, William

    Kearley, Hudson E.

    Reddy, M.

    Devlin,Chas. Ramsay (Galway

    Kennedy, Vincent P.(Cavan,W

    Redmond, John E. (Waterford

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

    Kilbride, Denis

    Reid,Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Kitson, Sir James

    Richards,Thomas (W.Monm'th

    Doogan, P. C.

    Labouchere, Henry

    Rickett, J. Compton

    Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark)

    Langley, Batty

    Roberts, John Bryn (Eifion)

    Dyffy, William J.

    Law, Hugh Alex. (Donegal, W.

    Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

    Duncan, J. Hastings

    Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall

    Robertson, Edmund (Dundee)

    Edwards, Frank

    Layland-Barratt, Francis

    Robson, William Snowdon

    Elibank, Master of

    Leese,SirJoseph F. (Accrington

    Roche, John

    Ellice,Capt EC(SAndrw'sBghs.

    Leigh, Sir Joseph

    Roe, Sir Thomas

    Ellis, John Edward (Notts.)

    Levy, Maurice

    Runciman, Walter

    Emmott, Alfred

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Schwann, Charles E.

    Esmonde, Sir Thomas

    Lloyd-George, David

    Scott, Chas. Prestwich (Leigh)

    Evans,Sir Francis H(Maidstone

    Lough, Thomas

    Shackleton, David James

    Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.

    Whittaker, Thomas Palmer

    Sheehy, David

    Thomas,David Alfred(Merthyr

    Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Toulmin, George

    Wills,ArthurWalters(N Dorset

    Sinclair, John (Forfarshire)

    Trevelyan, Charles Philips

    Wilson, Chas. Henry (Hull, W.

    Slack, John Bamford

    Waldron, Laurence Ambrose

    Wilson, Fred. W. (Norfolk.Mid

    Smith, Samuel (Flint)

    Wallace, Robert

    Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

    Woodhouse,SirJ.T.(Huddersf'd

    Spencer,RtHnC.R (Northants)

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Young, Samuel

    Stanhope, Hon. Philip James

    Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan

    Yoxall, James Henry

    Stevenson, Francis S.

    Wason, John Cathcart(Orkney

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    White, George (Norfolk)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr.

    Sullivan, Donal

    White, Luke (York, E. R.)

    Herbert Gladstone and Mr.

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

    Whiteley, George (York, W. R.

    William M'Arthur.

    Tennant, Harold John

    Whitley, J. H. (Halifax)

    NOES.

    Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

    Colston, Chas. Edw. H. Athole

    Greville, Hon. Ronald

    Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel

    Compton, Lord Alwyne

    Guthrie, Walter Murray

    Allhusen,AugustusHenry Eden

    Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas

    Hall, Edward Marshall

    Allsopp, Hon. George

    Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Halsey, Rt. Hon. Thomas F.

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

    Hambro, Charles Eric

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Craig, Charles Curtis (AntrimS.

    Hamilton,RtHnLordG (Midd'x

    Arnold-Forster,Rt.Hn. HughO

    Cripps, Charles Alfred

    Hamilton, Mar. of (L'nd'nderry

    Arrol, Sir William

    Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile

    Hardy,Laurence(Kent Ashford

    Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John

    Dalkeith, Earl of

    Hare, Thomas Leigh

    Aubrey-Fleteher,Rt.Hn. Sir.H.

    Davenport, William Bromley

    Harris, F. Leverton(Tynem'th

    Bailey, James (Walworth)

    Davies,Sir HoratioD.(Chatham

    Haslam, Sir Alfred S.

    Bain, Colonel James Robert

    Denny, Colonel

    Hay, Hn. Claude George

    Baird, John George Alexander

    Dewar,SirT. R (Tower Hamlets

    Heath Arthur Howard(Hanley

    Balcarres, Lord

    Dickinson, Robert Edmond

    Heath SirJames(Staffords.NW

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

    Dickson, Charles Scott

    Heaton, John Henniker

    Balfour,RtHnGerald W(Leeds)

    Dimsdale,RtHn.Sir Joseph C.

    Helder, Augustus

    Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch.

    Disracli, Coningsby Ralph

    Henderson, Sir A (Stafford, W.

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Dixon-Hartland,Sir FredDixon

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Dorington, Rt. Hn. Sir John E.

    Hogg, Lindsay

    Bartley, Sir George C. T.

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers

    Hope,J.F.(Sheffield, Brightside

    Bathurst, Hn. Allen Benjamin

    Doxford, Sir William Theodore

    Horner, Frederick William

    Beach,RtHn.Sir MichaelHicks

    Duke, Henry Edward

    Houldsworth, Sir Wm. Henry

    Bentinck, Lord Henry C.

    Dyke, Rt Hn. Sir William Hart

    Hoult, Joseph

    Bhownaggree, Sir M. M.

    Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton

    Houston, Robert Paterson

    Bigwood, James

    Faber, Edmund B. (Hants, W

    Howard, J. Kent, Faversham

    Bill, Charles

    Fardell, Sir T. George

    Howard. J. (Midd.Tottenham)

    Bingham, Lord

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

    Hozier, Hn. James Henry Cecil

    Blundell Colonel Henry

    Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst

    Hunt, Rowland

    Bond, Edward

    Finch, Rt. Hn. George H.

    Hutton, John (Yorks. N. R.)

    Boscawen, Arthur Griffith

    Finlay, Sir R B (Inv'rn'ss B'ghs)

    Jameson, Major J. Eustace

    Brassey Albert

    Fisher, William Hayes

    Jeffreys, Rt, Hon. Arthur Fred

    Brodrick, Rt. Hn. St. John

    Fison, Frederick William

    Jessel, Captain HerbertMerton

    Brotherton, Edward Allen

    FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose-

    Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.

    Brown, Sir Alex. H. (Shropsh.

    Fitzroy, Hn. Edward Algernon

    Kenyon, Hn. Geo T (Denbigh)

    Brymer, William Ernest

    Flannery, Sir Fortescue

    Kenyon-Slaney, Rt Hn. Col. W.

    Bull, William James

    Flower, Sir Ernest

    Kerr, John

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Forster, Henry William

    Keswick. William

    Butcher, John George

    Foster,Philip S(Warwick,S.W.

    Kimber Sir Henry

    Campbell, J.H.M(Dublin Univ.

    Galloway, William Johnson

    Laurie, Lieut-General

    Carson, Rt, Hon. Sir Edw. H

    Gardner, Ernest

    Law, Andrew Bonar Glasgow)

    Cautley, Henry Strother

    Garfit, William

    Lawrence, Sir Joseph (Monm'th

    Cavendish, V.C.W.(Derbyshire

    Gibbs, Hon. A. G. H.

    Lawson, Hn H L W. (Mile End

    Cayzer, Sir Charles William

    Godson, Sir Augustus Frederick

    Lawson John Grant (Yorks. NR

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

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

    Lee Arthur H(Hants, Fareham

    Cecil Lord Hugh (Greenwich)

    Gordon, J. (Londonderry, S.

    Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead)

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hn J.(Birm.

    Gordon, Maj Evans-(T'r H' mlets

    Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage

    Leveson-Gowar, FrederickN.S.

    Chamberlain,RtHn.J A (Wore.

    Goschen, Hn. George Joachim

    Llewellyn Evan Henry

    Chamberlayne T. (S'thampton

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Lockwood, Lieut. Col. A. R.

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    Graham, Henry Robert

    Loder Gerald Walter Erskine

    Chapman Edward

    Gray, Ernest (West Ham)

    Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham

    Coates, Edward Feetham

    Green, Walford D.(Wednesbury

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

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

    Greene, Henry D(Shrewsbury)

    Lonsdale, John Brownlee

    Cohen, Benjamin Louis

    Greene, W. Raymond-(Cambs.)

    Lowe, Francis William

    Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse

    Grenfell, William Henry

    Lowther, C. (Cumb., Eskdale)

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

    Gretton, John

    Loyd, Archie Kirkman

    Lucas, Col. Francis (Lowestoft

    Plummer, Sir Walter R.

    Stock, James Henry

    Lucas,Reginald J(Portsmouth

    Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

    Pretyman, Ernest George

    Stroyan, John

    Macdona, John Cumming

    Pryee-Jones, Lt.-Col. Edward

    Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley

    MacIver, David (Liverpool)

    Purvis, Robert

    Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

    Maconochie, A. W.

    Pym C. Guy

    Thorburn, Sir Walter

    M' Arthur, Charles (Liverpool)

    Quilter, Sir Cuthbert

    Thornton, Percy M.

    M' Calmont, Colonel James

    Rankin, Sir James

    Tollemache, Henry James

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

    Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne

    Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M.

    Majendie, James A. H.

    Ratcliff, R. F.

    Tuff Charles

    Malcolm, Ian

    Reid, James (Greenock)

    Tufnell, Lieut.-Col. Edward

    Manners, Lord Cecil

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Tuke, Sir John Batty

    Marks, Harry Hananel

    Renwick, George

    Turnour, Viscount

    Martin, Richard Biddulph

    Ridley, S. Forde

    Valentia, Viscount

    Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W. F.

    Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield)

    Vincent. Col. Sir C.EH (Sheffield

    Maxwell, W.J.H (Dumfriesshire

    Robertson, Herbert (Hackney)

    Vincent, Sir Edgar (Exeter)

    Milner Rt. Hn. Sir Frederick G.

    Robinson, Brooke

    Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H

    Molesworth, Sir Lewis

    Rothschild, Hn. Lionel Walter

    Wanklyn, James Leslie

    Montagu, G. (Huntingdon)

    Round, Rt. Hn. James

    Warde, Colonel C. E.

    Montagu, Hon. J. Scott (Hants

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

    Webb, Colonel William George

    Moon, Edward Robert Pacy

    Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool

    Welby, Lt.-Col. A.CE (Taunton)

    Moore, William

    Sackville, Col. S. G. Stopford

    Welby, Sir Charles G.E. (Notts.

    Morgan, David J (Walthamstow

    Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander

    Wharton, Rt. Hn. John Lloyd

    Morpeth, Viscount

    Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos.Myles

    Whitmore, Charles Algernon

    Morrell, George Herbert

    Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.

    Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset)

    Morrison, James Archibald

    Sharpe, William Edward T.

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer

    Shaw-Stewart, Sir HI (Renfrew)

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

    Mount, William Arthur

    Sinclair, Louis (Romford)

    Wilson, John (Glasgow)

    Mowbray, Sir Robert Gray C.

    Skewes-Cox, Thomas

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

    Muntz, Sir Philip A.

    Sloan, Thomas Henry

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

    Myers, William Henry

    Smith, Abel H(Hertford, East)

    Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm

    Nicholson, William Graham

    Smith, HC(North'mb. Tyneside

    Worsley-Taylor, Henry Wilson

    Palmer, Sir Walter (Salisbury)

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

    Wylie, Alexander

    Peal, Hn. W. Robert Wellesley

    Spear, John Ward

    Yerburgh, Robert Armstrong

    Percy, Earl

    Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk

    Pierpoint, Robert

    Stanley, Rt. Hn. Lord (Lanes.)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

    Pilkington, Colonel Richard

    Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart

    Alexander Acland-Hood and

    Platt-Higgins, Frederick

    Stirling-Maxwell, Sir John M

    Mr. Ailwyn Fellowes.

    Main Question again proposed.
    Debate arising; and, it being after midnight, the debate stood adjourned. Debate to be resumed to-morrow.
    On the Motion for the adjournment of the House.
    MR. J. A. PEASEasked what business would be taken on Thursday in the event of the debate on the Address being concluded.
    THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD,)said that in the event of the debate on the Address being concluded on Wednesday, Supplementary Army Estimates would be taken on Thursday
    to be followed by the Supplementary Civil Service Estimates.

    REPORTED RESIGNATION OF MR. WYNDHAM.
    MR. RUNCIMAN: May I ask the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury whether he is able to give us any information as to the reported resignation of the Chief Secretary for Ireland?
    SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD: There is no foundation for it.
    MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL: Is it untrue?
    SIR A. ACLAND-HOOD: Quite untrue.
    Adjourned at twelve minutes after Twelve o'clock.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:—Metropolitan and Great Central Railway Companies [H.L.]; Southend and Colchester Light Railways [H.L.]; County of London Electric Supply Company [H.L.]; Dearne Valley Railway [H.L.].
The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

BARRYMORE ESTATE.
Petition of the right hon. Arthur Hugh Baron Barrymore, praying leave to introduce a Bill "To enable the Baron Barrymore to restore certain forfeited leases in the town of Tipperary, and for other purposes"; together with a copy of the proposed Bill annexed thereto; read, and referred to the Examiners.
Clyde Navigation (Reconstitution) Bill [H.L.]. Presented, and read la.
Cardiff Railway Bill [H.L.]. Read 2a; and committed. The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
Hastings Harbour District Railway (Abandonment) Bill. Read 2a; and committed.
Rhymney Railway Bill [H.L.]; Commercial Union Assurance Bill [H.L.]; Clyde Navigation Bill [H.L.]. Read 2a, and committed. The Committees to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION.
  Fifty-seventh Report from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England; with an Appendix. Presented (by Command), and ordered to lie on the Table.
  PIERS AND HARBOURS (PROVISIONAL ORDERS).
  Report by the Board of Trade of their proceedings under the General Pier and Harbour Act, 1861, and the General Pier and Harbour Act, 1861, Amendment Act. Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.
  NAVAL WORKS (PORTSMOUTH BAR- RACKS SITE) BILL [H.L.]
  Report from His Majesty's Attorney-General received, and ordered to lie on the Table.

  STREET BETTING BILL [H.L.]
  [SECOND READING.]
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  LORD DAVEY: My Lords, this is identically the same Bill as was passed through your Lordships' House last session, after having been extensively amended at the suggestion of the Government. It is unnecessary, therefore, for me to trouble you with a speech on this occasion. I will merely briefly remind your Lordships that the object of the Bill is to render betting in streets and public places a statutory offence, instead of its being left, as at present, to be dealt with by municipal by-laws. It also increases the penalties which may be imposed on persons found betting in the streets, and for a third offence enables the magistrates to imprison an offender. Since the Bill was before your Lordships I have had a great many communications from magistrates and other people in different parts of the country urging that the Bill should be proceeded with as a very necessary measure. I will not trouble your Lordships by reading all the communications I have received, because it would be a little monotonous,but I will quote some statistics which have been sent to me from Stockton-on-Tees. In that town on one day eighteen so-called commission agents were brought before the magistrates for bookmaking, and of that number one had been convicted thirty times, one twenty-three times, one twenty times, one seventeen times, one sixteen times, two fifteen times,

  1443
  two fourteen times, and so on. One would scarcely believe that such a record could be furnished in one Police Court, and the writer of the extract I have in my hand concludes by stating that—
  "The convicted person pays the fine with a smile on his face, as much as to say to the presiding magistrate, 'It is all right, old man, so long as I know you cannot increase the penalty or send me to prison.'"
  My Lords, that is exactly what is proposed to be done by this Bill. I cannot pretend that the Bill can be passed through the House of Commons without the assistance of the Government, and as it is substantially the Bill of the Government, all their Amendments having been embodied in it, I hope I may claim some assistance from the Government in passing it through the other House.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(Lord Davey.)
  On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

  CONGESTED DISTRICTS (SCOTLAND) BILL, [H.L.]
  [SECOND READING.]
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (The Marquess of LINLITHGOW): My Lords, the Bill which I now ask you to read a second time seeks to enlarge the powers of the Congested Districts Board for Scotland. Section 4 of the original Act of 1897 confers upon the Board certain powers of expenditure of money placed at their disposal, but eight years experience has proved that those powers are insufficient. So long ago as the year 1899 my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh introduced and passed through your Lordships' House a somewhat similar Bill to the one which I now present to you. It went to the House of Commons but did not obtain a Second Reading there. In the year 1893, and again in 1894, a similar measure was introduced into the House of Commons, but did not reach its Second Reading. The provisions of this Bill are briefly these; to enable the Board to make
  1444
  provision for the practical instruction of youths and girls in agriculture, trades, and other industries within the congested districts. Boys are to be taught seamenship, carpentering, tailoring, and other trades, and girls cooking, laundry work, and housework, so that they may be turned out into the world useful citizens, not forgetting, of course, that this practical instruction should only be supplementary in all cases to the ordinary school course. The second provision is to permit grants in aid of public health objects to be given to hospitals, and in respect of medical attendance and nursing in districts where the full statutory public health rate his already been levied or where the burden of general rating is oppressive and local resources are exhausted. In the third place it provides that advances are to be made for the improvement of existing and the erection of new dwellings. The Board are confident that if these powers are granted they will greatly accelerate the improvement which is already showing itself amongst the people in the congested districts. I ought to mention that the Board are by this measure restricted to devoting a maximum of one-fifth of the whole of their funds to the new objects under the Bill. I trust that your Lordships will pass the Bill and that before the end of the session it will become law, for it is a very necessary piece of legislation.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Marquess of Linlithgow.)
  On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House on Monday next.

  RESERVE FORCES BILL [H.L.]
  House in Committee (according to order).
  [The Earl of ONSLOW in the Chair.]
  Bill reported without Amendment.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (The Earl of DONOUGHMORE): My Lords, this Bill is in the same form in which it passed your Lordships' House last year, and, as I have said, it embodies

  1445
  the Amendments suggested by the noble Lord opposite (Lord Monkswell). I would therefore ask your Lordships to negative the Standing Committee.
  Moved, "That the Standing Committee be negatived."—(The Earl of Donoughmore).
  LORD MONKSWELL: I offer no objection to the Motion.
  On Question, Standing Committee negatived; and Bill to be read 3a on Thursday next.
  House adjourned at twenty minutes before Five o'clock, to Thursday next half-past Ten o'clock.