Sitting of 3 May 1906

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before Three of the Clock.
PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.

  PROVISIONAL ORDER BILLS (NO STANDING ORDERS APPLICABLE.)
  MR. SPEAKERlaid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of
  682
  Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, viz.:—;
  Marriages Provisional Order Bill.
  Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time to-morrow.
  Gas Companies (Removal of Sulphur Restrictions) Bill, read the third time, and passed.
  Sutton District Water Bill, "for the preservation of the sources of water supply of the Sutton District Water Company; and for other purposes," presented, and read the first time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
  Romford and District Tramways Bill, Order [24th April] that the Romford and District Tramways Bill be committed, read, and discharged: Bill withdrawn—;(Mr. Caldwell.)
  Peterborough Gas Bill; Rochester, Chatham, and Strood Gas Bill; Southampton Gas Bill, reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Antofagasta (Chili) and Bolivia Railway Bill [Lords], reported, without Amendment; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  H. R. Baines and Company Bill [Lords], reported, without Amendment; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time.
  Vauclain's Patent Bill [Lords], reported, without Amendment; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Bill to be read the third time.
  London and South Western Railway Bill, reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  Railway Bills (Group 4) Sir George Doughty reported from the Committee on Group 4 of Railway Bills; That, for the convenience of parties, the Committee had adjourned till Monday next at half-past Eleven of the clock.
  Report to lie upon the Table.
  South Metropolitan Gas Bill, reported [Parties do not proceed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
  Private Bills (Group F.), Major Seely reported from the Committee on Group F of Private Bills; That for the convenience of parties, the Committee had adjourned till Monday next, at half-past Eleven of the clock.
  Report to lie upon the Table.
  Public Petitions Committee, Third Report brought up, and read; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  That they have agreed to Amendments to Kidderminster Gas Bill [Lords], without Amendment.
PETITIONS.
  COAL MINES (EIGHT HOURS) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; from Crigglestone; Derbyshire; Don Pedro; Moresby; Nostell; and, Thornhill Collieries; to lie upon the Table.
  DISEASES OF ANIMALS ACT (1896) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Sunderland, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES) BILL (RELIGIOUS TEACHING).
  Petitions against alteration of Law; From Arundel; Beachampton; Bedwardine; Bethnal Green; Biddestone cum Slaughterford (two); Bradenstoke cum Clack; Budleigh Salterton; Cheriton; Chippenham; Chipping Campden (two); Claines; Clee and Cleethorpes; Compton cum up Marden (two); Crofton; Dorset; Eton; Felton Common; Finsbury Park; Freemantle; Great Houghton; Great Somerford; Hartley Manditt (two); Hawley (two); Hockliffe; Hornsey (two); Huddersfield (two); Hythe (two); Kensington; Knelston and Llanddewi (two); Lichfield; Llanwrytyd; London; Monkwearmouth; Montgomery (two); Morpeth; Newick; Newington next Folkestone; Norden; Oldwood near Tenbury; Otterton; Preston (two); Ratcliffe; Rumbolds-whyke; St. Pancras; Saltwood; Seagry; Seaton; South Bersted; Stanley; Stockport (two); Tarrant Hinton; Tortington; Upham; West Clandon (two); Wood Green (two); Worcester; and Worthen; to lie upon the the Table.
  ENGINES AND BOILERS (PERSONS IN CHARGE) BILL.
  Petition from Huddersfield, against; to lie upon the Table.
  LICENSING (SCOTLAND) AMENDMENT BILL.
  Petition from Kingston (Glasgow), in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LIQUOR TRAFFIC LOCAL VETO (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Kingston (Glasgow), in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES (QUALIFICATION OF WOMEN) BILL.
  Petition from St. Pancras, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  PREVENTION OF CORRUPTION BILL.
  Petition from Huddersfield, against; to He upon the Table.
  PUBLIC TRUSTEE AND EXECUTOR BILL.
  Petition from Huddersfield, against to lie upon the Table.
  RATING OF MACHINERY BILL.
  Petition from Huddersfield, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
  SUNDAY TRADING (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petitions in favour; From Glasgow and, the Royal Burghs of Scotland; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORT, ETC.
  TRANSVAAL (CHINESE LABOURERS) (CRIMES).
  Returns [presented 2nd May] to be printed. [No. 156.]
  CONGESTED DISTRICTS (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1897.
  Copy presented,—;of Eighth Annual Report of the Conjested Districts (Scotland) Board to the Secretary for Scotland [by Command]; to lie upon the table.
  TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copies presented.—;of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 3571 and 3572 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS IN CERTAIN URBAN AREAS IN ENGLAND AND WALES.
  Copy presented,—;of Statement showing number of Voluntary Schools on 1st. January 1906 in Urban Areas, with a population of 5,000 and over, in England and Wales respectively, and their average attendance for statistical year ended 31st July 1904, with approximate percentages to the total number and average attendance of all the Voluntary Schools in England and Wales for the same period [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TREES (IRELAND).
  Return presented,—;relative thereto [ordered 5th April; Mr. Jeremiah MacVeagh]; to lie upon the Table.

  ASSESSMENT OF REAL ESTATE ON THE BASIS OF ITS MARKET VALUE.
  Copy ordered, "of Translation of Prussian State Documents as to the introduction of the Assessment of Real Estate on the basis of its Market Value for local purposes; Circular of Minister of Finance
  686
  and Minister of Interior of the 2nd day of October 1202, and Model Regulations therein referred to; Memorandum of 1904; and Extracts from statistical tables accompanying it."—;(Mr. Runciman.)

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

    Motor Licences.
    COLONEL LONG: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can state the total amount raised during 1905 from licences taken out for motor vehicles of all descriptions, including motor cycles.
    (Answered by Mr. Asquith.) The duties paid on motor cycles are not distinguished in the Returns for 1905 from those paid on other two-wheeled vehicles (though they will be in future). But on motor vehicles of all other descriptions the total of the duties collected in 1905 amounted to £61,967.

  Postmen's Sick Benefits.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Postmaster-General whether postmen who belong to sick benefit clubs are treated under any special rules with regard to sick absence, and whether their sick pay is stopped earlier than in the case of men who do not belong to sick benefit societies.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The Answer is in the negative.

  Assistant Postmen's Increments.
  MR. JAMES O'CONNOR: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that in calculating the unestablished service of assistant postmen for special increments due to them under the memorandum of 1st April, 1905, two-thirds of the time is deducted in those offices where the minimum has been raised, although the memorandum states that such service shall count under the same conditions as it does for stripes, and expressly provides that the pay shall not be carried more than two increments beyond the new scale.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) As the minimum was raised by 1s. (which is the equivalent of eight months at Is. 6d. a year) on 1st April, 1905, it was decided, under the Stanley revision, to deduct eight months from the unestablished service rendered before 1st April, 1905, in the case of officers appointed on the new scale. If this had not been done, a postman appointed on the 31st March 1905, would have been in receipt of less wages than a postman with similar unestablished service appointed on the 1st April, 1905.

  Small Holdings in County Roscommon.
  MR. HAYDEN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether representations have been made to the Estates Commissioners, on behalf of the small occupiers of land in the parish of Kiltoom, county Roscommon, as to the general desire of the people that the lands of Carrounolan, in the barony of Athlone, should be acquired for the purpose of enlarging the small holdings; and, in view of the fact that a certain portion of the proprietors' interests in these lands is now for sale, and that this is the only untenanted land in the parish which, with this exception, has only small and, in many cases, uneconomic holdings, will he advise the Estates Commissioners to vise their powers of initiating negotiations with all those interested in the ownership of this land for the purpose of making it available for distribution.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that the fact is as stated in the first part of the Question. The estate referred to is that of Williams and others, and the Commissioners have ascertained that three undivided sevenths of this estate are for sale in the Land Judge's Court. The Commissioners are not satisfied that it will be possible for them to purchase undivided shares of the estate for division amongst small tenants in the vicinity, but they are making further inquiries in the matter, and, if it should be found practicable they will issue a request to the Land Judge under Section 7 of the Act of 1903, with a view to considering the question of purchase.

  Dunshaughlin Labourers' Cottage Site Dispute.
  MR. SHEEHY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Dunshaughlin District Council purchased an acre of land from a Mr. Kelly for the purpose of building a labourer's cottage on it; that since the cottage was built Mr. Kelly objected to the measurement, and claims to have a rood of the plot restored to him; that the council's surveyor has again measured the plot, and states that the same does not contain one foot more than the statute acre; and whether he proposes to take any steps to prevent the council giving back to Mr. Kelly any part of the land which they purchased from him with public money.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The rural district council purchased an acre of land in Mr. Kelly's occupation for a labourer's cottage. While the cottage was in course of erection, Mr. Kelly took exception to the manner in which the boundaries were being marked out, and claimed a readjustment of the plot. The claim was considered and recommended by a committee of the district council, and by its officers, and is now under the consideration of the Local Government Board, who have not yet arrived at a decision in the matter.

  Imprisonment for Contempt of Court—;Case of Declan Power.
  MR. O'SHEE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Declan Power, an evicted tenant on the Odell estate, county Water-ford, was recently imprisoned for contempt of court by the Land Judge on two occasions, the first for one year and four months, and the second for nine months; whether on the second occasion his wife was also arrested by order of the Land Judge and imprisoned for three months and twelve days for contempt of court; whether, seeing that the alleged contempt of court consisted in retaking possession of his evicted holding, he will say whether that offence is punishable by the ordinary law; and whether legislation will be introduced to prevent the jurisdiction in contempt

  689
  of court cases from, being applied to offences for which the ordinary law provides a definite penalty.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The facts are substantially as stated in the first two parts of this Question, save that the imprisonment did not take place recently, but in the years 1897 and 1900 respectively. The offence of taking forcible possession is punishable by the ordinary law. As regards the concluding part of the Question, I beg to refer to the reply which I gave to the similar Question of the hon. Member for North Sligo on 20th March,† and to what was said by my right hon. friend the Attorney-General in the debate on this subject a few weeks ago.‡ The subject will not be lost sight of.

  Examination in Irish, in North Galway Schools.
  MR. HAZLETON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland what provision at present exists for the examination of Irish in the schools in North Galway; how many inspectors are there for the division competent to examine the bilingual schools; how many examiners are there competent to examine in Irish as an ordinary subject; whether there is only one such for each province; and, if so, will he represent to the National Board that the provision in this respect is entirely inadequate.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Commissioners of National Education inform me that North Galway is included in a district which is assigned to two inspectors of Irish, who examine the schools in which the bilingual programme has been sanctioned. There is one special inspector of Irish, and sixteen other inspectors who are competent to examine in the subject. These inspectors are not assigned by provinces, but their services are availed of when and where necessary. If this provision is shown to be inadequate, I have no doubt the National Board will endeavour to secure a better provision.
  † See (4) Debates, cliv., 226–7.
  ‡ See (4) Debates, civ., 605 et seq.

  Dromin Evicted Tenant—;Daniel Murphy.
  MR. THOMAS O'DONNELL: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether any steps have been taken to reinstate Mr. Daniel Murphy in his farm at Dromin, Killorglin, Kerry; whether the Estates Commissioners have had any communication with the occupier, Mr. Thomas Wharton, with regard to his giving up the place to the owner; and whether steps will be immediately taken to transfer the occupier from this farm to some other district.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners inform me that an application for reinstatement in his former holding has been lodged by Mr. Daniel Murphy, who states that the holding in question has been in the occupation of Mr. Roger Wharton since 1898. The owner has not up to the present instituted any proceedings for the sale of the estate, and the Commissioners have not yet had an opportunity of making any inquiries into the matter.

  Royal Irish Constabulary.
  Mr. VINCENT KENNEDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state what is the present strength of the Royal Irish Constabulary; what number of recruits were enrolled in the years 1904 and 1905; whether recruiting is at present going on; and at what rate per month for 1906.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) On the 31st March, 1906, the latest date at which Returns have been compiled, the total number of sergeants and constables in the Royal Irish Constabulary was 9,481. The numbers of recruits enrolled in 1904 and 1905 were fifty-two and 197 respectively. Recruiting is at present provisionally proceeding at the rate of about forty each month, which is no more than equivalent to the waste of the force.

  Special Police Service in Ireland.
  Mr. VINCENT KENNEDY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state the number of cases in which police are now stationed in special localities for alleged

  691
  special and exceptional duties in Ireland; on whose requisition and order are they so located; and on whose recommendation are they retained in these alleged troubled districts.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) Seven men of the reserve force are stationed in county Cork, and forty-eight men from other counties are serving in county Galway. These extra police were originally sent to, and are now retained in, the counties in question at the instance of the Inspector-General and with the approval of the Government. No charge in respect of extra police is made upon local authorities in county Galway, seeing that the total force employed in that county does not exceed the established strength of the county force. The number of extra police employed in Ireland is now considerably smaller than it has been for some years.

  Report of the Estates Commissioners.
  MR. DILLON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland when the Report of the Estates Commissioners will be circulated.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Estates Commissioners hope to have their Report for the year ending March 31st last ready by the middle of June.

  Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.
  Mr. DILLON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction makes any grant of money, directly or indirectly, to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) The Department of Agriculture has made payments to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society up to March last for work done by the Society at the request of the Department in connection with certain forms of agricultural organisation, such as agricultural banks and home industries' societies, in respect of which no danger of controversy arose, and of which the Council of Agriculture had expressed their approval. It has this year been resolved to include provisionally other forms of organisation than those above-
  692
  mentioned for mutual advantage among members of the agricultural classes, and the Council of Agriculture are to be invited at their next meeting to express their opinion on the question of aiding such methods or forms.

  Boyle Councillor's Election Petition.
  MR. JAMES O'KELLY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a demand has been made by the Treasury on the Rural District Council of Boyle for the sum of £81, the official expenses incurred in connection with a recent petition against the election of a district councillor for the Boyle urban division; whether it is in the absolute discretion of the Commissioner to grant these costs against the body of the ratepayers who were not guilty of any breach of the law; whether any, and, if so, what facilities are afforded the rate payers of checking the account; and whether the Government will consider the wishes of the district council that this amount should not be levied on the district.
  (Answered by Mr. McKenna.) The Chief Secretary has asked me to answer this Question. It is the fact that a demand has been made upon the Boyle Rural District Council as stated. Under Section 101 of the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, these moneys are repayable out of the local rate unless the Court by which the petition was tried ordered that they should be repaid by the petitioner or the respondent. Such an order is within the absolute discretion of the Court. Under the statute above quoted the moneys are paid in the first instance by the Treasury, which is responsible for their correctness upon the facts stated by the Court. It is not usual to submit the detailed accounts to the ratepayers, but the amount paid to each officer engaged in the trial of the petition is specified in the Treasury certificate by which repayment is claimed. As the provisions of the statute as to repayment are imperative, the Government has no power to give effect to the wishes of the district council in the matter.

  Cork Harbour Board and Public Monuments.
  MR. CHAELES CEAIG: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the Cork Harbour Board have granted the sum of £35, out of the public moneys which they administer, towards paying off the debt on a monument recently erected in a public street in Cork in memory of certain Irishmen who fought to recover the independence of Ireland, and to encourage the youth of Ireland to imitate their example; and whether he intends to take any action in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) It would appear from Reports which have been published in the newspapers that the facts are as stated. The Cork Harbour Board is not under the control of the Irish Government, and its accounts are not audited by the Local Government Board, who have, therefore, no power to question the legality of the expenditure referred to.

  Sparkbrook Factory Agreement.
  Mr. WEIE: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he will state the nature of the arrangements in regard to the manufacture of the new rifle embodied in the agreement for the sale of the Sparkbrook factory, and the price to be paid for each finished rifle.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane. As the agreement for the sale of the Sparkbrook factory has not yet been completed I am not in a position to give my hon. friend the detailed information for which he asks.

  Enfield Factory.
  MR. WEIR: To ask the Secretary of State for War, in view of the fact that a large plant of special machinery and tools is available at Enfield Factory for the manufacture of rifles, will he state why 33 per cent, more rifles are to be manufactured by private firms than at the factory at Enfield.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The usual allotment of orders to the trade has been supplemented by those given to Sparkbrook, while those given
  694
  to the ordnance factories are proportionately diminished.

  Curramore Bog.
  MR. HAYDEN: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he will state the date upon which an arbitration inquiry in reference to the compulsory acquisition by the military authorities of the bog of Curramore, near Athlone, in the county of Roscommon, took place, and the date of award therein; whether a number of the persons to whom various sums were awarded have not yet been paid and whether he will state the cause of the delay.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The arbitration took place from the 27th July to the 11th August 1903. The date of the awards was the 23rd December 1903. All persons to whom compensation was awarded have been paid.

  Manchurian War—;General Ian Hamilton's Report.
  MR. CROMBIE: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether General Ian Hamilton's Reports on the War in Manchuria, supplemented by those of Colonel Haldane and the staff, can be purchased by volunteer officers or others desiring to study them for purposes of military instruction, or whether they are regarded by the War Office as of a confidential nature.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The books referred to are regarded as strictly confidential, and in view of this as wide a distribution has been made as was held to be practicable. A history of this war compiled from the non-confidential portions of the Reports is in the course of preparation and will be available for all officers.

  Inoculation against Enteric Fever.
  MR. EUGENE WASON: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he has yet received the Report of the Committee appointed to consider the question as to the value of inoculation against enteric fever; and, if so, will he lay it upon the Table of the House.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The final Report of the Antityphoid Inoculation Committee has not yet teen received. An interim Report has, however, been received, and the recommendation contained therein that the practice of voluntary inoculation against enteric fever should be resumed, has been approved by the Army Council. The voluntary inoculation of men proceeding abroad is now being carried out, and arrangements are being made for those now serving in India. I will lay this Report upon the Table.

  Compulsory School Attendance Abroad.
  Mr. HAROLD COX: To ask the President of the Board of Education, at what age compulsory attendance at public elementary schools begins in the following countries, colonies, and states: France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Canada, the State of New York, and the State of Massachusetts.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) I will lay upon the Table of the House, I hope on Monday, a statement showing the practice in the countries named.

  Denominational Instruction in Voluntary Schools.
  MR. CLOUGH: To ask the President of the Board Education whether he can state the time per week that was actually occupied in imparting distinctively denominational instruction by the teachers or clerics, or both, in the so-called voluntary schools during 1901; and whether he can state in how many of these schools the time so occupied did not exceed half an hour, one hour, and one and a half hours, and in how many it exceeded one and a half hours per week.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Board have no information on the subject.

  Trust Deeds of Voluntary Schools.
  MR. TALBOT: to ask the President of the Board of Education, when the Return of Trust Deeds of Voluntary Schools, moved for at the beginning of the Session, may be expected to be in the hands of Members; and whether he will give an assurance that the
  696
  House shall not be asked to go into Committee on the Education Bill before that Return is presented.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.): It is not possible to give a date for the completion of the Return. The work of examining the trust deeds is both heavier and more complicated than was expected. Many schools have more than one trust deed (in some cases more than 20 deeds) and different parts of the same school and even of the same room, are subject to different trusts or are held on different tenures. In many cases it has been necessary to ask the trustees for further information, and in nearly 2,000 cases the trustees have up to now failed to comply with the Board's request for the transmission of their deeds. As it is obviously desirable that a complete and accurate Return should eventually be made it is impossible to give the assurance which the right hon. Member asks for, but I am quite willing if it is desired to proceed with the publication of the Return by instalments so that the House may be in possession of as much information as possible for the Committee stage.

  Durham Mines—;Storage of Explosives.
  MR. JOHN JOHNSON: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to a notice issued by the police to the miners of Durham, altering the conditions upon which police certificates for the keeping of blasting explosives, other than gunpowder, will be issued to workmen, and particularly to the requirements as to the provision of storage by the workmen; and whether in view of the difficulties that this order will impose on the workmen, he will consider the possibility of taking any action, by the issue of regulations or otherwise, in the matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone): I have seen the notice to which the hon. Member refers. The question of the keeping of explosives by miners has for some time engaged the consideration of the Department, in consequence of the numerous accidents caused, more especially by the practice of men taking explosives to their homes, and I recently issued to police forces throughout the

  697
  country a circular impressing on them the necessity of enforcing strictly the requirements under the Explosives Act, and more especially of granting certificates for the keeping of blasting explosives only to such men as could satisfy the police that they had a place of storage entirely under their control and inaccessible to other persons, and that otherwise they were fit persons to take charge of explosives. In places, however, where these requirements had not been fully enforced, the police were recommended to give due warning, so as to prevent any hardship or dislocation of the industry. I may add that I am proposing to bring the whole question of the use and keeping of explosives for blasting purposes in mines and quarries under the consideration of the Royal Commission of Mines which is shortly to be appointed.

  Telephone Service and the Fruit Industry.
  MR. H. H. MARKS: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he can take measures to give effect to the recommendation of the Departmental Committee of the Board of Agriculture on the Fruit Industry, that the telephone service should be further extended in country distrcts.
  (Answered by Mr Sydney Buxton.): I have been in communication with the Board of Agriculture as to the best means of extending the telephone system in the fruit-growing districts of the country; and the circumstances of particular districts, to which the Board has drawn my attention, are being investigated. During the last two years the Post Office has opened 127 exchanges in country districts, and a considerable number of others are being constructed. I hope that the arrangement lately announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, under which the Post Office will assume two-thirds of the liability under guarantees for the extension of the telephone trunk wire system, will facilitate such extensions.

  Kiveton Park Colliery Post Office.
  MR. CHARLES NICHOLSON: To ask the Postmaster-General if his attention has been called to the application made by
  698
  the parish council of Wales, Kiveton Park, near Sheffield, to have the Kiveton Park Colliery post office made a postal telegraph office as well; whether he is aware that the parish council of Wales have offered to guarantee the authorities against loss under the provisions of The Post Office Amendment Act, 1895; and what steps he proposes to take, if any, to meet the request of the Wales parish council.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton): I have inquired into the matter. The Wales Parish Council have offered the usual guarantee for the extension of telegraph business to the post office at Kiveton Park Colliery. I find, however, that the nearest telegraph office is only about three-quarters of a mile distant, that the transaction of telegraph business there is at present unremunerative, and that the number of telegrams which would probably be sent from the proposed new office is less than three a week. Under these circumstances I regret that I should not be justified in complying with the request of the parish council.

  Bix Postmistress' Pay.
  MR. MORRELL: To ask the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that in the parish of Bix, near Henley-on-Thames, the total sum paid for hire of post office, with light, firing, etc., and the services of the postmistress is £10 15s. a year, or rather more than 6d. a day, and that for this remuneration the postmistress has to be on duty from 6.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 6.50 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 11.30 a.m. to 11.50 a.m. on Sundays, making a week of 84½ hours; and whether he will take steps to increase the remuneration.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton): The emolument of the sub-postmistress of Bix appear to be as stated by the hon. Member. The sub-postmistress, like most sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses in charge of commission sub-offices, has a private business. The amounts such sub-postmasters receive from the Post Office, in the form of commission on the comparatively few simple duties they perform for the Department are merely adjuncts to the income derived from their ordinary business. The

  699
  period during which the sub-postmistress of Bix provides for attendance for Post Office work of necessity covers a good many hours per diem, but it is not to be assumed that the work occupies any very large portion of this time. The Select Committee will consider the question of the emoluments of the sub-postmasters.

  Locomotive Spark Arresters.
  MR. YOXALL: To ask the hon. Member for South Somerset as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether his attention has been drawn to an invention described as a spark arrester for locomotives, concerning which a Paper was read before the council of the Midland Counties Institution of Engineers at Nottingham in September last; and whether he will cause an inquiry to be made into the value of this invention as a means of preventing damage by fire to hedges and fields adjacent to railways.
  (Answered by Mr. Lloyd - George): My hon. friend has asked me to reply to this Question. The attention of the Board of Trade has been called to the invention referred to, and the Paper respecting it has been seen by the technical officers of the Board. The adoption of any particular appliance of this character is, however, a matter for the consideration of the several railway companies.

  Inspection of Railway Offices.
  MR. WARDLE: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether local sanitary or factory inspectors have powers of inspection in the case of railway offices or other buildings on railway property.
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) I presume my hon. friend has in view cases of the kind to which he referred in his Question of the 28th March. If, then, he refers to buildings used as workplaces for clerks or others in similar employment and alleged to be so overcrowded while work is carried on as to be dangerous or injurious to the health of those employed, the circumstances might be such as to enable the local authority to use the powers of entry and inspection conferred
  700
  by the Public Health Acts. Any question as to the powers of the factory inspectors would be a matter for the Home Secretary.

  Poor Law Settlements.
  MR. STAVELEY HILL: To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the present position as to settlements of poor persons in parishes divided under the operation of Section 1 (3) 36 (1) or 36 (2) of The Local Government Act, 1894; and whether he will propose some remedy to meet the cases in which persons have lost their settlement by reason of the division of the parish in which they were born or have derived a settlement, and will he consult the law officers of the Crown.
  (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) The hon. Member asked me an almost precisely similar Question on the 9th April,† and I would refer him to the Answer I then gave. I have further considered the matter, but it does not seem to me to be necessary to consult the law officers on the subject.

  Assistant Clerks' Superannuation.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: To ask the Secretary to the Treasury if, seeing that senior assistant clerks are only allowed to count one-half of their un-established service towards superanuation, and as the present plan of stating in the estimates the service ranking for pension only is misleading, he will in future, until such time as this class are allowed to count their full service, introduce into the estimates a column showing the years of unestablished as well as the established service of clerks awarded pensions.
  (Answered by Mr. McKenna.) The suggestion put forward by the hon. Member has been carefully considered, but the conclusion has been come to that it would not be expedient to insert in the estimates any particulars of service other than those upon which the award of pension is based.

  Salmon Fishery Legislation.
  Mr. MUNRO FERGUSON: To ask the Secretary for
  See (4) Debates, clv., 995–6.

  701
  Scotland whether he can give any indication of his intentions with respect to salmon fishery legislation.
  (Answered by Mr. Sinclair.) I regret that at present it is not possible for me to undertake to introduce legislation upon this subject this session.

  Custom's Duties on Sweetstuffs.
  MR. CHANNING: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the

  Gross.

  Net.

  I.—;Customs.

  £

  £

  Sugar, raw and refined, British and Foreign

  5,859,778

  5,723,458

  Glucose

  163,630

  160,882

  Molasses, British and Foreign

  140,211

  139,641

  Saccharine

  40,080

  39,596

  Articles containing sugar

  115,201

  114,375

  6,318,900

  6,177,952

  II.—;Excise.

  Glucose

  91,460

  89,496

  Saccharine

  13,144

  13,144

  104,604

  102,640

  Total

  6,423,504

  6,280,592

  Irish Land Commission Staff.
  Mr. MEEHAN: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a gentleman named Wilkinson has recently been appointed to a position in the Irish Land Commission at a salary of £300 per annum, and that the duties performed by this gentleman were previously discharged by a boy clerk at 16s. per week; and will he state the reason for this appointment, and say
  Exchequer what have been the gross and net receipts during the financial year 1905–6 from the duties on sugar, glucose, molasses, saccharine, and articles containing sugar or sweetening matter.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith.) The gross and net receipts of Customs and Excise duties on sugar, molasses, glucose, saccharine, and articles containing sugar, during the financial year 1905–6, were—;
  what are the qualifications and previous occupations of Mr. Wilkinson.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) Mr. W. F. Wilkinson was, on December 15th, 1905, appointed assistant to the clerk in charge of the department for the collection of interest in lieu of rent, at the salary stated in the Question. He is a skilled accountant who served his apprenticeship under a firm of public accountants, and had many years experience as managing

  703
  clerk to a firm of land agents, with a large clerical staff under his control. The staff of the department in question consists of forty clerks, who are under the control of the clerk in charge and his assistant. It is not the fact that the duties of such assistant were previously discharged by a boy clerk. The department in question is one of considerable importance; the number of payers of interest is now about 80,000 and is daily increasing, and a large clerical staff, under adequate supervision, is required for the duties of the department.

  Meetings of the Irish Congested Districts Board.
  DR. AMBROSE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he can state the number of meetings which have been held by the Congested Districts Board within the last two years, and who attended those meetings.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) During the two years from May, 1904, to April, 1906, thirty meetings of the Congested Districts Board were held. The following statement gives the number of attendances of the different members at these meetings:—;Mr. Wyndham, 2; Mr. Long, 5; Mr. Bryce, 1; Sir Antony MacDonnell, 23; Most Rev. Dr. O'Donnell, 17; Lord Shaftesbury, 13; Sir Horace Plunkett, 21; Mr. Kennedy, 25; Mr. Geoghegan 23; Mr. Green, 25; Rev. Dr. O'Hara, 20. Attendances at committee meetings, which usually occupy two days before each sitting of the Board, are not included in this statement.

  Congested Districts Board and Inspection of Estates.
  DR. AMBROSE: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether any members of the Congested Districts Board ever inspected estates which were about to be or which have been purchased by the Board; if so, what are the names of the estates and what members of the Board inspected them; have any members of the Board ever interviewed the intending occupiers of new holdings under the Board, with a view to their fitness for such holdings; if so, who are the members; have any members of the Board ever visited the
  704
  residents of uneconomic holdings, for whose benefit the Congested Districts Act was passed; and, if so, what are the names of those members, and what localities have been visited by them.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) Members of the Congested Districts Board have frequently inspected estates purchased by them, but no records of such visits have been kept. It is not the practice of the Board to visit estates before purchasing them; when considering such purchases they have before them full reports and valuations prepared by the chief land inspector, who is assisted by other expert valuers in the Board's service. The Board have now under consideration the means whereby their valuations may harmonise with the valuations of the Estates Commissioners. It is not the practice of the Board to interview intending occupiers of new holdings, but when visiting estates which have been purchased the Board have at times visited occupiers of uneconomic buildings. No records of such visits have been kept.

  Duties of Attendants at the National Library of Ireland.
  MR. HAZLETON: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether some of the attendants in the National Library of Ireland are called upon to do clerical and other work, outside their ordinary duties, without extra remuneration; and, if so, whether steps will be taken to see that they are paid for such work, as is the case, under similar circumstances, in the British Museum.
  (Answered by Mr. Bryce.) I am informed that no attendant in the National Library of Ireland is called upon to do any work beyond his ordinary duties as an attendant or outside the established hours.

  Yeomanry Canteens.
  Mr. W. F. D. SMITH: To ask the Secretary of State for War if he is aware that an order has been issued forbidding the sale of spirituous liquors in the canteens of Imperial Yeomanry Regiments when out for annual training;

  705
  whether unfavourable reports have been received upon the management of such canteens in previous years; and, if not, whether he will cause the order to be cancelled.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The Imperial Yeomanry, when out for training, are under military law, and, as regards their canteens, are subject to the same rules as govern the canteens of the regular Army and Militia. Under these rules the sale of spirituous liquors of any description is prohibited at home. No unfavourable reports upon the management of Yeomanry canteens have been received in previous years.

  St. Helena Garrison.
  MR. W. F. D. SMITH: To ask the Secretary of State for War whether he can say upon what date the garrison of St. Helena will be withdrawn.
  (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The garrison of St. Helena will be withdrawn in the autumn.

  Ecclesiastical Disorders Commission—;Publication of Report.
  MR. BRYNMOR JONES: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can state when the Report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Disorders will be published.
  (Answered by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman.) I must refer my hon. friend to the Answer I gave yesterday to a similar Question.†

  Description of Foreign made Jam.
  MR. H. H. MARKS: To ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether it is the intention of the Government to give effect to the recommendation of the Departmental Committee of the Board of Agriculture on the Fruit Industry, that jam made wholly or in part from foreign fruit should have this fact clearly stated on the label of every pot or jar in which it is sold.
  Answered by Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman.) No effect could be given to this recommendation without legislation amending the Merchandise Marks Act,
  † See col. 578.
  706
  and such legislation could not be confined to a single article such as jam. I am not prepayed to introduce a measure of this kind.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  Repatriation of Chinese Coolies—;Government Proclamation.
  MR. DALZIEL: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is now able to state the steps that have been or will be taken with a view to carry out the pledges of the Government in regard to the repatriation of the Chinese coolies in South Africa.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL,): The Secretary of State has approved the issue of a notice this week, in the following terms:—;"Notification addressed to Chinese Indentured Labourers on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines. Although when you enlisted in China for the Transvaal you were informed that you were engaging yourselves to work on gold mines and you entered into a contract to that effect, it has come to my ears that certain amongst you, not appreciating the conditions under which mining is carried on in this country, are discontented in spirit. There may also be others who, unaccustomed to strenuous manual labour, find themselves on arrival in a position of difficulty. Cases such as those give rise to feelings of compassion. Now you all know that in terms of Clause 14 of your contract any labourer may at any time terminate the contract without assigning any reason on tendering to his employer the expenses incurred in introducing him into the Transvaal, together with a sum sufficient to defray the expenditure necessary in returning him. This is a provision of which you can all avail yourselves, and it cannot be said that you are detained here against your will. Perhaps, however, some of you who are anxious to return may not have earned the wherewithal to enable you to do so. If this be the case, I am willing to receive any statements you who really wish to leave the Transvaal may have to make, and after

  707
  a review of circumstances to consider whether or not I would be prepared to recommend Government to be generous to you and not to insist on the full payment required from you by your contract. An exceptional act of benevolence of this kind ought to command your gratitude. In sending in your petitions, however, you must clearly inform me of the motives which influenced you in the first instance to enlist and now influence you in wishing to return to China, of the amount of monthly wages you earn, of the class of work on which you are engaged, and of the money you have saved. If circumstances appear to me to warrant it, I will take note of and register the application, but the applicant will thereafter have to make an honest effort by working on his mine to earn a contribution towards his expenses. Of such honest effort I will constitute myself the judge, and should any fail in this respect his application will be cancelled. On receipt of the applications from the various mines I will carefully weigh each individual case and decide which of them are deserving of the generous consideration of the Government and entitled to this favoured treatment. It must be understood that no one who has not served in the Transvaal for at least six months need apply; for you all know that beginnings are not easy, and any one undertaking work partaking of a novel character cannot be in a position to judge whether or not he is fit for it uutil he has given it a fair trial. The obvious duty of all who desire to return to China is to save money and avail themselves of the provisions of the 14th Clause in their contract of service. Still, force of circumstances may be against some of you, and I am willing to consider genuine applications with a view to rendering assistance. I solemnly warn you that any attempt to deceive me by misrepresentations which are punishable by the law of the Transvaal will be dealt with accordingly. And it must further be distinctly borne in mind by all who make application as a result of this notice that, if allowed to return to China, they will never, under any circumstances, be allowed to re-enter the Transvaal, and that steps will be taken severely to punish anyone who attempts to do so." I ought to add, of course this notice will be published in Chinese.
  MR. STUART WORTLEY: By whom will the notice be signed?
  MR. CHURCHILL: It will be signed by the Superintendent of Foreign Labour.
  MR. DALZIEL: Am I to understand that each individual Chinaman will have personally to convince the Superintendent of Foreign Labour on the point before he is allowed to go, or will the manager of the mines have anything to say in the matter?
  MR. CHURCHILL: I should not imagine that the manager of the mine will come into the question at all. If a coolie makes his application and is able to convince the Superintendent of Foreign Labour that he has a bonâ fide desire to return to China, he will be allowed to return whether it is the wish of the mine manager that he should return or not. And we have Lord Selborne's personal guarantee that the machinery of the offer which is now made will be carried out in a genuine and honest spirit, and with every desire to give full effect to the intentions of His Majesty's Government that no man who earnestly and honestly desires to return to China shall be kept under those conditions against his will.
  MAJOR SEELY: May I ask what length of time it is contemplated by His Majesty's Government that a Chinaman should continue to work in order to show, in accordance with the terms of the notice read out, that he is anxious to return to China?
  MR. CHURCHILL: The length of time is not definitely stated in the proclamation, but it is quite clear that no period of probation which will have the effect of taking away with one hand what is offered with the other will be consented to by His Majesty's Government.
  MR. SLOAN: When will the proclamation come into force?
  MR. CHURCHILL: It will be posted before the end of this week, or in the early days of next week.
  CAPTAIN CRAIG: I desire to ask whether, if a Chinaman represents

  709
  to the Superintendent of Foreign Labour that the conditions under which he has been invited out to South Africa to work in the mines constitute a condition of slavery, that will be sufficient to enable him to go back to China?
  MR. CHURCHILL: I think the Question of the hon. Gentleman is fully covered by the terms of the proclamation. I believe the notice is to be posted in a conspicuous position, so that the Chinese will have no difficulty in having access to it at all the mines on the Witwatersrand reef.
  DR. MACNAMARA: Has this proclamation yet been transmitted to South Africa?
  MR. CHURCHILL: The terms of the proclamation have been most carefully arranged by Lord Selborne, and have received the sanction of the Secretary of State here. Until the Secretary of State sanctioned them I was not able to lay the terms of the proclamation before the House. The Secretary of State has now sanctioned them, and the policy that will follow from the proclamation will be carried into operative effect.
  DR. MACNAMARA: Is it possible to cast the proclamation in language simpler and more to the point?
  MR. CHURCHILL: I do not pretend to be a judge of the simplicity of language, but, if I may venture on a lay opinion, I would say that I do not see in what terms it would be possible more accurately to convey the offer which His Majesty's Government intend to convey to the coolie than in the terms which Lord Selborne has chosen. I have every reason to believe that the terms, addressed as they are to Chinese coolies, who entertain perhaps a somewhat different opinion of the influence and character of the Government from what we in this country are accustomed to do, will have the effect which His Majesty's Government contemplate, and which they desire.
  MR. BOTTOMLEY: Am I to understand that the only ground on which a coolie may be sent back at the expense of the State is that the Superintendent of Foreign Labour is to be satisfied that he is unfit for the work?
  MR. CHURCHILL: No, Sir, but that he has a genuine and earnest desire to return to China.
  Other hon. Members rose to ask further Questions.
  MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! Nearly a quarter of an hour has already been taken up by this Question, and it is not fair to other hon. Gentlemen who have Questions on the Paper to continue these supplementary Questions.

  Johannesburg Chamber of Mines.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Government has received a communication from the Chamber of Mines of Johannesburg, through the Lieutenant-Governor, concerning the now regulation requiring notices to be posted in the mines informing the coolies that they may be repatriated during their term of contract; if so, what was the exact nature of the communication; and what reply did the Government make.
  MR. CHURCHILL: A memorandum from the Chamber of Mines on the subject has been transmitted to the Secretary of State, but has not yet arrived though the important parts have been telegraphed. No answer has as yet been sent, and I am not able to state the nature of the communication at present. I may add that it is not clear to the Secretary of State, as yet, whether the communication is of a confidential character.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER: May I ask if the Secretary of State will not take into consideration the question of delaying the Proclamation just road until the communication has been received?
  MR. CHURCHILL: No, Sir. The Proclamation has been delayed long enough.

  Disturbances in Brunei.
  SIR EDWARD SASSOON: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information to communicate to the House, from the British Resident in Brunei, concerning the disturbances which have recently occurred within the Sultan of Brunei's territory; will he state what the

  711
  area and the present population of this sultanate is; and whether, seeing that Brunei is enveloped and enclosed on the landward side by the territory of H.H. the Rajah of Sarawak, would he state the number of the Malay natives who, during the last ten years, have fled from Brunei to settle in Sarawak; and whether and how often the flag of Sarawak has been hoisted by the natives in Brunei.
  MR. CHURCHILL: No official information has been received as to any disturbances in Brunei, but the Resident will be asked for a report; no statistics are in existence, but the area of the sultanate is estimated at 4,000 square miles, and the population at about 30,000; it would be impossible to give accurate details as to the number of natives who have migrated from Brunei to Sarawak territory, but the Resident will be asked if he has any information; I am not aware that the Sarawak flag has over been hoisted in Brunei except by individuals who for personal reasons claimed the protection of that State.

  Government Arms Factories in India.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, having regard to the fact that the Government of India have facilities for the manufacture of small arms in Government factories, will arrangements be made for the new short rifles required for Indian troops to be made in India.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOE INDIA (Mr. JOHN MORLEY,): The Government factories in India will make a proportion of the new short rifles required for the Army in India. The capacity of the factories is not sufficient to make the whole number required within a reasonable period.

  Papers on Tibet.
  MR. ASHLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India if he can now lay upon the Table further Papers with reference to the agreement with Tibet.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: Papers will be laid as soon as the ratifications of the convention for the adhesion of China to the Tibet Convention have been exchanged,
  712
  but the Answer given yesterday† has already explained the nature of the Convention with China.

  Indian Provincial Settlements.
  MR. REES:. I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether Madras and the United Provinces are to continue, in respect of their provincial contracts with the Government of India, to receive a quarter share of their growing revenues, plus an additional assignment, as compared with the half share of growing revenues enjoyed by other provinces under the like contracts.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: The provincial settlements are made after full discussion in each case between the Government of India and the Provincial Government; and so far as I am aware it is not at present intended that the settlements which were made in 1904 with Madras and the United Provinces shall be modified.

  Indian Trade Journal.
  MR. REES: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether the Indian Trade Journal, lately established by the Commercial Department of the Government of India, is intended to be of a permanent character.
  MR. JOHN MORLEY: I understand that the journal is intended to be a permanent feature of the system of commercial intelligence which the Government of India have lately organised, though as to form and contents it may be regarded as being in the experimental stage.

  The Congo Free State.
  SIR CHARLES DILKE: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether His Majesty's Government have information to the effect that King Leopold has declined to sign the decrees submitted by the Commission of Reforms appointed by the sovereign of the Congo State in consequence of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry, or has in lieu of signature, transmitted the decree to Governor Wahis for advice; whether, having regard to the correspondence
  † See Col. 553.

  713
  between His Majesty's Government and the Government of the Congo State at the time when the Commission of Inquiry was appointed, and to the fact that the Congo Report substantiates the statements made by the then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, which formed the subject of the British Note of August 8th, 1903, and in view of the delay that has occurred, His Majesty's Government contemplate any further immediate action; and whether the policy of entering into communication with the Government of Belgium upon the subject of the future of the Congo has been considered, there being a Government Bill before the Belgian Parliament to the general policy of which His Majesty's Government have stated in the House of Commons that they are favourable.
  MR. NOLAN: Before the right hon. Gentleman rises I should like to ask him the following Question, of which I have given him private notice:—;Whether His Majesty's Government has any official knowledge that King Leopold has refused to sign the recommendations of the Commission on Reforms in the Congo Free State; whether he considers there is anything unreasonable in the desire of King Leopald to consult the responsible Governor of the Congo Free State before finally authorising the reforms recommended by the Commission; whether he considers His Majesty's Government have any greater right to interfere in the affairs of the Congo Free State than it had to prevent the shooting in cold blood in Natal of two batches of unarmed prisoners, subjects of His Majesty, by His Majesty's troops, without trial by law.
  MR. SPEAKER: That last Question is not a proper one. It is not one of fact, but of opinion.
  MR. NOLAN: I wish further to ask whether there is any evidence before the House that the reports of atrocities circulated amongst Members of this House by the Congo Reform Association are other than gross exaggerations or baseless calumnies, as stated on the authority of independent witnesses of the highest character? And whether he does not think His Majesty's Government has enough trouble on hand on the African continent, in connection with
  714
  Egypt, Natal, and Nigeria, without going in search of further trouble in the territories of independent foreign states.
  MR. SPEAKER: That again is a matter of opinion.
  MR. McKEAN: Before answering the Question of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean will the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs say whether it is the fact that the decrees of the Commission of Reforms referred to in the Question have only been submitted a month ago; whether therefore it is reasonable to expect that reforms of the most far-reaching character can be approved and determined on without due examination and inquiry as to their necessity and advisability; also whether it is not the fact that the Congo Free State is a Sovereign State; whether therefore, in accordance with International Law, the intervention on the part of His Majesty's Government suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean is not absolutely barred; and whether this view is not supported by the opinion of Mr. Root, Secretary of State for the United States of America, expressed in his letter bearing date February 28th, 1906, addressed to Mr. Denby, Member of Congress; and whether under all these circumstances the right hon. Baronet will decline to advise His Majesty's Government to take any further action in the matter?
  MR. SPEAKER: Notice should be given of this Question.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir EDWARD GREY,): Both supplementary Questions contain so much matter that it is desirable I should have due notice before attempting to answer them. I may say I have not received the notice sent mo by the hon. Member for South Louth. In reply to the Question of the right hon. Baronet I have to say that our own opinion as to the great desirability of not delaying the Reforms has already been made known to the Congo Government. We cannot enter into communication with the Belgian Government until they are willing to be concerned; but as a matter of fact if they

  715
  accepted responsibility for the Congo State, it would be a guarantee of reform and good government which would be very welcome.

  Capitulations of Egypt—;Lord Cromer's. Proposals.
  MR. GOOCH: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether His Majesty's Government approve Lord Cromer's proposals for the modification of the capitulations in Egypt; and, if so, when they intend to bring them before the notice of the Powers concerned.
  SIR EDWARD GREY: It will be seen, on reference to Lord Cromer's Report (page 3), that his remarks respecting the modification of the capitulations are made in order to elicit an expression of local opinion which will be fully and impartially considered before any final and more detailed proposals are laid before His Majesty's Government. Any expression of opinion on the part of His Majesty's Government at this stage would, therefore, be premature; what they desire is that the question to which Lord Cromer has called attention should receive attentive and impartial consideration, with a view to securing eventually reforms, which will be both effective and acceptable.

  Income-Tax.
  MR. EUGENE WASON: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in the Committee which he proposes to appoint to consider the question of the graduation and differentiation of the Income-tax, he will be prepared to refer to that Committee the question as to whether a general tax on capital (to be graduated) might be substituted instead of the Income-tax, as is the case in the United States of America and many of our own colonies.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. ASQUITH,)The reference to the Committee will be to consider the practicability of graduating the amount of the tax and of differentiating; between permanent and precarious incomes. It will be for the Committee to determine whether the investigation of such a question as that referred to by my hon. friend will help them in forming their conclusions.

  Royal Prerogative of Mercy.
  Mr. BOTTOMLEY: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the number of persons who have been released from prison, or whose sentences have been modified upon the advice of the Home Office, since the release of Mr. Adolf Beck; and whether he will give the names of the judges or magistrates by whom such persons were sentenced.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GLADSTONE,): The Judicial Statistics give, every year, the numbers of, and some particulars relating to, the cases in which the prerogative of mercy is exercised on the advice of the Secretary of State; but I cannot undertake to give the names of the Judges and of the magistrates composing the Courts by whom these prisoners were sentenced.

  Servants' Registry Office Fees.
  Mr. SNOWDEN: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if, in consequence of the frequency of cases of excessive fees charged by registry offices to male applicants for situations, and the declarations of the police of their powerlessness to interfere under the existing law in such cases, he will consider the desirability of amending the law relating to employment agencies so that it shall include registries for males, and so as to fix the scale of charges at a registry office, as is done in certain foreign countries.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I have no information before me at present which would point to the desirability of regulating the charges made at registry offices. At present registry offices are not regulated by the general law at all, though as the hon. Member is perhaps aware, certain powers of control in regard to employment agencies for women have been obtained by London and also by Manchester in private Acts. The question of the regulation of employment agencies is no doubt an important one, and I shall be happy to consider any facts that may be laid before me.

  German Gipsies in Scotland.
  Mr. MUNRO FERGUSON: I beg to ask the Secretary of

  717
  State for the Home Department whether he is aware of the concern caused in Leith and elsewhere in Scotland by the arrival of further detachments of German gipsies; and whether he will take steps to guard against the evasion of a leading provision of the Aliens Act.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I can only refer my hon. friend to the Answer I gave yesterday to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire, † to which I have nothing to add.

  Factory Inspectors' Certificates.
  MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the difference in the certificates issued to assistant inspectors in 1893 by the then Home Secretary and those issued in 1902, the former empowering assistants to inspect all factories and workshops and the latter limiting their inspection to workshops only; and whether he would reissue the former certificates to assistants whoso period of service and efficiency would, in his opinion, qualify them for exercising the larger powers.
  MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, the form of certificate was changed in 1897, but in order to prevent misunderstandings, and not as a result of any change in the duties assigned to the assistants. From the time the class was instituted in 1893, the duties of the assistants have been confined to workshops and they never have inspected factories. As regards the suggestion in the last part of the Question, I may say that the question of the position and duties of the assistants is now under my consideration.

  Assistant Factory Inspectors' Allowances.
  MR. J. RAMSAY MACDONALD: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department upon what principle the extra allowance of £25 has been alloted to ten assistant factory inspectors; and whether he proposes to limit the number who receive this extra allowance to ten.
  Mr. GLADSTONE: On the recommendation of my predecessor, the Treasury recently sanctioned the grant
  † See Col. 554.
  718
  of ten allowances (including one already in existence) of £25, to be given to assistants doing specially responsible work. The assistants to whom the allowances have been alloted were selected after due consideration of the qualifications and length of service of the different members of the class. As I have already stated the question of the position of the inspector's assistants is now under my consideration.

  Local Education Authorities.
  DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, if any municipal authority, the London County Council, or any provincial council, being a local education authority under the Education Acts of 1902 and 1903 desire at any time to increase its membership with a view to the better control of the public education in its area, it would be competent to do so under any existing statute or statutes; and, if so, whether he will indicate such statute or statutes, and state further the course which such municipal authority would need to pursue.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. JOHN BORNS,): The local bodies referred to cannot themselves alter the number of their members. The number of members of the London County Council is fixed by the Local Government Act, 1888, and legislation would probably be necessary to alter it. The number of members of any other county council could be altered by the Local Government Board on a representation under Section 54 of the Act, and a county council can alter the number of members of the council of any urban district other than a borough. The number of members of a town council cannot usually be altered, unless in connection with an alteration of the borough or its division into wards.

  London Water Supply.
  MR. STRAUS: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether, with the view of improving the London water supplies, he will consider the advisability of compelling, by legislation or otherwise, the use of the process now in existence, which is capable of dealing satisfactorily with contaminated water by completely

  719
  destroying all pathogenic bacteria remaining in the supply after sand filtration.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: I am not sure what is the particular process to which my hon. friend refers. The Metropolitan Water Board have before them the question of the research work to be undertaken with a view to determining whether the present system of purification of the London water cannot be still further improved, and every practicable means of obtaining the best results will, no doubt, be thoroughly investigated. The matter does not appear to me to be one for compulsory action by legislation, or otherwise, at the present time.

  Woodford and Wanstead Joint Hospital.
  MR. SIMON: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether a request was received by the Local Government Board from the Woodford Urban District Council for the issue of a Provisional Order authorising the provision of a joint hospital for the districts of Woodford and Wanstead; if so, what was the date of the request; when were the preliminary formalities complied with; when was the local inquiry held; did the Board decide to issue a Provisional Order; if so, when was that decision arrived at; and what is the explanation of the delay in communicating this decision to the local authority and in carrying the decision out into law.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: The original application for the Provisional Order came from both the Woodford and Wanstead Urban District Councils, and was made in February, 1902. The Local Government Board directed an inquiry to be held, but at the instance of the Wanstead District Council it was deferred to enable the parties to agree on the terms of the proposed Order. They failed, however, to agree, and ultimately the Wanstead Urban District Council withdrew their application. Some action was taken by the Essex County Council with a view to forming a hospital district and, with the concurrence of the Woodford District Council, the inquiry as to the Provisional Order was postponed pending the decision of the county council on this scheme, and it was not until the autumn of 1904 that the case was
  720
  ready for an inquiry as to the Provisional Order to be held. It took place on November 30th, 1904. After the inquiry the Board had some correspondence with the parties, but there was considerable opposition to the proposal and no definite decision was arrived at. The case has recently been again under consideration. There are difficulties with regard to it, but a communication will very shortly be made to the local authorities definitely deciding the matter.

  Disabled Soldiers and Sailors.
  Mr. MORRELL: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he can now inform the House that steps will be taken to prevent paupers, whose destitution is due to injuries received during their service in His Majesty's forces, from being chargeable to local rates.
  MR. JOHN BURNS: I caused a letter to be sent to the Admiralty and the War Office informing them of the communications which I had received on this subject. I have not at present heard from the former Department with regard to the matter, but I have received a communication from the Army Council in which it is explained that, in all cases where a soldier has established a reasonable claim to be compensated by the State for disablement resulting from Army service, provision exists for awarding him a pension. It is added that should there be any discharged soldiers, in workhouses who are without pensions, or with small pensions, and who can be shown to be suffering from disabilities directly due to military service, their cases will always receive careful investigation on being brought to the notice of the Secretary, Royal Hospital, Chelsea. I propose to issue a circular to boards of guardians informing them of the effect of the communication from the Army Council.
  MR. JOYCE: Will it apply to Ireland also?
  MR. JOHN BURNS: That is a matter for the Irish Government. I will, however, consult the Chief Secretary.

  London Sortership Examinations.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether the examinations for

  721
  sorters in the General Post Office are all held in London only; and, if so, whether, for the convenience of Irish candidates, examinations could be also held in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and other Irish centres.
  THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON,): Examinations for London sorter-ships are held in London only. It is the general practice of my Department in recruiting this class, and the class of sorting clerks and telegraphists throughout the kingdom, to hold local examinations for local vacancies.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the great inconvenience and expense caused to candidates from Ireland?
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: Yes, but there would also be great difficulty and expense if the opposite course were adopted.

  Amble and the Telephone Service.
  MR. FENWICK: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether it is his intention to include the town of Amble within the Alnwick telephone area; and, if so, can he state when the work is likely to be completed.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I am considering what is the best method of extending the telephone system to Amble, and will communicate the result to the hon. Member as soon as possible.

  Sailors and Soldiers and the Foreign Parcels Postage Rates.
  MR. SNOWDON: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General if he will make some special reduction in the postage rate for parcels sent to men serving in the Army and Navy abroad.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: Under our parcel post agreements with the various Colonies and foreign countries this proposal would not be practicable.

  Registration Claims and the Halfpenny Post.
  MR. WATERLOW: I beg to ask the Postmaster-General whether the extension of the privileges under the halfpenny book-post, foreshadowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will pro-
  722
  vide that claims of occupiers and lodgers to be placed on the register of electors will pass through the post at the halfpenny rate.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: The details of the concessions as regards the halfpenny post are under consideration.

  Horticultural Instruction in Elementary Schools.
  MR. H. H. MARKS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether measures are being taken by the Education Department to give effect to the recommendations of the Departmental Committee of the Board of Agriculture on the Fruit Industry, that horticulture should be taught in elementary schools in country districts, and that such schools should have gardens attached where possible; that the attention of the local education authorities should be called to this, and also to the desirability of encouraging the study of practical horticulture in training colleges.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (Mr. BIRRELL,): I must refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave on this subject on March 28th. † I have nothing to add to that reply.

  Grant in Aid of Education Rates.
  DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether he is in a position to make any statement respecting the Board's scheme for the allocation of the £135,000 special aid grant promised on behalf of heavily rated areas in the Budget; and whether he will furnish a Return showing how much of the sum in question will be given to each recipient area.
  MR. BIREELL: The hon. Member is under a misapprehension in thinking that the special aid grant referred to is a specific sum of £135,000 which is to be distributed amongst a definite number of local authorities. That sum is merely an estimate of the maximum sum likely to be required within the present financial year for the purposes of the grant. The scheme of the special grant (which is strictly temporary) is that the Government undertake to pay to each authority
  † See (4) Debates cliv., 1252.

  723
  whose expenditure under Part III. of the Education Act to be mot from local rates has in the previous year exceeded the produce of an eighteen-penny rate a grant amounting to three-fourths of that excess. There are various necessary conditions and safeguards, incident to a grant of this kind, which will be set out in the Regulations for the grant which I hope shortly to issue. I am unable at present to give an exact list of the places which will certainly fall within the conditions above-named, or the precise amount which any place will in fact receive, until complete information is obtained from each authority as to the sums actually expended from the rates under Part III. of the Education Act in the preceding year. But, so soon as the Regulations are issued, each local authority will be able to work out approximately for itself (from its own expenditure records) the probable amount, if any, which it will receive.
  DR. MACNAMARA: Is it intended that the grant shall be for one year only?
  MR. BIRRELL: That is so.
  DR. MACNAMARA: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether, in addition to the £135,000 new special aid grant promised in the Budget, the education authorities for necessitous areas will be eligible to receive for the year ending 31st March, 1907, all existing grants, including the special aid grant provided for in Section 10 of the Act of 1902.
  MR. BIRRELL: Yes, Sir.

  Secondary Schools—;Registry of Teachers.
  MR. ASHLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether he has considered the probable effect of abolishing the register of teachers on secondary schools at present inspected by the Board of Education with a view to the admission of their teachers to the register; and whether he anticipates that in consequence many of such schools will cease to seek recognition or undergo inspection by the Board.
  MR. BIRRELL: The Board have given their careful attention to the points referred to in the Question and are considering the possibility of estab-
  724
  lishing a list of efficient secondary schools, whether grant-aided or not. A very thorough inspection would be a necessary preliminary to the placing of a school upon such a list. Such recognition would, in consequence, be of much greater value to the schools so recognised than the limited recognition in connection with the teachers' register, which was accorded without any stringent conditions and tests of inspection or otherwise.

  Withdrawal from Religious Instruction in Elementary Schools.
  MR. ROGERS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education if he will state the number of local education authorities which have adopted By-law 3 in the model form of by-laws issued in the Elementary School Code, which by-law, if adopted, removes from the parent any obligation to cause his child to attend school except during the time allotted in the time-table exclusively to secular instruction.
  MR BIRRELL: Ninety-four local education authorities have adopted the by-law, under which a parent is enabled to withdraw his child from the school promises during the period of instruction in religious subjects. These ninety-four local authorities consist of thirty-seven counties, eight county boroughs, thirty-six boroughs, and thirteen urban districts.
  MR. ASHLEYasked if permission to withdraw was conditional in any way.
  MR. BIRRELL: I believe it to be unconditional.

  Apprenticeship Endowments.
  MR. CROOKS: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether under the Education Bill it is proposed to give the authorities control over endowments which are for apprenticeship; if so, will an amending clause be inserted safe-guarding such endowments for apprenticeship.
  MR. BIRRELL: It is hardly possible to explain the provisions of the Bill satisfactorily within the the limits of an Answer, and there will ample opportunity during the Committee stage. I may, however, assure the hon. Member that the Board are giving careful attention to the question of apprenticeships.

  Electric Generating Stations—;Injury to Trees.
  MR. ASHLEY: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the Memorandum of the Commissioners of Works on Electric Power and Supply Bills, he will take steps to give effect to the views of the Commissioners on the subject of damage to trees and shrubs by smoke and other products of combustion, in connection with the London County Council (Electric Supply) Bill at present before a Committee of this House, and particularly to procure the omission of Clause 3 (2) of that Bill.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. KEARLEY,): I have no doubt that the Committee of this House to whom the London County Council (Electric Supply) Bill is referred will give full consideration to the views of the Commissioners of Works with respect to possible injury to trees and shrubs by smoke and other products of combustion from generating stations, and I will confer with my right hon. friend the First Commissioner as to the way in which these views can be brought before the Committee. The particular clause referred to is based on the recommendation of the Joint Committee of the two Houses (which considered the subject in 1898) to the effect that where a site for a generating station is acquired under compulsory powers, and is specified in the special Act, the undertakers should not be subjected to any further liability than that which is imposed by the common law in the case of persons exercising statutory powers and duties. It is for the Committee to decide on the evidence submitted to them whether any particular site should or should not be so exempted.

  Epizootic Lymphangitis.
  Mr. G. A. HARDY: I beg to ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, the number of cases of epizootic lymphangitis in civilian stables which have occurred in Great Britain since this disease was introduced by means of service horses returned from South Africa, the localities in which these cases occurred, the course taken to prevent the further spread of infection, and whether
  726
  the owners of affected horses have been compensated for the losses which they have sustained through this disease; and, if so, whether the compensation was paid by the Government, or was, by order of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries, required to be paid by the local authority.
  SIR EDWARD STRACHEY: Six outbreaks of epizootic lymphangitis have occurred in civilian stables, viz., three in London, and one in each of the counties of Kent, Hertford, and Lanark. In each case steps were at once taken to place all animals under control which might have been exposed to infection. In two instances compensa-was paid by the local authority acting under an Order of the Board of Agriculture.

  Liverpool Victoria Legal Friendly Society.
  MR. SNOWDEN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board if he is aware that a movement is on foot to turn the Liverpool Victoria Legal Friendly Society into a limited liability assurance company; and as, according to Sections 71 and 74 of the Friendly Societies Act of 1896, this, can be done by the consent of three-fourths of the members present at a general meeting duly called for this purpose, he will consider the question of altering the law in regard to such procedure, in view of the impracticability of the present procedure, as in the case mentioned where there are 2,577,353 members residing in all parts of the country.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. McKENNA): No application has so far been made to the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies by the Liverpool Victoria Legal Friendly Society under Section 71, Sub-sections (1) and (2) of the Friendly Societies Act, 1896. I must call the attention of the hon. Member to the fact that under Section 74 of the Act votes may be given either in person or by proxy if the rules so permit.

  Loyal Cranmer Orange Friendly Society, Blackburn.
  MR. SNOWDEN: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board

  727
  if his attention has been called to the expulsion of certain members of the Loyal Cranmer Orange Friendly Society, Blackburn, for having supported a particular candidate at the late general election; and, seeing that in the registered rules of such society there is no power under which the society can expel members and deprive them of benefits for political actions, and as such expelled members have suffered considerable financial loss by the expulsion, will he say if the Registrar General of Friendly Societies proposes to take any steps to secure the readmission of the expelled members.
  MR. McKENNA: My attention has not been called to the expulsion of certain members of the Loyal Cranmer Orange Friendly Society. If any member has any dispute with the society or its committee or officers, Rule 26 of the rules of the society gives power for such dispute to be referred to justices pursuant to the Friendly Societies Act. The Chief Registrar has no power to interfere.
  MR. SNOWDEN: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General if his attention has been called to the expulsion of certain Members of the Loyal Cranmer Friendly Society, Blackburn, for having, at the late General Election, supported a particular candidate, and as under the registered rules of the society there is nothing to justify such expulsion, will he state if he proposes to take any action in the matter.
  THE SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir W. ROBSON,): I am not aware that the attention of the Attorney-General has been called to this matter, but if it is suggested that an offence has been committed in relation to the facts referred to by the hon. Member, and those facts are laid before the Director of Public Prosecutions, they will be duly considered.

  Army Excess Votes.
  COLONEL HERBERT: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether, with reference to Treasury Minute 5283/06 of March 28th, 1906, he can furnish the House with a statement of the Votes for Army Services, 1905–6, from which the estimated excess of £783,000 is expected to accrue
  728
  whether any steps are being taken by the Treasury to ensure that the Estimates of the spending departments for the year 1906–7 shall be framed with a more accurate regard to the actual requirements of the several services; and whether the Treasury proposes to apply any check to the practice whereby expenditure un-authorised by Parliament can be covered by the appropriation of balances arising from inaccurate Estimates.
  MR. McKENNA: The principal savings were effected on the following Votes: Quarterings, Transport, and Remounts £107,000; Supplies and Clothing £338,000; Ordnance establishments and general stoics £78,000, and Works £87,000. The Estimates for 1906–7 were presented to the House in March, and it is therefore not possible in the current year to take any special stops in the direction indicated. No expenditure which involves an excess upon a Vote or even, generally speaking, upon a sub-head of a Vote can be incurred without the sanction of the Treasury, and I would point out that the Treasury Minute of March 28th last sanctions excesses of expenditure to the extent of £92,000 being met out of savings estimated to amount to £783,000. I desire also to say that, as was shown incidentally in connection with the Navy Supplementary Estimate of this session, the Treasury aims at greater stringency for the future in the exorcise of the temporary powers of transfer between Vote and Vote which are annually conferred by the Appropriation Act in respect of Navy and Army Services.

  Crown Lands as School Sites.
  MR. ROGERS: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether it is the practice of the Woods and Forests Commissioners to present sites and to make monetary grants out of their revenues for the purpose of assisting the building of non-provided elementary schools; and, if so, whether he will take steps to ensure that, in future, such grants, whether of land or of money, are not made except to schools under public control and in which teachers are subject to no disabling tests.
  MR. McKENNA: The power to make grants of Crown Lands as sites for schools

  729
  which was given by Section 45 of the Crown Lands Act, 1829, was taken away by the Crown Lands Act, 1894; but Section 5 of the latter Act provides that the Commissioners of Woods may, with the consent of the Treasury, make donations of money out of the income of the Land Revenues of the Crown for any educational purposes connected with land under the management of the Commissioners. Since the passing of the Education Act, 1902, a certain number of donations have been made in cases where the amount of the voluntary contributions and other circumstances seemed to justifiy it, but no further promises of donations will be made whilst the present Education Bill is before Parliament.
  MR. FLAVIN: Where can I get information as to the amount of property held by the Commissioners?
  MR. McKENNA: If the hon. Member will speak to me privately I will show him it.

  Law of Divorce—;Justice Gorell Barne's Observations.
  MR. EUGENE WASON: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General whether his attention has been called to the observations of Mr. Justice Gorell Barnes on the question of divorce in England; and whether he will be prepared to consider the propriety of bringing the Divorce Law of England into conformity with that of Scotland and other civilised countries.
  SIR W. ROBSON: I believe my hon. and learned friend the Attorney-General is aware of the observations referred to in the Question. I do not think that either he or I is entitled in the present state of public business to say that the Government are likely to introduce any legislation on the subject.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: With regard to the last sentence in the Question will the hon. and learned Gentleman and the House bear in mind that the most civilised country in the world, Ireland, has no divorce law.
  MR. FLAVINasked when England ceased to be a civilised country.
  MR. EUGENE WASONsaid the words at the end of his Question were not his but those of the learned Judge.

  Crofting Counties Schools.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state how many schools attended by Gaelic-speaking children in each of the crofting counties would be entitled to participate in the grant contemplated in Section 2, Sub-section C (2), of the Scotch Education Department Minute of March 19th, 1906, taking as a basis the teaching staff in attendance at each such school last year.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. SINCLAIR,): The Department has no information in its possession to enable it to answer this Question with sufficient accuracy.

  Kessock Ferry.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland having regard to the fact that the inhabitants on the Ross-shire side of Kessock Ferry have appealed for suitable boats to be placed on the service, on the ground that the present boats are very old and quite unfit for the work, will he state whether any arrangements have yet been made to provide suitable boats.
  MR. SINCLAIR: The Secretary for Scotland has no jurisdiction and no information in regard to the ferry in question.

  Scottish Congested Districts Board Report.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he will state when the Report of the Congested Districts Board for Scotland will be laid upon the Table of the House.
  MR. SINCLAIR: The Report will be laid upon the Table to-day.

  Telephone in Scottish Prisons.
  MR. WATT: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if his attention has been called to the statement on page 14 of Code 218, 1900, in the Report of the Departmental Committee on Scottish Prisons, to the effect that the chairman of the Prison Commissioners objects to telephones, but they are now a

  731
  recognised convenience for the transaction of business, and might be introduced with advantage into the general service of prisons; and if he will explain why nothing has been done to give effect to the Committee's recommendations.
  MR. SINCLAIR: Treasury consent has been given to the connection of the Commissioners' Office and the two Glasgow Prisons with the Exchange, and steps will be taken to have telephones introduced.

  Glasgow Prison Warders' Grievance.
  MR. WATT: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland if he is aware that at a lecture on the Sunny Land of Spain, given in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow, on February 9th, 1906, nineteen warders were detained on duty for two hours and twenty-five minutes, and thirty-five warders for forty-five minutes, without any financial allowance or without being granted leave of absence for an equal time; and if he will take steps to remedy this grievance of the warders.
  MR. SINCLAIR: No financial allowance has been given. One warder has been allowed leave in lieu, but others have not asked for it. They will be granted leave in lieu when they apply for it.

  German Gipsies in Scotland.
  MR. MUNRO FERGUSON: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether the police are unable to give the public protection from the bands of Gorman gipsies who constitute such a nuisance in Scotland.
  MR. SINCLAIR: All complaints that have been received have been investigated, and my information is that the police have not failed to afford the public due protection. If the hon. Member will furnish mo with information as to instances to the contrary, inquiries shall at once be instituted.

  Scottish Fishery Cruisers.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland, seeing that with a view to the purchase of an additional fishery cruiser the Secretary for Scotland had a year ago saved a sum of £7,000 out of moneys placed at his disposal for fishery purposes, will he state whether a suffi-
  732
  cient sum has now accumulated to admit of the purchase of a new cruiser for the protection of the interests of the line fishermen.
  MR. SINCLAIR: A sum sufficient to purchase a new cruiser has not yet been, accumulated.
  MR. WEIR: How long will it take to accumulate the sum required?
  MR. SINCLAIR: A considerable time.

  Island of Lewis Evictions.
  MR. WEIR: I beg to ask the Secretary of Scotland whether, in view of the fact that Major Matheson of Lewis Castle, the proprietor of the Island of Lewis, is now carrying out evictions of landless cottars who have built at their own expense substantial stone houses on waste land, he proposes to take stops to stay further evictions and to protect these men (chiefly fishermen) with their wives and children from such cruel and inhuman treatment.
  MR. SINCLAIR: The information I have received respecting Andrew Finlayson and John Campbell North Tolsta referred to in the hon. Member's letter of April 25th is as follows: Finlayson was warned in February, 1903, that he would not be allowed to build a house on the common grazing. This warning was repeated the following month. As he nevertheless continued to build he was interdicted in May, 1903. In spite of the interdict he continued operations, and in April, 1904, he was observed to be roofing his house. Warning was then sent, and was repeated in May, 1904. The following August he was found in possession, and in June, 1905, he was evicted. On eviction the proprietor offered to find him rooms in Stornoway, but this offer was refused, and he went to live in the Missionary House. In October he re-entered the house, and the same step was taken by Campbell, the other squatter referred to. The proprietor refrained during the winter months from taking action. These men had squatted on land not in occupation of the proprietor, but in that of the crofters, in defiance of Section 1 (4) of the Crofters Act of 1886. As the hon. Member knows, the condition of the Lews and of

  733
  the crofting districts generally is under the serious consideration of the Government.

  Ireland and the Poor Prisoners' Defence Act.
  MR. VINCENT KENNEDY: I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland whether, seeing the manner in which the Poor Prisoners' Defence Act of 1904 is working in England, and in view of the desirability of introducing similar provisions in Ireland, he will have this humane statute extended to that country at an early date.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. CHERRT,): I agree with the hon. Member as to the desirability of extending the Poor Prisoners' Defence Act of 1903 to Ireland, but in the present state of Parliamentary business I fear I cannot make any promise to introduce a Bill dealing with the subject.

  Irish Land Act Administration—;Purchase Price and Arrears of Rent.
  MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutentant of Ireland whether in cases of sales within the zones, under the Land Act of 1903, any record was kept prior to 1906, and is any record being kept now, of arrears of rent included in the purchase price; has the bonus been paid, or is it being paid, on the gross price including arrears; is there any authority in the Act, or analogy in any Act, for the State paying a bonus on the amount of a civil debt which has been recovered without cost; and seeing that tenants in debt are embarrasssed and, therefore, not free agents, will this peculiar method of obtaining public money through them be stopped.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (MR. BRYCE,): I am informed by the Land Commission that no such record has been, or is being, kept. Under Section 48, Sub-section (1), of the Act of 1903, the bonus or percentage is payable on the amount of the purchase money advanced under the Land Purchase Acts, subject to the proviso that the bonus is not to be paid in respect of any land re-sold to the vendor. When once the advances have been sanctioned and the purchase money
  734
  paid into court, the statute provides that where at the date of the agreement for purchase arrears of rent were due in respect of any holding on the estate, a sum equivalent in amount to those arrears, but not exceeding in any case one year's rent, shall be paid out of the purchase money to the person who would have been entitled to receive those arrears for his own use. The statute contains no provision excluding the portion of the purchase money so applied from the calculation of the bonus under Section 48, and it has been judicially decided that the bonus must be calculated and paid in accordance with the statute without deduction. The objection taken in the Question to the present practice is therefore really an objection to the terms of the statute.

  Land Valuations.
  MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in view of the practice of the Irish Land Commission in having valuations made, recorded, and calculated in a way differing from that laid down by statute, and giving decisions without stating any grounds upon which they are based, and the dissatisfaction which the Fry Commission reported to exist on account of this practice, and its present aggravation and continuance, whether he will have the practice of the Commission brought into conformity with the statute and with the practice of other courts.
  MR. BRYCE: I am informed by the Land Commission that this Question is founded upon a misapprehension. As I have stated in reply to a previous Question of the hon. and learned Member, the practice of the Land Commission in having valuations made, recorded, and calculated is, they inform me, in accordance with the statutory provisions concerned. The schedules attached to all orders fixing fair rents set out in detail the various facts and circumstances considered, and in cases in which a special judgment is called for the reasons for the decision are stated in open court.

  Estates Commissioners' Inspectors.
  MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will grant a Return relating to inspectors in the service of the Estates

  735
  Commissioners similar to Parliamentary Paper, No. 151, of session 1902; and, if so, will it be necessary for a private Member to move for it.
  MR. BRYCE: No objection will be offered to the proposed Return if the hon. Member should move for it.

  Abbeyleix Police.
  MR. MEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the district inspector, head constable, and sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabulary, stationed at Abbeyleix, Queen's County, are Protestants, which is contrary to the arrangement that at least one of the officers at any station should be a Catholic; whether he is aware that seven-tenths of the police at this station and 80 per cent, of the population are Catholic; and will he give instructions that one, at least, of the officers in charge at this station should be a Catholic.
  MR. BRYCE: The inspector-general informs mo that of the police force at present stationed at Abbeyleix, the district inspector, head constable, one sergeant, and two constables, are Protestants, and that one acting-sergeant and five constables are Roman Catholics. It is, I understand, the fact that 80 per cent, of the population of Abbeyleix are Roman Catholics. There is no arrangement or rule universally applied that one of the officers at any station should be a Catholic, though this is usually the case. The Inspector-General is not aware that there is any dissatisfaction with the present arrangement of the force at Abbeyleix. The allocation of the men is regulated in accordance with public requirements.

  Irish Afforestation.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is intended to appoint a Commission of Inquiry into the subject of afforestation in Ireland.
  MR. BRYCE: An Advisory Committee on Forestry has already been appointed by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction at the instance of the Council of Agriculture. I am con-
  736
  sidering the question whether it may not be desirable to institute a further inquiry into the subject, but I am not at present prepared to make any definite statement on the matter.

  Royal University.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the position of Chancellor of the Royal University is still vacant; or whether he is in a position to announce the name of the new Chancellor.
  MR. BRYCE: The position in question has not yet been filled, and I am consequently unable to make an announcement on the subject. The matter is at this moment under the consideration of the Irish Government.
  MR. SLOAN: What is the cause of the delay?
  MR. BRYCE: Personal questions always give rise to delay.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has any information showing that the Senate of the Royal University are taking steps to punish the students who were guilty of disloyal and disorderly conduct at the last conferring of degrees, or to prevent the recurrence of such disturbances.
  MR. BRYCE: I am imformed by the Secretaries of the Royal University that the matter in question is under the consideration of the Senate.

  Annaghmore Disturbances.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that on Monday. April 16th, when a Protestant band was passing in a peaceable manner through Annaghmore, county Armagh, in order to attend the opening of an Orange hall at Cranagil, an unprovoked attack was made upon them by a number of Nationalists who were strangers to the neighbourhood; whether the police authorities had previous knowledge that such an attack was possible, and whether they took any steps to prevent it; and whether it is the intention of the Government to take proceedings against the

  737
  persons who provoked this breach of the peace.
  MR. BRYCE: I am informed that proceedings are being taken against offenders on both sides, and, following the invariable practice, I must decline to make any statement in the matter while the proceedings are sub judice.
  MR. LONSDALE: Did the right hon. Gentleman say offenders on both sides?
  MR. BRYCE: Yes.
  MR. LONSDALE: They were only on one side.
  MR. BRYCE: My information is the other way.
  MR LONSDALE: Considering the source from which the right hon. Gentleman gets his information, I am not surprised.

  Chancellorship of the Royal University.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in the selection of a person for the position of Chancellor of the Royal University of Ireland, care will be taken to choose one who will insist upon adequate measures being taken to prevent riotous and disloyal demonstrations on the occasion of the conferring of degrees.
  MR. BRYCE: In making this appointment due regard will be had to the high dignity of the office.

  Irish Fisheries.
  MR. HALPIN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received a Resolution from the County Council of Clare to the effect that the present Government, in view of the inquiry into the working of the Agricultural and Technical Instruction Department, has an excellent opportunity of placing the sea and fresh water fisheries on a popularly sound and practical basis, by appointing a representative Fishery Board as in Scotland, with thoroughly competent and practical experts as inspectors, and establishing a Government brand for mackerel and herrings; and
  738
  will he say what action he will take in this Question.
  MR. WILLIAM ABRAHAM: May I also ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has received a copy of a Resolution adopted by the Cork County Council, at a special meeting held on the 26th ultimo, with regard to the establishment of a representative Fishery Board for Ireland; and if this matter will be considered by the Commission appointed to inquire into the working of the Agricultural and Technical Instruction Department.
  MR. BRYCE: I have received the Resolutions referred to and have transmitted them to the Committee of Inquiry into the working of the Department, as it seems to me that the subject is a fit one for the consideration of the Committee.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: Will the right hon. Gentleman call the special attention of the Committee of Inquiry on the Working of the Board of Agriculture to the expediency of doing something to develop the fisheries on the Irish coast?
  MR. BRYCE: If the hon. Member cares to address a special communication to me on the subject I will forward it to the Committee.
  MR. CHARLES DEVLIN: Is this Committee always to sit in London?
  MR. BRYCE: No. It will have a great many sittings in Ireland.

  Head Constable Spence, Royal Irish Constabulary.
  MR. MEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Head Constable Spence, stationer) at Abbeyleix, Queen's County, is engaged in promoting a sect which is giving offence to both Catholic and Protestant people in the district; and that he attends constantly at a house at Tullyroe, adjacent to Abbeyleix, for the purpose of preaching and otherwise spending his time promoting his views; whether he will take steps to oblige this policeman to give his time to his duties for which he is paid by the public, and is he aware that this head

  739
  constable so arranges the discipline and hours of duty for the Catholic constables as to prevent them from attending mass on Catholic holy days of obligation.
  MR. BRYCE: It would appear that the hon. Member has been misinformed. I have referred this Question to the Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, who informs me, on the authority of the local district inspector, that there is no foundation for any of the statements contained in the Question.
  MR. MEEHAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman order an independent inquiry? I can assure the right hon. Gentleman from personal inquiry his information is wrong.
  MR. BRYCE: I think the answer of the officer is entitled to some respect as first-hand evidence.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: In view of the fact that there is the personal denial of the constable for a contrary statement by the Member for the Division, cannot the right hon. Gentleman further inquire?
  MR. BRYCE: I will make any inquiry that may be wished, but, judging from the information which has reached me, I do not think the matter is one on which there can be much doubt.

  De Freyne Estate.
  MR. JAMES O'KELLY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that it is now about twelve months since the Congested Districts Board acquired the De Freyne Estate for the purpose of transferring it to the tenant occupiers; whether any progress has been made with the work; and, pending the transfer, what facilities are given to the tenants in the matter of turbary and water.
  MR. BRYCE: The estate in question has not yet been vested in the Congested Districts Board, who are therefore not yet able to sell it to the tenants or to make any alterations in the holdings. It is a very large estate, and many questions are involved, requiring time. The Board, however, have commenced to make such improvements as will not in-
  740
  terfere with the boundaries of the holdings. The tenants continue to enjoy the same facilities in regard to turbary and water as they possessed before the Board arranged to purchase.

  Irish School Building Plans.
  Mr. O'SHEE: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, in conjunction with the Commissioners of National Education, announced about four years ago that they intended to issue new plans for the construction of national schools; that they have since neglected to do so; that inconvenience and delay is caused to managers proposing to build schools by the absence of any standard plan or plans, except those which were declared obsolete; whether the correspondence which was proceeding in November last between the Treasury, the Irish Government, and the Commissioners of National Education, on matters relating to school building grants, is still proceeding; and whether, seeing that a number of managers proposing to replace schools which have been condemned as unsanitary by new schools are, in effect, being delayed for a full year in providing the new schools, he proposes to take any action in the matter.
  MR. McKENNA: The delay in issuing general plans, which I regret, is not due to the neglect of the Board of Works or any Department, but to the difficulty of arriving at an agreement. Correspondence is still proceeding, but I will do everything I can towards expediting a settlement.
  MR. O'SHEE: When is the correspondence likely to end? It has been going on six months now.
  MR. McKENNA: I am doing my utmost to expedite it.

  North of Ireland Mail Service.
  MR. SLOAN: I beg to ask the Post-master-General if he can now state the result of his inquiry with the view of arranging for a dispatch of mails by the train leaving Tynan at 6.40 p.m. to proceed to England viâ Greenore, and to Scotland by way of Belfast and Ardrossan.
  MR. SYDNEY BUXTON: I have made inquiry on the question of affording a despatch from Caledon by the 6.40 p.m. train from Tynan Station; but I regret to find that the amount of correspondence for England and Scotland (which amounts to only about twelve letters a day) is not sufficient to justify the expense which would be involved.

  Public Accounts Committee's Reports
  MR. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can see his way to adopt the recommendation of the Select Committee on National Expenditure in 1903 that a new rule of Supply should ensure that at least one day should be provided for consideration of Reports of the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Minutes thereon.
  I beg also to ask the First Lord of the Treasury if he can see his way to adopt the recommendation of the Select Committee on National Expenditure in 1903, that an Estimates Committee should be appointed at the beginning of each session to consider in detail a particular part of the Estimates for the current year, such particular part to be chosen for them in the previous year by the Public Accounts Committee.
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN,): I have nothing to add to the Answer which I gave to my hon. friend the Member for Clackmannan and Kinross on March 1st.† I then expressed the opinion that a reasonable opportunity should be given for the Report of the Public Accounts Committee being discussed by the House of Commons. I also expressed the opinion—;if my hon. friend will allow me to answer his next Question at the same time—;that the manner in which the financial control of the House of Commons should be exercised was eminently a matter for the Committee of Procedure to consider.

  Crofters Bill.
  MR. MORTON: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he can now say when the
  † See (4) Debates clii. 1298–9
  742
  Crofters Acts Amendment Bill will be introduced.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am afraid I cannot yet name a day for the introduction of the Crofters Bill, but, as my hon. friend is no doubt aware, every effort is being made to push forward the preparation of the Bill.

  The Prime Minister.
  Mr. PAUL: Before I ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will put down the salary of the Secretary of State for War for discussion in Committee of Supply on Thursday, May 10, or Thursday, May 17, Mr. Speaker, will you kindly give your ruling on a point of order? When I put down a Question addressed to the "Prime Minister," those words are struck out at the Table and the words "First Lord of the Treasury" are substituted. I understood that the King had been pleased to confer the style and title of Prime Minister, and appropriate precedence, on the head of his Government, and that it was, therefore, now the official designation of the right hon. Gentleman. And I have observed for my guidance that you yourself, Sir, make use of it when you call on the right hon. Gentleman in debate. Perhaps you will be good enough to say, for the information of the House, and of the Table, whether I rightly apprehend the significance of His Majesty s most gracious act.
  MR. SPEAKER: This Question which the hon. Gentleman has put to me is one, I think, of which notice ought to be given, though I am afraid it is not usual to give notice of Questions to the Speaker. If I am asked to decide the Question at a moment's notice, I should say that Prime Minister was the proper designation. I always so refer to the right hon. Gentleman.
  MR. PAUL: I beg to thank you most respectfully, Sir, for your reply, and to ask the Prime Minister the Question.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I hope my hon. friend will find that the rose by either name will give the same answer. I fear that the arrangements for public business will not admit of either of the days named being appropriated for the War Office Vote; but I am

  743
  aware of the undertaking that was given in the matter, and I hope that there will be an early opportunity of fulfilling it.
  MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER: Is it not the custom for the choice of the subjects taken in Committee of Supply to be regulated, in a large measure, after consultation with the minority of the House? Will that arrangement continue to be observed?
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Yes, I think it is the usual practice at any rate; but it is a practice against which I have always protested, because I have always had the impression that the Government, being responsible for the conduct of business, ought not to put upon the Opposition, or any minority, the responsibility of the choice of the subject of the day. But as a matter of courtsey and convenience, of course, the wishes of the Opposition will be duly consulted.

  Scottish Supply.
  MR. CROMBIE: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury it he can now fix a day for the discussion of the Scotch Supply.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I am afraid that I cannot give my hon. friend a definite answer at the moment as to when Scotch Supply will be taken.

  Church Endowments in Wales.
  MR. ELLIS GRIFFITH: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when it is proposed to appoint the Commission of Inquiry to examine into the question of the endowments and the present position of the Church of England in Wales; whether the scope of inquiry has been determined upon; and whether he will now give the names of the members of the Commission.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I hope there will be no great delay in the appointment of this Royal Commission. I am not in a position to give my hon. friend the exact terms of reference, but the Commission will inquire into the origin and history of the endowments of the Church of England in Wales, and will ascertain what provision is made by all
  744
  the religious denominations for the spiritual needs of the people. I am afraid I cannot give my hon. friend the names of the Commissioners, but I may inform him that the King has approved of the appointment of Lord Justice Vaughan Williams as chairman.

  Depopulation of Rural Districts.
  MR. BRIDGEMAN: I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury when the House will be in possession of the measures promised in the gracious Speech from the Throne, dealing with the social and economic conditions of the rural districts in Great Britain, by which a larger number of the population is to be attracted to and retained on the soil.
  SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's Question is that no measures of the kind were promised in the King's Speech. The inquiries into the economic conditions of the rural districts to which allusion was made are still proceeding.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—;THE EDUCATION BILL.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Will the Prime Minister state what will be the course of business next week?
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: The business will commence on Monday with the Second Reading of the Education Bill. We propose to devote to the debate Monday and Tuesday, and the Government's share of Wednesday, and then to postpone the business of Supply on Thursday, and to conclude the debate on the Second Reading on Thursday night. Of course, another day will be given for purposes of Supply.

NEW BILL.
  LONDON TRAFFIC BOARD BILL.
  "To establish a London Traffic Board," presented by Sir John Dickson-Poynder; to be read a second time upon Monday, May 28th, and to be printed. [Bill 189.]

  LAND VALUES TAXATION, &c. (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Solicitor-General for Scotland be a Member of the Select Committee on the Land Values Taxation, &c. (Scotland) Bill:—;(Mr. Whiteley.)
  MR. HAROLD COXobjected to the composition of the Committee because, while the question was one of very great importance to all classes who were interested in property which sprang from land values, there was an over-whelming majority of the Committee absolutely committed to one view of the question. Further, he objected that, while nominally a Scottish Bill—;the precedent would apply both to England and Ireland—;the Committee was almost exclusively composed of Scotsmen.
  MR. DILLON: Can this discussion proceed an indefinite time?
  MR. SPEAKER: A brief statement is permissible, as the matter comes within the so-called Ten Minutes Rule.
  MR. HAROLD COXsaid he would be very brief. But his opinion was that it was very important to have other than purely Scottish representatives on the Committee. Why had the hon. Member for the Elland Division been put on—;in view of his known advocacy of the Bill—;while the Member for Spen Valley—;who had shown his impartiality by speaking against and voting for the Bill—;had been ignored. Then the Lord-Advocate had promised to use his influence to ensure that the inquiry should be very brief.
  THE LORD-ADVOCATE (Mr. THOMAS SHAW,): No.
  MR. HAROLD COXsaid that at any rate in view of some remarks by the Lord-Advocate, he asked for an assurance that no undue pressure would be placed on the Committee to rush the Bill through. Finally, he wanted it made clear that the Bill should not be retrospective in its action.
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not entitled to go into that.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (Mr. GEORGE WHITELEY,)stated that the Bill was supported almost unanimously by hon. Members on the Ministerial side. The usual course as between Parties in the House was followed in the composition of the Committee. The practice was for the Government to select eight Members, the Opposition four, the Irish Party two, and the Labour Party one (each branch of the Labour Party alternating in making the selection). It was impossible for the Government to appoint amongst their eight Members any Member who was not a supporter of the Bill. They looked to the other parties to supply opponents. No attempt would be made to rush the action of the Committee or its Report, and the House would have due time for consideration of the Report of the Committee.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURrose to a point of order. As he understood it, there was to be a short speech on each side on each question which was put from the chair, and as there were fifteen Members it was obvious that there might be several short speeches upon all the Members of which the Committee was to be composed. He would ask whether that was not the fact, and he wished to know from the Government whether it was usual or convenient that a controversy of this kind should be started on an allotted day and whether it ought not to be taken on a day when Government business was put down.
  MR. SPEAKER: This Motion comes within the ordinary so-called Ten Minutes Rule. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right in thinking that if opposition is raised to the name of each hon. Member a short discussion can take place in regard to the name of each Member. It is also open to me to put the Question that the debate should be adjourned, as the rule says that the Speaker, after admitting a brief explanatory statement from the Member who moves and the Member who opposes such a Motion, may without further Amendment put the Motion on the Motion that the debate be adjourned.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELLinquired whether it was not the ordinary

  747
  course that if a name was objected to the debate should be confined to the substitution of another name.
  MR. SPEAKER: I do not think that that is so. It is really almost necessary to enter into a general statement to explain the position of the Member named, because possibly no objection will be taken to the individual, but only to him as representing a particular section of opinion.
  MR. SHACKLETONhoped they would not be taken to have pledged themselves to the particular manner in which the name of the Labour Member of the Committee was decided upon. If they were they would vote against him; therefore he hoped they were not pledging themselves to the particular method of selection.
  MR. GEORGE WHITELEYsaid that the point the hon. Member took was exactly what he had indicated to the House. The Motion had been down on the Paper for three days, and he put it down three times in order that there should be opportunity for considering opposition to the Committee. He did not see any reason why the appointment of the Committee should be any longer delayed.
  MR. HAROLD COXsaid he was satisfied with the assurances of the hon. Member.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  MR. Hugh Barrie, Mr. Arthur Dewar, Mr. Findlay, Mr. John Henderson, Mr. McKillop, Mr. Mitchell-Thomson, Mr. O'Hare, Mr. Remnant, Mr. Thomas Frederick Richards, Mr. Sutherland, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Dundas White, Mr. Wood, and Mr. Younger nominated other Members of the Select Committee.
  Ordered, "That the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records."
  Ordered, "That five be the quorum." (Mr. Whiteley.)

  SUPPLY [7TH ALLOTTED DAY]
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  [Mr. EMMOTT (Oldham) in the Chair.]

CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1906–7.

  CLASS III.
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,215, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1907, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Irish Land Commission."
  MR. JOHN REDMOND MR. JOHN REDMOND (Waterford) moved to reduce the Vote by £100, so that an opportunity might be given for discussion of that particular Vote, which was most vital to the welfare of the people and the future of the country. He wished to repeat a protest he had made in previous sessions against the system which governed the discussion of Supply, and especially Irish Supply. On the question of Irish taxation, the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day stated that although the general taxation of Ireland had increased by £2,000,000 or £3,000,000, yet the Imperial contribution had not increased. That was to say that the whole of the additional taxation had been caused by an increase in the cost of the government of Ireland. One of their most serious complaints was that the government of Ireland was increasingly costly and was an extravagant as well as an inefficient government. Notwithstanding that great and increasing cost no opportunity was given of criticising the items of the expenditure or endeavouring to curtail the extravagance. Under the Rules of Supply three days were graciously vouchsafed to Ireland for the discussion of the entire cost of Irish government. Three days only were given to discuss an expenditure of £8,000,000, and to discuss the proceedings of some forty-five public boards, as to whose proceedings this Committee was in absolute and blank ignorance. The representatives of the Irish people who had to pay this money were

  749
  not given any opportunity of discussing the system of government, because, of course, hon. Members would see that three days for the discussion of all these various boards was practically no opportunity at all. If the whole of the twenty-three days allocated for the discussion of Supply generally were given for the examination of the proceedings of these various Irish boards and for the discussion of the daily increasing cost of the government, it would not be too long a period. The present system meant, therefore, that no opportunity was given them of investigating how the money was spent and of exposing to the House of Commons the monstrous extravagance of every single Department in the government of the country. So far as Supply was concerned, the House of Commons might as well not exist at all. Every year at the end of the session all the Irish money—;such of it, at any rate, as had not been voted—;was voted in the course of a few minutes without any discussion at all, and the most they could hope for was that in the course of one session they would be able to discuss two or three subjects of Irish expenditure. On this occasion they had selected for discussion the Land Commission Vote, because in their judgment it more vitally concerned the welfare of the people and the future of the country than any other department of Irish government. The Irish Land Commission was engaged at present in the task of endeavouring to settle the Irish land question. All parties in the State were in absolute agreement that there never could be peace and prosperity in Ireland until that question was settled, and all parties were also agreed that this must be carried out by the purchase by the tenants of their holdings on fair and equitable terms. The carrying out of this on a sound and equitable basis by the Land Commission concerned the welfare and the future of every man, woman, and child in Ireland, and ought to concern all in that Committee and every Statesman who looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity in Ireland. The Irish Land Commission was engaged in rent fixing and land purchase. These two operations were indissolubly connected. Rents were the basis of
  750
  purchase. If unfair rents were fixed either maliciously or ignorantly by the agents, that reacted on purchase. If the rent fixing was wrong, then inevitably the land purchase would be wrong. The whole of the rent-fixing machinery of the Land Commission had been manned and run for the last twenty years by the Tory Party in the landlord interest. He said that that was true of the officers of the Land Commission from top to bottom. Those at the head of the Land Commission had more to do with giving the tone to the actions of all the officers of the Commission right through than anybody else; and if those at the head were partisans, say, of the landlord interest, that would be felt down through every ramification of the machine. In his judgment, and in the judgment of his colleagues, the whole staff from top to bottom, with the exception of the recently-appointed Estates Commissioners, was a packed staff that had been put in, within the last twenty years, by Tory Governments in the interests of the landlord class. Most of the appointments to the Land Commission were, he believed, ordinary permanent Civil Service appointments, and so far, no doubt, the hands of the Chief Secretary were tied, but that right hon. Gentleman could still do something by rearrangement of offices, by judicious promotion, and by other such means to improve the permanent staff of the Land Commission and to increase enormously the confidence of the people in its impartiality and justice. Besides the permanent staff there was a staff of temporary officers who were in no sense Civil Service officers. These officers were appointed originally for temporary purposes and were reappointed from time to time. His criticism of the staff generally was more particularly true of these men, who were put into their positions by the Tory Government un-blushingly in the interests of the landlords. When he gave the names and qualifications of these men the Committee would be driven to the conclusion that he was strictly accurate in his statement. They were for the most part broken down landlords, aged land agents, retired military officers, and political hangers-on generally of the Tory Party. Was it not a monstrous thing,

  751
  when so much, depended upon the proper working of the Land Acts in Ireland, that persons of that sort should have been put into the Commission, and that a great English Party should have packed the tribunal in the way it had? Here was a field open to the Chief Secretary for immediate reform. A number of these persons had arrived at the end of their term of office—;in the case of twenty-seven their period of engagement would have terminated at the end of March. Representations were made to the Chief Secretary almost immediately he took office as to the way some of these men had been acting, how that, notwithstanding the fall in the value of produce, these men had been for some months past actually raising rents—;that there was good reason to believe that, ever since the Land Act of 1903 was passed, there had been a conspiracy on the part of certain people in Ireland, aided and abetted by these agents of the landlords in the Land Commission, to keep down second-term reductions in order to keep up the price of land. Moreover, they impressed upon the Chief Secretary by every means in their power that the great majority of these twenty-seven men were distrusted by the Irish people and that they had no proper qualification for their positions. They had therefore impressed upon the Chief Secretary the desirability of refusing to renew these appointments, urging him to fill up the vacancies thus created by men whose impartiality was proved to his satisfaction. In the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament there was a pledge that Ireland in matters of administration was to be governed in accordance with Irish ideas. That pledge had led the Irish Party to believe that in matters of this kind, which so vitally affected the prosperity of the country, the right hon. Gentleman would adopt the suggestions made to him by Irish representatives. On the contrary, however, he had rejected their views and advice. With the exception of five, he had reappointed all those Commissioners who had been the mere tools and agents of the landlord party, and a large proportion of whom were notoriously distrusted by the people and had no qualification for their posi-
  752
  tions. By refusing to reappoint the five he had incurred just as much opposition from the landlord class as if he had gone the whole way and refused to reappoint any at all. He had dissatisfied the people and profoundly stirred the souls of the Ulster Members of Parliament. The reappointment of these men was a very serious matter in regard to the working of the Land Act, and as showing the attitude of some of the right hon. Gentleman's advisers in Ireland. He could assure the Chief Secretary that the confidence of the Irish people in him and his Government would not stand many more shocks of that character. As regarded the general administration of the Land Commission he might say that they were, as was usual upon these occasions, in a very difficult position. They were under the disadvantage that when they had been able to seize on an opportunity of bringing forward a matter of this kind they were without the necessary facts and figures to enable them to discuss the matter intelligibly. It was more than twelve months since they had had a Report from the Estates Commissioners, and they did not know, except in the most fragmentary way by means of Questions across the floor of the House, what the figures were for the past twelve months, what these Commissioners had been doing, or what they had achieved. When the Land Act of 1903 was passing through Parliament they extracted from the right hon. Member for Dover a promise that periodical Reports should be published by the Estates Commissioners. That promise had not been kept from that day to this, and it was a serious scandal that when the Irish Party desired to raise a discussion upon the administration of this great Department, they were handicapped by the fact that they had not the necessary information before them. No facts, figures, or other information on the subject had been provided for the last twelve months.
  THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BRYCE,): The Reports are made up to the 31st of March in each year, and the Estates Commissioners are now engaged on their Report. They could

  753
  not have it ready before the 31st of March, but they will present it to the House as early as possible.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that did not satisfy him. A pledge was given to the Irish Party by the right hon. Member for Dover, and the pledge was replaced after the right hon. Gentleman left office by a pledge given by the Estates Commissioners themselves that they would issue periodical Reports. They should have had within the twelve months at least two Reports, and perhaps more. The Land Commission issued Reports with regard to the fixing of rent periodically throughout the year, and to-day he was unable intelligently to discuss what had been going on in the last twelve months in the Estates Commissioners Department because his knowledge was only picked up casually. That was a serious scandal. He knew that the office in question had not had a sufficient staff, but it was the old question of the Treasury again. For the sake of saving the cost he supposed they refused to give the Commissioners additional assistance to enable them to prepare the Report, and the result was that the Commons had to discuss the matter without any information less than twelve months old. The Land Commission, he knew, had been hampered very seriously in endeavouring to carry out the Land Act of 1903 by the instructions and regulations under which they were forced to act for a considerable time. It would be remembered that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover issued no formal regulations for publication, but he did issue a number of regulations and instructions from time to time to the Commissioners, and when they called for the production of those documents (the Act having provided that regulations should be published) they were met with the statement that they were not really regulations at all; they were only letters and therefore could not be produced. It was unfair to denounce the regulations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin, which were published and then withdrawn, because the real responsibility rested on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, who, having passed the Land Act, proceeded immediately by secret instructions and
  754
  regulations to hamper and thwart its proper working. He now asked the Chief Secretary to set that question at rest in justice to everybody by producing and publishing the letters containing those instructions. The Estates Commissioners had them ready. They did not publish them because they had been forbidden to do so. Anyway, the regulations secret and public had all gone, and he congratulated the Chief Secretary most heartily on his action in tearing them up as soon as he got into office. Those regulations had prevented the effective working of the evicted tenants' clauses of the Land Act, and other clauses with reference to untenanted land, and so forth. And now the Commissioners had been working with perfect freedom of action in those matters, and with a sympathetic Government in office for four months, what had been the result? They were told that 100 evicted tenants had been restored to their holdings or to other holdings provided for them. It was possible for the Commissioners under the Act as it stood now, in a comparatively small number of months, practically to settle certainly seven-eighths of the whole evicted tenants' question. He wanted to know why had that not been done? The Chief Secretary had done his part, but the reason these clauses were not working was that for four months the Treasury had been haggling with the Irish Government over the appointment of five or six additional inspectors asked for by the Estates Commissioners to enable them to carry out that portion of the Act. The Chief Secretary had said the other day that now they were going to be appointed. He was glad to hear it, and he would be glad to know definitely if the appointments had been made.
  MR. BRYCEreplied that they had been appointed.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: I suppose it was the day before yesterday.
  MR. BRYCE: Yes. Let justice be done to the Treasury. The Treasury had consented to the appointments before the day before yesterday.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid he did not imagine for a single instant that anything he said in the House would have such an effect. At the same time he did congratulate himself upon the coincidence that after this attack had been made on the Treasury, and after the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made a sympathetic reply, these men were immediately appointed. Anyhow, he congratulated the right hon. Gentleman upon their appointment. But what he complained of was that the whole operation of these portions of the Land Act were hung up by a hostile Treasury for four months after a friendly Government got into I office. That was a lesson with reference to Irish affairs. The Treasury had played the same part with regard to Irish affairs all through. It was just the same when the Act first came into operation. Here was a body created to effect a great national settlement of the land war in Ireland with £112,000,000 of money provided for the operation, and yet, forsooth, the English Treasury heckled and fought with them for months before they would give them an office to sit in or clerks to carry out the work. The delay in carrying out this portion of the Act up to the present had been entirely due to the same cause, and he urged the right hon. Gentleman, now that these additional inspectors had been granted by the Treasury, to see that this portion of the Act was put rapidly in operation. There was no portion of the Irish land question so vital. It was the promise of a settlement of the evicted tenants' question that made the passage of the Land Act of 1903 possible. No man on the Nationalist Benches would have agreed to that Act except on the distinct understanding that the evicted tenants' question was going to be settled. Three years had passed since then, and these poor creatures were still out on the road side, some dying through hope deferred. This had gone on for four months after a friendly Government had come into office. He did hope that the right hon. Gentleman would now insist that this portion of the Act should be worked rapidly, and if he did he felt certain that in a few months the greater portion of the evicted tenants' question could be settled. He did not say it could be completely settled. It
  756
  could not be settled without amending legislation dealing with grazing land and so forth. But an enormous amount of good could be done by a sympathetic and energetic administration unhampered by the action of the Treasury or anybody else, and he did appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to make up for the culpable delay of the last four months by pushing on this work in the immediate future. He was not able to discuss the Department with proper knowledge because they were without information. He moved this Motion in order to initiate a discussion in the hope that the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give them information, also as a protest against the action of the right hon. Gentleman in the reappointment of these temporary Sub-Commissioners, and in the hope that the discussion that had taken place and the dissatisfaction that had been expressed on the matter might lead him to take more seriously on other matters the well ascertained and clearly expressed views of the majority of the people of Ireland, in sympathy with whose views he was pledged to govern the country. He begged to move.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,115, be granted for the said Service."—;Mr. John Redmond.
  MR. HAYDENsaid he desired to supplement the remarks of his hon. friend in reference to one particular phase of the land question, namely, the question of purchase as affected by the untenanted land. The part of Ireland which he represented was intensely interested in the action of the Government in respect of the restitution of such land, and whilst it was true to say that it would have been impossible to have passed the Land Act of 1903 if it had not involved the possibility of a settlement of the evicted tenants question, it was equally true to say that it would have been utterly impossible for the Government to face Parliament with the Bill unless they were ready to promise a settlement of the questions of congestion and depopulation which existed side by side in the West of Ireland. Previous to the passage of the Act of 1903 there had been a fierce agitation in the West of Ireland because

  757
  of the separation of the people from the land, and the aid of coercion was invoked in order to suppress it. Over and over again agitation had been accompanied by coercion, and coercion had been immediately followed by legislation to remove the grievance which gave rise to the agitation. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover when Chief Secretary was warned from the Irish Benches that he could not accomplish the reforms which he described as being so necessary unless the clauses of the Act in regard to untenanted land in the congested districts were made compulsory. Time had justified the prophecy that was made. Only the mere fringe of the question had been touched in the West of Ireland. The little that had been done was accomplished, not by the Estates Commissioners, but by the Congested Districts Board, and considering the extent of the work still to be done, it was true to say that if the action of both bodies was to be continued at the rate of progress made during the last two-and-a-half years it would take at least two or three generations before the question was settled. In the part of the country he represented the land was in the hands of a very few people, and the inhabitants were huddled together upon bogs and marshes. Ninety per cent, of the people occupied holdings under £12 valuation, and at least two-thirds of the land, which meant all the good land, was in the possession of 3 per cent, of the agricultural population. Most of this land was untenanted, unprofitable, and uncultivated. Those who were experienced in the question knew that the feeding capacity of good land, even in the best counties of Ireland, was not nearly so great as it was ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, because of the absence of cultivation. Were they going to have cultivation by allowing a thousand or five thousand acres to remain in the hands of an absentee grazier, who often let his land go to waste? That was not the way in which the country would be regenerated, and it was admitted by the late Government and no doubt it would be equally admitted by the present Government. At least they had the right to expect a declaration from the Chief Secretary, who was responsible for the administration of the country, as to the future policy of the Government, of the Estates Commissioners, and of all the bodies connected
  758
  with the administration of the land laws of Ireland. Unless they got such a declaration and unless it was followed up by performance, the consequences to the country would be very serious. In the first place the people were, still fleeing from the land, the hopes which arose in their breasts by the promises made by Ministers in 1903 not having been fulfilled by the performances. The people now were beginning to despair, and the Chief Secretary knew what had been the consequence of former periods of despair among the Irish people. He warned the right hon. Gentleman that unless his declaration was satisfactory on this question of untenanted land—;the distribution of these ranches, the bringing together of the people who worked the land and the land itself—;and unless that declaration was immediately followed up by prompt and energetic action, there must spring up in a very few months in Ireland, in the West, at least, an agitation which would very quickly set the machinery of land purchase in motion, and once again teach the people of Ireland that it was really upon themselves that they must rely, and that if they showed themselves quiet the Government became negligent of their desires. That was the lesson that had been taught the Irish people, but the lesson had come, not from the Irish Benches, but from the Treasury Bench. They had reason to hope a few months ago, and they still clung to the hope that with the present Government in office the lesson would be reversed, and that the people of Ireland might really feel there was some attention paid to the representations made on their behalf. But the people were losing heart, and it would require a great change to bring them back to the state of feeling which existed two years ago. With reference to the action of the Estates Commissioners, there was a case in his own constituency where the Commissioners bought a small estate that was owned by the Rev. Mr. Birmingham, a rector of the Protestant Church, in county Meath, but the Commissioners left ninety-five acres in the hands of the owner. In other words they had resold ninety-five acres with the use of public money to the non-residential landlord. In reply to his question the Chief Secretary informed him that the reason the rev. gentleman

  759
  was left those ninety-five acres was that the land surrounded a residence. He had known the place from his childhood, and he was rather taken aback when he heard that there was a residence. But he did not like to contradict the right hon. Gentleman in the House, without making a little inquiry. He was on the estate a fortnight ago, and he found as he expected that the residence of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke—;on information of course supplied to him by officials—;was an ordinary herd's house and had always been a herd's house, and had the character and appearance of one. There was a curious circumstance connected with that estate. An inspector came down before, he believed, the price was fixed, and with the landlord he visited the tenants, who believed that the estate had been purchased by the Estates Commissioners, and that this gentleman was selling it to them, certain amounts having been named; but as a matter of fact he was there with the landlord trying to make the price high. The estate had since been sold at a very much less price than that which they tried to induce the tenants to pay. That was the way the price of land was forced up. It had been since sold at a less price, but the strange thing was that four of the small tenants to whom allotments of land were given in the first instance and who had been induced to sign an agreement for certain allotments which were pointed out to them, and for which the annuity was fixed, now found that the land had been given to others, some of whom did not live on the estate. The reason assigned for this was that they were not persons suitable for the working of the land. He did not know why they were not suitable. One of them, Charles Brennan, was a man who had about one and a half acres of land on this estate, and for thirty years or more he had been earning the entire livelihood of himself and family on the land. It might reasonably have been expected that he was a person suitable to work four, five, or six acres more. The reason given in regard to another was that he was a tradesman. His trade was that of a nailer—;a trade out of which thirty or forty years ago a man could make a living, but which had been destroyed by machinery and cheaper methods of production. This man who was no
  760
  longer a tradesman had to make his living out of a small patch of land. The additional patch promised had not been given to him, and ninety-five acres of the best of the land had been acquired by the non-residential landlord by the use of public money. He would ask the Chief Secretary to make particular inquiry with regard to that estate. He had failed to get information from the Commissioners although he wrote to them on the matter, as he would have preferred to deal with it in that way instead of bringing it up in Parliament. After all, the Irish representatives were shown on every hand that the only possible chance of getting redress was to bring matters up in this House. He asked the Chief Secretary to pay particular attention to the questions of congestion and depopulation, for the two were side by side in the West of Ireland, and also to get the Congested Districts Board and the Estates Commissioners to administer the clauses of the Act dealing with these questions in a broader and more vigilant spirit than had hitherto characterised their action. In some districts large quantities of land had been acquired either by the Estates Commissioners or the Congested Districts-Board or both; in some cases it had been in their hands for a year or two years. He understood that the reason for not distributing the land was that the Commissioners or the Board were anxious to acquire a great deal more land in order to have a wide and general scheme of distribution. He would approve of that idea if he saw any indication on the part of these bodies that they would quickly acquire land. There was no indication on he part of the Government that they intended to bring forward, as he thought they must do in the end, a compulsory measure dealing with untenanted land in the congested districts. There being no such indication he thought it was indefensible for these bodies toll old up 1,000 or 2,000 acres as they were doing in some districts instead of dividing it among the small occupiers. This was a pressing matter to which he invited the right hon. Gentleman's attention. With regard to rent-fixing, great complaints were made all over the country as to the manner in which the Chief Commissioners and the Sub-Commissioners were discharging their duties. Ever since the

  761
  passing of the Act of 1903 they had been fixing rents on a higher standard than existed before, and that side by side with the fact that agriculture was more depressed now than in 1903. That depression continued, and the prospect was far from bright. A tenant some time ago showed him the schedule in which the rent at which his holding was fixed was set forth. Under one head Sub-Commissioner McElligot stated that it was extremely difficult to fix the rent because of the exceptionally good treatment which the tenant had given to the land. Then he proceeded to fix a very high rent, and because the land was within the boundaries of a country town he put 33⅓ per cent, additional rent upon it for "proximity," but he did not take into account the fact that because it was so closely situated to the town the sum of 10s. was levied for the local water and sanitary rate. Mr. McElligot was one of the twenty-two gentlemen in whom the Chief Secretary had recently expressed renewed confidence. He wished to impress on the Chief Secretary and those charged with the administration of the laws in Ireland the absolute necessity and urgency of dealing quickly with the questions of congestion and the redistribution of the untenanted lands in the West of Ireland in order to save the people and the Government themselves from consequences that might be serious. He said "redistribution" because this land about a couple of generations ago belonged to the predecessors of the very people who were driven from it at a time when the production of cattle seemed to pay a little better than allowing men to increase and multiply there. He wanted more than an expression of sympathy from the right hon. Gentleman. He asked for a declaration of the policy which the Government was going to pursue in this matter in the future. Unless the right hon. Gentleman was in a position not only to make a declaration of his own good will, but to tell them that the various bodies connected with he administration of the land purchase laws in Ireland were prepared quickly to administer those laws, and to carry out in a sympathetic spirit the promises which no doubt would be made,
  762
  there were serious times before them in Ireland in the near future.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid that before the House broke up for the Easter holidays he made a statement which was resented here, and which had been resented in certain quarters in Ireland. He stated then what he believed, and what thousands of the Irish people believed, that for some time past there had been a deliberate conspiracy in Ireland to raise rents with the avowed object of increasing the purchase price of land. He was not then able to give any specific evidence, but he proposed now to submit some evidence to bear out what he admitted was a very serious statement to make, especially in the House of Commons. He had with him the annual report of the Irish Land Commission up to March 31st, 1905, and he was in the same position as the hon. Member for Waterford when he complained that in regard to purchase he was unable to deal with recent facts and figures. His (Mr. Russell's) information, on the question of fair rents was fourteen months old. That was not his fault. It was the fault of the arrangements. Taking the report as it stood let them see what was taking place in the matter of rents. The total reduction in first term rents in that year was 14·8 per cent., and the reduction in the same class of rents during the preceding twenty-three years of the Land Act was 21·2. There was a difference of more than six per cent. With regard to second term rents, the total reduction for the year ending 1905 was 15·8 per cent., and during the preceding period the reduction was 20·9 per cent. During the year ending March, 1905, the Chief Commission raised rents in twenty-four counties in Ireland and reduced them in eight. For the same period the Chief Commission in first term rents increased sub-commission rents in seventeen counties and reduced rents in nine. With figures such as these it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that something had occurred to influence the Land Commission in dealing with these matters. He asked any member of the Committee, who had any knowledge of Ireland, whether there had been anything in the condition of Irish

  763
  agriculture to warrant that increase in rents? Was there a man in the Committee—;he did not care where he sat, but he should stipulate that he should know something of the facts of Irish agriculture—;who did not know that for months past Irish farmers had been driving home their cattle from the fairs because they were unsaleable? He knew that had occurred in his own constituency, and if these poor people could not sell their cattle how could they pay their rent. In face of the position of Irish agriculture and of the fall in the price of almost every article of produce, and especially the fall in the price of cattle, proceedings such as these were totally unjustifiable, and people had a right to conclude that there was this conspiracy in existence, the object of which was not so much to raise rents as to increase the price of land for the purpose of sale. Dealing with the question of appeal, he said the appeal in the matter of fair rents under the Act of 1903 must be held before one judicial commissioner. It was true the Lord-Lieutenant might appoint an additional judicial commissioner, but under the Act the appeal must be held before Mr. Justice Meredith or Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald. He did not know, by the way, why the latter gentleman was called a Judge, because he had no claim to that title. These two gentlemen, however, had the right to appoint ten assessors who, according to the Act, must be men of skill and experience in agriculture; and the point he wished to bring out was that these appointments must be approved by the Lord-Lieutenant, which meant the Chief Secretary. Ten of these gentlemen had been appointed, and although a very large number of fair rent appeals were heard in the province of Ulster, out of the ten gentlemen who had been appointed as assessors to sit on fair rent appeals only one was an Ulster farmer. The rest were from other provinces, and most of them were graziers. The point he wished to urge upon the Chief Secretary was this. Did the right hon. Gentleman think that a grazier from county Louth, who knew nothing about Ulster farming, was competent to judge in such a matter? He was not seeking to cast any blame upon the present Chief Secretary, because he
  764
  had been in office only four months; but the time would come when the right hon. Gentleman and the Lord-Lieutenant would be responsible. He could not appeal to the Front Opposition Bench, however, and so he was bound to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, and his point was, as he had said, Did the right hon. Gentleman think that the appointment of a grazier from Louth, or a large grass farmer from Tipperary, fulfilled the terms of the appointment laid down by the Act itself, which required that an assessor should be skilled in agriculture? This sort of people did not know anything about farming in Ulster, which was quite different from farming in Louth or Tipperary. He held that the strict terms of the language of the Act had not been complied with. There was not only the difference in the farming, but there was an important point which had told most unfavourably against these Ulster farmers—;there was a difference in the law. What did Mr. Callan, an assessor who came from county Louth, or Mr. Williams, who was a farmer under the Duke of Devonshire and an Englishman brought over a few years ago, know about the Ulster custom? He should be delighted to have Mr. Callan or Mr. Williams upstairs and to cross-examine them about it. Under the Act of 1870, which governed the whole of the land code of Ireland, the presumption was that the improvements on a holding belonged to the tenant. That was stated in plain terms, but under the Ulster custom the right of the tenant to the improvements was much clearer. The Land Commission, with the exception of one Commissioner, Mr. Commissioner Bailey, who had gone, made the tenant prove the improvements which were made by himself or his predecessor on title, and everything that the tenant could not prove went to the landlord without proof, although the Act of Parliament said the presumption was in favour of the tenant. Therefore, the Ulster men did not get their improvements, which they were entitled to, both according to law and custom. The hon. Gentleman proceeded to quote cases, especially from Monaghan, to establish his proposition. He said that in that county the figures showed that, since the Purchase Act of 1903, rents had been raised by even sums of £1 and 10s. all round.

  765
  He had it not in his heart to blame the Chief Secretary. He was comparatively new to the work, and had been dealing with the English people in the past. He told them there was an appeal. But to whom? Then they were told it was a judicial proceeding. What were the facts? A man got a reduction of rent, say in 1902, and paid the reduced rent up to 1906. Then—;four years afterwards—;the appeal was heard, the rent was raised, and the difference between the two rents had to be made up at the next galeday. The only intimation the suitor got was a halfpenny postcard announcing that the rent had been raised. Was that a judicial proceeding? In one of the Divisions of Monaghan a large number of rents had been raised, but in the other Division rents fixed by the same Sub-Commissioners were left alone. Those that were altered were raised by the automatic proceeding of putting on a £1 here and 10s. there. He heard the evidence in 1894 before the Morley Committee and he had not the slightest hesitation in saying that there was not, a bit of judicial procedure about it. It was simply rule of thumb. They did not want to raise every rent, and so they put on £1 here and 10s. there. What did the appeal system cost? He knew the hon. Member for East Mayo was in a position to deal roughly with him on that point. In 1894 the appeal system would have been wrecked in the Morley Committee but for his vot. He made confession publicly of the fact. He felt then that it was a very serious matter, when they were dealing with a man's property, not to have an appeal. As the result of all this work and expense to landlord and tenant, during the whole existence of the Land Act rents had been raised 2 per cent. Was the game worth the candle? Two per cent. was neither here nor there for the landlord, and it was not much to the tenant, in comparison with the irritation, worry, and trouble which it caused. The tenants were brought ten or fifteen miles from their homes to the appeal court, and the difference in rent was consumed over and over again. The expenses to the landlord also ran away with any gain he might make. He knew the Chief Secretary had it not in his power to alter this system by a stroke of the pen; but
  766
  surely there ought to be some way of ending a system which produced not more than 2 per cent, of increase, at enormous cost to the landlord and worry and annoyance to the tenant. There were 12,000 appeals now pending, and no real impression had been made on them. The landlords appealed in almost every case, and he asked the Chief Secretary to take into his serious consideration the whole question of appeal. Coming to the question of purchase, the Land Act had been in operation two and a half years. Perhaps before he dealt with that he ought to call attention to the condition of the Front Opposition Bench. The late Government was responsible for this Act and the conduct of it, and neither the right hon. Member for South Dublin nor the right hon. Member for Dover was in his place.
  MR. BRYCEsaid he was very sorry to say that the right hon. Member for South Dublin was unable to be present through ill health.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid there was no doubt good reason for the absence of both right hon. Gentlemen, but it was extremely awkward to have to speak of them in their absence. The Land Purchase Act had been in operation two and a half years. Land to the value of £40,000,000 sterling had been sold and the agreements signed. That was in a sense satisfactory, but in one sense it was most unsatisfactory. How far had they got? How much money had been distributed? What was the inducement to give up inspection? It was a great thing to give up inspection and possibly by-and-bye it would be found to have been a great error. They gave up inspection and consented to the zone system for one reason and one reason alone. The right hon. Member for Dover said that all such cases would be rapidly dealt with. It was for that reason they gave up inspection and accepted the zone system. The result had been that while the Government had secured a high price for the land under the zones, the people had not had the rapid dealing promised, and the British taxpayer had lost the security which existed in the inspection. Now what blocked the way? Some people spoke of

  767
  the want of money, but this contention was now out of court. They could not get rid of the money they had got. They had been under a delusion for some time; the scheme was not blocked for want of money at all. First of all there was the fresh start; one did not get into harness all at once. Then there was the inevitable muddle which followed a fresh start. Then there was the want of staff and office accommodation. They knew perfectly well that the department had to fight for sanitary provision and sanitary offices, and there were times when, if a sanitary officer had been sent in, he would have cleared out the whole place. That was the fault of the Treasury. Then there was the want of staff, inspectors, and clerks—;that was the Treasury again. Did hon. Members think that the Treasury went into court for the purposes of promoting the working of the Act? Not a bit of it. They went in for the purpose of obstructing it and to prevent the untenanted land from being divided among the people. He cheerfully admitted that they had not now to fight the right hon. Member for Trinity College. He was out of it; nor had they to fight the members of the late Government. But all that was not sufficient to account for the delay and the block that was caused. There was no difficulty in the actual work of the Estates Commissioners. Their work was far forward. They had got or were getting settled by degrees all the legal difficulties that were bound to arise under a complicated Act. But they had got them settled, and it was when the case left them that the real trouble and the real delay began. It was the old old story. Everyone who knew anything about Ireland knew that when an Act was passed tie moment it crossed over to Ireland a body of men would begin to obstruct it. This great Act was passed for a great and noble purpose, but was it being worked in the spirit in which it was passed? The Estates Commissioners had done everything in their power, but their efforts had been blocked at every stage. The real difficulty arose the moment a case left the Estates Commissioners and got into the Department of Title. There was something like a dozen examiners of title. They were gentlemen belonging
  768
  to the Bar, and they were appointed at sums varying between £600 and £800 a year. Of course these officials were in no hurry; why should they be? They were not permanent officers, and the sooner their work was done the sooner they would go back to the Bar. That was where the real trouble began. They were now bringing into the new department all the old machinery of the Landed Estates Court; but it was in the Department of Title that the real difficulty arose, and unless something was done there it would be impossible for the Act to work. When a case was ready and had passed through the hands of the Estates Commissioners, and had even got through the hands of the Examiners of Title, what happened? Under the Act itself Mr. Justice Meredith must distribute the money, that having to be done by the Judicial Commissioner. The neck of the bottle was blocked because no case could be settled until Mr. Justice Meredith had passed it, and he could not get through the work. Personally he should welcome the transfer of Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald to this work, because he could do no harm there, or, at any rate, he could not do as much harm as he was now doing. There was no reason why there should not be an additional Commissioner for facilitating the last stage of these proceedings. The block was not due to want of money: they had not spent the money they had got. It was contemplated when the Act was passed that £5,000,000 a year would be spent; but in the three years which had elapsed all they had had was £12,000,000, and they had not been able to get rid of all that. Surely there was some possibility of the Government's asserting itself over these officials. If they were once given to understand that the Government meant business, and that they would not be kept on unless they got through their work, then the work would be done. He wished to know if the Chief Secretary intended to look into the matter with a view to getting rid of those things that were blocking the way. The Land Purchase Act was the one thing that gave hope to Ireland, and he hoped the officials would not be allowed to thwart the work. He now wished to ask for some information about a gentleman who was appointed in 1888 or 1889 to the office of Assistant

  769
  Land Commissioner at a salary of £800 a year. Early in the 90's he was appointed to a sub-department for reporting on the prices at fairs, and his salary raised to £1,000. Upon one occasion he asked one of the Sub-Commissioners whether they appreciated this Department and he said they never looked at the prices. In 1897 when the Agricultural Department was formed, this gentleman was transferred. It appeared, however, that Sir Horace Plunkett, who was at the head of the Department, had no use for this official, and if Sir Horace had no use for a man then he was hopeless. Consequently, he was transferred to the Congested Districts Board, and even they had no use for him, and he was sent back to the Agricultural Department. He wanted to know where this man was now. He had been through the whole of the Irish Estimates to find his salary, but had failed to discover it. He was told that the Department gave a grant to the Agricultural Organisation Society of £2,000, and the last he had heard of his old friend was that he had a salary of £1,000 to superintend the expenditure of this £2,000. If the Government wanted retrenchment, here was an opportunity. What he wanted to know was where was this man placed? [An HON. MEMBER: Who is he?] The name was "Porter." Was he still a Sub-Commissioner? There were fifty-seven Assistant Commissioners chargeable on these Votes, and he wanted to know if his old friend was still doing this work. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford and he had both made their views pretty clear before the adjournment for the Easter holidays upon the question of recent appointments. He had never made any secret of the fact that he had appealed to the Chief Secretary to deal with the matter. He had told the right hon. Gentleman that he considered it a great national question, that these rents were intolerable rents, and that to appoint twenty-seven temporary officers of this kind was not a proper thing to do. It was a curious coincidence that most of the permanent men had been put upon the Land Purchase Department, and that the temporary men, who were open to influence, had been put on the Rent Fixing Department. These men ought not to be
  770
  let loose on Ireland. The Government were bound to appoint the best twenty-seven men they could find in the country for this work. They should have carefully examined the credentials of candidates for the appointments, taken into consideration who recommended them for office, and, in fact, found out all about them. He did not say that the whole of these men should be removed. He and his friends had been denounced in Irish Tory circles for what they had done in this matter. He was, however, prepared to stand by it. He would tell the Chief Secretary at once that he might as well have been hung for a sheep as for a lamb. The Unionist Members had given him just as much trouble for the refusal to reappoint five as they would have done for refusing to reappoint fifteen. There was one principle dear to the Unionist Party, but there was another almost equally dear. It was that everything with a salary attached to it must not get out of the Unionist Party. The longer the Chief Secretary remained in his office the clearer he would realise that truth. But all the Liberal Governments that he had known to be in office were never in power. The Castle and the Tories always managed things for them, and they would endeavour to do it now. One of the Ulster Members put a Question the other day about a twopenny-halfpenny appointment of a builder in Belfast, and they were up in arms about that going out of their ranks. He hoped the Government would realise that there was no use in trying to satisfy those gentlemen unless they gave them everything. Let the Government give them what they liked, however, but let them not hand over the land question to them. Did those gentlemen honestly approve of appointing to fix rents some of the men of the kind that were now at work. At any rate the constituencies did not approve of it. They had been worrying his life out in regard to those appointments.
  MR. LONSDALE: Not from my constituency.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Oh, yes, from yours. He urged that any body who knew those men was aware that they were mere

  771
  creatures, and the Commiteee would find the rents were very different during 1906 from what they were during 1905. But both the fair rent department and the question of purchase ought to receive the immediate attention of the Chief Secretary himself, who ought to let the officials know that they would not in the future be allowed to obstruct the Purchase Act as they had been obstructing it in the past. The Treasury, at all events, he was glad to think, was not going to oppose the Estates Commissioners dealing with the evicted tenants as they did before.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he had not intended to intervene in this debate, but as the period had been alluded to during which he was Chief Secretary, perhaps he might, on that account, be allowed to say a few words. All he desired was to make his position clear. He wished to dissociate himself from the latter part of the speech of the hon. Member for South Tyrone. He thought a great mistake had been made by those hon. Members who had attacked the gentlemen who were discharging the difficult duty of fixing rents in Ireland. It was true that technically their appointments were temporary, and that dated from the time of Mr. Gladstone's first Land Act. At that time it was supposed that, after certain rents had been fixed and a standard arrived at, rents would be fixed by agreement, and that, therefore, permanent appointments would not be necessary. Since that time the Treasury had always been looking forward to a millennium in which Irish landlords and tenants would be able to agree about rents without going to law. In 1903, when they were debating the Land Purchase Act, not only the Treasury, but many persons from Ireland, believed that if that Act was a success the necessity for fixing rents on a large scale would disappear. If the presence of those gentlemen in a temporary capacity was a peril to the Land Purchase Act, then was the time to have said so, and not now, and since they had been discharging almost judicial functions, he deprecated most earnestly the practice of trying to bring pressure to bear upon them by debating their decisions night after night in Parliament. As Mr. Porter had
  772
  been alluded to, he thought it only right to say that he had always found him to be a zealous and competent official under the Congested Districts Board. He thought it was only right that he should state what he knew in regard to the services which Mr. Porter had rendered.
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: Where is he now?
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid the hon. Member would see that it was not his duty to answer that Question. When he had the opportunity of judging of Mr. Porter's work he found it good. The hon. Member for South Tyrone had stated that the last stage of land purchase, namely, the distribution of money, was the stage which ultimately set the pace of land purchase in Ireland, and with that contention he agreed. He wished, however, to correct one misapprehension. When he introduced the Land Bill he said that they did not expect to proceed at a greater pace than £5,000,000 worth of purchase in any one of the first three years. At that time he was anxious to give full assurance to the Treasury to get the best terms, and he arrived at that estimate of the maximum pace at which it would proceed during the first three years largely because he knew that it would be very difficult to expedite the distribution of the purchase-money. If his memory served him right, he believed that they never sold more than £2,000,000—;he doubted whether it was more than £1,500,000—;under the provisions of the Land Act, in any one year.
  MR. FLAVIN: At seventeen years purchase.
  MR. WYNDHAM: That is not relevant.
  MR. FLAVIN: But it is most important to us.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid he cordially agreed with the proposition that the distribution of the purchase-money in the preliminary stages would ultimately set the pace of land purchase, and if in these days of surpluses—;which were not

  773
  enjoyed during the time he was Chief Secretary—;help was to be given to Ireland, it could not be given in a better quarter than by strengthening and expanding the Department which had to deal with the distribution of the purchase-money, rather than that part of the machine which dealt with the fixing of rent. If the hopes of land purchase were to be fulfilled, it was obvious that the fixing of rent must become a decreasing and not an increasing operation. If they desired land purchase to go on more rapidly they would have to strengthen the machinery of land purchase throughout from top to bottom. They knew the attitude of the Treasury upon this question. It was certain that the Treasury were not going to raise millions when Consols were at 90, in order that the money might lie for two or three years in the Irish Land Courts. That was an operation which no sane financier would indulge in. If land purchase was to go on at a rapid pace, and if the Treasury saw its way, under happier conditions than had recently prevailed, to assist the operation of land purchase, then the way to assist it was by strengthening the machinery which dealt with the ultimate distribution of the purchase-money. The hon. Member for Waterford had asked for the production of certain instructions to the Estates Commissioners. He was afraid that the hon. and learned Gentleman's wish could not be gratified, for he issued no instructions.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that he admitted the right hon. Gentleman had not technically issued instructions. But the Estates Commissioners admitted in their Report that letters were written to them containing in effect instructions how they should proceed. When the production of these documents was asked for it was refused, on the ground that the documents were private. It was commonly reported that those instructions hampered the action of the Commissioners just as much as the regulations of the right hon. Member for South Dublin.
  MR. WYNDHAMsaid that he issued no instructions; but, though he did not know the grounds for the rumour
  774
  to which the hon. and learned Member referred, he could guess them. In the first place, it was the duty of the Estates Commissioners to issue directions to their Sub-Commissioners, and the drafts of those directions were brought before him. For their final form he took full responsibility.
  MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that the interim Report of the Commissioners in 1904 stated—;
  "All proceedings under this section have been regulated by the Acts, provisional rules, and the instructions received from time to time from his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant."
  It was also stated that doubtful cases had been—;
  "Gradually settled by judical decisions, by instructions received, or by experience."
  MR. WYNDHAMasked the hon. and learned Member to allow him to proceed. He had only dealt with the first of the two grounds which might have given rise to the rumour. The instructions to the Sub-Commissioners certainly embodied his views not only of what the Act laid down, but of what was the outcome of the debate on the Act—;that where an agreement entered into between landlord and tenant was outside the zone it was the duty of the Land Commission to protect the State by inquiring as carefully as ever hitherto had been the case into the security of the holding, or to see that other parties interested did not suffer because the landlord had made an improvident bargain. That was his view when the Bill was debated, and he believed it was the meaning of the Act. That view, he said quite openly, was in the instructions of the Estates Commissioners to the Sub-Commissioners. As to bargains within the zone, he had always held that there was no necessity to look into the security or to protect other interests. The only other ground for the assertion that he had issued instructions to the Commissioners was that he wrote them a letter towards the end of 1904 stating that where property had come into the market owing to intimidation or illegitimate practices, cognisance must be taken of the fact. It had been stated that

  775
  his communications to the Estates Commissioners prevented progress from being made in dealing with congestion and the reinstatement of evicted tenants. There was no foundation for such a suggestion. He had always been most eager to deal with congestion, and, where possible, not to prevent an estate's being sold because at some time tenants had been evicted. It had been said that he issued instructions contrary to the spirit of the Act. He wished to contradict that.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: Will the right hon. Gentleman consent to the publication of the documents he has mentioned?
  MR.WYNDHAMsaid that the hon. and learned Member might have the letter; but there were no other documents—;only the verbal communications between any Minister responsible to the House and the officials who worked under him. Those communications must be of a private character, but there was not a word in them that he should not be glad to repeat to the Committee nor a word which departed in one jot or tittle from those matters which were in agreement when the Bill was being debated in the House.
  MR. PAULsaid he hoped it would not be thought presumptuous if an English Member who had never been officially connected with Ireland like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, were to intrude in this Irish debate. After all this was the Parliament of tie United, Kingdom—;more or less united according to the policy pursued by the Government of the day. The money which they were voting was British money as well as Irish; unless it was spent for the benefit of the Irish people, in accordance with the opinions of their representatives, it might as well be thrown into the sea. The Acts of Parliament whose administration they were now discussing were both Land Acts and Purchase Acts. It was with the Purchase Acts which, with the leave of the Committee, he proposed to deal. England, Ireland, and Scotland, with all their differences of race, climate, and religion, found a common denominator in Committee of Supply. He was a convert to this purchasing legislation.
  776
  If he had been in the House when the Purchase Act of 1897 was passed he feared he should have opposed it. He regarded it as a gigantic and very dangerous experiment in British credit. He remembered observing that the discussion upon it was almost entirely confined to Mr. Gerald Balfour, who was then Chief Secretary, and the Gentlemen from Ireland, and he could not help asking himself whether the only person who was not represented in the House of Commons was the British taxpayer. But he freely and frankly admitted that he should have been wrong. Mr. Gladstone once described the Irish tenant as the best rentpayer in the world, and Mr. Gladstone's remark had been justified by the experience of all the Land Acts which had been passed during the last twenty years. The Irish tenant, when he was fairly rented, or when his rent had been fixed by a tribunal in which he had confidence and which was fully acquainted with the facts of the case, would pay to the uttermost farthing. When he was rented upon his own improvements, when the fruits of his labours were diverted from himself and his family to the pockets of his landlord, he would rise in rebellion, as the English tenant would rebel in a like case. While he quite shared the regret expressed by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford that they had not fuller information before them, he was fully enabled, from listening to his speech, to appreciate the nature of the grievance under which hon. Gentlemen from Ireland laboured. They complained that for a long series of years Assistant Commissioners had been appointed of one political complexion, who sympathised with the interest of the landlord rather than that of the tenant. The right hon. Gentleman opposite was much shocked by the criticisms passed upon these functionaries. But he would remind him that it was not only by Nationalist Members that these criticisms had been passed upon the Sub-Commissioners. The late Mr. James Lowther with his racy humour called them the sub-confiscators, and the late Lord Salisbury described them as applying to the land which they had to value the umbrella test. Irish debates were never dull, but some Irish

  777
  debates were more interesting than others, and he thought the debate which was in progress was more interesting than one with which they were indulged a few evenings ago, when the question was whether there should be for the county of Cork one clerk of the peace or two clerks, and whether if there was one clerk he should have a salary or a salary and a half. Although this Parliament was new and this, its first session, was not very old, it had already been borne in upon his mind that if any appointment in Ireland was not given to anyone who was in the first place a Protestant and in the second place a Unionist, the foundations of Irish society, at least in the North, were rocked and shaken to their very basis. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: And the Empire too.] That was quite correct; as his hon. friend said, the foundations of the Empire were also represented to have been shaken. He would recommend his right hon. friend the Chief Secretary to keep them rocking. It was a perfectly harmless convulsion. There would be no Belfast riots over the appointment of Land Commissioners, and it would be positively indecent to select the last ditch in which to make a stand in the absence of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for North Armagh. Unless his right hon. friend proceeded, as he was sure he would, in a spirit of union and harmony with those hon. Gentlemen who could speak and could alone speak for the people of Ireland, the success of these Acts, introduced by Conservatives and passed by Conservative Parliaments, would be absolutely, frustrated and all hope of their favourable result annulled. A great deal, as they all knew, depended upon the spirit in which an Act was administered, and that was more particularly the case in regard to an Act which could not be construed by strict rules or definite legal principles, but which must be interpreted with due regard to the circumstances of the case and to the circumstances of the tenant and the neighbourhood in which he lived. He believed that the electors of this country who had this Irish question brought fully before them the other day, while they were convinced that it would not be possible in this Parliament to pass
  778
  anything like the legislation for Ireland which Mr. Gladstone introduced in 1880 and in 1893, were yet most strongly of opinion that Ireland should be governed as Lord Dudley, when Lord-Lieutenant, said—;in accordance with Irish ideas. Speaking for his own constituents, and, he believed, for those of most of his hon. friends around him, he would say that the more thoroughly the Government acted, not merely in union with the opinions of hon. Members from Ireland sitting below the gangway, but by associating them so far as was possible under the present system with the administration of their own country, the better the people of England and Scotland would be pleased. They knew very well that when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover resigned, and when he ought to have been followed into retirement by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London whose policy was precisely the same as that of the late Chief Secretary, there came a change over the spirit of Irish administration, and that all attempt to conciliate the Irish people in the administration of these Acts and in other ways was given up. For reasons which he did not presume to criticise, it seemed impossible that an Irish Member should become Chief Secretary for Ireland, but the more responsibility it was possible to throw upon these Gentlemen who understood the wants and wishes of and were responsible to the Irish people the better it would be for Great Britain, because the better would Ireland be governed. He thought the hon. Member for Waterford, if he would forgive his saying so, was a little inclined to be hard upon the Chief Secretary. His right hon. friend was in a very difficult position. He had to deal not merely with hon. Gentlemen from Ireland in Parliament, but with Dublin Castle which was not what, its name would imply, a frowning feudal fortress, but a congested district of impervious officialdom, not unlike the War Office in London. It would be necessary for his right hon. friend to assert the legitimate authority which belonged to him, to teach the officers of the Crown in Dublin that they were the servants of the public, that if they were not directly answerable to this House he was

  779
  answerable for them and that he would not approve of any acts on their part which he was not prepared himself to justify from his place in Parliament. He was quite sure that if in the administration of these Purchase Acts his right hon. friend went upon the principles laid down by the hon. Member for Waterford and accepted by the whole of the Party which he so ably led, he would receive the steady, the hearty, the united and the loyal support of the Liberal Party in the House and in the country by whom his appointment was received with such hearty applause.
  MR. GINNELLsaid he rose to support this Motion and to submit to the Committee his reasons for doing so. In the first place he would enter a protest against the shortness of the time assigned for this debate. The subject of the Irish Land Commission was of such magnitude that it naturally divided itself into two distinct portions, namely, rent fixing and sale, and a separate day should have been allotted to each. The fact that sufficient time was not allowed for the purpose of discussing both those subjects separately must be his excuse for trespassing upon the indulgence of the Committee at greater length than he would otherwise have done. Farms in Ireland had descended for generations from father to son, and having been neglected utterly by those who occupied the position of owners, a certain class of equitable ownership inevitably grew up in Ireland, in favour of those who did all the improvements on the farms and who had reclaimed in many cases a portion of them and in some cases the whole. This equitable ownership was recognised in Ulster in favour of the tenants, but in the other three Provinces it was, as a whole, ignored, and the landlords appropriated the tenants' property, while they increased the rent in proportion to the extent to which the tenants improved their holdings. At length, after untold hardships and indescribable misery, this state of things culminated in a semi-revolution and the tenant right was tardily recognised by the Land Act of 1881. That Act was a big step towards the settlement of the land question. It was the first recognition of the
  780
  tenant's property in his holding, of the landlord's rapacity, of the unreality of contract between them, and of the necessity for a special tribunal to restrain one section of the community from robbing the other. That, at the time, was called a measure of confiscation, and the author of it, Mr. Gladstone, was roundly abused as a revolutionary. That Act enabled every tenant to whom it applied to sell his tenant right or occupation interest, and in the event of his being disturbed in his position he obtained compensation for the tenant right apart from and in addition to the compensation for improvements to which he might be entitled. The tenant right and the improvements, being alike the tenant's own property, the landlord was not entitled to have rent fixed in respect of either, or to have the price fixed in respect of either in the event of his selling to the tenant. In short, the joint ownership, which had always existed from the point of view of moral justice, was at last recognised by statute, and the landlord and the tenant became part owners. No sooner had the denunciations of that Act and its author blown over, than the very persons who had uttered them directed their attention to monopolising, in the interest of their class, all the offices by means of which the Act was to be worked, and the landlords who occupied the position of convicted criminals so asserted themselves that, with the help of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues, they succeeded in getting into their hands the greater portion of the working of this great measure. The Act was intended as a charter of justice to the tenants of Ireland, but the administration of it was put into the hands largely of the people who had made that charter necessary. Wholesale injustice had long been committed unheeded by the British Parliament until it had provoked desperation and outrage. It was only then that Parliament recognised the extent of the injustice by establishing these special tribunals to settle the matter, and in true English fashion in dealing with Ireland spoiled its own gift by putting the administration of the charter into the hands of the interested parties. When the Tories came into office they were not troubled with any scruples, but simply

  781
  put in supporters of the landlord faction. The law ad the facts were so clear that no one could fail to appreciate them, but the Commissioners and sub-Commissioners succeeded at the outset in confusing the law and the facts, and that confusion had been purposely continued during the twenty-five years in which this rent fixing had been in operation. During the whole of that time the Commissioners had shirked their plain duty of laying down the principle under which they and the sub-Commissioners were to act in such a way that there was to-day radical disagreement among them on fundamental points. What some of the Commission regarded and what he agreed was regarded as Mr. Justice Meredith's perversion of the law upon this point was bad on all counts. It was that any form of competition which had the effect of unduly inflating the letting value of a holding beyond what would otherwise be its fair letting value was not to be taken into consideration as a ground for increasing fair rents. That was a characteristic example of Irish interpretation of a law. It meant that there was no tenant or occupation interest, and the thing which the Land Act of 1881 enabled the tenant to sell did not now exist. Mr. Justice Meredith had not the courage to use those words, but he intended that his words should be so construed, and knew that they were being so construed. Of that he had the best possible proof. The Chief Secretary, in answer to a Question put to him, had said that it had been decided that no reduction could be made on account of the tenants' occupation interest beyond his interest in his improvements on his holding. That meant, in other words, that the first section of the Land Act of 1881 had been repealed by Mr. Justice Meredith. That was a provision of law at present in force in Ireland, owing, in the first place, to the poverty and inability of the tenants to remedy it, and, in the second place, to the well - founded want of confidence in the Courts. Though the Land Act of 1881 incidently mentioned the words "future tenants," there was nothing in that Act which suggested in any way the creation of a new class, but the Commissioners immediately set about creating and increasing a permanent class of
  782
  people under the name of future tenants. The Unionist Government embodied in the Act of 1887 a section rendering the intervention of the sheriff unnecessary, and making it possible to evict in Ireland after notice by a letter addressed through the Post Office. After a letter had been posted and a few other trifling formalities complied with, the tenant was destroyed and transformed into that hopeless outlaw, the future tenant. He might be dragged by a policeman like a thief from the house he had built and the home he had created. The Act of 1896 directed the Court to ascertain and record the gross fair rent from which the improvements, which were to be similarly ascertained, were to be deducted. That was in accordance with the Act of 1881. But in most cases there was not even a pretence made to comply with the law. What was called the Pink Schedule and all the farms and rules as they now stood were, in his opinion, planned with the deliberate purpose of taking out of the tenants' pockets money they had honestly earned and transferring it to the pockets of the landlord, and they had successfully effected this from 1881 to the present time. In most cases there was not even a pretence made to comply with the law in making up the schedule. There was nothing in the record to show that any account had been taken of the price of produce and of labour and of the increase of local burdens and the various burdens which the tenants had to bear in a country without manufactures. There was no data to show whether proper deductions were made or not, and there was no authority for saying that proper deductions had been made except the unsupported assertions of the Commissioners. No tenant was offered any means of ascertaining what the grounds were on which a high rent was fixed. The pink schedule was not available to the unfortunate tenant; he was simply told on a contemptuous half - penny postcard the amount of the fine imposed upon him. Even when a Court Valuer had ascertained and reported improvements made by a tenant, there was no guarantee that justice would be done. No deductions could be allowed for improvements unless a formal schedule of them was made out. In one case which he had inquired into, the tenant

  783
  had made extensive improvements in draining his farm, and those drains were shown to the Court Valuer when he inspected the land, but because the tenant had not lodged in Court a formal schedule of them, no allowance could be made in respect of them. The Court made the man pay for that improvement for no better reason than that he had not complied with a technical requirement not of the law, but the Court itself. That was a great injustice, and he had no hesitation in branding it as an outrage on justice. Having shown the improvements to the Court Valuer on the ground this man was entitled to believe that he had done all the law required him to do and that he was entitled to full credit for those improvements. He warned the Committee to guard themselves against the suggestion that there was anything exceptional in this case. If there was, an independent examination of the files would be welcomed by the Land Commissioners as the best means of refuting the charge and vindicating themselves. But when he asked for such an examination, instead of availing themselves of it, the Land Commissioners sheltered themselves behind the suggestion that this request was unprecedented. Was not the tribunal itself unprecedented? This special tribunal had only been in operation five years when the Government found it necessary to order a revision of the whole of the rents that it had been fixing in the first term. This tribunal had systematically pursued a course diametrically opposed to that laid down by the law under which it acted. It purposely rendered it imposible for anybody to investigate its proceedings, and when challenged it shirked all inquiry. At the hearing in the Courts the Chief Commissioner and Sub-Commissioners harried through the cases so rapidly that it was absolutely impossible to have due regard to their respective merits. Some of these rent-fixing ourts dealt with as many as 200 cases in a week of five days of five hours each day. That was an average of seven and a half minutes to each case. It was manifestly impossible to take and consider the evidence from both sides in such a short time. In a certain case, owing to these methods, the tenant's statement
  784
  was not complete until after the decision was given. That did not matter much, but when the tenant found an exorbitant rent fixed upon him for fifteen years he naturally murmured, and mentioned, among other things, that a large portion of his farm was covered with water during several months in the year. The Judicial Commissioner who was fixing the rent, and whose decision they were asked in this Committee to respect, had no better answer to give than to tell the tenant to go and drink the broth. That flippant and heartless remark was a specimen of what they were desired to regard with awe as judicial decisions. The gentleman who made it was one of those recently re-appointed by the Chief Secretary For himself he had just as little confidence in the new appointments made by the Chief Secretary as he had in the older appointments. The right hon. Gentleman had strangely selected them from among the admirers of his predecessor and opponent. The baneful effects of the Land Conference were not confined to ruinous prices for land. It was an integral part of the Conference to destroy the rent-fixing courts in order to force the tenants to purchase on the landlord's terms. The Land Commission, vicious always, had surpassed itself since that unfortunate conference invented the system of purchase regardless of value. That invention gave the landlords such a chance of fancy prices as they had never hoped for, and so excited their innate cupidity that Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners were influenced in advance to promote the game. The courts had been thus degraded mainly with the object of forcing tenants to buy at exorbitant prices, and incidentally to degrade the courts utterly in the eyes of the people in the promotion of that main object. The name of justice had been so misused and polluted as to amount to a moral menace. From that time, though the cost of labour and the burden of local rates had increased, though seasons had been bad, product short, and prices low, the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners had, according to official returns, given on an average only half the reductions they had been accustomed to give in previous years. In some

  785
  instances, to his knowledge, landlords themselves, bad as they were, had on the advice of their own valuers given higher reductions. For all the hardships of which the Nationalist Members complained, both Chief and Sub-Commissioners were to blame, but more particularly the Chief Commissioners, for they formed the rules of practice which their subordinates had to obey. They were the greatest scourge upon the people to whom they dispensed their perversion of the law. Yet that was the tribunal to which the Chief Secretary directed people as a Court of Appeal and fountain of justice. Before they could get those Courts respected they must make them respectable. A courageous exercise of existing powers would accomplish all that was necessary. He sincerely hoped the Chief Secretary was inspired by a nobler ambition than to become another item in the long list of British failures in Ireland. If the right hon. Gentleman were equal to the needs and the opportunity now presented to him he would insist upon an immediate revision of the forms, rules, practices and interpretation of the Land Commission in order to bring them into accord with the letter and spirit of the statutes, and side by side with that he would also insist upon an immediate revision within the current term of all existing judicial rents, such as was ordered by Section 29 of the Act of 1887. All this was easy for the Chief Secretary to do, and he would do it if the frost of Dublin Castle had not already frozen up the fountain of justice and liberalism at his heart. So much for the Land Commission proper as a rent fixing machine.
  He would now ask permission to say a few words on the Land Commission in its relation to purchase. In that respect the Act of 1903 was the most one-sided measure ever passed, and the greatest instrument of extortion ever devised. If it were important to the tenant that he should not be obliged to pay either rent or price for what was already his own property, when the buying was done with public money, and the public were responsible in case of default, it was of public importance that no money should be advanced for what would in business be regarded as a bogus sale.
  786
  By bogus sales he meant all those now being carried out in obedience to the decision in the King-Harman case, in which the landlords were being paid out of public funds the price of a thing that never belonged to them, with a bonus of 12 per cent, added. Such a swindling system as that was so utterly indefensible that they were not without hope that the Chief Secretary would insist on having the decision overturned. The great achievement of the Land Conference embodied in the Land Act of 1903, was to abolish inspection for value, that protection of the tenant and of the State, to remove that obstacle to landlord rapacity and to allow the landlord a free hand at extortion. Henceforth the price of a farm was not to depend upon its value, but upon the skill of the landlord and the simplicity and embarrassment of the tenant. Under former Purchase Acts when holdings were inspected for value, advances were refused in 7,838 cases, generally on the ground that the prices which the tenants had agreed to pay were more than the holdings were worth. A large number of estates had been sold under the Act of 1903 at prices five years purchase more than the prices under the previous Acts, and therefore five years in excess of their true value. Advances to the full amount of those prices had, according to the latest information, been made in all except 693 cases. The inflation of prices beyond value was the greatest and most obvious effect of the zone system, but it was not the only effect. That system, in the hands of skilful landlords and agents playing upon tenants who had been deprived of their last shilling, and, consequently, of their courage, amounted to a real and deadly compulsion to accept any terms the landlord pleased to lay down. In the vast marjority of cases the tenants had nothing to say to the terms but sign them. The only choice left to them was immediate destruction by eviction or a slower destruction by purchase, and the easier but the worse course was generally taken. The tenants, by signing these agreements, enabled the landlords to get the money from the State. It was only one tenant in 1,000 who had the moral courage to face immediate ruin by refusing to sign the landlord's terms. Such a tenant, while sacrificing

  787
  himself, did a distinct service to the State. He regretted to have to add that the Estates Commissioners so far from recognising that service showed very scant favour to such a man. He enjoyed the distinction of having in his constituency a landlord who had sold a slum estate comprising a swamp farm appropriately occupied by a lunatic tenant. The landlord got the; lunatic to purchase the swamp at more than twice its value. On the strength of that agreement it seemed that the landlord had obtained the cash amount of that monstrous price with the handsome bonus of 12 per cent, added, and he had left the Estates Commissioners to sue the lunatic for the annuities. It was needless to ask what any decent man would think of such a landlord. He thought this was the time and place to ask what were they to think of the supervision exercised by the Commissioners over their inspectors in the presence of such a transaction? Did any Member of Parliament who voted for the Act of 1903 realise that it would be used as a trap for lunatics? That landlord was a specimen of the class to which the British Parliament in a fit of one-sided generosity had voted four or five bonuses. The first bonus was a free grant in cash of 12 per cent, added to the purchase money. This was called in the discussions on the Bill a financial bridge to enable landlords and tenants to meet, and be equally beneficial to both. Had this been used honestly for that purpose they would for the sake of peace have abstained from criticism, but no precaution whatever was taken in the Act against a dishonest use of the bonus, and the more avaricious a landlord was the greater was his reward. True to their nature the landlords had used and were using it to the extreme of dishonesty. So far from letting the bonus be of any use to the tenants the landlords had taken it all to themselves and had increased its amount by increasing the price. This bonus was worth somewhat more than three years purchase and it amounted to £12,000,000. The second bonus was given to the landlords by way of relief from the costs of sales. Under this head they were relieved from the payment of stamp duties, which would
  788
  otherwise cost them 2½ per cent, on the amount of purchase money; expenses of publication and of notices; expenses of preparation of surveys, of notices on public departments, and of searches in the registry of deeds, titles and judgments and negotiation fees in cases of sales to the Commissioners. Those savings were worth one year's purchase, or about £4,000,000. The third bonus was received by landlords of mortgaged estates, which constituted the vast majority of Irish estates. On receiving money from the State at 2¾ per cent., they could clear off the mortgages which were now costing them 4½ or 5 per cent., and thus effect the savings, amounting in many cases to two years purchase. The fourth bonus was the legislative miracle by which the Act enabled the landlord without any disturbance of his household gods to sell his house and demesne and afterwards enjoy in comfort the house and demesne and the price of them, the sham sale having been to himself. This was a fine specimen, surely, of Unionist finance. It would be observed that all these bonuses flowed straight in the same direction. Parliament was dealing with two sections of the community and it ought to have been impartial. If favours were to be shown at all it should have been to the poorer of the two sections. Did the Act give any bonus to the tenants?
  THE CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member appears to be spending a great deal of time in criticising the Act. He must adhere to the administration of the Act, and he is not entitled to discuss any errors of legislation.
  MR. GINNELL (continuing)said that the bonus did not give any benefit to the tenants; in fact it only increased their difficulties. The Act gave them nothing but zones by means of which the landlords could hold them as in a vice absolutely at their mercy, and make the Act where it suited them compulsory. One could not help admiring the accuracy with which one landlord had described the situation, for when his poor tenants murmured against the price he demanded he told them they were only biting granite. The bonus of 12 per cent, which was to have formed a financial

  789
  bridge enabling landlords, without loss, to sell more cheaply than under the previous Acts had only increased their cupidity. The Chief Secretary had admitted in a carefully prepared reply that the average price under the Act of 1903, exclusive of bonus, instead of being less than under previous Acts, was five years purchase more. In other words the cash which the landlord received, including the bridge bonus, was eight years purchase more under the new Act than under the old. If they added the other bonuses which he had just mentioned they would find that in many cases the landlord was able to get, under this extraordinary Act, up to twelve years purchase more than the holding was worth. He would give the Committee an illustration. A landlord who sold under the Act of 1896 a farm rented at £100 for seventeen and three-quarter years purchase, which was rather over the average under that Act, would receive £1,775, out of which he would pay all the costs of the sale; he could, under the Act of 1903, sell a farm of the same value for twenty-two years purchase, receive £2,200, with a bonus of £264 added, or a total in cash of £2,464, free from all costs of sale. This was a cash gain to him of £698 in excess of what an inspecting department would certify that farm to be worth. To that sum had to be added the relief from cost of sale and other advantages. That was what the Land Conference had done for the individual landlord in respect of a single farm. He would now consider the question from a tenant's point of view. Supposing a tenant, paying a rent of £100, bought his farm under the Act of 1896 at seventeen and three-quarters years purchase. That tenant would in the term of forty-two and a half years make a total payment in principal and interest of £3,017 10s. A tenant buying the same farm under the Act of 1903 at the same number of years purchase would in the term of 68½ years make a total payment of £3,951 15s. 3d. That was to say, that the same farm at the same number of years purchase would cost the purchaser £934 5s. 3d. more under the new Act than under the old. As against that increase he had nothing but the longer time for repayment. That was the true and
  790
  entire value of the farm according to the scheme. But value having been abolished as a measure of price, the landlord now could and did charge more than the true value. According to the latest returns the average price without the bonus was twenty-two years purchase. At this rate the tenant rented at £100 must make a total payment of £4,897 15s. being an increase of £1,880 5s. over his total payments under the Act of 1896. That was what the Land Conference had cost the individual tenant. The result was bonuses for the landlords and zones for the tenants. Who would deny that class legislation had in this Act its most brilliant example?
  THE CHAIRMAN: Order, order! The hon. Member is still criticising the Act, and that is not in order. He is only entitled to criticise the administration of the Act by the Land Commission. The hon. Member is a new Member, and I have for that reason given him a good deal of latitude. He must, however, deal only with the administration of the Land Commission and not with mistakes in the legislation of the past, or indeed with what he thinks is wanted in the legislation of the future.
  MR. GINNELLsubmitted, with great respect, that he was leading up to that point in order to show the effect of the zones. He proposed to show that the evils of the zone system could be remedied without legislation.
  THE CHAIRMAN: That will be in order.
  MR. GINNELLsaid that in 1903 the then Chief Secretary gave to Parliament his opinion that all the saleable land in Ireland could be bought for £100,000,000, and he got Parliament to vote that sum and a further £12,000,000 as a bonus to enable vendors and purchasers to meet easily without losing sight of the true value as settled by the scale of prices when inspection was practised. If they were charitably to assume that he expected the landlords to sell at a somewhat lower number of years purchase than previously, on the bridge theory, and that he cared at all

  791
  for the solvency of Ireland, how scandalised he must be now to find his pets extracting such prices that £150,000,000 would be required to buy the amount of land he had in his mind. Of the £112,000,000 the landlords would receive in cash as the true value of the land about £73,000,000. They would receive in cash in excess of that value by virtue of the zones, £22,000,000, and in cash also the so-called bonus of £12,000,000. They would receive in relief from the costs of sale and relief from mortgages at least £5,000,000. In other words, for property worth £73,000,000 they would receive £112,000,000, being £39,000,000 in excess of the value. He was, of course, aware that this was not the way in which the bonus was calculated, that it was calculated on the entire price, and that the higher the price the landlord charged the greater was his reward at the public expense. But the method of calculation was not very material when the net result was as he had stated. That was what the Act of 1903 did for one section of the community. Let them see what it did for the other section. It so arranged the matter that for this property worth £73,000,000, which the tenants could have purchased on inspection under previous Acts for £124,524,982 in the term of forty-two and a half years, they must now pay £202,118,386 in the term of sixty-eight and a half years, being £77,593,404 in excess of what they would have been obliged to pay had inspection been retained. This £77,000,000 was what the land conference had cost the Irish people. It was the result of the lamb lying down even for a brief period with the wolf. What a fine inducement for conferences on other subjects! When the Act which produced these results was passing through Parliament the right hon. Gentleman who was now Prime Minister used these wise and honest words, but, alas, used them in vain—;
  "I am not willing to put a load on the tenant's back under which he must entirely break down and involve us all in disaster in order that the landlord should get, not a fair price, but an inflated security. If there are to be sacrifices in this matter, and there must be, these sacrifices must be mutual. Whilst it is right under existing circumstances that these gentlemen (the landlords) should receive just, and even generous treatment, they have no right to escape laden with the spoils of war,
  792
  no right to burden the tenant and leave a legacy of future trouble for the State."
  The landlords were now going away laden with the money which the Treasury was advancing without regard to value. He asked hon. Members to look to it that they did not persist in sowing the trouble for the State which the Prime Minister apprehended. Was all the flagrant extortion now being practised nothing to those who passed by the way? Was the Chief Secretary content to play the role of the unconcerned spectator while the country he had undertaken to govern was being juggled and cheated? Would he apply nothing more effective than civil commonplaces to the class who were making the people bite granite? While on the one hand certain provisions of the Act were being used dishonestly, and while on the other the provisions of the same Act for the acquisition and distribution of untenanted land, which was so much needed, remained almost a dead letter, the Chief Secretary appeared to think that the Irish representatives should be satisfied when he threw up his hands in sympathetic despair and said he could do nothing. What sort of answer was that in the mouth of a Liberal statesman with a huge and, he believed, generous majority at his back? Why did people, uninvited, undertake to govern a country if, with the power in their hands, they would not remedy great and admitted evils? Immediate compulsory sale at a fair price and the payment to landlords of 75 per cent, of their gross incomes on second term rents, or their equivalent, pending inspection of the holdings, would, he believed, be the quickest and fairest solution of the problem. If the Government proposed such a measure he felt sure that the House would pass it. But, pending legislation, much more could be done by administration than the Chief Secretary had yet realised. Though the Estates Commissioners were under the control of Dublin Castle they deserved credit for having early this year exposed to public contempt the illegal instructions to which the Castle had subjected them. That was a courageous act and a distinct public service. But the Commissioners had to wait for two years and a change of Government before they mustered courage to do it. Had they done it three

  793
  months earlier, while the Unionists were in power, it would have cost them their positions. He did not say that to detract from any merit due, but in view of the Castle's capacity for mischief it was wholesome for the Commissioners to know that the Irish Members could measure them accurately and would not shrink from doing so. It might have been better to have left the Commissioners free to administer the Act in accordance with its terms and spirit, unhampered by any regulations. If regulations there must be, the new were preferable to the old. But the instructions issued under them to the inspectors were not in all respects satisfactory. What steps did the Commissioners take to ascertain whether the proposed purchasers submitted to them were bona fide tenants? Was any record kept of purchasers who had in recent years been graziers on eleven months tenure of the lands they had been enabled to purchase? What measures were taken to counteract the designs of graziers upon untenanted lands and to reserve those lands for the beneficial distribution which was so large an element in getting the Act passed? Where there was reason to believe that the proposed purchaser was insolvent, or stripped of means for working a farm, was inquiry made as to whether that condition was due to excessive rent, and whether the purchase price was calculated on that rent? Were prices being revised with the view of lowering the value of farm produce by the importation of cattle and products? Were some inspectors taking one course and others an opposite course on any or on all of those points? A very considerable amount of good could be effected by uniformity of principle and of practice throughout the administration. No such uniformity had hitherto existed even outside the zones where there was unquestionably a free hand. No one would undertake the moral defence of what had been done within the zones. The zone trick by which inspection was evaded was in practice, in the circumstances of Ireland, such a gross piece of systematic dishonesty as would not be tolerated for a day in any self-ruled country. Could that trick be exploded without legislation? He believed it could. In the beginning some of the Commissioners thought they
  794
  had jurisdiction to check the price with the value in all cases. They probably thought so still, notwithstanding Judge Meredith's decision to the contrary. He suggested that a serious effort would be made to have that decision reversed. But he believed that it could in any case be nullified and prices brought back to the standard of value by a Treasury minute forbidding the Estates Commissioners to advance in any case a price in excess of the value of the interest which the landlord had to sell. Who would have a right to complain of an order so just? No one except a dishonest landlord.
  MR. FETHERSTONHAUGHthought he would find himself on this occasion in substantial agreement with a good deal of what had been said by the hon. Member for Waterford and other Members. He was unable to express himself in agreement with the hon. Member for North Westmeath however, because he was not able to recognise either his facts or his statement and interpretation of the law. If the Chief Secretary failed to understand the facts of the hon. Member, perhaps the Attorney-General who had written a book on the Land Act would be able to come to his assistance.
  MR. JOHN O'CONNOR: You are not a model of clearness yourself.
  MR. FETHERSTONHAUGHsaid that in reference to land purchase which had been spoken of both by the hon. Member for Waterford and by the hon. Member for South Tyrone, he thought anyone who had the interests of Ireland at heart would be most anxious to see a settlement of the land war effected with all possible speed. They would all be glad to see the evicted tenants question satisfactorily settled. They would be glad to see successfully dealt with the problem of the grazing lands of the west and the provision of better houses for the congested districts, and he hoped it would have the result of staying the drain of emigration from that part of the country. Whether that result would or would not follow, he would not venture to prophesy, but at any rate

  795
  the experiment was well worth the trial. It was only his anxiety to say or do something to accelerate the operations of the Land Purchase Commissioners that he ventured upon the Motion on the adjournment for the holidays to bring forward several suggestions which had been repeated in the present debate. On that occasion he alluded to the fact that the operations of land purchase were very much retarded by the difficulties arising from the distribution of the purchase money, and he desired to suggest that it was impossible for the Land Commissioners to distribute the purchase money at a rate which would keep pace with the sales going on. He then suggested that it would be the truest economy to give him assistance to dispose of the congestion of business that had arisen in the Estates Commissioners' Office. Everything that was done to expedite land purchase would be a saving on the side of the rent fixing and other Departments of the Irish Land Commission; although it had been very profitable from the lawyers' point of view for the last 20 years, he did not hesitate to say, putting aside personal interests, that there was not a man who would not be delighted to see the rent fixing tribunal come to an end. He mentioned a case in which he was counsel, which came up as far back as 1898, and had not been finally disposed of yet. Indeed it might be several months before the tenant knew what his ultimate judicial rent was to be. There were hundreds of similar cases. There were only one or two small matters in which he felt compelled to dissent from the views of previous speakers. The case of Mr. Porter seemed to excite the hon. Member for South Tyrone very much. Perhaps he did not vote for his hon. friend at the last election. Let him be given time and he might on the next occasion, and then perhaps they would not hear so much about it.
  An HON. MEMBER: He could not be found.
  MR. JOHN O'CONNORrose to a point of order. Was the hon. and learned Gentleman in order in attributing such a motive to the hon. Member for South Tyrone?
  The CHAIRMANsaid he did not think the hon. Member was really aspersing the motives of the hon. Member for South Tyrone. He thought it was said more by way of a joke than anything else.
  MR. FETHERSTONHAUGHsaid that if the remark was taken at all seriously he would at once withdraw it. It was intended as something in the nature of a joke. Did the hon. Member for South Tyrone by his reflections on the sub-Commissioners mean to suggest that if he was offered a position which might shortly become vacant with a satisfactory salary he would not take it? He ventured to think that if any sane man was offered a post with a satisfactory salary he would be willing to take it. He objected to the criticisms made by the hon. Members for Water-ford and South Tyrone upon the sub-Commissioners. He himself did not hold a brief for either landlord or tenant, but he regretted that persons who had to discharge judicial functions should be discussed in this Committee in the manner in which they had been discussed, and that they should have it borne in upon their minds that their continuance in office was dependent upon the popular opinion of the Committee. Persons who discharged judicial duties ought, according to our constitution, to discharge them independently. He quite recognised the difficulty pointed out by the right hon. Member for Dover in appointing people to permanent office when they might not after a time be required. He did not quite see how the difficulty could have been got over, but he did say that when once men were appointed and proved satisfactory in the discharge of their duties they should be kept on—;if he might use the phrase—;permanently in a temporary office, that was that they should have security of tenure as long as their services were wanted. It was said that these sub-Commissioners were a lot of military officers and land agents and members of other unsuitable professions. The last return showed that they numbered ninety-six, of whom only six were landowners or simple owners of land and nothing else; six were neither landlords nor tenants; thirty-four were combined in the ownership and in the tenancy of land. That meant that in many

  797
  instances they held one piece of land in fee simple and were tenants of other large pieces of land adjoining. Out of the ninety-six there were fifty who were tenant farmers; only three had ever been in the Army and twenty were described, in addition to farming, either as landlord or tenant, as being estate agents, auctioneers, and such like. He thought it was an unfortunate thing that it should be stated in this Committee that these men who discharged very difficult and delicate functions were dependent upon the opinion of the majority of Members. He knew nothing about rents or whether they were high or low, but he deprecated the fact that these gentlemen should be threatened with dismissal if rents were higher this year than they were last. They called it conspiracy, but who were the conspirators? Two Judges, one a Judge of the High Court and the other Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald, who was regarded and paid as a Judge. Was it suggested that they had entered into a conspiracy to raise rents since the passing of the Act? He had heard skilled valuers say, under cross-examination, that the fall of prices was very sharp from 1878 to 1890. From that time on there was not such a fall of prices and the prices of many things on which rents were fixed, sheep, pigs, store cattle, etc., had not declined since 1890. He was not discussing whether rents should or should not be reduced, but he was suggesting that undoubtedly valuers of great eminence held that although first term rents fixed between 1880 and 1890 required very considerable reduction to make them fair rents when they came up for revision, when they came to rents fixed after 1890 they did not find at all the same need for subsequent revision as the earlier cases required. That might very possibly account for the figures which the hon. Member for South Tyrone had quoted showing that the average reduction during the past ten or twelve years was greater than the average reduction in 1905. Rents fixed in 1905 would be first term rents or they would be second term rents that had been fixed later than 1890. He had frequently heard it said that where a tenant since 1881 had not gone into Court down to
  798
  the year 1905 that he must have considered his rent, on the whole, pretty fair, and that it was only because when times had changed he thought he would get a small reduction he went into Court in 1905, and then he would not expect to get so big a reduction as a man who felt the pinch earlier in 1881 and went into Court then. That was enough, he thought, to acquit the Commissioners of the gross charge of conspiracy that had been made against them by the hon. Member for South Tyrone. He often heard the Commissioners abused by both sides, and it had always struck him that it might be said, in justice to these gentlemen, that, in the matter of fixing rents, if they pleased neither party, the chances were that the rent they fixed was pretty fair. He could not think that the sub-Commissioners had ever been neglectful of the interests of the tenants. Considering that the landlords of Ireland did not return a single Member and that the tenants returned the whole 105, he should think that it was very unlikely that the sub-Commissioners would act in the interests of a class who, however powerful they might have been in the past, certainly since 1885 had been totally deprived of political power. It was a most lamentable thing that the conduct of a Judge should be discussed in the Committee in this way, and that it should be plainly held out to him that his salary and his continuance in office was to be dependent on the decisions he gave. It tended to arouse a want of confidence. It was suggested that the rents were raised with the object of affecting the purchase price. Surely if the tenant was aware that his rent had been fixed too high he would not give that same number of years purchase as he otherwise would. He did not think the landlords or the tenants were so ignorant of their rights that they would rush into a bargain that would be destructive to either. They had been brought together in a wonderful manner since the Act of 1903. The Return published with regard to this matter showed that up to February, 1906, land sales amounting to nearly £33,000,000 had been agreed to. When people blamed a landlord or a tenant for holding back, did they imagine that in the three years

  799
  after the passing of that Act in 1903 nearly one-third of the land of Ireland would be dealt with? He did not say that these agreements had come in too fast. He would have been glad to have seen more of them, but he thought they had come in as quickly as they could. The fault he had to find with the Act was, first, that the money was not forthcoming, and, secondly, that the staff of Commissioners was not sufficient to deal with the money they had got. Not having the money held back many a sale. Many a man, if he thought he could get the money in time, would be glad to sell his estate. But the staff was not sufficient to deal with the matter, and that was why he had suggested the appointment of more Commissioners and examining clerks. He had made that suggestion with some practical knowledge of the workings of the office. He had also suggested the appointment of an additional Judge to assist Mr. Justice Meredith. He had never heard that the Commissioners were idle and did not do their work, and he had come across numbers of solicitors and others who had to do business with the office. He had simply made that suggestion because he thought it would accelerate the work. Surely they were all agreed, whatever might be the ultimate destiny of their country, whether it took the shape of the aspirations of hon. Gentlemen below the gangway or the shape that he and those who sat with him desired, that the remedy for the chronic evil from which poor old Ireland suffered could only be found in the solution of the land question. That should not be a Party question between them. All Members representing Ireland should associate themselves with that good work.
  MR. MEAGHERsaid that in dealing with this matter he did not wish to go over the ground which had been traversed by his hon. friends, and therefore as a tenant farmer he would confine himself to a few pertinent facts that had come under his own particular observation. He had heard a good deal as to the appointment and re-appointment of the temporary Sub-Commissioners, but as things were he did not see that the farmers of Ireland would be any worse
  800
  off if those Sub-Commissioners were swept away root and branch. In his opinion some means should be devised whereby second-term rents should be fixed on a different basis from the casual and ineffectual method adopted at the present time. He failed to see the necessity for a revaluation of the land after fifteen years occupation. The Commissioners when they came first valued the land as they found it and took into consideration the improvements which the landlord or tenant had made upon it, as the case might be. At the end of sixteen years, when the tenant had made his improvements upon the land and spent his money for them, a second Commissioner came out who had no knowledge of the state of the land fifteen years previously, and valued the land again. In the case of one holding the land of which he saw at the time of its first valuation the tenant farmer thought he was to have credit for all his improvements. He spent £275 in draining and improving the land, and fifteen years afterwards a Sub-Commissioner walked the land and what did he do? After the expenditure of £275 upon the land the tenant got 10s. reduction. When the second term rent was fixed the landlord appealed and the old rent was restored.
  And it being a quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.
  The House resumed.

LANCASHIRE ELECTRIC POWER BILL. (BY ORDER.)
Read a second time, and committed.

SUPPLY.
Considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
[MR. CALDWELL (Lanark, Mid.) in the Chair.]
Motion made and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,215

801
be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1907, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Land Commission."
Whereupon Motion made and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,115, be granted for the said service."—;(Mr. John Redmond.)
MR. MEAGHER,continuing his speech, said that from beginning to end the tenant class of Ireland had had no material improvement in their condition in comparison with the fall of prices. It was too costly to take cases into court, besides which the results were too unsatisfactory, fie maintained that unless compulsory powers were given to the commissioners to purchase untenanted lands the question of the evicted tenants would never be solved. He had asked the Chief Secretary how many evicted tenants in the county of Kilkenny at the date of the passing of the Land Act of 1903 were entitled to be restored to their holdings, and how many were restored to their holdings. The answer he received was that 153 had lodged applications and three tenants had been restored to their holdings. But his question was how many evicted tenants were in Kilkenny at the passing of the Act who were entitled under that Act to be restored to their holdings. A Return showed him that there were 301 instead of 153. He did not for a moment insinuate that the right hon. Gentleman wished to mislead him, but what he (Mr. Meagher) wanted to call attention to was the fact that half of the evicted tenants were so down-hearted and had so little confidence in the Act that they absolutely refused to lodge applications for reinstatement under the Act. In his own county there was a case in which 375 people had been turned out of their holdings to make room for sheep and bullocks, and the owner was living in Washington, in the United States. In the case in question 1,600 acres of land had gone into wilderness through want of cultivation. Compulsory powers of acquiring these untenanted lands were necessary if the question of the evicted tenants was to be dealt with successfully. Unless there was some
802
vital amendment of the Act he failed to see by what means the evicted tenants could be restored.
SIR THOMAS ESMONDEcongratulated his hon. friend upon his maiden speech. He had spoken very feelingly upon a detail of the Irish land question, in which he also took a very deep interest. It was a question which vitally affected the whole settlement of the land question as well as the peace and well-being of the country. They all expected when the Act of 1903 was passed that it would have brought about a speedy solution of the difficulty, but in that expectation they had been to a large extent disappointed. In his own county he was glad to say they had done somewhat better than was the case in his hon. friend's county. At the passing of the Act they had, he believed, 189 evicted tenants, and they had succeeded in settling seventy nine. That, so far as it went, was satisfactory, but it had not yet settled the question, and his reason for rising in the debate was solely to urge the Government to take every means in their power to expedite the settlement of this burning question. They believed the Government were actuated by a sympathetic feeling towards Ireland, and hon. Members from Ireland asked them to utilise their opportunities and powers especially for the evicted tenants. He did not quite agree with his hon. friend that they could not make satisfactory progress under the existing measure. He thought that within the confines of the existing Land Purchase Act there were great opportunities for the settlement of the question, but what was wanted was more energy and more courage in the administration of the Act. What they wanted was that the sympathy of the Government should translate itself into action, and that no opportunity should be missed of settling the case of any evicted tenant. It was purely a question of administration. The Estates Commissioners had ample power to clear any farm or estate, and they could declare any parcel of land an estate, with a view to settling on it the evicted tenants. No opportunity should be missed to remove this great social sore which had proved such a great drawback to the social peace and prosperity of Ireland, and without a satisfactory treatment of which the land question could

803
never be settled. In this time of returning prosperity, when they were told that their exports were greater than they had ever been before, surely it was possible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to find a sufficient sum of money to settle this question. He joined with his colleagues in pressing upon the Government the immediate necessity of dealing with the subject.
MR. O'SHEEsaid he desired to join in congratulating the hon. Member for North Kilkenny upon the excellent maiden speech which he had just delivered. With regard to what had been said he was inclined to think that the hon. Member for North Fermanagh and his friends preferred the backstairs influence of Dublin Castle to secure appointments, to open criticism in Committee of Supply of the appointment and of the qualifications of the men who had been appointed sub-commissioners. They all knew what had gone on ever since the Land Act of 1881 was passed, and they knew, above all, what had gone on during the past ten years of the Tory Government with regard to appointments in Ireland. If the archives of Dublin Castle could be searched, and if the correspondence which had passed between Lord Londonderry and the late Chief Secretary for Ireland could be perused, he thought they would be able to trace a number of those appointments to the influence of Lord Londonderry and Lord Donegal. Many of the public bodies in Ireland had passed resolutions against the appointment, under such influences, of men who were utterly unfit to give a fair decision with regard to rent fixing, and because they had done this they had incurred the indignation of the hon. Member for North Fermanagh and his colleagues. It was a very difficult thing to find men qualified for these positions who could be regarded as impartial arbiters between landlord and tenant. He would much prefer that the Irish Government should come over to England, Scotland, or Wales, and find Englishmen, Scotsmen, or Welshmen to perform the duty of fixing rents. It was the duty of the Irish Government to look very closely into the personnel of the Land Commission. He had had a long experience practising before the Land
804
Commission, and no doubt it would be thought a delicate thing for him to criticise the members of that Commission. He had known the Chief Commissioner, who was appointed under the influence of a particular landowner, go down to the chief Commission Court and adjudicate upon the cases brought forward by tenants of the very landlord whose influence had secured him the appointment. That kind of thing had gone on all over the country. Mr. Justice Fitzgerald had for many year the duty of selecting sub-commismissioners who had to fix the rents in the various parts of Ireland, and he could change them at any moment. Not only this, but he also had the duty assigned to him in consultation with Mr. Justice Meredith of selecting the tribunal to revise the decisions of those sub-commissioners. He was not going to criticise Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, but the tenant farmers had the deepest mistrust of him in regard to the fixing of rents. No one doubted that that mistrust existed, and it was an outrage upon justice that a man who was so distrusted should first of all have the picking of the individual men to fix the rents on the sub-commission, and also the picking of the men who were to revise the rents of the men he had first selected. That was the position of things in Ireland to-day. The hon. Member for North Kilkenny had said that he should not deplore it if rent fixing were abolished altogether in Ireland, and he was of the same opinion, because the rent fixing tribunals were being used simply to keep up prices. The tenants, could not go on much longer paying such high rents, the result of which was to make tham ready to snatch up anything in order to get relief. The system ought to be abolished root and branch. As a matter of fact, fifty of the sub-commissioners were described as tenant fanners. If their claims to call themselves tenant farmers were investigated, it would be found in most cases they had no proper right to be so designated. In making applications they naturally desired to put the best colour they could on their previous occupation, and, having done that, they obtained appointments by backstairs influences at the Castle. Hon. Members from Ulster who represented the landlord interest complained

805
of the criticism which had been directed against the reappointments as unreasonable and unjust. They said in regard to these men who were removable that their appointments should be permanent, but they had not in the past said that the removable magistrates should hold permanent appointments. Why should they be so indignant because Sub-Commissioners were only appointed for one year? In the comity he represented and a great many other counties in Ireland there was hardly any untenanted land to be acquired. That being so, how were the labourers to be provided for? He should be glad to see holdings enlarged, and he hoped the Chief Secretary would, in dealing with the untenanted land, assent to some of it being allotted to the labourers. When the Act of 1903 was passing through the House an Amendment was moved with the view of including the labourers in the benefits of the measure, but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, who was then Chief Secretary, intimated that he intended to deal with the labourers in the following year. On that promise the Amendment was withdrawn. The pledge had not yet been fulfilled, and he hoped that the Chief Secretary would deal with the matter in the forthcoming Bill. He knew cases in the counties of Limerick and Waterford where the labourers had taken strong measures to prevent people who held large quantities of land from getting portions of untenanted land. The labourers protested against farmers, who already had sufficient land, getting more; they wanted a little for themselves in order that they might be able to eke out a subsistence at periods of the year when they were unable to get employment from the farmers. He would point out one way in which untenanted land could be acquired under the Act of 1903. It was not contended that there was anything to prevent the Commissioners from buying land which was offered for sale in the open market. He knew of cases in Waterford where land was offered for sale in the open market, and he believed it could be acquired for a moderate sum. That land would be very useful for distribution among evicted tenants whoso farms had been grabbed. There were several of those farms. The same remark applied to other lands in Leinster and Minister. He asked the Chief Secretary to direct the
806
attention of the Commissioners to the Nugent Thomas estate in Waterford where the landlord had made his own brother the tenant of a largo area of land. They held between them 2,000 acres of land from which a large number of tenants were evicted ton or fifteen years ago. The majority of the Judges had decided that the Land Commission might advance money to the brothers for the purpose of the acquisition of this land by one of them, and it was admitted that he became the tenant of the land for the purpose of buying the fee simple from his brother and paying for it with money borrowed from the Estates Commissioners. On this estate at the present moment there were at least five evicted tenants some of whoso farms had been grabbed by outside persons and some by the person whose title to the land was in question fifteen years ago. He suggested that it should be represented to the Estates Commissioners that they ought not to countenance this and they should not deal with a case in which the brother of the landlord became the tenant of land which would otherwise be unoccupied and thereby oust the claim of the evicted tenants to return to the land. They ought not to advance the landlord any money so long as he hold, or his brother hold, this land which ought to be given back to the evicted tenants. He should like to refer to the subject of the purchase of their holdings by the tenants of town lands. The Estates Commissioners gave the owners of town lands, who were willing to sell, to understand that they could not see their way, considering the stringency of the conditions of the money market and the amount of money at their disposal, to make advances for the purpose of the purchase of these town holdings. He saw nothing in the Act itself, however, which compelled the Estates Commissioners to make any distinction at all between those town holdings and an estate which was mainly agricultural, and he hoped in future they would treat town tenants who applied for advances upon a different basis, and that they would make it clearly known to the owner of the land that they would have no hesitation in advancing money in the ordinary way to those tenants for the purchase of their holdings. Dealing with the question of returns he said that Mr. Porter who revised them was in a

807
class by himself in the Land Commission. The returns were not altogether satisfactory, and as his hon. friend had said in the last fifteen years they did not show any great change; but what made the figures in them much higher was the froth of Mr. Porter. As a matter of fact the returns were not properly prepared. He knew some of the gentlemen who went round to the fairs, and he knew the class of men that they belonged to. They were striplings drawn from the landlord class, and they only went for their information to dealers in the best class of cattle and did not trouble about other dealers at all. Then they sent in reports to Mr. Porter and from them he prepared the returns. None of these young men were qualified for their positions, they did not know how to speak to a farmer, and none of the farmers would understand them because of their highly Anglicised accent. In order to be qualified they ought to be able to speak Irish, but he did not think that any one of these gentlemen had been within a stone's throw of an Irish-speaking peasant before his appointment. In regard to the zone system, he would like to refer to a case which excited the merriment of Mr. Justice Meredith. It was a case of a landlord who had one tenant, who was his sister-in-law; and when the Act of 1903 was passed they thought it was a good opportunity of getting some money. They made a judicial agreement the day before the Act came into operation, because under the zone system the Court might deal with tenants whose rents had been fixed by agreement at that time, and had never been decided in the Courts, and he himself knew of a great many cases that had come before the Commissioners where the tenants were induced to sign judicial agreements the day before the Act became operative. Those agreements in no sense, however, dealt with judicial rents, but the landlord said to the tenant, "You must sign this agreement," and accordingly it was signed. The agreement he was dealing with between this landlord and his sister-in-law fixed the rent at £110, while the landlord was paying a rent of £104 to the head landlord. After three months a judicial agreement of this kind took effect and became absolute; but, unfortunately, those people were incautious, and did not wait the three months, but lodged
808
an application for purchase at twenty-seven-and-a-half years purchase before the period expired. The Land Commissioners said that they were entitled to have the property inspected, and the inspector put the fair rent at £90. Then the Land Commissioners said they would not advance twenty-seven-and-a-half years purchase at £110, because they had lodged their application before the three months had expired; but they said they would advance twenty-seven-and-a-half years purchase at £90. That was about £2,500, and the landlord got a bonus on that of £300. This middleman, who was selling to his sister-in-law, had no interest at all, and the whole of the £2,500 went to redeem the head rent; but he got £300 out of the estate, because he had made this arrangement with his sister-in law, and if they had waited for three months he would have got twenty-seven-and-a-half years purchase at £110 instead of at £90, and would have received £550 as a bonus. Mr. Justice Meredith referred to the case as one of the absurdities of the zone system, and that was a typical case of what occurred every day under that system.
MR. THOMAS O'DONNELLsaid the hon. Member for North Fermanagh had tried to show that the Assistant Sub-Commissioners were selected because they were skilled in land values, and were likely to be impartial, but his hon. friend who had just sat down had, he thought, shown that they were neither impartial, judicial, nor competent. This debate had been initiated because the people of Ireland, having got rid of twenty years of Tory Government, and a Liberal Government being in power, expected, at least, that the men who fixed rents should be impartial; and that those whom the Tory Government appointed, and who after twenty years experience they found to be most unfair, inexperienced, and incompetent, should be replaced by men who should, at least, be fair, qualified, and competent. It was because the Chief Secretary had not been able during the short time that he had occupied his office to ascertain the enormities of the system under which these officials were appointed, and the wretched manner in which they had done their work, and had been unable

809
to replace them by better men, that this subject was brought forward for discussion, and they trusted that in the near future the Chief Secretary would revise these appointments and appoint more competent men. Dealing with the evicted tenants, the hon. Member said he came from a district where 400 men had been turned out of their homes, and many of them had died. But some remained, and he had asked time after time since the passing of the Land Purchase Act of 1903 that something should be done to reinstate these men in their former holdings. So far, however, although two and a half years had passed since that Act came into operation, he did not know of one single tenant who had been replaced owing to its operation. It was true that some of the landlords themselves had replaced evicted tenants, but so far as he had been able to find, the Estates Commissioners had not done anything to reinstate the evicted tenants in the county of Kerry. He would advise the Chief Secretary to send down one of his best inspectors to the county to make inquiry into the largo number of cases which now remained, and to see whether the landlords, though not inclined to sell the whole of their estates, would sell that part of the estate which an evicted tenant had hold, and where a man had grabbed the land to see if he could not be induced to leave the holding and give it into the possession of the former holder. If the right hon. Gentleman would do that he would confer the greatest possible benefit upon the district and do something to allay the strong feeling which prevailed upon the subject. In his county there was very little untenanted land, and in the case of an evicted tenant whose holding was occupied by another there was considerable difficulty in settling his affairs.
MR. O'MALLEYsaid the hon. Member for Northampton had pointed out that the success of the various Land Acts depended a good deal upon their administration. He thought that that had been proved by the administration of the Land Act of 1903, which had not been in favour of the Irish tenant and which should not be satisfactory to the Members of this Committee. The hon. Member for South Tyrone had pointed out how, in Monaghan and in other parts of the North of Ireland,
810
the Sub-Commissioners had been raising rents, but he wished to call attention to the method adopted by the Land Commissioners in the west of Ireland. He remembered a Commissioner after the passing of the Act of 1881 stating that it was astonishing that people should live in such wretched holdings as these people had. The Commissioner having expressed his astonishment at these people living on holdings of six or seven acres of rock and bog, for which they paid rents of from 15s. to 25s. an acre, in Kerry and Connemara, he the next day at the court house only reduced the rents by from 10 to 20 per cent. He admitted that if these people had these holdings for nothing they could not live out of them, and as a fact they did not. But his contention was that they were uneconomic holdings; that they were worthless and could not sustain life, and that the Commissioners if they acted justly should have reduced the rents by 75 or 80 per cent. The same spirit which actuated the Commissioners twenty years ago in fixing the rents in Connemara actuated them in the fixing of the rents all over Ireland. Until what was known as the western problem was solved the land question could not be settled. When in Galway during the general election, he saw on the counter of a village post office a pile of papers, and was told by the clerk that they were money orders from Great Britain and abroad sent by the friends and relatives to the people living on these wretched holdings; that no less than £5,000 a year reached that village in that way from Irish people who had been forced to leave their country. It was by money that came in that way that these people were enabled to pay their little debts and live upon their holdings. It was a monstrous shame and a scandal that the whole of the tenants on the western sea-board should have to pay £1 an acre for land that was not worth 1s., and until some means was found of giving the millions of acres of grass lands now untenanted to the tenants the Irish land question would never be settled. The sooner the Government tackled this question the hotter it would be for themselves and the people of Ireland.
MR. BRYCEsaid he did not think that any one not acquainted with the jumble of legislation that formed the

811
Irish Land Acts and the large number of rules and regulations relating to their administration could appreciate the extreme difficulty of attempting to deal with all the points raised during the discussion and of presenting to English Members the points upon which reform was demanded. The difficulty to himself wais increased by his short tenure of office. He really had not had time with all the work to be done in the House and arrears of reform in Ireland to make himself master of the details of land legislation and the present condition, and therefore he asked indulgence if he did not deal satisfactorily with all the points raised. He admitted the extreme importance and gravity of the subject, and rejoiced that instances had been brought forward to show deficiences in legislation or administration. But he must also observe that hon. Members seemed greatly to exaggerate the amount of power possessed by the Irish Executive; it was really very limited. One would think from the questions put in the House that it was in his power to be continually giving directions to the Land Commissioners and Estates Commissioners; but Parliament, rightly or wrongly—;on the whole he thought rightly—;had taken the matter from the Executive and inserted minute provisions in the Acts passed. Most of the points raised, or a large number, described as faults by the various speakers, were really points upon which the Legislature had given directions, and these it was not possible for the Executive or the Commissioners to override; they could only be varied by legislation. In the second place, these tribunals were entirely independent of the Executive, with specified statutory functions. He was entitled, of course, and constantly did so, to bring forward grievances or defects alleged to have arisen in administration and to ask them to go as far as possible to remedy them; but, even if he thought in his own mind that they were not taking the way to give effect to the intention of Parliament, he had no right to attempt to exercise any control. Therefore he begged hon. Members, especially English and Scottish Members, to understand that some of the charges alleged to be defects in the system were not defects with which the Irish Government had anything to do or could amend. Only one charge had
812
been made against the action of the Irish Government, and with that he would deal, though he had not much to add to what he said a month ago. The charge on the one hand from Tory Members from Ireland was that he did not re-appoint five temporary assistant Commissioners, and on the other hand from other Irish Members came the complaint that all but these five temporary assistant Commissioners were appointed. He would toll the Committee how he proceeded. Time was limited, and it was not possible to ascertain the merits of all the candidates. It would have been entirely wrong if he had judged by whom they were appointed or whether they had raised or lowered rents. That would have been to constitute himself a Court of Appeal from the assistant Commissioners with functions for which he was not qualified. Furthermore, if he had proceeded on the basis of whether an assistant Commissioner had raised or lowered rents, or if he had inquired who appointed or recommended him, he would have been departing from the principle that should guide a Minister. It would have been to indicate that because an appointment was made by one Government that appointment might be annulled by another, that a change of Government should moan a change of offices irrespective of the merits of holders of offices, and that would destroy public confidence in the Commission itself. He hoped the Committee would understand it was not upon any such basis he approached the question of appointments to the Commission. He endeavoured to ascertain the qualifications of the assistant Commissioners, and at the same time he had the qualifications of candidates who appeared most competent examined, and the result showed that some of the temporary assistant Commissioners—;of whom he wished to say nothing disparaging—;were not so competent, so experienced, so capable as some of the candidates, and accordingly those gentlemen who were less competent were not reappointed, and the more competent candidates were appointed in their place. He might perhaps have gone further and have superseded others; but at the same time he must entirely differ from hon. Gentlemen who had spoken of the temporary assistant Commissioners as being all partisans or incapable. There was

813
no foundation for that charge being brought against the whole number.
MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid he had not spoken of the whole number, but he repeated that the majority were blind partisans.
MR. BRYCEsaid he was specially referring to the hon. Member, but, judging from the information that reached him, and he had not personal knowledge, it would not be true to say that a majority were blind partisans.
MR. FLAVINasked if there was not one appointed after a landlord's recommendation.
MR. BRYCEsaid it was not possible for him to say, but that afforded no ground for dismissal; it was a matter of history. The hon. Member for South Tyrone suggested that there had been unwillingness to displease Ulster Tories, but the hon. Member must think him very simple if he supposed he hoped to conciliate them in any such way. No; the reason that moved him was the competency of one man more than another; but where a case was doubtful he thought the occupant was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and, though he could not legally claim reappointment, if he wa3 fairly competent and of long experience, he prima facie was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. He did not say that experience always made a man better. He remembered the case of an eminent counsel of whom it was said, when he was appointed a Judge, that he was not a very good Judge. One of his former friends at the Bar replied that he thought that with a little practice he would make the worst Judge on the Bench. But if a man was prima facie competent, he thought experience ought to count in his favour. The only possible principle on which to proceed was to endeavour to discover who were the best men, with the largest experience, the greatest capacity for judging land, and the most freedom from any kind of bias or partiality. It was quite possible that it would be necessary to make further changes. The temporary Commissioners had been appointed only for one year under an order issued by the Land Com-
814
mission itself, which had his entire concurrence. As the year went on it would be his duty to study more and more carefully the competence and impartiality of those performing these important functions and to endeavour by degrees to bring the body of temporary Commissioners up to the highest possible point. But in doing that it would be necessary to retain the confidence on both sides in Ireland. A question had been put to him by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford on the subject of inspectors under the Land Purchase Acts. The Irish Government had selected one gentleman as an assistant Commissioner, two others to act as sub-inspectors, and six as inspectors in the matter of evicted tenants to negotiate for their restoration. All were men of practical experience and acknowledged competence and capacity. It was also contemplated to appoint some additional officers who the Estates Commissioners thought were wanted, and when the negotiations with the Treasury on the subject were complete he hoped to be able to make a further statement. It was said that a good deal of the delay in the land purchase system had been removed by having additional persons to do the work of examining titles. There was an additional Vote for them this year and there were now two first-class examiners at a higher salary and twelve at somewhat lower salaries. That was more than double the amount charged last year for that item, and it was hoped that, with the additional staff, the work of the Estates Commissioners would be greatly accelerated. He admitted that there had been some disappointment at the progress of land purchase, but difficulties had arisen which could not have been foreseen. He believed it would be possible, however, under the new arrangement to accelerate very much the working of the scheme. Some hon. Members had spoken severely of the judicial staff. He was very sorry to hear these things said about Judges; and he thought it was a little hard that Judges who had no opportunity of defending themselves, and who, as they did not know beforehand what cases would be criticised, could not supply him with material for their defence, should be subjected to this criticism. Mr. Justice Meredith was a man of the highest character.
MR. O'SHEEdenied that he had attacked the learned Judge.
MR. MEAGHERsaid he also wished to say that he did not attack the Judge in question.
MR. BRYCEsaid he was glad to have elicited from every Member who had spoken a disclaimer of anything but respect for Mr. Justice Meredith. As to the assessors, they were entirely outside the control of the Irish Government. They were appointed by the Judicial Commissioners with the consent of the Lord-Lieutenant, but the latter had no power to remove them. The Commissioners, however, had power to revise the list, and their revision also required the assent of the Lord-Lieutenant, and he could and would, if a new list was presented to him, scrutinise the names. Several Members had asked whether it was proper that rents should be raised on tenants' improvements. They ought not to be raised on tenants' improvements. Nothing was clearer than the intention of Parliament as to the assumption that improvements were made by the tenant; and, if he was put to the proof, sometimes difficult, and had his rent raised on his improvements in consequence, he should like to alter a system which he believed to be unjust and would take any means that might be in his power for doing so. With regard to the criticisms passed on the slow working of the Land Commission, it should be borne in mind that, when the Act of 1903 came into operation, a number of questions arose for judicial interpretation. There were many questions coming before the Estates Commissioners raising difficulties which had to be settled by the Judicial Commissioners. These difficulties having been now largely adjusted, he had every reason to believe that the work would go on at a much more rapid rate. The delay in purchasing congested estates had arisen from a most unfortunate blunder in the Act of 1903. A clause was inserted by the House of Lords which had practically the effect of tying the hands of the Estates Commissioners. The result was that they had been barred altogether in many cases from making any purchase because the loss incurred would be so high. He did not know how this could be remedied without
816
legislation, but, if the Government were able to got legislation, this was one of the first things to be attended to. He could understand why the view was held that the land purchase prices were too high. The only answer he could make by way of explanation, if not of consolation, was that the tenant was more apt than before to pay prices which many would think to be exorbitant because the time for redemption was much longer, and he grasped at this relief. Complaint was made that not enough had been done for the evicted tenants. That was perfectly true. The provision regarding them was one of the most important of the Act of 1903, and it was the prospect of relief to these tenants that made hon. Members accept some things in the Act which they would not otherwise have accepted. He said this not for any purpose of recrimination. There was nobody on the Front Bench opposite at the moment to hoar recrimination.
MR. LONSDALEasked what the right hon. Gentleman meant by relief to the evicted tenants.
MR. BRYCEsaid he was coming to that. He was now endeavouring to explain why relief had been retarded. It was owing to two regulations made by the late Government. By the first it was hold that the evicted tenants could only be reinstated by operations in connection with the estate from which they had been evicted; and by the second it was held that the Estates Commissioners could not buy untenanted land apart from the purchase of tenanted estates. This prevented the Commissioners from getting hold of land on which to put the tenants who could not be restored to land from which they had been evicted. The present Government cancelled these regulations altogether, and set free the hands of the Estates Commissioners. When so many criticisms were passed it was fair to remember that one of the first things the Government did was to endeavour to accelerate these operations. A further step taken was the provision of additional staff for the purpose of dealing with the evicted tenants and allowing the process of restoration to go on. He heartily sympathised with the view that the acceleration of the land purchase

817
scheme was perhaps the most important thing to which the efforts of the Irish Government should be directed—;next, of course, to the reorganisation altogether of the Government of Ireland. The Irish Government could not do much, but it had already done something. There were two particular objects to be kept in view by the Estates Commissioners—;the restoration of the evicted tenants and the creation of small arable tenancies. The existence of evicted tenants had been one of the very greatest evils in Ireland. According to figures which he had recently seen, the number of tenants evicted between 1849 and 1882 exceeded 2,000,000. There had been no case of human suffering and hardship within memory which ought more to touch the heart than the case of the evicted tenants, Remembering the way in which these people were turned out of their homes after the famine, many of them loft to starve, and many obliged to beg their way round the country until they could get off to America, he was astonished that past generations should have been able to look on with so much composure. That was why they were bound to do all that they could for those evicted tenants who remained. There was nothing which would conduce more to the social peace and order of Ireland than the restoration of the evicted tenants, who had been centres of discontent and of a sense of injustice wherever they had gone. He hoped that under the new arrangements the Estate Commissioners would be able to see an end to this question within a very few years. [NATIONALIST cries of "Months."] He did not wish to be too sanguine, but at any rate within the life of the present Parliament. [Cries of "Oh."] The other object to which he hoped the Estates Commissioners would specially direct their attention was the creation of small arable farms. Much had been said about the desirability of cutting up the large grazing farms—;many of them of rich soil—;and of setting people to till the land in places where it was formerly tilled and supported an industrial population. It was true that in the past many of the holdings were too small and were
818
uneconomic. He did not desire to restore the condition of things existing before the famine. The attempt must be to settle people in tenancies large enough to enable them to live in decency and comfort according to the higher standards of the present day. But in some cases the soil was so rich that, with additional facilities for reaching market, the position of a tenant with twenty or forty acres would be incomparably better than, and he would belong to a different social class from, the same tenant in the days before the famine. There used to be an economic school that considered that because the tendency had been to substitute grazing for arable farms, that tendency ought not to be interfered with. He did not believe that that was true, even on economic grounds. Taking into account the stimulus to industry and thrift, which was given by the possession not only of land, but of a holding on which it was possible to live in comfort and decency, it was possible to get far better results than were obtained by the present system of grazing farms. The change would be very greatly for the benfit of the country as a whole. It was a dismal thing for a country to see itself steadily depopulate d not only by eviction, but by the turning of arable into grazing farms. In thirty years much more than a million acres bad passed from arable to grazing. That process he wished to stop, and nothing would be more in the interest of Ireland than that these rich lands in the west should be settled with people holding farms of twenty or forty acres. The stoppage of emigration and the encouragement of the people were political objects of the highest possible moment; and he pledged the Government to do all they could to make the people of Ireland owners of their own land, to reduce the sufferings of those who had hitherto suffered from having uneconomically small holdings, and to replace in Ireland—;or rather to place in Ireland for the first time—;a prosperous industrial population.
MR. DILLONsaid that it was not an agreeable task to find fault

819
with the right hon. Gentleman so early; but the Irish members would not be doing their duty if they did not let him know the feelings of the people with respect to certain administrative acts in Ireland. He must express his own great satisfaction at some of the announcements which the right hon. Gentleman had made. But when the Chief Secretary spoke of years being occupied in the settlement of the evicted tenants' difficulty he did much to dash the pleasurable hopes which the other part of his announcement had created. The Irish Members were convinced that the whole business could be completed within one year, and the bulk of the tenants could be reinstated within six months.
MR. BRYCE: I said that, having heard of the difficulties sometimes experienced in getting the particular piece of land the tenant desired, I did not want to raise false hopes. If it can be done within the year, so much the bettor.
MR. DILLONwas quite content if the right hon. Gentleman would throw himself into that work, as he knew he would, in the spirit of the speech he had just made. There was one other announcement which the right hon. Gentleman had made which was extremely gratifying and that was that a sub-commissioner had been appointed specially to take charge of the estates which were to be purchased for division amongst small farmers. He would now turn to some points in regard to which they had to find fault with the administration. The reappointment of the temporary Assistant Commissioners could not be regarded as satisfactory. The hon. Member for Waterford did not contend that Civil Servants should change with a change of Government. These men were in no sense permanent Civil Servants. They were men appointed temporarily for a specific job, and were allowed to retain their ordinary moans of living. The Commission set up for fixing rents was no ordinary Com-
820
mission. The Commissioners had to deal with the means of existence of a whole people. They had to adjudicate between an aristocratic landowning class, who for generations had maintained a hold upon the government of Ireland, and a poor, persecuted, and impoverished tenantry. In that conflict, which was one of life and death, all the advantages lay with the landowning class. They had all the social influences that wealth could secure, they had the best legal advice, and even if the tribunal was a fair one all the advantages lay with the landowning classes. But what had been the history of that tribunal? For the first five years after it was instituted whilst the Government of Mr. Gladstone remained in office an unsuccessful attempt was made to hold the scales evenly. In the year 1886 the Liberal Government disappeared from power, and practically speaking, for an unbroken period of twenty years the whole control of Irish government passed into the hands of the Tory Party and the landlord class. Without the smallest pretext, and without endeavouring to maintain a shred of decency, that Commission had been packed against the tenants in the most barefaced way. Every one of these sub-Commissioners had been the nominee of a landlord or some agent of the Tory Party. In many cases they had been bailiffs or hangers-on to one of the great houses in Ireland, and came with letters of recommendation from the Duke of Abercorn or the Duke of Devonshire. How could these men be impartial to the tenants? It was said that the fixing of rents had ceased to be a subject of importance. That was not correct, for as long as purchase was in process the fixing of rents became more important than over. In the past, rents were fixed for fifteen years, but now the rent of the tenant fixed the price of his holding. There had also been a serious increase in the price of laud in Ireland. It was unnatural, forced, and based on no improvement in the profits of farming. Within one year the price of land had risen from a

821
general average of eighteen years purchase of all rents, paid in depreciated land stock at about £90, to twenty-three-and-a-half years paid in cash, with a bonus of 12 per cent, added. This rise was purely artificial and was due to three causes, all dangerous to the stability of land purchase—;(1) the operation of the zones abolishing inspection; (2) the extension of the term for redemption; and (3) the temptation offered to the landlords to put on pressure by proceeding; for arrears of rent and then calling on the tenants to sign an agreement for an excessive price. Why did that temptation arise under the new system? Because under the old system of the Ashbourne Acts there was a Government inspection, and the landlord had no temptation to squeeze out of the tenant a higher price. This system of pressing the tenant by suing for arrears had become a danger not only to the future prosperity of the tenant but also to the security of the State. The process of fixing fair rents was more important than ever, and therefore it was that they felt deeply aggrieved that the right hon. Gentleman did not take advantage of the opportunity he had the other day of making a substantial step towards giving an impartial tribunal in Ireland, which would command the confidence of all classes. In analysing the composition of the body reappointed by the right hon. Gentleman as temporary Commissioners for the fixing of rents the first test to apply was the religious test. The population in Ireland connected with agriculture was composed in the proportion of six to one of Roman Catholics, whereas the land-owning class were in the proportion of five to one of Protestants. The tenant and labouring classes were ten to one Roman Catholic; so that if the Commissioners had been selected impartially the proportion should have been six or four Roman Catholics to one Protestant. But the Commissioners had been selected because they could be relied on as being the friends of one class. Twenty-two sub-
822
Commissioners were reappointed by the right hon. Gentleman, and if they had been selected impartially there should have been six Roman Catholics to one Protestant. But there were, as a matter of fact, seventeen Protestants to five Roman Catholics, and those Roman Catholics were either land agents or landlords. The assessors, who sat in the Court of Appeal and reversed the decisions of two sub-Commissioners, were the crême de la crême of partisans. There were nine assessors, of whom six were Protestants and three were Catholics. The three Catholics were respectively a grazier, a landlord and barrister, and a land agent. This was what the right hon. Gentleman called impartiality. In Ireland the permanent officials—;the Civil Servants of the Crown—;were almost to a man Tories. During the past twenty years the Tory Government had staffed the public service with partisans of their own. Tories were not so tender in their consciences as Liberals; that was one of the troubles of his life. He had passed through many vicissitudes of Tory and Liberal Governments, and he had always found that a Liberal Government suffered from what was called—;he did not use the term in any invidious sense—;the nonconformist conscience. Tories were never troubled with "nonconformist conscience." They acted on business principles. The right hon. Gentleman had given an explanation of why he could not interfere with the assessors. They were an important body of men set up by the Act of 1903, to make the whole system steel clad. These partisans, sitting with the Judicial Commissioner in appeal cases, could reverse the judgments of two skilled sub-Commissioners. Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald admitted before a Royal Commission that he knew nothing at all about the value of land. The whole of this business was a humbug and a fraud. The appointment of Judge Meredith straight from being the standing counsel of the landlords to be the head of the Laud Commission was a glaring and gross scandal. There was no greater partisan

823
than Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald. He had packed his Court and arrogated to himself a power for which he believed there was no legal sanction, and he harried and worried the sub-Commissioners until they did his will. They were justified in looking to the Government, from whom they certainly did expect some consideration for Irish ideas and for their poor people, who had groaned for years, almost for generations, under the worst form of government, the government of the ascendency class, and in hoping that the right hon. Gentleman would show strength and courage and not allow his conscience to have such domination over him. Twelve thousand appeals were pending. God knew when they would be heard. The average time in which they could get an appeal heard was four years. But sometimes they were expedited. The case of the Marquess of Downshire was an instance in point. He was trying to screw up the poor part of his estate to twenty-three and a half years' purchase. The tenants were refusing to pay. They had gone into the Land Court in 1902 and had got very substantial reductions. Down came the Appeal Court, last month, and one of the assessors, accompanied by Mr. Meredith. They went over the rents which had been settled four years ago, and obliged the Marquess of Downshire by raising eleven of the rents, confirming three, and reducing none. They would not get the Irish people to believe that that was conscience or fair play. He assured the Chief Secretary that there was bitter disappointment and anger in Ireland over this proceeding, and they hoped and trusted it would not be repeated in the future.
MR. BARRIEsaid the speech of the hon. Member for East Mayo gave the Committee an insight into the ways and manners of the United Irish League. A highly judicial department had been characterised as "a fraud" by one of the leaders of the Nationalist Party. The Chief Secretary had a most difficult
824
duty to discharge when so many conflicting interests were arrayed against him. He congratulated the right hon. Gentleman on his speech in which he had got over the difficult and delicate points with great diplomacy. He congratulated him also on the promise he had given with respect to expediting the examination of titles. The trouble arising in that connection had been the cause of much of the congestion of which they had been complaining. He hoped the result of the arrangements which had been promised would be to expedite substantially the work of land purchase. The Act of 1903 had been one of the most beneficial ever placed on the statute book. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: For the landlords.] He represented an agricultural constituency, and it was not difficult to see a marked improvement in the prosperity of the farming industry as the result of the security of tenure which was now enjoyed by many of the tenant farmers. It was because he was anxious to see the number of tenant proprietors steadily increased that he rejoiced in the announcement made by the Chief Secretary to-night. The hon. Member for South Tyrone had criticised the work of the Land Commissioners. He could assure the Committee that in the opinion of his constituents they performed their onerous and highly judicial duties in a careful and satisfactory manner.
And, it being Eleven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

EDUCATION OF DIRECTIVE CHILDREN (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Read a second time, and committed for Monday next.
Adjourned at five minutes after Eleven o'clock.

Preamble
Several Lords took the Oath.
The Earl of Morley sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Bute (English and Welsh) Estates Bill [H.L.].—;Judges' Report received; Bill presented, and read 1a.
Portsmouth Water Bill [H.L.].—;Report from the Committee of Selection, That the Earl of Morley be proposed to the House as a member of the Select Committee on the said Bills in the place of the Lord Ravensworth; read and agreed to.
Epsom and Ewell Gas Bill. Read 2a, and committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
Dowlais Gas Bill; Merthyr Tydfil Gas Bill. Read 2a, and committed.
Manchester Churches Bill [H.L]; Alexandra (Newport and South Wales) Docks and Railway Bill [H.L.]; Mullingar, Kells, and Drogheda Railway Bill [H.L.]; Folkestone and District Electricity Supply Bill [H.L.]; Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Staffordshire Electric Power Bill [H.L.] Kent Electric Power Bill [H.L.]; Folkestone, Sandgate and Hythe Tramways (No. 1) Bill [H.L.]; Folkestone, Sandgate, and Hythe Tramways (No. 2.) Bill [H.L.].—;Report from the Committee of Selection, That the following Lords be proposed to the House to form the Select Committee for the consideration of the said Bills, viz:—;D. Wellington, E. Mayo, V. Falmouth, L. Suffield, L. Brougham and Vaux (Chairman); agreed to; and the said Lords appointed accordingly. The Committee to meet on Thursday next at Eleven o'clock; and all petitions referred to the Committee, with leave to the petitioners praying to be heard by counsel against the Bills to be heard as desired, as also counsel for the Bills.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [H.L.]. (NO. 62).—;A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the
670
Board of Trade under the Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Charing Gas, Chichester Gas, Corsham Gas, Farnham Gas, and Kings Lynn Gas.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 2) Bill [H.L.]. (NO. 63).—;A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Newport Pagnell Gas, Pontardulais Gas, Raunds Gas, Redditch Gas, and Saint Austell Gas.
Gas and Water Orders Confirmation Bill [H.L.]. (No. 64).—;A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Bolsovor and District Water, Great Grimsby Gas, Great Grimsby Water. Hoylake and West Kirby Water, Wath-upon-Dearne and District Gas, and Wollaston Gas.
Water Orders Confirmation Bill [H.L.]. (No. 65).—;A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Gas and Water Works Facilities Act, 1870, relating to Herne Bay Water, Maidstone Water, Mid-Kent Water, Rickmansworth and Uxbridge Valley Water, Sleaford and District Water and Slough Water.
Tramways Orders Confirmation Bill [H.L.]. (NO. 66).—;A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Tramways Act, 1870, relating to Altrincham Urban District Council Tramways, Dewsbury Corporation Tramways, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Corporation Tramways, Ossett Corporation Tramways, Portobello and Mussel-burgh Tramways (Port Seaton Extension), and Rochdale Corporation Tramways.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 3.) Bill [H.L.]. (No. 67).—;A Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Electric Lighting Acts 1882 and 1888, the Electric Lighting (Scotland) Act, 1890, and the Electric Lighting (Scotland) Act, 1902, relating to Bellshill, Blantyre, Bothwell, Dumfermline and District, Dunoon, Fochabers, Inveresk, Shettleston, and Pollcross and Uddingston: And
Electric Lighting Provisional Order (No. 4.) Bill [H.L.]. (No. 68.)—;A Bill to

671
confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under the Electric Lighting Acts 1882 and 1888, relating to Aylesbury, Boston, Castleward, Weetslade, and Cramlington, Godalming (Extension), Gomersal, Henley-on-Thames, Pinner, Stanmore, Harrow, Weald, and Edgware, Ryton, Swanage, Wantage and District.—;Were presented by the Lord Granard (E. Granard); read 1a; to be printed, and referred to the Examiners.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  TRADE REPORTS: ANNUAL SERIES.
  No. 3571. China (Ichang); No. 3572. Switzerland.
  CONGESTED DISTRICT (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1897.
  Eighth Annual Report of the Congested Districts (Scotland) Board to the Secretary for Scotland.

  JUDICIAL STATISTICS (ENGLAND AND WALES) 1904 (PART II. CIVIL JUDICIAL STATISTICS).
  Statistics relating to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the House of Lords, the Supreme Court of Judicature, County Courts and other Civil Courts, edited by Sir John Macdonnell, C.B., LL.D., a Master of the Supreme Court.
  Presented (by Command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION (IRELAND).
  Rules and Programme of Examinations for 1907.

  GAS COMPANIES (METROPOLIS).
  Accounts of the Metropolitan Gas Companies for the year 1905.
  Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.

  EDUCATION.
  Petitions in favour of the maintenance of existing religious teaching in Church of England schools of St. Annes, Clifton—;and Radcliffe, St. Andrews; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

  JURORS.
  Petition in favour of payment of jurors attending Quarter Sessions; of Justices of
  672
  the Peace for Essex; read, and ordered to lie on the Table.

  PUBLIC HEALTH ACTS (BUILDING BYE-LAWS) BILL [H.L.]
  Amendments reported (according to order), and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.

  SEED POTATOES SUPPLY (IRELAND) BILL.
  House in Committee (according to Order).
  (The EARL of ONSLOW in the Chair.)
  Clause 1 agreed to.
  Clause 2:
  LORD DENMANexplained that the Amendment standing in his name to this clause was necessitated by the Bill becoming law at a later date than was originally contemplated. He begged to move.
  Amendment moved—;
  "In Clause 2, page 2, line 40, after ('seven') to insert ('Provided that where the first ordinary poor rate made during the year 1906 was made before the passing of this Act, and the first special rate was not made therewith, then the amount of the instalment payable by any purchaser which would have been leviable by that rate shall be added to the amount of the second instalment payable by him, and the total amount of both instalments shall be levied by the special rate made at the same time as the first ordinary poor rate made during the year 1907.'"—;(Lord Denman.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
  Clause 3, agreed to.
  Clause 4:
  LORD DENMANsaid his Amendment to this clause was little more than a drafting one.
  Amendment moved—;
  "In Clause 4, page 3, line 16, after ('union') to insert ('and any rate made before the passing of this Act which would have been valid if this Act had previously passed.'"—;(Lord Denman.)
  On Question, Amendment agreed to.
  Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
  Remaining clauses agreed to; and Bill reported with Amendments to the House.
  Moved, that the Standing Committee be negatived.—;(Lord Denman.)
  LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEobjected to the proposal to negative the Standing Committee stage. He knew that there were several Members of their Lordships' House anxious to move important Amendments, and he thought the course which the noble Lord in charge of the Bill asked the House to take was a very unusual one. The sending of the Bill to the Standing Committee would cause but a trifling delay.
  LORD DENMANdid not think the course he proposed was at all unusual. The Standing Committee stage was frequently negatived in the case of Departmental Bills. The question was one of considerable urgency, because county councils in Ireland were fixing the rate mentioned in the Bill, and it was obviously necessary that they should do so under the law of the country, and that their action should be legalised as soon as possible. He hoped his noble friend on the Cross Benches would see his way to withdraw his objection to the Motion.
  LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEregretted that he could not comply with the request of his noble friend. Several noble Lords who were anxious to move Amendments expected to have the opportunity of doing so in the Standing Committee. The reference of the Bill to the Standing Committee would only mean a delay of five days.
  THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (The Marquess of RIPON): My Lords, I hope the House will agree to the Motion which has been submitted by the noble Lord in charge of this Bill. As my noble friend explained on the occasion of the Second Reading, the Bill is to correct errors which have arisen in consequence of the Bill of the late Government not having passed into law through want of time. The object of the Bill is to legalise certain proceedings which have been taken, and which, without the Bill, would not be legal. It is, therefore, a measure of really urgent
  674
  importance, and I trust your Lordships will agree to the Motion to negative the Standing Committee.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, I have no doubt the Bill is a desirable one, and I do not think we on this side of the House have any intention whatever of obstructing its progress. On the other hand, it must be evident to any one who will read it through that it deals with some very technical points, and the noble Lord who sits on the Cross Benches tells your Lordships that he and some of his friends desire that these points should be further examined in Committee. If my noble friend is right in saying that a delay of five days is all that would be involved by the Bill going, in the ordinary course, to the Standing Committee, I must say it seems to me only reasonable that the course which he recommends should be adopted by your Lordships.
  THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (The Earl of CREWE): I confess that we on this side of the House are somewhat disappointed at the action taken by the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition. The measure as it stands received the warm approval in another place of Mr. Walter Long, who is thoroughly acquainted with all the facts of the case. In these circumstances I do venture to make one more appeal to the noble Marquess and the Party opposite not to press their opposition to the Motion.
  LORD ASHBOURNEsaid there was not the slightest desire on the part of noble Lords on the Opposition side of the House to cause obstruction. The facts, broadly speaking, had been accurately stated. To the Bill itself there was no opposition, but he gathered from what he had heard that there was a desire to discuss Clause 3. This particular clause had been discussed in the House of Commons, and there was a difference of opinion upon it. Having regard to what had passed, he did not think it unreasonable that there should be some discussion and some ventilation of opinion upon it in their Lordships' House if desired.
  THE MARQUESS OF RIPON: My Lords, I can only speak again by your Lordships' favour, but if you will allow

  675
  me to do so I would point out that the Bill can be amended without going to the Standing Committee. It can be amended on Report or on Third Reading, Why, therefore, a Bill of this urgency should be delayed by being referred to the Standing Committee I cannot see.
  LORD ASHBOURNEagreed as to the power of the House to make Amendments at either of the stages named by the noble Marquess the Lord Privy Seal. He assumed that his noble friend on the Cross Benches only desired that full opportunity should be given for discussing such Amendments as he and his friends might put down. Having regard to the history of the Bill, that was only reasonable. Perhaps the noble Marquess would inform the House the day on which it was proposed to take the next stage.
  THE MARQUESS OF RIPON: The Bill could be put down for Report tomorrow and for Third Reading on Monday, when Amendments could be discussed. The point is a small one and hardly worth disputing about. But it is not reasonable to ask that the Bill should be sent to the Standing Committee.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: If the noble Marquess the Leader of the House will tell us that in his opinion the immediate passage of this Bill is so urgent that the trifling delay for which my noble friend asks would create serious inconvenience, then I would advise my noble friend to accept the proposal of the noble Marquess and bring forward his Amendments, if he has any, at a future stage.
  THE MARQUESS OF RIPON: I am informed that that is the case.
  LORD ORANMORE and BROWNEsaid that, in the circumstances, he would withdraw his opposition.
  On Question, Standing Committee negatived.
  The Report of Amendments to be received to-morrow; and Bill to be printed as amended. [No. 69.]

  RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.
  THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYrose to put the following-Questions standing in his name on the Paper: viz.: "To ask the Lord President of the Council whether a Return can be furnished showing (1) the regulations or syllabus of religious instruction put forth by each local authority in England and Wales for the use of its-council schools; (2) the date when each was settled; (3) the extent to which individual council schools are, or are not free in each area to depart from the regulations or syllabus; (4) the extent, if any, to which individual council schools in the area do depart from such regulations or syllabus, or refrain from giving any religious instruction; (5) where an authority issues no regulations or syllabus, to state whether individual council schools nevertheless give religious instruction, and on what syllabus; and (6) what arrangements the local authority makes for the inspection of the religious-instruction in the council schools."
  The most rev. Primate said: My Lords, I do not mean to detain your Lordships more than a moment, for the purport of my Questions will, I think, be obvious to any of your Lordships who have read them. At this moment, when discussions are rife upon educational questions both in Parliament and in the country, reference is constantly made to the syllabuses of religious education which are in use in the council schools of the country. Quotations are frequently made from these syllabuses, sometimes for the purpose of laudation, and sometimes for the purpose of criticism or condemnation. I have no kind of controversial object in asking these Questions. All that I desire is that when we speak upon this matter we shall speak upon a subject of which we have in our hands some certain information. I therefore venture to ask that the information which is tabulated on the Paper may be furnished to the House and to the country. What we desire, of course, is to know whether, when a syllabus is quoted, it is really a typical one or an exceptional one; and, further, whether the mere fact of a syllabus standing upon paper is all that really happens in a local area—;it is reported that there are instances in which that is the case—;or whether the syllabus prescribed is, as a matter of fact, followed in the schools

  677
  under the control of those who issue the syllabus. For that reason I ask in my last Question what arrangements the local authority makes for the inspection of religious instruction in the council schools. I ask for a Return with regard simply to council schools, but as regards the denominational schools of the country, so far as they are in connection with the Church of England, we have no kind of wish to do other than give all possible information which may be asked for; and should the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council think it desirable that any information should be furnished by any of the authorities of the Church of England with regard to the denominational schools under their control I need hardly say how gladly and freely we will furnish it. Ten years have elapsed since a similar Return was given of religious instruction in the then Board schools of the country, and during that period a great many administrative changes have taken place with regard to educational matters and the Return then made is now for many reasons somewhat out of date. On these grounds I trust that His Majesty's Government will see their way to grant the Return for which I ask.
  LORD ASHBOURNE: Before the noble Earl replies I would like to make one observation by way of suggestion to the most rev. Primate. I think the Return will be extremely valuable and useful, and will assist the discussions which will take place on the Education Bill; but it occurs to me that it would be a valuable addition if the Return could contain a list of the council schools where there are no regulations and no syllabus. The object of the Return is to give information in a handy form, and it would be convenient to know what councils have no regulations and no syllabus.
  THE EARL OF CREWE: My Lords, I can assure the most rev. Primate and the House that we have no desire whatever to place any obstacle at all in the way of his gaining the information he desires. On the contrary, we welcome his desire for further knowledge on the subject, and we most fully accept his statement that these Questions are put without any controversial object whatever. As those of your Lordships who are in the habit of studying the news-
  678
  papers are aware, there is not at this moment absolute agreement in the country as to the form which religious instruction ought to take in the elementary schools in England and Wales. That, at any rate, is not overstating the case; and it certainly is desirable tha those who hold different opinions on this subject should have the knowledge that they are arguing from the same data, and that their differences of opinion are not complicated by any further dispute as to what the facts of the case absolutely are; consequently we are very glad to help in supplying all the information possible. I have to point out, however, that in one or two respects it would not be easy, under the circumstances, to furnish the Return exactly in the form suggested by the most rev. Primate. Your Lordships will notice that in his Questions the most rev. Primate asks for information as to the extent, if any, to which individual council schools in the area do depart from such regulations or syllabus, or refrain from giving any religious instruction; and where an authority issues no regulations or syllabus, whether individual council schools nevertheless give religious instruction, and on what syllabus. I must point out to the most rev. Primate that if that information were to be obtained it would mean that every local authority, in any case where it had any doubt as to how far its syllabus was being practically used, would have to put the question to each individual school, and the time occupied in that process would, I am afraid, be so long—;it would be a matter of some months—;that by the time the information was received the purpose for which it was required might have passed by. I propose, therefore, if the most rev. Primate will agree, to modify the Motion, and to put it on the Paper for to-morrow in this form—;
  "To move for a Return showing in respect of each local education authority in England and Wales under Part III. of the Education Act, 1902—;

  1. The regulations or syllabus for religious instruction put forth for the use of its council schools, and the date on which they were issued.

  2. In the absence of such regulations or syllabus, any Resolution of the authority on the subject, and its date.

  3. Whether the authority leaves individual council schools free to depart from the regulations or syllabus."

  679
  Your Lordships will observe that that relieves the local authority from the necessity of applying to each separate school, and allows it to use the information which its education committee possesses.
  "4. Any information now in the possession of the local education authority as to the religious instruction, other than that under its own regulations or syllabus, given in individual council schools."
  On that I may deal with the point raised by the noble and learned Lord opposite. It will be quite easy, without altering the the form of the Motion, to make it clear, in issuing this Circular to the local authorities, that we wish, if they possess the information, to know in what schools no religious education at all is given; but we cannot go so far as to ask them to obtain the information by inquiry, for the reasons I have already stated to the House.
  "5. What arrangements the local authority makes for the inspection of religious instruction in its council schools."
  I now come to the observation which the most rev. Primate was good enough to make at the end of his speech. As your Lordships are aware, there are some 12,000 Church schools in the country, and I certainly think it would be desirable to lay before Parliament at the same time a statement of what may be called the typical religious instruction given in Church schools under the regulations of the different diocesan boards. I propose, therefore, to ask those who are able to supply the information to be so good as to furnish us with their different syllabuses, and when we receive them, as we have every reason to suppose we shall by the courtesy of the bodies concerned, I will lay them on the Table of the House in the form of a White Paper. It would take too long, and not be worth, I think, either the trouble or the cost, to attempt to obtain from every individual Church school a statement of what religious instruction it actually gives; but at the same time I think your Lordships will agree that it would be desirable, in addition to the information asked for by the most rev. Primate, to get some general idea of the course of religious instruction which may be considered to represent the type given in the Church schools of this country. Provided no opposition is offered to a Return in the terms I have read to your Lordships, I
  680
  propose to place a Motion for that Return on the Paper to-morrow.
  THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: With the indulgence of the House I should like to say that the Answer which the noble Earl has given seems to me perfectly satisfactory. If I understood him rightly, in the more compendious form in which he proposes to give the information asked in Questions 4 and 5, there will be included something which will show the case of schools in which no religious instruction is given, so far as that is within the knowledge of the local authority.
  THE EARL OF CREWE: That is so.
  THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: That perfectly satisfies me. I agree that expedition is of the the highest importance in this matter, and that anything which causes unnecessary delay is to be deprecated. I would only add that when the noble Earl asks the ecclesiastical authorities of the Church of England for information it will be furnished with the utmost promptitude and care.

  CRIMINAL APPEAL.
  LORD ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I have on the Paper a Motion for a Return which I think will be interesting and useful in the discussion of the Criminal Appeal Bill which has been introduced by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. A great variety of Bills have been introduced dealing with this very important subject, and it would be a convenience if the information that I ask for were made readily available to those of your Lordships who may desire to take part in the discussion. In the Motion standing on the Paper I ask for a Return of all Criminal Appeal Bills introduced within the last fifty years, but it has been intimated to me that this would exclude an important Bill introduced in the year 1844. I would, therefore, with your Lordships' permission, ask for a Return of all Bills introduced since the year 1843.

  Moved, for a Return of all Criminal Appeal Bills introduced since the year 1843, showing—;

  Date of Introduction.

  How far it Proceeded.

  By whom Introduced.

  Whether it gave an Appeal on (a) Law; (b) Facts; (c) Sentence.

  Whether it permitted (a) a new trial to be ordered; (b) an increase of sentence.

  What Tribunal was to hear the Appeals.

  —;(Lord Ashbourne.)

  THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord LOREBURN): My Lords, His Majesty's Government have no objection to this Return. Personally, I think it will prove most useful when the Bill in question is discussed in Committee. There is, however, a verbal Amendment which I would suggest to my noble and learned friend. He does not want a Return of all Criminal Appeal Bills, but only of those allowing appeal in criminal cases tried on indictment. I would suggest that the Motion be amended to read—;
  "That there be laid before the House a Return of all Bills introduced since 1843, which proposed to allow an appeal in criminal cases tried on indictment, showing—;"
  LORD ASHBOURNE: I gladly accept the suggested Amendment of the noble and learned Lord and shall be pleased if he will put the Motion in that form.
  On Question, Motion, as amended, agreed to.
  House adjourned at Five o'clock, till To-morrow, half-past Ten o'clock.