Sitting of 10 July 1907

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

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Alton Military Hospital Bill [Lords].—Read a second time and committed.
Aberdeen Corporation Electricity Bill [Lords]. —Reported, with Amendments; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to: Ladybank Sewerage Drainage and Water Provisional Order Bill; Clyde Navigation Order Confirmation Bill, without Amendment; Leeds Corporation Bill, with Amendments.
Amendments to: —Southport Birkdale and West Lancashire Water Board Bill [Lords]. —Without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill intituled, "An Act to confirm a Provisional Order under The Private Legislation Procedure Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Portobello and Musselburgh Tramways (Levenhall Extension)." [Portobello and Musselburgh Tramways (Levenhall Extension) Order Confirmation Bill [Lords.]
Killery's Divorce Bill [Lords]. —That they communicate Minutes of Evidence and Proceedings taken upon the Second Reading of Killery's Divorce Bill [Lords], as desired by this House, with a request that the same may be returned.
Portobello and Musselburgh Tramways (Levenhall Extension) Order Confirmation Bill [Lords]. —Read the first time; and ordered, under Section 9 of The Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland)
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Act, 1899, to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 274.]

PETITIONS.
  MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER BILL.
  Petition from West Ilsley, against; to lie upon the Table.
  PAUPER LUNATICS (COST OF MAINTENANCE.
  Petition from Leeds, for legislation; to lie upon the Table.
  SMALL LANDHOLDERS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  Petition from Stirling, in favour; to lie upon the Table.
RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising the Wolverhampton and Cannock Chase Railway Company to construct and work their authorised Railways as a Light Railway under The Light Railways Act, 1896, and for other purposes (Wolverhampton and Cannock Chase Railway (Light Railway Order 1907) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and confirmed by the Board of Trade, reviving the powers granted and extending the periods limited by the Central Essex Light Railway Orders, 1901 to 1905, for the compulsory purchase of lands and extending the periods limited by those Orders for the completion of the railways and works thereby authorised (Central Essex Light Railway (Extension of Time)

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  Order, 907) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
  Copy presented, of Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and confirmed by the Board of Trade, amending the East Sussex Light Railway Orders, 1901 and 1905 (East Sussex Light Railway (Extension of Time and Amendment) Order, 1907) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES' ACCOUNTS (DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE).
  Copy presented, of Report of Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into the Accounts of Local Authorities. Vol. I. Report. Vol. II. Minutes of Evidence, with Digest and Index [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  SUPERANNUATIONS.
  Copy presented, of Treasury Minute, dated 5th July, 1907, declaring that for the due and efficient discharge of the duties of the office of Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, professional or other peculiar qualifications not ordinarily to be acquired on the Public Service are required [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
  TREATY SERIES (NO. 16, 1907).
  Copy presented, of Convention between the United Kingdom and Belgium, supplementing Article XIV. of the Treaty of Extradition of 29th October, 1901. Signed at London, 5th March, 1907. Ratifications exchanged at London, 17th April, 1907 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  TREATY SERIES (NO. 17, 1907).
  Copy presented, of Agreement between the United Kingdom and the Republic, of Costa Rica for the Exchange of Postal Money Orders. Signed at San Josè de Costa Rica, 26th April, 1907 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  TRADE REPORTS (MISCELLANEOUS SERIES).
  Copy presented, of Diplomatic and Consular Report, Miscellaneous Series,
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  No. 662 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.

  COLONIAL REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
  Copy presented, of Colonial Report, No. 527 (Ceylon, Annual Report for 1906) [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  PAPER LAID UPON THE TABLE BY THE CLERK OF THE HOUSE.
  Royal University of Ireland. Copy of Account of Receipts and Expenditure of the Royal University of Ireland for the year ended 31st March, 1907, together with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General thereon [by Act]; to be printed. [No. 247.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CIRCULATED WITH THE VOTES.

  Annual Income of Public Charities exempted from Income-Tax.
  Mr. R. PEARCE: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether the £10,000,000 of annual income of public charities in the legal sense exempted from income or property tax for the financial years ending March, 1905 and 1906, includes hospitals and friendly societies; and, if so, whether he can state the amount of such income for those years, excluding hospitals and friendly societies.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith.) The£10,000,000 does include the income of hospitals and friendly societies, so far as such income would, if not specially exempted, be assessable to the tax, but the amount of such income cannot be separated from the total.

  Imports of Cocoa.
  MR. CATHCART WASON: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the amount of cocoa imported into this country from St. Thomé or from the Portuguese territory of Angola, from the West Indies, and from elsewhere.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith.)

  Statement showing the Quantity of Cocoa imported into the United Kingdom from the following Countries and Possessions in the year 1906.together with the Quantities consigned there from in the same period.

  Countries whence

  Imported.

  Consigned.

  Lbs.

  Lbs.

  Portugal

  12,964,369

  5,862,164

  Portuguese West Africa

  —

  6,658,042

  British West India Islands

  13,560,501

  15,158,713

  Other Countries, viz.:—

  Germany

  3,702,774

  1,639,647

  Netherlands

  1,137,748

  323,045

  France

  4,695,128

  1,430,512

  Ecuador

  2,812,457

  5,901,142

  Brazil

  4,179,002

  4,650,414

  British West Africa

  2,112,352

  2,135,827

  Ceylon and dependencies

  4,455,901

  4,468,104

  Other Countries and possessions

  2,050,089

  3,442,711

  Total

  51,670,321

  51,670,321

  Allocation of Fines in Cases under the Irish Education Act, 1892.
  COLONEL MCCALMONT: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether any alteration has recently been made in regard to the allocation of fines imposed in cases under The Irish Education Act, 1892; whether they are now payable to the Crown instead of the local authority; and whether he will consider the advisability of adopting the proceeding of Section 3 (5) of the Education Act of 1902.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The question involved in this matter is one of law. My right hon. friend the Attorney-General for Ireland has instituted proceedings in the High Court with the object of obtaining an authoritative decision upon the construction of the statutes
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  regulating the application of the fines referred to. The arguments cannot take place before next sittings.

  Rate Collector's Office on Licensed Premises.
  COLONEL MCCALMONT: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether In; is aware that Patrick Hughes, a rate collector in Dundalk, who recently out the halyards of and threw the British flag into the sea, has his office in a public-house; and whether this is in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Local Government Board.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Local Government Board are not aware that Mr. Patrick Hughes, rate collector, has his office in a public-house, but will make inquiries in the matter. It is contrary

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  to law for a rate collector to have his office as such in a public-house.

  Evicted Tenants —Case of John Normoyle.
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can say whether the Estates Commissioners have received an application from John Normoyle, of Adare, in the county of Limerick, labourer, and son of an evicted tenant, for a parcel of the untenanted land in the district when purchased by them; and, if so, whether it will receive their favourable consideration.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Estates Commissioners have recently received John Normoyle's application, and will consider it in due course.

  Evicted Tenants —Case of Mrs. Lena O'Carroll, of Tralee.
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he can say whether the Estates Commissioners have received an application for reinstatement or an equivalent holding from Mrs. Lena O'Carroll, of Tralee, in the county of Kerry, daughter of Jeremiah Hayes, -deceased, of Listowel, evicted tenant on the estate of Lord Listowel; whether Jeremiah Hayes sent in an application form; and, if so, whether it will receive their favourable consideration.
  (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The Estates Commissioners have received Mrs. O'Carroll's application, which appears to be in similar terms to that lodged by her deceased father. The case will be dealt with by the inspector who is at present engaged on the estate of Lord Listowel.

  British Indians in Rhodesia
  SIR WILLIAM BULL: To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the proceedings in the Legislative Council of Rhodesia, which threaten the imposition upon the British Indians of that Colony of disabilities similar to those of the Transvaal under the Asiatic Law Amendment Act; and whether he proposes to take any action in the matter.
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  (Answered by Mr. Churchill.) During the recent session of the Legislative Council of Southern Rhodesia one of the elected members moved a resolution asking the Government of the territory to legislate so as to protect the territory from an influx of undesirable Asiatic immigrants, and a promise was given that the subject would be dealt with next session, which will not be held till about this time next year. The Secretary of State has not yet received any proposals from the Administration of Southern Rhodesia, but will inquire further into the matter.

  Barristers practising in Egyptian Courts-Council of Discipline.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that the council of discipline, which tries barristers practising in the native Courts of Egypt, is at present wholly composed of judges and the Procureur-General in his quality of magistrate; and whether he will advise the Egyptian Government, to secure for the Bar adequate representation upon such council.
  (Answered by Secretary Sir Edward Grey.) The question is one of administrative detail which must be left to the Egyptian Government.

  Egyptian Legal Practice —Gratuitous Defence of Prisoners.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that members of the Bar practising before the native Courts in Egypt are compelled to defend prisoners gratuitously; whether, upon failure to appear for the defence after selection by the Court, a fine of £50 may be inflicted upon them; and whether he will advise the Egyptian Government to alter the system.
  (Answered by Secretary Sir Edward Grey.) I am not aware of the system which obtains in regard to this point; but I do not see that I can advantageously interfere in a matter of this kind which concerns the Egyptian Government.

  Arrests of British Indians at Delagoa Bay.
  SIR WILLIAM BULL: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

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  whether his attention has been drawn to the ease of twenty-five British Indians who recently were arrested in Delagoa Bay by the Portuguese authorities, on a charge of being in possession of passes not their own, and were without trial sent off to work as prisoners on the Delagoa Bay Railway; whether he will ascertain if the British Consul at Lorenzo Marques took any steps on behalf of these British subjects; and whether he is aware that dissatisfaction exists by reason of the general conduct of the British consulate in respect of British Indians both residing in and passing through Portuguese territory.
  (Answered by Secretary Sir Edward Grey.) His Majesty's Government have no information that British Indians have recently been arrested at Delagoa Bay. A Report is being called for from His Majesty's Consul General at Lorenzo Marques in regard to the matter. With respect to the last portion of the hon. Member's Question, the answer is in the negative. I have had no reason to suppose that this is the case.

  Postmastership of Limerick.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General whether the postmastership of Limerick, with an annual salary of £480 a year attached to it, is now vacant, or is about to become vacant; whether he is aware that the postmastership of this city has not been held by an Irishman for several years past; and whether, before selecting the best qualified candidate for the future postmastership of this place, he will give some consideration to the claims of applicants in Ireland.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) The answer to each point of the 'Question is in the affirmative.

  The Postmastership of Castlerea
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General, with regard to the recent preferment of the salaried sub-postmaster of Ilkeston to the postmastership of Castlerea, whether he can state the date of the Civil Service certificate of the appointee in this instance and the salary and allowances attached to the Ilkeston office; whether Ilkeston is a Crown
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  office; if not, what is the amount of the grant in respect of house rent.
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General whether the lately vacant postmastership of Castlerea has recently been filled by the transfer of Mr. Cooper, lately salaried sub-postmaster of Ilkeston, Nottingham; whether he will state the annual emoluments received by Mr. Cooper at Ilkeston and the total length of his established service in the Post Office, the number of Irish Post Office officials who applied for the postmastership of Castlerea, and the annual emoluments and total length of established service of the senior recommended Irish candidate; and, seeing that all Post Office officials are paid by the public, will he explain, for their information, how he selects the best qualified candidate from amongst the applicants, who are necessarily serving in different parts of Great Britain and Ireland and under different superiors.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Buxton.) Mr. Cooper has declined the appointment of postmaster at Castlerea, and it has been conferred upon an Irish candidate. The manner in which the best qualified candidates are selected for postmaster-ships was recently explained in detail to the Select Committee on Post Office Servants. It is rather too complicated a matter, I fear, to explain fully in answer to a Question in this House.

  Post Office Savings Bank —Transfer of Irish Business to Dublin
  MR. FIELD: To ask the Postmaster-General whether, seeing that a number of Savings Bank clerks were asked by the Savings Bank authorities, cither privately or officially, some time before the present Government came into office, if they would serve in Dublin in case the Irish work was transferred from London to Dublin; that the percentages of Irish deposits and withdrawals made through British deposit books, and vice versa, as worked out by the Savings Bank, either privately or officially, show only 1 per cent. approximately on the totals; that,, apart from the inconvenience of Irish depositors, Ireland loses £30,000 per annum by having the Irish Savings Bank accounts kept in London; that 99

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  per cent. of the manufactured stuff used in the Post Office in Ireland is not manufactured in Ireland; that clerical work can be as efficiently and, having regard to the cost of housing accommodation, more economically performed in Dublin than in London; and that it would be more in conformity with Irish ideas if the Irish Savings Bank accounts were kept in Dublin, he will further consider the advisability of transferring the work of keeping these accounts from London to Dublin.
  (Answered by Mr. Sydney Burton.) I am afraid I have nothing to add to the various replies which I have given to my hon. friend's previous Questions upon this subject.

  Kingswood and Longton Charities Bills.
  MR. EVELYN CECIL:To ask the hon. Member for the Elland Division, as representing the Charity Commissioners, whether, in regard to the two Bills dealing with the Kingswood and Longton Charities now before Parliament, he can set out the original clauses for which the second schedules of the Bills have been substituted, or if he can state where these clauses are published.
  (Answered by Mr. Trevelyan.) The original clauses for which the second schedule of the Bill dealing with the Kingswood Charity, and the schedule of the Bill dealing with the Longton Charity, have been substituted are stated i n the Fifty-fourth Report of the Charity Commissioners, pages 17 and 19.

  Income-tax Exemptions
  MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the estimated amount of unearned income exempted from income-tax by reason of the system of abatements now in force for incomes of less than £700 per annum; and what is the total amount of income from all sources, earned or unearned, at present exempt from tax, distinguishing, if possible, between income exempted for the foregoing reason and income allowed for insurance or any other cause.
  (Answered by Mr. Asquith.) The answer to the first part of the Question is,
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  about £20,000,000 for 1907–8. "The total amount of income from all sources, earned or unearned, at present exempt from tax "includes all the income that is exempt from tax by reason of the income of the recipient not exceeding £160 per annum. What the aggregate of such income may be the Board of Inland Revenue have no means of judging. All that they can make the subject of an estimate is the income that comes under their observation in connection with the assessment of income-tax, and this includes only a small fraction of the aggregate income of persons having not more than £160 per annum. The total amount of income that thus comes under observation, and that for one reason or another is exempted from tax, may for the current year be taken at rather more than £300,000,000, of which about £120,000,000 will be exempted under the system of abatements. The distribution of the £300,000,000 is shown in detail in Table CLXXV., on page 196 of the Forty-ninth Report of the Board of Inland Revenue.

QUESTIONS IN THE HOUSE.

  Channel Fleet -Refit.
  MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty whether, in view of the reduction of the Channel fleet to fourteen battleships, and the declared intention of the Admiralty to avoid further reductions by replacing ships undergoing an extensive refit with ships from the Home fleet, he can now state what is the minimum duration of a refit sufficiently extensive to entail replacement.
  THE SECRETARY TO THE ADMIRALTY (MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON, Dundee)The time required for the completion of the necessary refit is not the only criterion. One most important factor is the time required to make the ship fit for sea in case of emergency. It is obvious, therefore, that no hard and fast rule can be laid down.

  Sheerness Bar.
  MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg. to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty

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  whether the bar at Sheerness is to be dredged to a depth sufficient to enable the "Dreadnought" to cross at all states of the tide.
  MR. EDMUND ROBERTSON: As a result of the dredging which is in contemplation, the depth over the bar will be sufficient to enable the "Dreadnought" to enter at half tide.

  Soldiers' Uniforms.
  MR. RENDALL:I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War what the difference in the cost to the State would be if the the soldiers of the Army and the Reserve Forces were provided only with clothes satisfying the necessities of physical warmth and comfort without regard, as at present, to considerations of adornment, colour, and advertisement.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (MR. HALDANE, Haddington): It would be very difficult to make a calculation on the lines suggested in the Question and the matter would not appear to be of sufficient importance to justify the considerable labour involved. I may point out that assuming that the suggestion wore adopted a very large saving would probably result owing to the paucity of recruits attracted by an unadorned uniform.

  Australian Meat for the Army.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMOND: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the investigations by the Army authorities into the Australian meat-packing establishments have been completed; and whether the result has tended to prove that the Australian meat is properly prepared in every way.
  MR. HALDANE: The Report of the officers sent to Australia to inspect the meat-packing establishments has not yet been received.

  Military Manœuvres in Scotland.
  MR. A. DEWAR: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether the recent military manœuvres in Scotland have been completed with advantage to the Army and without damage to the land where the operations were carried on; whether he
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  is now satisfied that there are large areas of land in Scotland peculiarly suitable for cavalry training; and whether he will consider the advisability of providing such barrack accommodation as will enable him to quarter one or more cavalry regiments in Scotland, including the Scots Greys.
  MR. HALDANE: The recent manœuvres in Scotland have, I think, proved a real success and have resulted in substantial advantage to the military training of the Army, and particularly of the Cavalry and Yeomanry. I believe that no substantial damage has been done to any part of the extensive areas which were generously and freely placed at the disposal of the military authorities by owners and occupiers alike. For manœuvres of this somewhat novel class it is clear that there are large areas available, not only in Scotland, but in other parts of the United Kingdom, provided that the same public spirit that prevails in Scotland is displayed and equally generous invitations are given. The question of providing barrack accommodation of course turns on great questions of cavalry policy which are now being worked out. In saying that the circumstances of the recent manœuvres have but little bearing on these, I do not desire to be understood as casting doubt on the desirability of providing the cavalry accommodation in Scotland at the proper time.
  *MR. McCRAE: Did not the right hon. Gentleman undertake to make provision for cavalry barracks in Scotland?
  MR. HALDANE: At the proper time.
  MR. YOUNGER: Having regard to the compliment which Mr. Haldane has paid to the Yeomanry, will he reconsider the question of reducing their pay?
  MR. HALDANEI think the hon. Member has not read the discussion which took place in another place. We have met the Yeomanry most satisfactorily.

  Simla Municipal Committee.
  MR. LAIDLAW:I beg to ask the Secretary of State for

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  India whether his attention has been called to the fact that, since October, 1905, the taxpayers of the Station Ward of Simla have been disfranchised, although, by the Punjab Municipal Act, they are entitled to have the election of three representatives on the Municipal Committee; and will he take steps to see that this body of ratepayers have their rights restored to them.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (Mr. Morley, Montrose Burghs): I have no knowledge of the facts in this matter; but I am advised that there is nothing in the Punjab Municipal Act to give the Station Ward of Simla a right to three representatives. I will make inquiry

  Port Stanley.
  MR. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the work of improving the sanitation of Port Stanley, in the Falk-lands, has been delayed owing to lack of funds; what is the estimated cost of an improved system; and whether, in view of the official Report that the sewerage of the town is a matter of grave urgency, and that the system as at present constituted is a potential centre of disease, His Majesty's Government will give such financial assistance as will secure the provision of an improved system.
  THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. CHURCHILL, Manchester, N.W.): The improvement of the sanitation of Port Stanley has been delayed, owing to the fact that no scheme has hitherto been put forward which appeared to be suitable, having regard to the size of the town and the financial position of the Colony. The Governor of the Falkland Islands, who has recently come on leave, has now submitted fresh proposals, which are at present under consideration and the initial cost of which he estimates at £1,355, to be followed by an annually recurrent expenditure of £631. It is hoped that measures may be decided upon before the Governor returns to the Colony, which will produce a great improvement in the condition of the town. The case does not appear to be one for the grant of financial assistance by the Imperial Government.

  Repatriation of Chinese from the Transvaal.
  SIR GILBERT PARKER:I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can now say how many Chinese labourers have applied this year to be repatriated under the proclamation of last year
  MR. CHURCHILL: The number of applications since the last shipment (which took place on 17th January) is 417

  Mr. Deakin's Colonial Preference Scheme.
  MR. HAROLD COX: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether His Majesty's Ministers have given any detailed consideration to the scheme of Colonial Preferences put forward by Mr. Deakin at the Colonial Conference; and whether that scheme has at any time been treated by His Majesty's Ministers as an offer from the Australian Commonwealth, in view of the fact that its author declared that no such scheme of preference as he had been foreshadowing or discussing had as yet been formulated in Australia.
  MR. CHURCHILL: The proposals of Mr. Deakin were fully considered by His Majesty's Ministers, as will be seen by their speeches reported in the proceedings of the Colonial Conference.
  MR. WILLIAM REDMONDasked whether it was not the case that Mr. Deakin received neither from his Government nor from the people of the Commonwealth any mandate to make any offer whatever.
  SIR. GILBERT PARKERasked whether it was not the case that Mr. Deakin did not put forward any detailed scheme concerning preference before the Conference, and that he merely wished to establish the principle which he advocated.
  MR. CHURCHILL: All the proceedings of the Conference are published in the verbatim Report in the Conference Blue book, and I do not think we ought to go behind anything that was said by anybody at the Conference

  Coolie Labour on the Panama Canal
  MR. STANLEY WILSON:I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies if Command Paper 3527 of this year, dealing with coolie labour upon the Panama Canal, sets out the entire contract binding the coolie and his employer
  MR. CHURCHILL: Yes, Sir, so far as I am aware. The contract referred to is of course applicable to labourers from Trinidad only

  Hague Conference and Naval Prizes
  MR. GRETTON:I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if, in view of the protracted delay in settling cases of the naval prizes which arose during the Russo-Japanese War, he will instruct our representatives at the Hague to bring the matter before the Peace Conference, with a view to arriving at some early decision.
  THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. RUNCIMAN, Dewsbury; for Sir Edward Grey):It is outside the scope of the Conference at present sitting at the Hague to investigate specific incidents that occurred during the Russo-Japanese War and act as a tribunal for dealing with them, but important questions of principle, to which these incidents gave rise, are engaging the attention of the Conference.

  Finger Impression Identification
  SIR WILLIAM BULL:I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has any official information showing that the finger impressions of two persons, one in custody at Bloemfontein and the other at Cape Town, have proved to be identical; and whether, in view of the importance to criminal justice of the efficiency of this method of fixing identity being carefully scrutinised, he proposes to take any action in the matter.
  THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. GLADSTONE, Leeds, W): It appears from the official report that there is no foundation for the statement that the finger impressions taken at Bloemfontein and Cape Town were these of different
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  persons. They are the finger impressions of one and the same person who figured under one name at Bloemfontein and under another at Cape Town. The incident is a testimonial to the efficiency of the finger print system of identification

  Mr. A A. Lynch.
  LORD R. CECILasked the Home Secretary whether it was true, as stated in the papers, that a free pardon had been granted to Lynch.[NATIONALIST cries of Lynch!"]
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Who is Lynch?
  LORD R. CECILalso asked whether the right hon. Gentleman would state the grounds on which the free pardon had been given.
  MR. GLADSTONE: The fact is as stated. If the noble Lord wants to ask me a further Question, perhaps he will put it on the Paper.

  Inflammable Substances
  MR. MORTON:I beg to ask the Secretary- of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the danger from fire caused by articles made of celluloid, zylonite, and other similar substances, which are highly inflammable when in proximity to artificial light: and whether he will consider the desirability of granting powers to local authorities with respect to the storage and sale of such articles.
  MR. GLADSTONE: This question has been under consideration for some time, and I have communicated with the London County Council on the subject of legislation.
  Mr. H. J. TENNANTasked if the right hon. Gentleman was considering the desirability of appointing a Committee of some kind to investigate the matter.
  MR. GLADSTONEreplied that that hardly arose out of the Question on the Paper.

  Care of the Feeble Minded
  MR. T. F. RICHARDS: I beg to ask the Secretary

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  of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the fact that the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the feeble-minded were extended two years after the appointment of the Commission, he will advise the widening of the terms of reference of the Royal Metropolitan Police Commission so that it may inquire into statements containing serious allegations against the police which have been submitted to it, but which could not be considered as they did not come within the scope of the terms of reference.
  MR. GLADSTONE: No, Sir. As I said in answer to a Question by the hon. Member for Deptford on 25th June, the terms of the reference to the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Police are fixed by statute and I have no power to alter them. The terms of reference to the Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded are not so fixed. Moreover, it is a matter of public importance that the Royal Commission on the Metropolitan Police should report speedily.

  Crianlarich Railway Station.
  SIR JOHN DEWAR: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that the trains of the Caledonian and the North British Railways are timed to leave Crianlarich station in a way to cause the greatest inconvenience and delay to the passengers by the rival line; and if he will make representations to the companies to induce them so to rearrange their time tables as to prevent the travelling public suffering the inconvenience resulting from the present arrangements.
  MR. RUNCIMAN (for Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE):The Board of Trade have communicated with both the railway companies concerned and are informed that every effort has been made to provide convenient connections at Crianlarich, but that in timing the trains consideration has had to be given to the requirements of the local traffic on the companies' respective lines and the necessity for maintaining train and steamboat connections at other places. My right hon. friend is sending copies of the companies' replies to my hon. friend. The Board of Trade propose to communicate further with the railway companies in the matter.

  The Consular Service.
  MR. HAROLD COX: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the services of British Consuls, stationed in foreign countries, are at the disposal of the Colonial subjects of His Majesty; and whether any offer has at any time been made by the Colonies to contribute to the cost of this consular service.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: The answer to the first part of the Question is in the affirmative, but my right hon. friend would remind the hon. Member that for many such services fees are levied in accordance with the provisions of an Order in Council. The answer to the second part of the Question is in the negative, but in some eases, where a particular Colony has had special interests, the Government of that Colony have offered to defray or share the cost of maintaining a Consulate.

  Horse Flesh for Human Food.
  MR. RENDALL: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he proposes to introduce legislation making the sale of horse flesh for human food legal in this country as on the continent, having regard to the proposals of the Colonial Conference that imported wheat and meat should be taxed on entering this country.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. JOHN BURNS, Battersea):My right hon. friend has asked me to reply to this Question. The sale of horse flesh for human food is legal in this country at the present time, provided that the requirements of the Sale of Horse Flesh, Etc., Regulation Act, 1889, are complied with.

  Tuberculous Pigs.
  MR. SILCOCK: I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been drawn to the losses which are being incurred by the farmers of this country owing to the number of carcase of tuberculous pigs which are being destroyed by order of the medical officers of health without any compensation being paid to the owners; whether he is aware that, in the majority of cases, there is no indication that a pig is suffering from

  1607
  tuberculosis until an examination of the carcase is made; and whether he is now prepared to bring in a Bill to provide that some compensation shall be given to farmers for the losses which they sustain when animals which have been apparently healthy are destroyed in the interests of the public health.
  *MR. JOHN BURNS:I am aware that carcases of tuberculous pigs are destroyed, and that this involves loss to the owners. I am also aware that in some cases the disease is not recognisable during the life of the animal, but this is not always so, and it must not be assumed that the cause of the disease is necessarily not preventable. I cannot promise to introduce a Bill for the purpose suggested.
  MR. FIELD: Is it not the fact that there is no proof the disease is communicable from animals to man?
  MR. JOHN BURNS: The obiter dictum of the hon. Member is, I think, in conflict with the deduction to be drawn from the Report of the Royal Commission

  Elementary School Accommodation.
  MR. MIDDLEMORE: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education whether the Board of Education are about to issue a circular to local education authorities requiring the recognised accommodation in all existing schools to be on the ten foot basis per child, and that the grants will for the future only be given on that basis; and, if so, under what section of what Act of Parliament the Board of Education propose to reduce the accommodation which they sanctioned in the plans on which the schools were built.
  THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (MR. MCKENNA, Monmouthshire, N.):As has already been announced in the prefatory memorandum to the Code, the Board propose to take steps to revise the numbers for which public elementary schools are at present recognised, with a view to securing eventually in every school a minimum of ten square feet of floor space for each child in attendance. The reduction of accommodation can be carried out under Article 19 of the Code, read in conjunc-
  1608
  tion with Section 97 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870
  LORD BALCARRES: When will the Return be issued?
  MR. McKENNA: I do not think a Return is needed.

  Supplementary Estimates
  MR. CLAUDE HAY: I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether he will give particulars of the Supplementary Estimates to be presented this session.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: I have nothing to add to my reply of 26th June†

  Cocoa Imports.
  MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can state the amount of cocoa imported into this country from St. themé or from the Portuguese territory of Angola, from the West Indies, and from elsewhere.
  MR. RUNCIMAN: I will send to the Votes a statement showing the imports and consignments of raw cocoa for the year 1906‡ No separate figures are available in regard to imports from St. themé and Angola, these imports being included in the official records under the general heading of Portuguese West Africa, as explained by my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade, in reply to a similar Question in the House of Commons on the 12th of November last.§

  Employment of Widows in Government Buildings.
  MR. SNOWDEN: I beg to ask the First Commissioner of Works whether, in view of the fact that there are many widows, with children dependent upon them, who are unable to get employment, he will consider the desirability of giving preference to such for suitable work in the Government buildings over married women whose husbands are in regular employment.
  † See (4) Debates, clxxvi., 1389–90.
  ‡ See pages 1591–92.
  § See (4) Debates, clxiv., 1022.
  *THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (Mr. HARCOURT, Lancashire, Rossendale): I do give a preference to widows.

  Stranorlar Labourers' Cottage Scheme.
  MR. C. MACVEIGH:I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Local Government Board have come to the conclusion not to advance more than £170 on an average in respect of the acquirement of a plot of land and the erection of a labourer's cottage thereon under the Labourers (Ireland) Act; and, if so, whether he is aware that this sum is wholly inadequate for the purchase of a statute acre and the erection of a cottage, and that, in consequence, the Stranorlar Rural District Council are unable to acquire more than half an acre of land; and whether, having regard to the wants of the labourers with large families, he will take steps to secure money sufficient to provide an acre of land, and so carry out the intentions of the Act.
  THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR IRELAND (MR. CHERRY, Liverpool, Exchange, for Mr. BIRRELL): My right hon. friend dealt fully with this matter in his reply to the Question put by the hon. Member for North Dublin on 17th April †The Local Government Board have not fixed any definite maximum applicable to all rural districts, but they are endeavouring to keep the expenditure within the limit of £170 per cottage, so that 25,000 cottages and allotments may be provided with the.£4,250,000 set apart for the purpose by the Act of last session. If the Stranorlar District Council proceed with economy, there is, in the opinion of the Local Government Board, no reason why a suitable cottage and acre allotment in that district should not be provided for About £170.

  Boytonrath Evicted Tenant.
  MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland can he say whether the Estates Commissioners have received from Mrs. Flynn, widow of Patrick Flynn, an application for reinstatement, or in lieu thereof a farm of equal value
  † See (4) Debates, clxxii., 998.
  1610
  to the farm held by her husband on the townland of Boytonrath, barony of Middlethird, county Tipperary, from which he was evicted in 1888 by his landlord, Michael Kennedy, of Cahir, county Tipperary; if so, can he state whether an inspector from the Commissioners have interviewed Mrs. Flynn, at present residing in Blair's Cottage, Drombana, near Limerick; will the Estates Commissioners, if they have not done so already, ascertain who holds the farm at present, where does he reside, and on what terms does he hold it; and can he hold forth to Mrs. Flynn any hope of restoration to, or of otherwise being compensated for, her husband's holding.
  MR. CHERRY: The Estates Commissioners inform me that Mrs. Flynn's application has not yet been investigated. It was only received on the 15th of last month. The case will be fully inquired into in due course.

  Abington Evicted Tenant
  MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland can he say whether Mrs. McCoy has yet been reinstated in the farm of her late father and brother Matthew Duhy, of Rath, Abington, county Limerick, from which they were evicted over twenty years ago by Lord Cloncurry; and, if not, will he ask the Estates Commissioners to become mediators as to arrangement between Lord Cloncurry and Mrs. McCoy.
  MR. CHERRY: Mrs. McCoy has applied for restoration to a holding formerly occupied by her father, and at present in the possession of a tenant who is not willing to surrender it. The Estates Commissioners will consider Mrs. McCoy's application in connection with any proceedings for the sale of Lord Cloncurry's estate which may come before them, and also in connection with the distribution of any untenanted land which the Commissioners may acquire in the district.

  Mountshannon Untenanted Lands.
  MR. LUNDON: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland can he say whether the Estates Commissioners have recommended for farms on untenanted lands elsewhere,

  1611
  when and where obtainable, the following persons, Ellen Rafferty, of Knockroe, Kilteely, Simon Ryan, of Cross, Pallasgrean, and Arthur Graham, Lisnagry, Castleconnell, all in the county Limerick, in lieu of their evicted farms taken up by other tenants, or is there any residuary portion of the Mountshannon estate on which these parties were expecting to be quartered as yet remaining on which one or all of them could be settled.
  MR. CHERRY: The Estates Commissioners have fully investigated the cases of the persons named in the Question, and do not propose to provide them with holdings on any untenanted land which may be acquired.

  Mountshannon Firing Prosecution.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the facts connected with the trial of Patrick Macnamara, who was indicted at Ennis on Thursday for firing at Frank McAuliffe with intent to do him grievous bodily harm, at Mount Shannon, on 15th April; whether he is aware that the prisoner was identified by two witnesses as having fired at McAuliffe from behind a hedgerow; that no witnesses were called for the defence; that McAuliffe, who was in possession of a farm which was formerly occupied by a brother of the accused, had been denounced in the district as a grabber; and that the jury acquitted the prisoner; and whether any further action is to be taken in this case.
  MR. CHERRY: As the jury in this case acquitted the accused man no further proceedings can be taken.

  Boycotting Prosecution at Leitrim Assizes.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the statement of Mr. Justice Wright at the Leitrim Assizes on Thursday that there are in the county three families consisting of fourteen persons wholly boycotted, and seven families consisting of twenty-two persons partially boycotted; that in Dowra and other parts of the county there was practically a state of lawlessness prevailing; that writs
  1612
  had to be served by registered letter, letter carriers had to be guarded, and threatening notices were posted; and whether, in view of this state of affairs and the failure to secure the punishment of law breakers under the ordinary law, the Government are still determined not to have recourse to the special powers which Parliament has placed in their hands.
  MR. CHERRY:My attention has been called to the statements of the learned Judge referred to in the Question. As a matter of fact I was present myself in Carrick-on-Shannon on the day upon which they were made. I was glad, however, to ascertain from local inquiry that the disturbed area in the county is comparatively small, and not extending. On the contrary, I learn from the police authorities that there has been a slight improvement in that area during the last few months, while the greater part of the county is in a quiet and peaceful condition. As regards the latter part of the Question, I must refer the hon. Member to the Answer given by my right hon. friend the Chief Secretary to the noble Lord the Member for Murylebone on 13th June last, in which he stated that the Government still have confidence in the ordinary law properly and impartially administered.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT:Does the right hon. Gentleman support the statement of the Judge as to the condition of the county?
  MR. CHERRY: Certainly not. The learned Judge referred to certain districts only. The rest of the county is in a peaceable condition.

  The Brady Boycotting Case.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that, at the trial of eight men at the Leitrim Assizes on Thursday, who were charged with unlawful assembly at Drumkerrin on 7th July, 1906, the evidence showed that Thomas Brady was boycotted for caretaking two evicted farms, that his sons, aged seven and twelve, had to travel a distance of twenty miles to secure provisions under cover of the night, that on their return journey they were attacked

  1613
  by a mob of 600 persons and the provisions taken from them; whether all the prisoners were identified; whether he is aware that the Judge in his charge asked whether they were living in a Christian country, and said it was sufficient to see the extent of the boycotting to look at the starved appearance of the Brady boys; that the jury disagreed; and whether, seeing that this is the third time these men have been tried for this offence without any result, he will say what further action he intends to take in this case.
  MR. CHERRY: As the hon. Member is probably aware, I myself conducted the prosecution in this case at the last Leitrim Assizes, so that I am quite familiar with all the circumstances. The question states, fairly accurately, the case made on behalf of the Crown and some of the comments made by the learned Judge who tried the case. The jury disagreed. It is not usual after three disagreements to put the accused on trial a fourth time, but, owing to the peculiar circumstances of this case, I am considering the propriety of adopting this course in the present instance. I desire to point out to the hon. Member, most respectfully, the evil effects upon the administration of justice in Ireland of Questions such as this, put as regards pending cases, in this House. I am quite sure that his sole object in putting them is to assist the Government in the detection and punishment of crime, but unfortunately an impression prevails in Ireland that his intention and that of his friends is, for political purposes, to show that the Irish people as a whole sympathise with crime. The effect of the Question is, I have no doubt, to excite political prejudice among the jurors, and to render it more difficult to secure a conviction in a clear case than it would otherwise be.
  MR. MOORE: What I wish to know is if, after the three disagreements which have taken place in this case, the right hon. Gentleman will change the venue.
  MR. P. A. McHUGH: Is it in order for a Member of this House to take advantage of his position as a Member for the purpose of insinuating what he dare not state in public outside
  1614
  this House, viz., that these men, all of whom are friends of mine, are guilty of the charges preferred against them?
  *MR. SPEAKER: I do not think that insinuation is conveyed. All the hon. Member asks is if, the jury having been unable to agree, the Government intend to take further action.
  MR. JOHN REDMOND: But the Question went further in asking if the trial would take place in the same venue. That is an insinuation, I submit. I would like to ask a general Question, and that is—Is it in order, or is it proper, that a Question of this kind should be put with reference to a case that is still sub judice?
  MR. SPEAKER: I have always said it is extremely undesirable to ask Questions with reference to cases which are pending, and to that I adhere.
  MR. MOORE:As a matter of personal explanation, my Question was not intended to presuppose the guilt of these people, but to ask for a fair trial of the issue, which we have not had up to the present. I ask, again, is it proposed to change the venue? Otherwise another trial will be a farce.
  MR. LONSDALEsaid the juries had already disagreed at three trials, and he therefore asked if the venue was to be changed.
  MR. CHERRY: It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that in considering these matters I am most anxious to decide on what is most advantageous in the interests of justice, but I cannot undertake to say in this House what steps it is proposed to take.

  Tandragee Evicted Tenant
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland upon what grounds have the Estates Commissioners refused to reinstate Samuel Rainey upon his former holding upon the Duke of Manchester's estate at Bandage, county Armagh, in view of the fact that both the landlord and the present holder of the land are willing that Rainey should be reinstated.
  MR. CHERRY: The holding in which Samuel Rainey seeks reinstatement has been bought under the Land Purchase Acts by the present occupier. Having regard to the terms demanded by the tenant purchaser, the Estates Commissioners have not found it possible to arrange for Rainey's reinstatement.

  Hollypark Farm Dispute.
  MR. LONSDALE: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, whether he is aware that threatening letters have been received by Mr. Blake, of Hollypark, near Athenry, ordering him to give up a certain farm, and also by the servants of Mr. Blake, ordering them to give up their situations; and whether, in view of the attack with firearms made upon the residence of Mr. Blake on 23rd June, special protection will be afforded to these persons.
  MR. CHERRY: The Answer to both parts of the Question is in the affirmative.

  Estates Commissioners' Report.
  MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, if he can now say when the Annual Report of the Estates Commissioners will be available.
  MR. CHERRY: The Estates Commissioners' Report for the year ending 31st March last is in course of preparation, and will, the Commissioners expect, be ready before the end of the present month.

  Irish Departments Return.
  MR. GINNELL: I beg to ask the i Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, when he will be able to lay upon the Table the Return of Irish Departments (Cost, Income, and Expenditure) promised on the 27th May last.
  MR. CHERRY:My right hon. friend intended to lay on the Table, in connection with the Irish Council Bill, a Return j relating to Irish Departments, but as the Bill is not being proceeded with the necessity for presenting the Return no longer exists.
  MR. FLYNN: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think such a Return would be of the highest value even to the Government?
  MR. CHERRY: That had better be addressed to the Chief Secretary.

  Irish Education Rules—Kilmeedy School
  MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY:I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will urge upon the Treasury the unreasonableness of compelling the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland against their wishes to enforce the Rule 194 in an exceptional case, such as that of Kilmeedy, in the county of Limerick, where the average attendance in both schools combined is over 100, being in the boys' school forty-three and in the girls' school sixty, and where both schools are efficient, and the girls' school was awarded, in 1904, the Carlisle and Blake prize for excellence.
  MR. CHERRY:My right hon. friend has already given his most careful consideration to the principle involved in the rule referred to, and, for the reasons stated in his reply to the hon. Member's Question of 3rd inst., † he is not prepared to advise any modification of the rule.

  Insanitary Dwellings in Irish Towns.
  MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether, having regard to the fact that the prevalence of consumption in the cities and towns in Ireland is due chiefly to the want of proper housing accommodation for the working classes there, and having regard to the fact that the owners of the slum property in these cities and towns will do nothing to improve its insanitary condition, and that the local authorities hesitate to pull down the insanitary dwellings when they cannot raise money to build artizans' dwellings owing to the high rate of interest charged for it, he will take steps to inquire into the matter with the view to legislation next year in reference thereto.
  MR. CHERRY: My right hon. friend the Chief Secretary is not in a position to add anything to the reply which he gave to the hon. Member's Questions on this subject on the 3rd inst.‡ My right hon. friend stated that the question of
  † See (4) Debates, clxxvii., 711–2.
  ‡ See (4) Debates, clxxvii., 711.

  1617
  undertaking legislation would be considered, but that he could make no promise as to the introduction of such legislation.

  Crime in Limerick
  MR. OSHAUGNESSY:I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that Mr. Justice Gibson, in opening the assizes for the county of Limerick, stated to the grand jury that there was only a small case of stabbing to go before them, which had its origin in another county, and that it was the smallest record of crime which he recollected in the county since the time he first came as assize Judge to the county nineteen years ago; and whether, having regard to this fact, he will press on the Estates Commissioners the necessity for securing the speedy reinstatement of the evicted tenants there, so that the peace of the county may be preserved.
  MR. CHERRY:I am happy to say that the learned Judge did take a most favourable view of the state of county Limerick, which view is in accordance with all the information I have received from other sources. The Estates Commissioners are taking all possible steps which are open to them under the existing law to deal with the claims of evicted tenants in county Limerick as elsewhere.
  MR. MOORE: Does this mean that the Estates Commissioners are to take action according to the amount of crime in a particular county?
  MR. CHERRY: The hon. Member had bettor put his Question down.
  MR. MOORE: I understood the right hon. Gentleman to assent to the proposition in the Question.
  MR. CHERRY: The proposition I assented to was the statement that the Judge took a most favourable view of the state of the county.

  Knocklong Demonstration.
  MR. SHEEHAN: I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that a force of police, to the number of fifty or thereabouts, was
  1618
  drafted into Knocklong, County Limerick, on Sunday last; will he state the reason for their presence on this occasion, and what was the special duty they were deputed to perform; and whether the ratepayers will be called upon to bear the expense incurred in this connection.
  MR. CHERRY: The police authorities found it necessary to assemble a force of twenty-seven men at Knocklong on Sunday last in order to provide for the preservation of the peace. There was some reason to apprehend that a breach of the peace would be attempted, but I am glad to learn that nothing of the kind occurred. The police belonged to the county force, and no charge therefore will fall on local authorities.
  MR. SHEEHAN:Why was a breach of the peace anticipated?
  MR. JAMES CAMPBELLasked the reason for the presence of the police.
  MR. CHERRY:The police were under a misapprehension. They thought there were grounds for anticipating a breach of the peace. I do not think it wise to state the grounds.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT: Is this the county the right hon. Gentleman described as being in a fairly peaceable condition?
  MR. CHERRY: Yes, Sir.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT: That is a very good comment on the answer.

  Irish Dairy Inspectorship
  MR. FLYNN:I beg to ask the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) if he will state for what periods respectively Mr. Carroll, recently appointed instructor in dairying, studied dairy work at the Midland Agricultural and Dairy Institute, Kingston, England, and at the Ladelund Institute, Denmark; what certificates or diplomas he possesses; where and how he obtained his special knowledge of machinery; whether there was a considerale number of competent experienced creamery managers available; and whether, in view of the objection of the Irish Creamery

  1619
  Managers' Association to the appointment of Mr. Carroll, the Department intend to retain him in this position.
  THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOR IRELAND (Mr. T. W. Russell, Tyrone, S.): Mr. Carroll appears to have attended the Dairy Institute at Kingston for a period of six weeks, and at Ladelund in Denmark for three weeks. So far as the Department know there are no diplomas given at these schools. Mr. Carroll's knowledge of machinery was gained by twelve years experience in the works of Messrs. Hornsby at Grantham. A number of creamery managers were interviewed at the same time as Mr. Carroll, and of the five persons appointed four were creamery managers. The appointment is a temporary one and it is not proposed to dispense with Mr. Carroll's services. The Department do not admit that these appointments should be confined to creamery managers.
  MR. FLYNN:But what experience had this young gentleman before he was employed on the work of the Department 1
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I have no responsibility for the appointment, which was made long before I became Vice-President of the Board, but he was trained under his father at Glasnevin and I understand from inquiries that he is doing his work satisfactorily. I have therefore no intention of disturbing this temporary appointment.
  MR. T. L. CORBETT: Who was it that recommended him to the late Vice-President?
  MR. T. W. RUSSELL: I cannot say.

  Asking Questions on Behalf of Absent Members.
  MR. GRETTONhaving put a Question to the Attorney-General for Ireland on behalf of an absent Unionist Member,
  MR. CHERRYsaid he had written to the hon. Gentleman asking him to postpone it.
  MR. SWIFT MACNEILL: Is it proper for one hon. Member to ask a
  1620
  Question standing in the name of another unless he has authority to do so?
  MR. SPEAKER:It is desirable that such Questions should only be asked on the request of the absent Member.

  Education (Scotland) Bill.
  MR. MORTON: I)beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he can yet say when the Second Reading of the Education (Scotland) Bill is to be taken.
  THE SECRETARY FOR SCOTLAND (Mr. Sinclair, Forfarshire): I am not yet able to name a day.

  Scottish School Grants
  MR. GULLAND: I beg to ask the Secretary for Scotland whether he is aware that inconvenience and financial loss is caused to School Boards by delay and irregularity in paying the educational giants; and whether he can see his way to devise some scheme whereby the grant could be paid in two half-yearly portions.
  MR. SINCLAIR:Where there is any delay or irregularity in paying grants it will be found as a rule that it is due to the dilatoriness or neglect of School Boards in making the necessary returns. But if my hon. friend can furnish me with specific instances where inconvenience or financial loss has been caused to Boards, I will cause inquiry to be made. As to paying the grants in two installments, I am not at present prepared to make any change in the existing practice.
  MR. GULLAND)inquired if there were not frequent complaints of Boards having to pay a heavy overdraft at their bankers because of these delays?
  MR. SINCLAIR: Not frequent complaints—I only know of one.

Scottish Herring Fishery.
MR. CATHCART WASON: I beg to ask the Prime Minister if he is aware that the herring fishing on the West Coast of Shetland has steadily fallen off since whaling companies embarked on the indiscriminate wholesale destruction of whales, and that this year it is a total failure; that now Balta Sound and the

1621
East Coast are menaced; and whether, in view of the importance of the herring fishing, both from a local and national point of view, he will treat the matter as one of extreme urgency.
MR. SINCLAIR: As I have already informed my hon. friend, the former part of the Question is an expression of opinion and a matter of controversy. With regard to the latter part, my hon. friend is aware that legislation has been introduced to deal with the regulation of whaling, and it is the intention of the Government to pass that measure into law.
MR. CATHCART WASON: Has not the herring fishery fallen off as suggested in the Question?
MR. SINCLAIR: In some parts it has, but in other parts it has not. It is a matter of opinion.
MAJOR ANSTRUTHER-GRAY (St. Andrews Burghs): Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the consensus of opinion among Scottish fishermen is that great harm is done by this whale fishing industry?
MR. SINCLAIR: No, Sir; there are great differences of opinion on that point.
MR. MORTONasked if the Bill on the subject; could not be proceeded with at once.
MR. CATHCART WASONsuggested that as it was practically unopposed it might be taken at an early date.
MR. SINCLAIRsaid he feared that the Questions that afternoon did not carry out that view.

General Owen's Committee.
VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH (Maid-stone):I beg to ask the Prime Minister if it is proposed to follow the recommendations made by General Owen's Committee; and, if so, what is the nature of these recommendations.
THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Sir H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, Stirling Burghs): The recommendations of General Owen's Committee have been adopted with some modifications. It is manifestly impossible to make public the details of the armament of our fortified ports.
VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH: Is it advisable to attach much importance to the recommendations of inexperienced naval officers of very junior rank?
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: I do not know the bearing of that Question; I must ask for notice.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
MR. A. J. BALFOURasked as to the business for the next two or three days.
SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMANsaid the only change in the arrangements as to public business for the week which had already been announced would be that, in consequence of the abrupt termination of the proceedings on the Finance Bill the previous night, the consideration of that Bill would be resumed either tomorrow night after eleven o'clock or on Friday after five o'clock, whichever was found more convenient for the House. He thought himself the Friday arrangement would be the more suitable.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (LAND VALUES (SCOTLAND) BILL).
Motion made, and Question put, "That the proceedings on the Second Reading of the Land Values (Scotland) Bill, if under discussion at Eleven o'clock this night, be not interrupted under the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—(Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman.)
The House divided:— Ayes, 252; Noes, 58. (Division List No. 273.)

AYES.

Abraham, William (Cork, N.E.)

Baring.Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

Barran, Rowland Hirst

Alden, Percy

Barker, John

Beale, W. P.

Ambrose, Robert

Barlow, Sir John E. (Somerset)

Beauchamp, E.

Ashton, Thomas Gair

Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

Benn, W.(T'w'r Hamlets,S.Geo

Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)

Barnes, G. N.

Bennett, E. N.

Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, R'mf'rd

Hart-Davies, T.

O'Brien, Kendal(Tipperary Mid

Boland, John

Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

Brace, William

Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.

O'Doherty, Philip

Branch, James

Harwood, George

O'Donnell. C. J. (Walworth)

Brigg, John

Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

O'Grady, J.

Bright, J. A.

Haworth, Arthur A.

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Brunner, J. F.L. (Lancs., Leigh)

Hayden, John Patrick

Parker, James (Halifax)

Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

Hazleton, Richard

Partington, Oswald

Burke, E. Haviland-

Hedges, A. Paget

Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Leek)

Burns, Rt. Hon. John

Helme, Norval Watson

Pearce, William (Limehouse)

Burnyeat, W. J. D.

Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

Perks, Robert William

Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

Henderson, J. M.(Aberdeen, W.)

Power, Patrick Joseph

Buxton, Rt. Hn. Sydney Chas.

Henry, Charles S.

Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)

Byles, William Pollard

Higham, John Sharp

Price, Robert John (Norfolk, E.)

Cameron, Robert

Hobart, Sir Robert

Radford, G H.

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Hogan, Michael

Raphael. Herbert H.

Carr-Gomm, H. W.

Holt, Richard Durning

Rea, Russell (Gloucester)

Cawley, Sir Frederick

Hope, W. Bateman(Somerset,N.

Redmond. John E. (Waterford)

Chance, Frederick William

Horniman, Emslie John

Redmond, William (Clare)

Channing, Sir Francis Allston

Hudson, Walter

Rees, J. D.

Cheetham, John Frederick

Hutton, Alfred Eddison

Rendall, Athelstan

Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

Hyde, Clarendon

Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mptn

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.

Illingworth, Percy H.

Richardson, A.

Cleland, J. W.

Jacoby, Sir James Alfred

Ridsdale, E. A.

Clough, William

Jenkins, J.

Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

Johnson, John (Gateshead)

Roberts, G H. (Norwich)

Corbett, C.H.(Sussex,E.Grinst'd

Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

Robertson, Rt. Hn. E.(Dundee)

Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea

Robertson, Sir G.Scott(Bradf'd)

Cox, Harold

Jones, Leif (Appleby)

Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)

Jowett, F. W.

Robinson, S.

Crean, Eugene

Joyce, Michael

Robson, Sir William Snowdon

Crombie, John William

Kearley, Hudson E.

Roche, John (Galway, East)

Crooks, William

Kekewich, Sir George

Roe, Sir Thomas

Cullinan, J.

Kilbride, Denis

Roe, Charles Day

Curran, Peter Francis

Laidlaw, Robert

Runciman, Walter

Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

Lamont, Norman

Russell, T. W.

Davies, M. Vaughan-(Cardigan

Lardner, James Carrige Rushe

Samuel). Herbert L. (Cleveland)

Devlin, Joseph

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Scott, A.H.(Ashton under Lyne

Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

Lehmann, R. C.

Seaverns, J. H.

Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-sh.

Lewis, John Herbert

Seely, Major J. B.

Dickinson, W.H.(St. Pancras,N.

Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David

Shackleton, David James

Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

Lough, Thomas

Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)

Donelan, Captain A.

Lundon, W.

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Duffy, William J.

Lupton, Arnold

Sheehy, David

Dunne,Major E.Martin(Walsall

Lyell, Charles Henry

Shipman. Dr. John G.

Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)

Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

Silcock, Thomas Ball

Elibank, Master of

Macdonald, J.M.(Falkirk B'ghs

Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John

Erskine, David C.

Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

Smeaton. Donald Mackenzie

Esslemont, George Birnie

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Snowden, P.

Evans, Samuel T.

MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal.E.)

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Everett, R. Lacey

M'Crae, George

Soares. Ernest. J.

Fenwick, Charles

M'Hugh, Patrick, A.

Stanger, H. Y.

Ferens, T. R.

M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

Stanley, Hn. A. Lyulph (Chesh.

Field, William

M'Killop, W.

Steadman. W. C.

Flynn, James Christopher

M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

M'Micking, Major G.

Strachey. Sir Edward

Fowler, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry

Maddison, Frederick

Straus, B. S. (Mile End)

Fuller, John Michael F.

Manfield, Harry (Northants)

Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

Fullerton, Hugh

Marnham, F. J.

Stuart, James (Sunderland)

Furness, Sir Christopher

Massie, J.

Summerbell, T.

Gardner, Col.Alan (Hereford,S.

Masterman, C. F. G.

Sutherland, J. E.

Gilhooly, James

Menzies, Walter

Taylor. Austin (East Toxteth)

Gill, A. H.

Molteno, Percy Alport

Taylor. Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

Ginnell, L.

Montagu, E. S.

Tennant. H. J. (Berwickshire)

Gladstone, Rt.Hn.Herbert John

Mooney, J. J.

Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

Gooch, George Peabody

Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.

Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

Morley, Rt. Hon. John

Thorne, William

Gulland, John W.

Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

Torrance, Sir A. M.

Gurdon,Rt Hn SirW. Brampton

Myer, Horatio

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

Napier, T. B.

Ure, Alexander

Hall, Frederick

Nicholson, Charles N.(D'nc'str)

Verney, F. W.

Halpin, J.

Nolan, Joseph

Walsh, Stephen

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis

Norton, Capt. Cecil William

Walton, Joseph (Barnsley)

1624

1625

Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)

Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.;

Wason, Rt Hn E.(Clackmannan

White, Luke (York, E.R.)

Young, Samuel

Wason, John Cathcart(Orkney)

Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

Waterlow, D. S.

Wilkie, Alexander

Tellers for the Ayesߞ

Watt, Henry A.

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Mr. Whiteley and Mr. J.

Wedgwood, Josiah C.

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

A. Pease.

Weir, James Galloway

Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.)

Whitbread, Howard

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

NOES.

Alison, Sir" William Reynell

Fell, Arthur

Nield, Herbert

Anstruther-Gray, Major

Forster, Henry William

Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

Ashley, W. W.

Gretton, John

Parkes, Ebenezer

Balcarres, Lord

Hardy,Laurence (Kent, Ashford

Pease,Herbert Pike(Darlington

Balfour,Rt Hn A.J.(City Lond.

Helmsley, Viscount

Percy, Earl

Banbury, Sir Frederick George

Hills, J. W.

Randles, Sir John Scurrah

Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.

Hornby, Sir William Henry

Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

Beckett, Hon. Gervase

Keynon-Slaney, Rt. Hn. Col.W.

Remnant, James Farquharson

Bignold, Sir Arthur

Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

Roberts,S.(Sheffield, Ecclesall)

Bowles, G. Stewart

Liddell, Henry

Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles

Bridgeman, W. Clive

Lockwood, Rt.Hn.Lt.-Col.A.R.

Sheffield,Sir BerkeleyGeorge D.

Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.

Long, Col. Charles W.(Evesham)

Stone, Sir Benjamin

Carlile, E. Hildred

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

Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark

Castlereagh, Viscount

Lonsdale, John Brownlee

Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

Cecil, Lord R (Marylebone. E.)

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

Marks, H. H. (Kent)

Younger, George

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Middlemore, John Throgmort'n

Dixon-Hartland,Sir FredDixon

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Tellers for the Noes—Sir

Doughty, Sir George

Moore, William

Alexander Acland-Hood and

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Muntz, Sir Philip A.

Viscount Valentia.

Fardell, Sir T. George

Nicholson,Wm. G. (Petersfield)

LAND VALUES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time"
*MR. REMNANTin moving the rejection of the measure, said that the Bill proposed a valuation of land in Scotland apart from the buildings and erections upon it, and thus sought to give effect to one of the recommendations of the Select Committee on the Land Values Taxation (Scotland) Bill of last session. It might be affirmed without hesitation that the overwhelmingly preponderant weight of the evidence heard before the Committee was against such a change in the law. Indeed, the Report adopted by the majority of the Committee could hardly be said to have been based upon any substantial evidence, being little more than a reproduction of some crude fallacies expounded by a solitary witness, a Mr. Adam. This Mr. Adam favoured the Committee with a hash of Henry Georgeite fallacies, and the Solicitor-General for Scotland in his Report favoured the Committee with a rechauffé of Mr. Adam's evidence. On the other side, the Com-
1626
mittee had before them the evidence against separate valuation of a number of men of great business experience, known throughout Scotland as experts on all such matters. Against the findings of the Select Committee of last Session, after some months of inquiry, must also be set the findings, after years of inquiry, of both the Select Committee of this House on Town Holdings, in their Final Report presented in 1892, and the Royal Commissioners on Local Taxation, in their Final Report presented in 1901. Those bodies both condemned the separate valuation of sites. The Commissioners reported that—
"Such a system would certainly be attended with considerable uncertainty, complication, and expense;"
and the Town Holdings Committee reported that—
"The scheme is open to very great objection on the ground of the difficulty and uncertainty of the proposed system of valuation."
As regarded one of the most important parts of the Report of the Select Committee of last session—viz., that which dealt with the assessment of feu duties and the violation of contracts—the Prime Minister had recently, in answer to a Scottish deputation, completely thrown over the Report of that Committee in

1627
favour of the findings of the Royal Commission. They might, therefore, hope that, on further reflection, the Government would go further in the path of wisdom, and see that on the other questions at issue also the Report of the Royal Commission was greatly to be preferred. The overthrowing of the finding of the Select Committee had produced the most extraordinary results. They had the Solicitor-General for Scotland practically staking his reputation on the valuation of existing contracts and carrying it in Committee by his own casting vote, and then they had the Government once more throwing over their own law officer. They all knew what had happened in the case of the Trade Disputes Bill—viz., that the Attorney-General was thrown over. Now the Solicitor-General for Scotland had also been thrown over, and so they had these two gentlemen bottling up their opinions and remaining in this extraordinary Government. As regarded land that was built on, the proposal to value sites was futile to the point of absurdity. Since the value of land was included in the valuation of the rateable hereditament as a whole, land values were already taxed, and the Bill by separately valuing sites would not increase local revenue at all, any more than a man would increase his stock of fruit by cutting his apples in half. No doubt separate valuation of sites, if used as a basis for assessment, would increase the assessment on some houses and reduce the assessment on others, but the results so attained would be, as he pointed out in a draft report which he submitted to the Committee of last session, most Anomalous. There were only two cases where the proposed method of valuation might yield an approximately reasonable result—viz. (1) when the site was already utilised to its fullest commercial capacity by the existing building upon it, but these cases were just these which the existing system of valuation completely covered; and (2) when the existing buildings were so unsuitable or ruinous that their presence added nothing to the value of the site, but these cases were so extremely rare as to be for practical purposes negligible. In all other cases such a method of valuation would lead to most anomalous results. In the case of a very considerable proportion of the older
1628
property in the centre of towns, the value of the site considered as cleared was greater than its value as a site for the buildings at present upon it. Yet the value of the property as it stood was greater than any value which could be obtained for the site alone, so that it would be absurd to pull down the buildings in order to utilise the site for new buildings. The site value was thus one which the proprietor could not realise, because in order to realise it he would require to sacrifice more than he could possibly obtain. The proposal to value the site was therefore consonant neither with justice nor with sound economics. The price which might be obtained for a single site if placed upon the market was no guide to the value of the whole of the sites in the street. The site came into the market as a building site for new premises when that stage was reached, through the growth of site value and the decay of the existing buildings, at which more could be obtained for the ground as a site to be cleared than for the ground and present buildings in their present state. In an important thoroughfare it might happen once every two or three years that a suitable site for a large building so came into the market, and when it did so happen there might be one or two purchasers in the market anxious to acquire a site in the neighbourhood for an important building or for some special purpose, and in that way a large price might be paid for the site. But the price would naturally be somewhat smaller if three properties happened at the same time to reach a corresponding stage of deterioration, and so come simultaneously into the market, and it would be vastly smaller if the number were fifty. As the number of sites coming into the market for the purpose of being cleared was limited, so was the number of purchasers wanting such important sites and able fully to utilise them. In the course of fifty years every site in the street might in succession come into the market in this way and obtain a large price, but in endeavouring to ascertain the present value of the aggregate sites in the street it was necessary to discount that long period. Failure to observe this had led to a huge over-estimate of the value of covered sites. It was obvious, too, in view of the foregoing considerations, that a single sale, or even several

1629
sales, of site property in a street, would afford to the assessor a most untrustworthy index to the true average value of a site in the street. The Report of the Select Committee of last session described the object of the proposed change in the law as being—
"to measure the ratepayers' contributions, not by the value of the improvements on the land to any extent, but solely by the yearly value of the land itself."
The Bill ran directly counter to this object. The definition clause exempted " structural improvements," but not other improvements. In many agricultural holdings the expenditure upon the improvement of the soil exceeded the whole of the present capital value. How was the valuation of such improvements under the Bill to be reconciled with the professed object of its supporters? And in the case of urban sites large sums were often spent upon the preparation of the sites for building and the construction of streets and sewers. The Report of the Select Committee of last session stated—
"In some instances exceptional and substantial expenditure has been incurred in preparing a site for building. As it originally stood the site was, on account of unevenness of surface, slope, or it may be the character of the soil, unfit for building operations. But judicious expenditure has rendered it suitable, In such a case, if the owner can satisfactorily prove the amount of the expenditure, your Committee consider that allowance ought to be made for it, at all events if it has been incurred within, say, twenty years of the date of the valuation. To make such an allowance would, in the opinion of your Committee, be in strict conformity with the principles of the Bill, which aims at relieving all owners of rating based on industrial expenditure."
The allowance proposed by the Committee was obviously inadequate, but even that was not made in the Bill. The Select Committee of last session also reported—
"Discretionary powers should be given to the local authorities to exempt totally or partially from local rating any gardens or open spaces in private hands which in their opinion are beneficial to the community."
If such open spaces were not to be rated they ought not to be valued, but they were not exempted under the Bill. A good deal had been said about precedents for this system of valuation in certain of the Colonies, in Prussia, and in the United States. In the two last mentioned cases no rate was levied on the site value as apart from the combined
1630
value of site and buildings. In New Zealand and some other Colonies a system of rating on unimproved value had been adopted, but reports showed that it had been in operation for so short a time that no substantial conclusion could be drawn as to its effects. It should be noted that the process of ascertaining the unimproved value necessarily presented much fewer difficulties in a new-country. As regarded New Zealand, Dr. David Murray had shown that, as all the land in the colony which was subject to valuation, rural, suburban, or urban, had been disposed of by the Crown within recent years, its original unimproved value without crops, without stock—that was, in its primitive condition—was accurately known. The improvements were necessarily of recent date and were visible; they were being constantly surveyed, and it was easy to estimate their value. The circumstances of New Zealand were so entirely different from these of Scotland, that, so far from proving that what was done there could be done here, they showed that every element which made the ascertainment of land values possible was wanting in Scotland. If the Bill was to be considered as a means of procuring a rough valuation of the bare land value to satisfy curiosity or any other purpose which was an end in itself, that could be attained by means of a Government Return to be furnished by the assessors in Scotland. In this way it would cost nothing to the people in general, although, of course, it would throw a small charge on the Exchequer. If the valuation, however, was to be so accurate as to furnish a foundation for rating proposals, it must throw on the owners of land and buildings and ratepayers in Scotland a cost of several millions sterling. Dr. Murray estimated the cost for valuation alone in Glasgow at half a million, viz.,,£340,000 on the part of the owners and £160,000 on the part of the assessor. This figure did not include any allowance for litigation, which might be enormous, as of course each property was in a sense rated against the rest. If they allowed half a million for Glasgow, it would not be out of the way to estimate the cost of valuation in Edinburgh at £350,000 to £400,000, the acreage being very nearly as large. Dundee and Aberdeen, on the same basis, would not cost less than from £80,000 to£100,000, and so on throughout

1631
the burghs and counties of Scotland. It was impossible to follow any rule of thumb in proceeding from one place to another, as was shown by the evidence before the Committee, Mr. Binnie estimating the site valuation of Glasgow at one-fifth of the rateable value, while the Edinburgh site value was stated to be one-sixth, and Aberdeen from one-eighth to one-tenth. It had indeed been suggested that an official valuation of land would facilitate the process of buying land under compulsory powers for small holdings or for public purposes, but it was obviously much cheaper to value the comparatively small parts of land that might be so acquired when they were wanted than to start with a valuation of all the land in Scotland. The latter method was about as wise, from an economical standpoint, as to burn down a house in order to roast a pig. It could not therefore be imagined that the Government wished to throw this enormous burden on the people of Scotland unless a rating Bill was to follow, and this being so the question of an alteration in the system of rating was directly in point, as the merits of the change had to be shown to exceed the merits of the present system by the whole cost of making the change. What value then could be attached to the Bill as providing a new basis for rating? As regarded land that was built on, it had already been shown that it was absolutely futile. As regarded vacant land, it was true that the Bill would bring about a higher valuation. But the assessment of such property could yield only an apparent gain to the municipalities. It would only relieve the owners of occupied land of some part of the rates, and cast that part on the owners of unoccupied land. The present practice, under which owners were taxed when they had income with which to pay the taxes, was more convenient to them, and did not ultimately cause any loss to the public. People who talked about "holding up" land for a rise forgot that the owner and the municipality were really in the same boat. The object of a landowner who kept his land out of the market was to get a greater price for it at a later date when the value had gone up. In most cases self-interest would guide him wisely, and in the long run he would make a gain. In this matter the interests of the municipality and the owner were identical
1632
If the owner gained by waiting, the municipality also gained, because it got proportionately higher rates. Even the apparent gain from the capital valuation of vacant land would be very small. The cities and suburbs of Scotland did not differ materially in this respect from these of England, and in the debate on the English Land Values Bill of 1905 the present Chancellor of the Exchequer gave figures showing what the effect of the assessment of vacant land would be upon the actual rates in two districts, one suburban and the other metropolitan. In the case of Hornsey the result would be a reduction in the rates of that community only from 7s. 6d. to 7s. 2d. in the £. A similar calculation in regard to Fulham showed that in that case there would be a reduction of the rates only from 7s. 4d. to 7s. 2d. While worthless as a rating measure, the assessment of vacant land would do a great deal of harm by driving in to the building market all gardens and other open spaces in private ownership in the populous parts of towns. There could be no question of the expediency of preserving such additional breathing spaces or "lungs" in towns, or of the undesirability of adding new piles of bricks and mortar within crowded areas. This drawback had been insisted upon in the Report of a Committee appointed by the Fabian Society to consider the housing problem, which stated—
"The direct tendency of taxation of urban land values would be to bring into the market as building land these oases of garden and pleasure ground at present enclosed within our urban areas. The tax would therefore promote housing on exactly that class of land which in the interests of the health of the community should be most carefully kept vacant. Owners of gardens and fields in towns have already ample temptation to sell for building the valuable sites which yield them little or no actual revenue. The taxation of urban land values would increase this temptation. The sort of house-building which land taxation would facilitate is therefore exactly the worst sort in that it would tend to increase the density of our towns, and retard the movement of population towards the suburbs."
What was feared here had taken place in the United States, where for very many years (he believed from time immemorial) vacant land had been taxed on its full selling value. In New York there was far more dense over-crowding than in the worst slums in this country. For the sake of the whole community, and especially of the working classes in out-cities and towns, he asked the House to

1633
refuse to take the first step towards the introduction of this cruel system of taxation into Great Britain. The system of valuation which this Bill proposed to introduce offered such unattractive results for a great waste of money that the proposal could be explained only as a first step towards carrying out a programme of confiscation of all rent by taxation, as advocated by the late Mr. Henry George. It had been explicitely admitted that that was the object of the real promoters. Mr. John Paul, Secretary of the Scottish League for the Taxation of Land Values, wrote—
"The Scottish League for the Taxation of Land Values is the one organization in Scotland exclusively devoted to promote the teachings of Henry George."
It should be observed that Henry Georgeism was much less deserving of respect than the most extreme Socialism. Socialism was a considered theory, defended by some learned economists and affecting all forms of property equally. The "single tax," on the other hand, was a wild proposal for confiscating only capital invested in land, put forward by a half-educated fanatic whose views had been condemned by every competent economist who had condescended to examine them. It was noteworthy that when the name of Henry George was mentioned in this House it should find on the Liberal Benches so many cheers. It found plenty of supporters in the Select Committee, and it was mainly on his theories that the majority Report was based. When that fact was mentioned in this House he hoped he would be excused for taking up so much of the time in endeavouring to influence the House to reject the Second Reading of this Bill
*MR. YOUNGERin seconding the Amendment, said that the Bill was one of such vast importance and of such far-reaching effect, that it was the duty of these who had considered this question to do what they could in the House to awaken the people of Scotland to a sense of what was looming in the distance if the Bill were passed. The manner of its introduction was not what they would have expected. It was introduced under the ten minutes' rule, and in his opinion it was an abuse of that rule to introduce so controversial a measure under it. Nobody had an opportunity save the Leader of the Opposition of attacking the principle or
1634
the import of the Bill. He complained not only of the Bill being introduced under the ten minutes' rule but of the whole tone and import of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. No one knew better than the right hon. Gentleman himself that he was introducing a Bill which was designed to effect a complete revolution in the system of local taxation in Scotland, yet he not only had the audacity, there was no other word for it, to suggest that the Bill should be considered non-contentious, but said it only added one more to the columns in the valuation roll of Scotland, of which there were already eight. The right hon. Gentleman no doubt designedly spoke in that way in order to allay suspicion and not to arouse too soon that opposition of which after the debate on the Second Reading he hoped there would be a good deal. The Prime Minister in no uncertain language repudiated the proposals of the Solicitor-General and the majority of his Committee as to taxation of feu duties, as he was certain to do after the declaration of the Lord Advocate in the Bill last year, certainly the most important fact embodied in the Report of which the hon. Gentleman had constituted himself a knight-errant all through Scotland in the winter. The Prime Minister's refusal to have any thing to do with it thoroughly discredited the whole Report. The original suggestion for reform in the laws which governed every form of taxation of land value in Scotland arose from the mistaken idea, freely circulated, that feu duties escaped taxation. If the Select Committee did nothing else it completely exploded that mistaken notion. It was explicitly stated in the Report that the land values were fully taxed, and that should disabuse the minds of the people of Scotland of the notion that there was any exemption on the part of those who owned feu duties. That mistaken belief resulted in the Bill of last year, a Bill the principle of which was accepted by the House by a unanimous and overwhelming majority. He was glad to think the whole of the Committee were sensible enough to take the view they did in condemning that Bill as indefensible. There were also signs of a return to sanity on the part of the Corporation of Glasgow, because at a recent meeting the report of the Land Values Committee on this Bill, of which it approved, was not accepted by the

1635
Corporation, and a motion was carried that the report of the committee be not accepted and that the Bill be referred not to the Select Land Values Committee, but to the Parliamentary committee, which was analogous to its being shelved. This Bill was to provide for the rating in Scotland of land at its annual value from year to year. The gross valuation only appeared on the roll at present, and these who supported this particular proposal quoted the minority Report, for which Lord Balfour of Burleigh was responsible, as a justification of their action in asking for the separation of land value from structural value. But they, unfortunately, ignored the fact that the recommendation was not for the separation of the land from the heritage—the system proposed in this Bill to form a basis for taxation—but for the separation of the two subjects, in order that where the gross value appeared on the roll the deductions usually made for poor rate and education rate should be taken off the structure only, and not off the land value. That did not in the slightest degree support a proposal of this kind, which was of a totally different character. In point of fact, the present valuation rested upon facts; the new valuation would rest upon a hypothesis. The Bill proposed that owners should return the capital value of the land, whether urban or rural, and it defined capital value as follows—
"Capital land value in reference to any lands and heritages means the sum which such lauds and heritages might lie expected to realise in the open market at the time of the valuation if (1) divested of buildings, erections, or structural improvements, and fixed or attached machinery; and (2) sold free from all burdens, public and private, except building restrictions or other servitudes."
He would note, in passing, what his hon. friend had mentioned, that there were very many improvements on rural and urban lands which under this particular clause would be left in the land value For example, in the case of rural land they had reclamation, drainage, fencing (he was not very certain whether this was a structural addition or not; he assumed that perhaps it was), a good water supply, etc. In the case of urban land there were levelling, preparation of sites, in many cases piling, street-forming, and all that sort of thing; and he wanted to ask whether this formed an intentional departure from the recommendation of
1636
the Committee, or whether they were willing to enlarge this definition clause as to improvements to something like the recommendation which the Committee made, namely, that the valuation should be the value of the land apart from buildings and all the improvements upon it, or in other words, whether it was to be the bare land entirely apart from improvements. What was needed, if this theory of land valuation was to be carried out was a definition something like what they had in Now South Wales, which was as follows—
"It includes houses, buildings, fencing, planting, excavations for holding water, wells, ring barking, clearing from timber or scrub or sweet briar, or noxious weeds, or laying down in grass or pasture, and any other improvements whatever, the benefit of which is unexhausted at the time of the valuation."
That was Section 68 of the Land and Income-Tax Assessment Act of 1895. He read that clause as embodying at all events what he believed to be the recommendations of the Committee, and he asked whether this was an intentional omission, and whether, as a matter of fact, the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Gentlemen who at present ruled Scotland had at last discovered that, if they included all these improvements, in a very large number of cases there would be no land value left, and therefore no basis of land valuation at all in many rural parishes of Scotland. He was inclined to think that was the true explanation. If it were so—he did not wish to use strong language—it was not a particularly worthy way of bolstering up their particular theory. What about the difficulty of the task which was set the assessor in valueing land on the principle of this Bill? In the first place, the assessor got no proper directions at all. There was insufficient definition of what improvements were, and there were many things not provided for. For example, they did not know the position as to shootings, fishing, minerals, or plantation, and a thousand and one other things of that kind. It was impossible to say from the Bill whether they were dealt with, and, if they were dealt with, how. He had a most interesting collection of the views of assessors published, in the Scottish papers not very long ago on this Bill. | He would read some of them. He knew the Lord-Advocate had claimed that he had expert opinion, and some evidence before the Committee in favour of this

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proposal. A couple of assessors gave a qualified approval to the scheme, but no professional valuator examined gave it any support. But the House would hear what the assessors had got to say about this Bill. Here wore a few extracts. The first was assessor of a southern county; he said:—
"The Bill is perfectly unworkable in its present form. We receive no guidance in it as to the manner in which we should set about to carry out its provisions."
Another one said:—
"The duty laid upon the proprietors of lands and heritages will without doubt be puzzling to a degree, but to the assessors who have the carrying out of the provisions, more especially these who have to do with burghs where there are many small proprietors, the bulk of whom are in perfect ignorance that such a Bill is oven contemplated or that it affects them in the least—the work must be herculean before it is possible to get a return from them of the capital value of their lands; and it is perfectly safe to say that it will take the corrections of several years before the Valuation Roll will be even approximately correct."
A third said—
"I have not given the Bill any serious thought because I think the proposal so impossible to carry out with any degree of accuracy, that I think it is almost sure to be thrown out or abandoned."
Yet another assessor said—
"Capital land value will be found so be a very difficult and puzzling item to estimate when one considers the deductions and restrictions to be ascertained as stated in the definition clause."
He had many other extracts of the same character. And he had a letter from an assessor, whose name he could supply privately if it was desired, who said exactly the same thing, that it was quite impossible, so far as he could see, in the county with which he had to deal, and in regard to the varied subjects which he had to value to estimate according to the directions given in the Bill. The system of valuation proposed was somewhat extraordinary. The site was supposed to be cleared of all structural buildings and improvements upon it; the assessor was to imagine it clear of all structural improvements. When he had done that, he had also to imagine a hypothetical market for a site which was purely hypothetical. Then he had to imagine a buyer who did not exist, in a market which did not exist, for an article which did not exist. And arising out of these hypothetical principles they would
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have a highly hypothetical result, and yet they had sensible men asking the people of Scotland to accept this as the basis of their future taxation. It was most astounding. How could the latter justify it? They attempted to justify it by pointing out that every now and then, under the existing system, a hypothetical tenant had to be discovered, and that, as a matter of fact, it was just as difficult to find a hypothetical tenant as to find a hypothetical buyer. He had for twenty years presided over the valuation of a typical Scottish county. They had had all kinds of subjects to value, and during the whole of the twenty yews only one case had been appealed to the Court of Session, and on that occasion their judgment was upheld. His point was that they had dealt only with actual subjects for valuation; the factory and the land were in actual being, and there was no difficulty in finding the hypothetical tenant. They had an actual basis of fact to work upon and not a nebulous hypothesis. The Lord Advocate, when he made his speech, claimed that he had skilled witnesses who backed up his proposal. Two assessors had given him a certain amount of countenance; and one of them, Mr. Henry, of Glasgow, after making the best case he could for these who employed him, at the end of his evidence, being a thoroughly honest man, told the Committee that this proposal involved such an enormous change that, if the Bill were passed, and they were to tax these land values, it should not come into operation for a generation. The second argument in favour of the change was based on Colonial and foreign experience. His hon. friend below him had said all that was necessary on the subject. To bring in New Zealand as an example for dealing with the land of Scotland, seemed to him to be ineffective for the purpose. Unimproved land there was an ordinary staple commodity, and would sell in New Zealand at a price which was easily ascertainable. There was no difficulty, whatever. All were taxed on the same principle and it did not matter, and there was no difficulty, but this Bill would establish a very different state of things in Scotland, where no unimproved land existed except perhaps on such places as the top of Schiehallion, and it would entirely change the incidence of taxation. He knew a country town where

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the rates at the present time were 5s. in the £, but if they were levied on land values alone they would be 30s. He could give an instance there of a factory building erected on one and three-quarter acres assessed at a rental of £1,040 and paying £260 in taxes. If taxed on its land value that factory would only pay £45. In another instance there were one and a half acres at a rental of £350 which yielded £8 10s., but under the new system the amount would be £45. In another case there were five acres containing large buildings routed at £3,850 a year which at present paid £962 in taxation, but if the basis were altered to land value taxation the amount would be £125. In this case all such deficiencies would be made good by the heavily-increased rates payable by the owners of villas and cottages with garden ground attached. He might take another illustration of farm land where the rental was £180 for about as many acres. He had had this farm's improvements valued, including the farm buildings, drains, roads, and everything else, and he found that while before the Liberal Government came into power they could get in Scotland twenty-five years purchase, and that at a rental of £180 the farm would be worth £4,500, the improvement alone reached a total cost of £5,125, which was £625 more than the capital value. In that case there was no land value left to tax. That was the position of most of the agricultural farms in the districts of Scotland which he happened to know. It had been admitted by experts that in many cases there would be no land values to tax, and it naturally occurred to these who had to do with county government where on earth the basis for local taxation was going to be found, and who in future would pay the rates. The effect of this Bill would be to compel people in Edinburgh and Glasgow to get the best price they could by feuing the land for the highest possible purpose, wholly regardless of amenity or obligation to existing feuars. The Leader of the Opposition upon a previous occasion asked the Secretary for Scotland if he would give to the House before the Second Reading an estimate of the cost of this Bill. A week or two after that he put a Question himself in order to elucidate this point, but he only got the usual answer that his premises were not admitted, and that there was not the
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smallest necessity to call for the estimate asked for. That was a way they had got at the Scottish Office, It did not appear to him that Dr. Murray's estimate was much out of the way. In one county there were 250 landed proprietors, and it was impossible for them to prepare their statements under £50 each. There were 4,000 feuars, and he did not think any of them would be able to fill up the schedule without expert assistance, which would cost them 30s. each. The cost would amount to about £20,000, and the assessors' outlay and remuneration had also to be provided for. It would be seen that even in a sparsely populated county in Scotland the expense would be very great. This was certainly a charge which ought to be borne by the nation and not by the individual. One of the most extraordinary proposals in the Bill was the exemption of railways. The Select Committee undoubtedly reported that in their opinion railways should be exempted from this particular form of rating, but they made no provision—and the Bill made no provision—for the fact that railways were rated on their commercial value, and if that commercial value was to remain as the annual rateable value, there would be precious little dividend left for any of the shareholders. He could not believe that that was intended. His hon. friend the Member for Dumbartonshire who saw this absurdity in the Report introduced a clause to deal with the point, but when the time came to propose it he incontinently dropped it. He had then moved it, but was only supported by the Unionist Members and the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire whose acute mind realised the absurdity of the recommendation. If they were to have any change at all, what they wanted was not a narrowing but a broadening of the basis. Then local rates were increasing hand over hand. They were no doubt very burdensome, and he could understand the reasons which actuated rating authorities in endeavouring to find some new source of taxation and income. There was an enormous amount of personal property which escaped taxation. This did not use to be so, and if there was to be any change at all it ought not to be in the direction contemplated by this Bill, which was impracticable and unworkable. It would be very costly, and would cause an infinite

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amount of trouble in its administration, and it would be perfectly worthless for the purpose which hon. Gentlemen opposite had in view. There was only one thing to do with this measure, and it was that at the earliest possible moment it should be be consigned to the Parliamentary scrap heap in which far better measures had found their haven.
Amendment proposed—
"To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words ' upon this day three months.'"—(Mr. Remnant.)
Question proposed "That the word " now ' stand part of the Question."
THIS SOLICITOR-GENERAL FOR SCOTLAND (MR. URE, Linlithgowshire)said he was afraid he could not congratulate his hon. friend upon having thrown any fresh light upon this somewhat thorny and difficult topic. The subject was one which had been threshed out on four separate and distinct occasions. The sole object of this Bill was to set up a new standard of rating, a new measure by which to fix the contribution of the citizens to the rates. The Bill expressly stated (hat nothing contained in the measure would affect the question of rating or of assessment. Reference had been made to the divergence of view between the Lord Advocate and himself with regard to the scope of the application of the standard once it had been set up, and that had given rise to a personal note in the discussion which was always so welcome in the House. He would not fail before sitting down to respond to the personal note so vigorously struck by his two hon. friends opposite. He hoped to satisfy even them that the difference between the Lord Advocate and himself with regard to the scope of the application of the standard once it had been erected was a difference which was confined exclusively to that and was not such as to debar him from rendering such humble aid as he could in carrying this measure and in co-operating heartily with the Government of which he was a member. He invited the House to consider the only two questions which seemed to be worthy of attention in regard to the measure. The first was: Ought they to set up a new standard by which to measure the citizen's contribution to the rates? The second question was: Could
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they set up a new standard? It was obvious that an answer in the negative to either or both of these questions would end the measure. To the question: Ought they to set up this standard? he answered unhesitatingly, yes. He said so, because it would lead to a more equitable distribution of the rates on the shoulders of the citizens At the present moment, to defray the cost of the local services on which the comfort and well-being of the individual citizens and the prosperity of the community so largely depended, all the citizens were laid under contribution, and the amount of their contribution was determined by the yearly value of the houses they owned or occupied, or of the business premises in which they carried on their calling. There were two ingredients involved in the citizen's obligation to pay rates. There was, in the first place, the personal benefit which the citizen, his tenantry and retainers, derived from the local services to which the rates were devoted; and there was, in the second place, the advantage to the citizen's property, the maintenance of or the increase in its value depending largely upon the enterprise of the community and the expenditure of the rates contributed by his fellow citizens. In the Scottish rating law both these ingredients were recognised, and a certain portion of the local rates fell upon the owner and a certain portion upon the occupier. They were not equal divisions, but some sort of arbitrary divisions. It was quite plain that to apportion the burden according to the precise amount of personal benefit derived, with any approach to scientific accuracy, would be impossible. On the other hand the advantage to property was capable of being gauged and estimated, and the citizen's ability to pay the rate was determined by the yearly value of the house which he occupied, or the yearly value of the business premises in which his calling was carried on. No attempt was made under the present system to sever the value of the buildings erected on the land from the value of the land itself. No attempt was made to estimate what each contributed to the total value. It was, indeed, a rough and ready test which was applied at present, and necessarily so, because valuable premises were often occupied by firms and individuals whose profits were small and approaching the vanishing point.

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Millionaires might live in garrets, and they sometimes did, while a man of slender means might occupy commodious premises, because he was blessed with a large family or a fashionable wife. The present standard, therefore, was only a rough and ready method of determining a man's ability to pay rates. There was no use longing after the ideal, for it was hopelessly unattainable. The question was: Could they have a better system set up which would result in a fairer and more equitable distribution of the burden so that they should as far as possible lay the heavy burden on the broad back and ease the burden on the backs of these least able to bear it? In the selection of a standard of rating, their area of choice was very small. Some wiseacres in that House—formerly, but not at present—had suggested that the area for the standard of rating should be bank stock, railway stock, or Consols. If any one of these three was selected, it must be obvious that there would be no ratepayers in many parts of Scotland, and that these who were ratepayers today would sell out, so that to-morrow there would be no ratepayers at all. It was obvious that for the purpose of rating they must take something which the citizens had and could not do without. If they were all equal citizens, a poll tax would do, but as they were not the rates must be levied on the land, or on the buildings erected on the land. That was what the Bill proposed to set up. It was proposed to exclude altogether from the rating standard, as at present existing, houses erected and structural improvements on the ground. It was perfectly obvious that there would be very great difficulty in ascertaining the value of such improvements, as the hon. Member opposite had suggested. The Government proposed that the value of, the land, apart from the buildings and structural improvements upon it, should be taken as the new standard of rating, That was a standard which expanded or ' contracted, not like the present standard according to the enterprise and the expenditure of the individual owner of the property, but according to the energy, enterprise, and expenditure of the community surrounding it. If a man was minded to erect handsome and commodious buildings, to spend generously upon wages and material, and to do his very best, he could do so under the new
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standard without being haunted with the idea that whatever improvements he made would instantly be followed up by a substantial rise in his rates. He would feel assured, because he would know that the measure of his contribution to the rates would be determined by the value of the land. On the other hand if a man for some reason, or for no reason at all, chose to allow his property to fall into a state of dilapidation and decay, or if he chose to have on his land inferior property unsuitable for the site,, he would not thereby escape the rating which was applicable to the value of the site he possessed, and which on ac count of his neglect or heedlessness was not being fully utilised He would not, whatever the misuse he might put his property to, pay any less rates than he would have had to pay if he had put it to the best use. Accordingly the objection to the present standard was that it operated as a burden upon industry, it operated as a deterrent to a man to spend wisely and generously in wages and in material in putting his property to the very best use possible. It discouraged a man from spending freely and generously and doing the best he could with his property, because he knew that when the value was increased the burden of higher rates would fall upon his shoulders. Under the now system no man who had spent generously in doing the best he could with his property would be asked to pay more than his air share of the rates. It was a standard of rating which had a direct and immediate connection with the expenditure of the rates. When the rate expenditure was wise, prudent, and generous, his standard expanded and enlarged; when, on the other band, the rate expenditure was unwise, prodigal, extragant, and foolish, it contracted. But it lever expanded or contracted according to the wisdom or the unwisdom of the individual owners of property. That was the method which the Bill proposed to set up. The House would very naturally ask, although the application f the standard was expressly excluded from the measure, what, in general terms, would be the effect of adopting this new standard. The effect would obviously e threefold. In the first place, a umber of citizens who at present contributed nothing to the rates would be included in the ranks of

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ratepayers. These were men who at present held building land which was standing vacant and unbuilt upon, or which was used merely for temporary purposes or for agricultural purposes, although really within the building area and zone. He would deal with these three points when he came to the question of the practicability of their scheme. These men at present escaped rating altogether or wore rated merely upon the agricultural value or upon the rent derived from the temporary erections which stood on their property. The second effect would be that men who were insuring their property, men who hold valuable sites upon which the buildings wore either being allowed to dwindle into dilapidation or decay, or sites which carried buildings obviously unsuitable to the situation, which did not take the full value out of the site, and which were inferior to the site on which they stood, would be asked a substantial increase to the rates on that which they at present paid. In the third place, men who were at present owners of property upon which there were handsome buildings and erections of better value comparatively than the site on which they stood would require to pay a smaller contribution to the rates than they did at present. He would offer an illustration as an example of a wealth of instances of the enormous value given to land by the progress and industry of a surrounding community. He took one illustration, because it afforded a good example for a demonstration of all his points. Some three years ago there changed hands in the open market agricultural property in Princes Street, Edinburgh, at the handsome figure of £100,000. Upon the site at the time there were comparatively modern buildings, which were entered in the valuation roll at £2,750. The purchaser proceeded to remove these buildings. They wore obviously unsuited to the value of the site on which they were erected, although they were comparatively modern buildings. He proceeded to expend some £40,000 on new buildings suitable for the site. Although the former owner was rated at £2,750, he really gained £100,000 for the site alone, because the instant the new owner purchased he proceeded to clear away the buildings which then existed. A very modest return on £100,000 was 4 per cent., and, accordingly,
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if the owner were rated upon the land value, he would stand in the roll as proprietor of ground worth £4,000; but under the present system they would add to the valuation (and correspondingly to the rate) £1,600, which was 4 percent. on £40,000 spent on the buildings. Accordingly in the valuation roll for this year the property would probably stand at £5,600 instead of £2,750. A century and a quarter ago, when the ground was first given up, its capital value was between £60,000 and £70,000. In the first place, there was an illustration of an enormous increase of value due entirely to the progress, prosperity, and expenditure of Edinburgh; in the second place, there was an illustration of property entered in the valuation roll at £2,750, substantially less than the yearly value of the ground alone; and in the third place, there was illustrated the very great injustice of rating an enterprising man upon £40,000 which he had spent in erecting handsome, palatial buildings. That was the case of the Bill upon the question whether or not they ought to set up a new standard. He now turned to the second question. Could the proposed standard be set up? Was it reasonably practicable to set it up? He stated the case in that way, because nobody now said, though some time ago they did, that it was impossible to value land apart from the buildings erected upon it. It was done every day in his own experience. Nobody maintained that it could not be done. Everybody now knew that it could be done, but the question was, "Is it reasonably practicable?" That resolved itself into whether the objection usually stated, which was that their valuation was necessarily arbitrary and uncertain, and that it was expensive and difficult, was well founded. To say that their valuation was arbitrary and uncertain was merely to say that they were in the region of valuation, but not in the region of mensuration. Accuracy and precision were not only unobtainable in the region of valuation, but also unintelligible. Accuracy and precision the might have upon questions of fact; but when they were in the region of valuation they were in the region of speculation and opinion, where necessarily they must go by guess work more or less near the mark according to the experience and skill of the man who guessed. After all,

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no great harm was done, for let the House never forget that what they were in search of was really a standard by which to measure the citizen's contribution to the rates. Although they might have in one local area what they called high valuation and in another low a valuation comparatively, amongst the ratepayers themselves no injustice was done, because they were all valued upon a high scale in one area and upon a low scale in another area. In Scotland there was an annual revision of the valuation roll so that any gross error made in one year was readily corrected in the next, and no great harm was done. Let it never be forgotten that the present system, which had been in vogue upwards of fifty years, so far as machinery and method were concerned, was based upon speculation and opinion. They would suppose, from what they had heard, that under the Valuation Act of 1854 all they had to find out was the actual rent paid for premises and then to insert it in the rent roll. But the basis was a totally different one. The basis in the Statute of 1854 was not the actual rent which the owner put in his pocket, but the yearly value on which the property might be reasonably expected to pay. Whenever they approached the Statute of 1851 they were in the region of expectation and therefore out of the region of accuracy and precision. To speak of reasonable expectation as being anything else than speculation and opinion seemed to him absolutely absurd. No doubt he would be reminded by hon. Gentlemen opposite that the Valuation Act of 1854 first directed that where there was an actual rent that was to be taken as they early value of the property. True, but in how many instances was there no actual rent to go upon at all? The vast majority of good houses in the west end of Glasgow and Edinburgh, in all their large towns and in many other towns, were owned by their occupiers. There was no actual rent there, and they must proceed as best they could to find out what an hypothetical tenant would give, and he entirely agreed with the hon. Member for the Ayr Burghs that the hunt for the hypothetical tenant was an even more baffling pursuit than the hunt for the hypothetical buyer. In nine cases out of ten they had to grope for the value. The assessor had to do the best he could.
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He knew many houses which never had been and never could conceivably be let. Yet the assessor had to put a yearly value on them with the penalty of getting no rates out of them if he did not. Further than that, wherever they found any other consideration than the rent, or wherever they had a lease for twenty-one years and upwards, or a lease given to a favourite child or to a faithful servant, they tossed aside the actual rent altogether. The Statute so directed and enjoined, and there again they were left to grope for what was the true yearly value. When they considered that probably the large majority of substantial houses were in the occupancy of their owners, and that wherever they had any consideration other than rent or a lease of twenty-one years and upwards they were thrown back upon speculation and opinion, the House would see that it was preposterous to suggest that the present system was based upon yearly rent. It was based upon reasonable expectation. It was in the region of speculation and opinion. The best test of all as to the success of the present system and the efficiency with which the assessors performed their duties was this: From the whole of Scotland last year there came not a single appeal against the assessors" valuation to the Supreme Court from any one of the great population centres. [An Hon. MEMBER: It shows how easily it is done.] From the whole of Scotland there came not a single appeal against the assessors' valuation, but the valuation of dwelling houses was child's play as compared with the valuation of business premises which in nine cases out of ten were in the occupation of the owner and the annual yearly value of which was always a matter of speculation and of opinion. The assessors in Scotland had to value an infinite variety of such business premises, foundries, distilleries, breweries, coal workings and the rest, not one of which had ever been let. How was the assessor to perform this apparently impossible task? If the duty was put upon them for the first time, it would be said to be impossible for men to do it, at all events without some of the attributes of omnipotence. The Valuation Act of 1854, which cast the duty upon them, would, however, never have been passed if the views of his hon. friend had been

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given effect to. How did the assessors perform the task at present? They performed the duty by the application of a series of artificial rules, not one of them obligatory or statutory, but serving as indexes. All might be taken into account but not one of them could be exclusively followed without leading to some blind alley. Yet the overseers performed the work with perfect ease. Sometimes a percentage' was taken of the expenditure on buildings and machinery; usually they took the value of the land on which the business premises were planted. That was the usual rule. They took the value of the land. Sometimes they took a percentage on profits, sometimes they took the floor space and sometimes the output or working capacity. Sometimes they had the valuation of a neighbouring lot to guide them, and then they had to make allowances for comparative advantages and disadvantages, arriving in the end at a result eminently satisfactory both to the ratepayers and to the owners themselves. Thus it was as he had said, that positively there was not a single appeal coming from any one of the great industrial centres in Scotland, although in every case these valuations were reached by speculation, by opinion, by guess work, by looking at this circumstance and that, having in many cases no more guidance and in many cases much less than was to be found in estimating the value of the land without the buildings or the property upon it. That was done every day. There were three cases in which land might have to be valued without the buildings. There were the cases in which they might have the land already covered with buildings. How were they to proceed? They had to imagine the buildings on that particular plot of ground cleared away; they had to imagine what if they placed a ticket "For sale "on the property a willing buyer would give to a willing seller for that site, cleared of the buildings, with all its environment as they found it at the present time. The valuers had a rule-of-thumb method by which they reached the value of the buildings. How was the task performed? It was done by finding the nearest instance of a sale in the open market. He had never found a valuator yet who was not able with perfect ease to tell
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how much ought to be allowed for buildings, and even in keenly contested cases he had never yet found, and he thought the Lord Advocate would agree with him, one where the valuators on each side were in disagreement as to the value of the buildings. The Lord Advocate and himself had never yet had to argue the question of the value of the buildings. In the second ease, the. site might be actually vacant, and the value was arrived at by comparison with other sites, and allowance for relative advantages and disadvantages. The third case was that of building land entirely vacant or in use for agricultural purposes, but undeniably within the building zone. The valuer found out at what price ground in the vicinity had changed hands in the open market. He then found out at what rate feuing had been progressing in the neighbourhood. He put his value on the particular plot in hand, and considered how many years it would be before that plot would be utilised for building, and by discounting for that number of years reached the present value. That was a matter of everyday practice, and there; was no mystery and no difficulty about it. The hon. Member had objected to the proposals contained in the Bill on the ground of the expense of the inquiry. He did not understand him to say, however, nor could he understand him to say, that if the House came to the conclusion that it was desirable to set up this standard, the expenses which arose would be absolutely prohibitive. The question was rather this: Would the expense be so far out of proportion to the advantage to be gained that the House on considering the question should at once drop the proposal? The estimates he had heard as to the cost of making this valuation had been, in his opinion, greatly exaggerated. It was made a matter of complaint that the Government presented no estimate. The same objection might have been urged against the Act of 1854, which made a much more sweeping change in valuation than this Bill would effect. At present they had in Scotland the most efficient assessment machinery. They had more skilled and quick-witted valuers than any country in the world. How could the Government estimate the

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expenditure in a matter where the personal factor entered so much in to the consideration of the problem? Each area knew best its own need. In some areas there were assessors who would be able to accomplish all that was' necessary without outside assistance. In others a considerable amount of help might be required. An estimate would be entirely valueless. It was wiser and safer to leave each area to determine for itself the amount of assistance which its assessors would require. As to the difference between the Lord Advocate and himself upon the true scope of the Bill if it became law, his right hon. friend held, for good reasons no doubt, that the definition of owner under the new Rating and Assessing Act which was intended to follow this Bill should remain as it was under the present Valuation Act. He agreed that under the present Act these who drew feu duties were not included in the definition. Under the old law they were included in the category of owner, and were made to contribute to the rates, but under later developments of the law that view had changed. He held that these who drew feuduties should be included in the definition. It was a question of degree, but it was not a matter which could affect his views with regard to the valuation that ought to take place. This was nothing more nor less than a Bill to secure a valuation of all the vacant land in Scotland, free from the buildings and erections upon it. It would be idle to pretend that mere curiosity prompted the measure. There was an ulterior object in view. This was only a preliminary investigation to an entire alteration of the basis of rating, which would be more or less far-reaching according to the relation which the bare value of the land bore to the valuation of the composite subject. The Bill was designed to supply the present lack of information, and in that light he commended it to the House. The Government were under no misconception with regard to the object. Whatever the value of the land might turn out to be—and, in his judgment, in the populous centres it would turn out to be much greater than any one had anticipated—the Government were the victims of no delusion. They would not consider they had chanced on an El-dorado, some gold
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mine from which they might seek the precious metal to relieve the ratepayers, or some infinite source of revenue from which to replenish their pockets. Whatever the value of the land might be, they would regard it as nothing more nor less than a standard of measure by which to fix the contribution of the ratepayer to the rates, and to secure, as he firmly believed it would, a nearer approach to justice and equity than they had ever yet seen.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: I am disposed to regret that the audience I see before me is in so large a measure composed of Scottish Members only, because everybody knows that if we are going to change the whole principle of rating in Scotland, and to change it in obedience to certain abstract theories with regard to what is called the unearned increment of land, these principles, if adopted for one part of the United Kingdom, must by logical necessity be extended also to the other parts. That, of course, must be not only the opinion, but the wish of every man who supports this Bill. It is, therefore, all the more desirable that these who are affected by the Bill—not only Scotsmen, but Englishmen and Irishmen—should understand what is the change the Government have in view and what is their motive for the change. There is a dispute between the learned Gentleman who has just spoken and my hon. friends who moved and seconded the rejection of the Bill as to the extent of the cost the Bill will involve. My hon. friends on the highest authority say it will be very great, and the learned Gentleman thinks they exaggerate. The learned Gentleman admits, however, that in the earlier years of the new valuation roll the expenses are likely to be considerable. Why are the Government going to impose on the ratepayers of Scotland a tax, an obligatory expenditure, which, as I and my friends, think, will amount to a very large sum and which the promoters of the Bill admit will be an important and far from negligible sum, unless they are going to make some immense and fundamental change in the incidence of taxation and the sources from which they are going to get their revenue? Of course, everybody knows

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that is the object of the Government and of these behind them. It is an open secret in Scotland that the forces moving the Government are these who accept to the full the theory that every owner of land is a man who owns what he has no right to own, and that it is the duty of the State at the earliest possible moment to relieve him of his ill-gotten property. That is the avowed view of the most earnest advocates of the group of measures of which this is one. Did the learned Gentleman hear the cheers from his own friends which greeted the allusion of his hon. friend behind him to the doctrines of Henry George? The doctrine on which the Bill is founded is the doctrine of Henry George. I ask the Government why the localities in Scotland are to be burdened with this heavy charge, unless it' is to bring into the area of local taxation sources hitherto untapped these sources, though they have indirectly paid their share, are the feuduties and the rents paid by long leaseholders of houses; and undoubtedly the object of the learned Gentleman and of these who promote the Bill is to tax the owners of feus and the owners of long leases.
MR. URE:The long leaseholder is already taxed under the Valuation Act.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: It would ill become me to dispute with the learned Gentleman on a matter of law, but does he mean to say that there, is anything in Scotland analogous to that which we have in England of a man taking a house for forty years and paying all the rates.
MR. URE:What I did say was that the long leaseholder as we call him in Scotland, has to make good his contribution to the rates in proportion to the amount of rent he derives. When he pays his rates, he deducts from the rent which he pays to the long leaseholder the proportion of rates applicable to the amount of rent which he pays,
MR. A. J. BALFOUR:I think that we must be at some cross-purposes in this matter. I do not think that there is any serious dispute between us. The principle is fundamental, but about the facts of the case I do not think
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there need be any dispute. At all events let us confine the discussion to the feuars. To use a somewhat vulgar expression, would there be any steam behind this Bill unless it was the intention of these who are pressing for it in Scotland to include in the net of local taxation the existing feuduties? Every human being knows that there would not. Everyone knows that the Solicitor-General for Scotland would like to include the feu duties. Every human being knows that the Prime Minister, the Lord-Advocate, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, frightened not too soon by the well-founded alarm instilled into these who hold the ordinary views with regard to property in Scotland, have declared that they do not mean to break contracts. If they do not mean to break contracts at some future time, then this Bill will most certainly lose its most ardent supporters in Scotland; and it is in the hope that on this Bill will be founded another Bill which will break contracts that we have had the agitation which has induced the Government to enter upon the perilous course which they are now pursuing. The right hon. Gentleman has openly and avowedly said that he wishes entirely to alter the standard of rating, but I say that it is impossible to alter the standard of rating without committing the grossest injustice to particular individuals and to corporations; and this is manifest on the face of it. What does the hon. Gentle man want to do? He wishes to transfer from buildings and from business interests and machinery, entirely to the owner of the soil, the whole cost of every species of expenditure which goes on in a given urban or rural community. I will deal with the rural question presently, and I will now confine myself to the urban owner. In the first place I would ask an what principle of equity is that particular class concerned with the town to pay all the cost not merely of maintaining the fundamental needs of society, but of cheapening a large part of the luxuries of society? If you consider, a man may own land in a town and yet may not live in the town at all; le may have invested his savings in the feu or ground site in the town. Why Put on his shoulders and on these of

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his fellows the whole of the burdens? The only conceivable justification of such a course is, after all, to say that everybody else in the town had by his own exertions obtained the valuable privilege which he enjoys; he has either built a house or made a business or done a large share of the work which conduces to his own well-being, whilst the owner of the soil is merely the owner of the unearned increment. That is the only justification of the inequities of this Bill. The doctrine of unearned increment is not held in its logical form, as I will come to show directly, in certain parts of the Bill. Does not the House see that it is perfectly true to say that in a civilised community nothing is of value to the owner except through the exertions of the society in which he lives and the predecessors of that society; that we are all inheritors of wealth; that even the weekly wage earners are inheritors of wealth, or at all events of a subsistence—put it as low as you like—to which they are only in part contributors? Do not let me make my argument too wide; I know that the House does not like generalisations to be too extended in their scope. Take the case of a man who owns a house in a thoroughfare which has become a fashionable thorough fare and whose business opportunities go up; he makes a great deal of money by the mere accident of the situation of his premises, and he gets his wealth just as much from unearned increment due to the society in which he lives as the owner of any site in the very centre of this great metropolis. Who are these that contribute to this unearned increment? Hon. Members sometimes talk as if the people who had made the unearned increment of the plot of land were the other citizens of the town, and they only. That is a proposition which no man can believe if once he grasps the fact that it is not the living citizens, but the dead citizens who have done even more than the living citizens; and in the second place, it is not the community who collect the rates or these who benefit by the rates who alone have been concerned in this social development. What would Glasgow be if you circumscribed it within walls, and did not bring into the general system of which it is a part, the fellow workers, not only from every
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part of Scotland but from every part of the world, who have contributed to its development just as much as its own citizens? Then if that is true, why are you going to take away from a particular individual in Glasgow his unearned increment and hand it over, not to the people who have contributed to the making of that increment, but to the ratepayers of Glasgow, who. It is admitted, have not taken any hand in bringing that increment about? The doctrine of unearned increment if it is once really understood will be seen to have very unexpected consequences, and if driven to its logical conclusion would produce legislation which it would tax even the ingenuity of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General for Scotland to find any cause for. The truth is that it is simply mere robbery, as far as I can see, to say to a man who has bought, perhaps while the late Government were in power, a site near some great town in Scotland, and say to him: "You bought that on the faith of the rating system which prevails in England and Scotland and which you had every reason to believe would he a permanent system. You bought at a price based on that system of rating which you thought would be carried on. That site was to be valued, let us say, at £50 a year, and henceforth, it is to bear rates at £70 a year." The Solicitor-General knows perfectly well that if you are going in our great towns to throw the whole burden of the rates on the land the cost of the rating will be a great deal more than 20s. in the £. It must be so; it is inevitable; and, therefore, you are not merely going to diminish the resources of this unfortunate purchaser of a site, but you are going to deprive him of all that he has got; you are going, first, to take every shilling which he has in the world, and then you are going to leave him burdened with a sum costing per £ more than the whole value of the land of which he is the owner, and which he has bought out of his own savings. If the word "robbery" is not applicable to that transaction will any Gentlemen tell me what is applicable? What is proposed to be done? Apparently the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have been frightened out of interfering with the feu duties; that

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was a breach of contract. But there is no express legal contract in the case which I have been discussing; therefore the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Lord Advocate have nothing to say to this unfortunate purchase of a site in or near a big town. But this House has surely to consider the equities of the case, and I again wish to ask why the trustees of an estate, who have purchased land quite recently close to a big town, or within a big town, believing that the land was to be rated upon the ordinary equitable principles to which we are accustomed, are suddenly to find that not only every single shilling which that land has brought in is to be taken for purposes from which the owner of the land gets no profit, but that the owner of the land is to be saddled besides with a total charge of 3s. or 4s. in the £ more than the whole value which the land brings in. That is a transaction which, I am convinced, if only hon. Gentlemen will consider it, they will see is perfectly unjustifiable. The hon. and learned Gentleman did not say anything about two parts of his Bill on which I should like to ask the Lord Advocate a few more questions. The theory of the Government in bringing in this Bill is that anybody who expends money upon land is to be rated in respect of that land. But there is one very remarkable exception, and that is the railway land. Why? What is the ground for it?
THE LOUD ADVOCATE (Mr. THOMAS SHAW, Hawick Burghs): said that in his reply he would be happy to give an answer on that point. The whole valuation of Scotland for half a century had proceeded on an entirely different basis of machinery as regarded railways and canals. The railway companies themselves, along with the Government thought that until this first step was taken as to a general scheme there should be no inclusion of railways.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: That interruption is of a highly technical character, and does not touch the fundamental equities of the case. If the Government are going to make an arrangement by which railways will be entirely relieved from any rating except such as conies from the bare, naked value of the land upon
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which their lines and stations are laid, it is evident that they will absolutely ruin whole districts in Scotland, where the railway companies are, and have long been, the principal ratepayers. The Government will cause a large amount of inconvenience and suffering by such a violent revolution of our system of valuation. But if, on the other hand, the Government are not going to carry out such a violent revolution, but are going to rate railway companies in the future as going concerns, with only slight modifications of the existing system, then what becomes of the theory of prairie value and unearned increment? Why is a railway company to be treated differently from a gas company? Why should capital in the one case be regarded as a proper subject for rating, while in the other it is to be free from that imposition? I do not know which horn of the dilemma the Government will take, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman when he comes to reply will not deal with the mere technicalities of the case. I hope he will tell us whether or not there is going to be a substantial alteration in the existing system. If so, I say that he will cause infinite inconvenience and hardship in large districts in Scotland in which at the present time the railways are the principal ratepayers as is the case in large districts in England. On the other hand, if he is going to leave the railways as they are, why is this particular form of capital and this alone to be required to contribute to the rates of the district in which those undertakings are situated? I come now to agricultural land. So far as I know there has never been in any Bill an attempt to deal with the value of the land of agricultural holdings apart from the improvements upon it. The present Government, if not fearless themselves, are the humble servants of people who are fearless. But I notice with regret that they have not the logical instincts which animate those whose theories they adopt and spoil in the adoption. If there is to be a general system of spoliation in rating, at least let it be consistent and logical. The theory the Government has adopted in towns throws the whole burden of the rates upon the bare unoccupied land. Why do they not follow out that theory in dealing with agricultural land? I think the reason is that in a large part of

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Scotland, if you merely consider the value of the land, apart from what has been done to the land, and if you estimate by any fair method the annual value of what has been put into the land by the owners and their predecessors, you will find that the prairie value of the land which is to bear all the rates is non-existent and a minus quantity, and you will have your whole fabric of rating upon no basis at all. The Bill says—
" 'Capital land value' means the sum which such lands may be expected to realise in the open market at the time of valuation if divested of buildings, erections, or structural improvements, and fixed or attached machinery."
But that is not a full, or anything like a full, enumeration of the capital expended on agricultural land in Scotland or England, especially in the highly-farmed districts. Under this definition, I suppose, a stone wall would be included under "erections," while a ditch would not be included. I am not quite so sure about a hedge. A field which is surrounded on one side by a wall and on three sides by hedges would not be rated in respect of that side where the wall is, but I suppose it would be rated in respect of the expenditure upon the hedges, because a hedge is hardly an erection or a building, or fixed or attached machinery. That does not seem very rational. A hedge has as good a claim to exemption as a wall, and a drain, which is certainly not an erection, has probably a better claim than either, because it is more directly associated with the increased fertility of the soil. A friend of mine, who was once a Member of this House, wrote a letter in which he contrasted the different treatment of two contiguous acres of land in a rural district, one of which was used entirely for building residential houses and appurtenances and the other for purely agricultural purposes. As I understand the matter, on the acre which was used entirely for building purposes everything expended in the way of building sewage works, water works, roads, and all the absolutely necessary additions required by building would all escape rating, and everything would go upon the so-called original value of the soil. But his neighbour, owning land of precisely the same character in plots of precisely the same size, and using the land not for residential but for agricultural purposes, would find
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that he wag rated on the hedges and drains and water supply, and upon all he had expended to improve the quality of the soil. And then the Government tell us that they do not propose—and think it very unjust—that rates should fall upon industry. Then how about forests? Hon. Members below the gangway are fond of urging afforestation as a cure for all our social ills and as a method of bringing the people back to the soil. To plant a wood is regarded as a great social re- form. Is it the intention of the Government to rate the wood? Do they propose to rate trees? I have not the least idea, and perhaps the Solicitor-General will tell me.
MR. URE: We propose to rate them.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: Are trees the original property of the soil? Are they not the result of industry? Do they not require industry to plant them, preserve them, thin them, and keep them in health? The logic of the Government is really of a most extraordinary kind. Their whole scheme as to agricultural land appears to me utterly absurd. In future the valuer will have to ask himself, "What will any independent purchaser give now in the open market for this plot of land? "What does "now" mean? Does it mean when this Bill is passed, or when the public think it is going to pass, because if that is so I venture to suggest nobody will ever buy a plot of land. It will have no value at all. The Government are going to rate it at 24s. in the £ in some places, and in others at a still higher figure. What is the value of a plot of land rated at 21s. to 30s. in the £, or what will a purchaser give for an article which will cost him 4s. in the £ more than it will bring him in? Of course he is going to give nothing. Up to a recent date feu duties were among the most valuable securities in existence; thirty years' purchase was a common price, and it was given by trustees, owners of charities, and all those who desired to have what they regarded as an absolutely sale gilt-edged security. Bu- the economic speculations of the Solicitor General for Scotland and his colleagues have destroyed all that already. Who

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can get thirty years purchase, or twenty-five years purchase for a feu in Scotland? Who is foolish enough to pay that rate? Nobody. Since it was realised that the Government were contemplating these precious schemes I do not believe that a single feu in Scotland has been sold at twenty-five years purchase. You have absolutely destroyed the value. You have thrown into the sea, with no benefit to anybody, a large fraction of these valuable gilt-edged securities, and I think you have done a very great evil to Scotland by so doing. But you are going to do much worse with regard to unoccupied lands in towns. Let us take the case of the Merchant Company in Edinburgh, a great and ancient corporation owning large wealth, which, they use for purely philanthropic and educational purposes. A large part of their property is unoccupied land in Edinburgh, or its immediate neighbourhood—I believe the number of private owners of unoccupied land in Edinburgh is extremely small. Every unoccupied acre which this unfortunate Merchant Company owns will henceforth, if this Bill and the consequential measure should be passed, be rated at 24s. or 25s. in the £. That is simply robbing the corporation. It is doing nothing else. On what principle, too, is the valuator to estimate the value or the owner to return it? Evidently the whole of this unoccupied land will undergo a complete revolution if this Bill is passed, and no valuator can ignore that. He would say, "If it is going to be rated at the present level its value is so and so, but if you are going to throw the whole rates of Edinburgh on it its value is nil." If that be true, does it not condemn the Bill absolutely? Here you have a measure which does not, indeed, touch existing contracts, and which, therefore, does not meet the demands of those who have supported the Bill, but which absolutely robs—there is no other words which can be used—the owner of every site in or near one of our big towns. On what system the land is to be valued, the new or the old, is one, and only one, of the problems raised by the terms of the Bill. The theory on which is based the transfer of the whole burden of urban expense from those who now bear
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it to those who own the land and houses is one which does not hold water. It is a theory which can be knocked into a cocked hat by a little ingenuity of argument; and the matter will, of course, be pressed in every Court, and before every tribunal, because the fortunes of the people who own the land are absoutely at stake. You cannot avoid the litigation which has already choked the efforts of Glasgow to deal with the matter on its own account. It seems to me that the Government have in this case treated Scotland as they are rather accustomed to treat it, as a kind of experimental ground on which all the wildest crotchets, all the rawest political speculations may be tried by rash and thoughtless innovators. I see nothing in the structure of this Bill—I do not refer to other Bills—to indicate that the Government have thought out the problem at all. It is avowedly only a door which is to lead to some scene beyond; the Government themselves do not know precisely what, and nobody knows precisely. The Bill itself is drawn on inconsistent lines, and the speeches in which it is defended touch very little on the real difficulties of the situation. It is clear that its framers, or, at all events, those who are driving the framers of the Bill along their course, will never be content without some revolution in our rating system which manifestly inflicts the most cruel hardship on a relatively small section of the community. I do not believe that the provisions of this Bill when thoroughly understood will be accepted in any part of Scotland except by that small section who seem to think this is going to be the beginning of that happy state of things when all land will be taken away from its owners without the payment of any compensation. As far as the agricultural interests are concerned I do not know that the result will be very serious, but when you come to urban property, it is as clear as daylight that under the guise of a mere alteration of the system of valuation you are really beginning a great revolution which can, I believe, do little good to the general body of the ratepayers, which certainly will not stimulate those social reforms of which we hear so much in speeches and see so

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little in Bills, but which, at the same time, will inflict a most cruel and unmerited hardship on a large part of the community which as much deserves the protection of equal laws and equal justice as any other portion of His Majesty's subjects.
MR. A. DEWARsaid it was a little difficult for anyone speaking on this side of that House to follow the Solicitor-General for Scotland, who in the Committee upstairs, as hon. Members on both sides would admit, rendered conspicuous service to the House of Commons. The Leader of the Opposition had assumed that the object of the Bill which was to follow this measure was to remove the burden of the whole of the rates from the bulk of the individuals in the towns, and to place it on the few landlords who were there. He thought that was a misconception of the intentions of the Government. He understood the Solicitor-General to state expressly that the proposal was to change the standard of rating from what was now the standard, namely, the houses on the land, to the land itself. The whole question, therefore, was whether it was preferable that the rating standard should be the land itself or the land with the buildings upon it. He asked the House to consider how the present system worked out. It meant a tax on a man who improved his house. It was a haphazard system. An assessor looked at a house and decided the valuation on which the owner was to be rated. The valuation was regulated very much by the size of a man's family. According to the present rule, if a man had a large house, his rates were high, and if he had a small house his rates were low. If a man required a large house for the accommodation of his family, up went his rates. He knew a place where there was a row of workmen's houses, similar in size and accommodation, and each valued at £20 a year, but one of the men, who had an addition to his family, got another room added to his house. His rates were increased in respect of that improvement. Another man who neglected his property and allowed it to fall into decay actually had his rates reduced. The present standard was bad from that point of
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view. It took away a man's inducement to give light and air to his children and encouraged him to neglect his property. As showing the unsatisfactory nature of the present system of rating he instanced the case of a manufacturer who provided premises where his workpeople had plenty of light and air. That man's rates were high because he provided that kind of accommodation, while his competitor across the street had low rates because his premises were not so commodious and well-equipped. The shopkeeper who built a shop to give plenty of light and air was rated high, not because he could afford it, but because he had spent money. The man in a back office was rated low, although probably he could much more afford to pay rates than the shopkeeper. He thought anyone would agree that the present system was haphazard and contrary to the best interests of the community. What difference would it make to any of these men if, instead of taking his house and land, they said they would take only his land and make that the standard? Then a man might put as many rooms on his land as he chose, and erect what shop or factory he pleased. The standard of rating would be the same. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition had overlooked that point.
MR. A. J. BALFOUR: The hon. Gentleman has appealed to me as though. I had omitted something. Would not the system he has been advocating drive all the poor out of the wealthy quarters of a town?
MR. A. DEWARsaid that was undoubtedly so, but the fact of the standard being changed would not in the least throw a burden upon different shoulders. That was his point. It would still be on the whole community. Valuable land was in the centre of the city, and it would no longer be used by the poor people, crowded together there in the most extreme way. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition said that it would probably be an expensive problem, although he did not exactly say how much it would cost. That argument was based on the theory that a skilled valuer would value every

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house and that he would be paid the ordinary fees. He agreed that in that case it would be expensive, but he thought the right hon. Gentleman had overlooked the fact that they in Scotland had skilled assessors, who did their work admirably and gave absolute satisfaction. The work they did at present was quite as difficult as that they would have to do under this Bill. Two of the most skilful and experienced of those assessors gave evidence before the Committee. One of them said it would probably cost £4,000 a year to do the whole of Scotland for the first time. He had reason to believe that the valuation of Edinburgh, with a rateable value of £300,000 odd a year, would cost under £3,000 for the first time, and, as hon. Members knew, the first time was most costly. They had some corroboration from new countries. A Blue-book was presented to the House last week for Australia and New Zealand, and it showed that the whole of South Australia was valued in a few months from one centre without any organisation, such as they had in Scotland, of assessors. The House would be surprised to learn that it was estimated that the cost would not exceed £5,000 a year. Surely if Australia could do it for £5,000 a year Scotland could do it, as the Solicitor-General said, at a reasonable sum. The taxation of land values had been enforced in New Zealand now for several years. In reply to Lord Elgin, who telegraphed asking them for information with regard to the effect of the taxation of land values in various provinces, the Governments of both Australia and New Zealand reported that it had added to the solid prosperity of the country. Out of fifty-two districts in New Zealand which had adopted the taxation of land values, two only did not approve of it or gave a qualified approval, others from time to time had expressed cordial approval of it, and several said that they had not yet had time to form an opinion; not one had gone back to the old system, although they had the option. The hon. Member for Ayr Burghs had indicated that it was a simple matter in New Zealand, as though he was talking of a dreary and desert island with only one man on it; where-
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as Wellington, the largest town in New Zealand, had 58,552 inhabitants. It was no answer to say that the countries were dissimilar. They should be told in what respects they were dissimilar. New Zealand was a new country and had fewer people it was true, but the economic conditions which regulated life there were precisely the same. There was another point. He would give an instance within his own personal knowledge. Similar instances would be within the knowledge of every Member of the House. Twenty-five years ago two fields in the city of Edinburgh, absolutely unbuilt upon, had a rent roll of £450 per annum. Now they had a rent-roll of £12,500 per annum. The capitalised value of the fields at thirty years purchase would have been about £13,000, its value to-day at thirty years purchase was over £300,000. That enhanced value was due to the energy and enterprise of the community. Was it unreasonable to provide machinery to tap sources of wealth of that kind? They might depend upon it that in the next thirty years other fields would be subject to precisely the same condition. He supported the Bill for two reasons: first, because to take the rates off buildings would encourage men to build, and secondly, because to put them on land would tax unearned increment, some of which ought to come back to the community.
*MR. J. M. HENDERSONsaid that what seemed to have vexed his hon. friend was that somebody had increased the value of his land from £400 to £12,500, but supposing he remained the owner of it he would have to pay taxes on that increased amount. Then as to, the other point raised about New Zealand the prosperity of the towns was not attributable to this tax, and indeed hon. Members would forgive him for saying that nothing in the nature of prosperity was attributable to any tax. In other words taxes could not give prosperity. What brought prosperity to New Zealand was the frozen meat trade. Several people used to attribute the stopping of garrotting to flogging, but garrotting had stopped long before flogging was resorted to. People were very apt to attribute an effect to a cause which had ceased to

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operate. The enormous prosperity of New Zealand must be attributed to the improved refrigerating machinery on ships enabling meat to be brought to this and other countries. As to the Report which had been referred to, it was written by the very gentlemen who were justifying their existence, the assessors. Surely it was impossible to say that that was evidence which they could accept or to suggest that they should go to America or New Zealand, which were Protectionist countries, and take their policy from them. The argument was one which was not legitimate and was very far-fetched. This Bill was introduced on the recommendation of a Select Committee, and before he joined this House he always thought that a Select Committee was a Committee selected of open-minded men who would bring judicial minds to bear upon the evidence submitted to them, and according to that state of mind they would weigh the evidence submitted to them and so give their Report to the House. Since he had joined the House, however, he had learned something very different. This Committee consisted of fifteen members, one of whom retired and took no part in the proceedings. That reduced the number to fourteen, and of that fourteen eight were pledged up to their very eyes in support of this principle. Three of these included his hon. friend the Solicitor-General for Scotland, and the hon. Member for South Edinburgh, both of whom are honorary vice-presidents of the League for the Taxation of Land Values. That league was promoted for the promulgation of the doctrine of Henry George, that—
"It is not necessary to confiscate land it is only necessary to confiscate rent. Let the individuals who now hold it, still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them buy and sell and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell if we take the kernel."
What this Bill therefore was going to lead up to was nothing less than the carrying out of that doctrine of Henry George. Before that Committee they had the evidence of the best surveyors and assessors from Edinburgh and Glasgow and from all over Scotland—men of the highest eminence, who gave them the most important evidence. He was bound to say that the whole weight
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of that evidence was against this principle, but the whole of it was brushed aside, and he assured the House that the Report was a condensed form of the evidence which was given by the present president, the late president and another ex-president of this very league. He was very sorry to say it, but there was a great deal of ignorance throughout the country on this question, and some of the leading Liberal papers had largely contributed to that ignorance. Some of the literature which had been sent through the country by means of tracts also was most misleading. The object of the foolish piece of legislation which was foreshadowed by this Bill was to strike off the buildings from the sites and relieve them from rates, but they could not get away from buildings in estimating any site value. It was imposible. The picture his hon. friend drew of a man being able to put up as much building as he liked and not pay rates was ridiculous and it would be iniquitous. Supposing a man had a house with two storeys and paid rateson £100 a year. Were they going to allow his neighbour to build twenty storeys and still pay on £100 a year also? If the two storeys accommodated twenty people and the twenty storeys 200, were they going to give water, sewage arrangements, street lighting, police and other amenities to the 180 people for nothing? According to that principle, three-fourths of the people would be enjoying these municipal amenities for nothing. Was such a proposal to be defended for a moment? Let them suppose that there were six houses in a street which were all, say, two storeys high, that the assessor came along and fixed the site value of these houses at £100; and that one of the owners built his house up to four storeys. Was the assessor to come next year and say to the other five people, "You have not made the best use you could of your site as you have not built four storeys, and you must pay the same rate as the four-storeyed house which I have now valued at £200?" In New York they were building twenty-four storeys high. He was glad that the Prime Minister had been so wise as to throw over the Solicitor-General for Scotland in regard to feu duties. He did not think

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it much mattered who paid the rates, so long as rent was the guiding factor in regard to rating. He should be glad to see the owners pay all the rates, as they did in a large proportion of cases in the City of London. ["Oh!"] Well, that was a fact, and was according to the evidence before the Committee. If a man wanted an office in the City he understood that usually the owners paid the rates and included it in the rent. If it was an unpopular district the tenant got a cheaper rent, and by that means the owner paid the rates. He was quite content that the owner should pay the rates. The difficulty arose when they proceeded to deal with the outlying property. Let him take as an illustration the town of Aberdeen. The Committee had a Return carefully prepared by the City Assessor, the Parish Assessor, the Town Clerk and several others who took a great interest in this subject. That Return showed that the total rateable value of Aberdeen was £750,000, and the estimate of the land value £107,000. So that the whole of the land value would only amount to half the present rates, which were over £200,000 a year, and therefore the rates could not be paid out of the land values. But he understood from the hon. Member for South Edinburgh that there was to be an additional rate on the buildings. If that was so, then that was exactly the ground on which the Glasgow Bill was thrown out. They (the Committee) objected to a double standard. The estimated land values in Aberdeen were £107,000 a year, the rates were over £200,000, and the other £100,000 must be obtained from the buildings. Therefore they broke their principle of a single standard. It was said that the balance would be obtained from the unbuilt-upon land. Let them observe what would be done in every town when they came to deal with the figures. The unbuilt-upon land in Aberdeen was taken at 3,340 acres, and all this land was assumed to be nearly ripe for building purposes. The town of Aberdeen only covered 1,685 acres, so far as the buildings were concerned, and it had taken several hundred years to do that. The meaning of these calculations was that if it were assumed that all this land was ready for building upon to-day the land value of it was £50,000. But that still
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left £50,000 short of the amount of the rates. What did that mean? There was this danger. An assessor would go to one of these men and say: "You have an acre of land. I propose to value it at £1,500, that is equal to £60 a year." The man might say: " But I am only getting £3 a year for it." To which the assessor would reply: "I cannot help that. Somebody will give you £1,500 for it." Who was to be the judge in a matter like that? The Solicitor-General spoke of a building zone. He did not know what that might be. And no one would buy 500 acres surrounding a town to build upon immediately. The most speculative builder in Aberdeen, if anybody went to him and offered him 500 acres at £500 an acre, provided he at once covered them with buildings, would decline. He would be ruined if he accepted. What would be the result of an extension of this sort in Glasgow? The gentleman whose land would be operated upon at the end of this twentieth century would have to pay the rates upon it now, that was, double, treble, or quadruple the actual rent he was receiving. A good deal had been said of the expense of it; but this matter had been brought forward by the Scottish Municipalities. Some of them had been very keen about it, let them pay for it. He was sure when the truth came out it would demonstrate the folly of the whole thing, unless the full principles of Henry George were adopted. How would it affect the land values? Was it a wise thing to attack property so as to reduce its value? One of the objects of the Bill, as stated in the Report, was to settle the housing question. One of the economic advantages was—
"that houses and their improvements would be relieved from rates, which would encourage building and facilitate industrial developments."
One of the points taken by the hon. Member for South Edinburgh was that directly a man began to add to his house his rates increased. The 1854 Act did not say a word about taxing buildings. What it did was to tax rents, and it was right that it should. If he had a house at £100 a year, and his neighbour had a house at £120 with two rooms more, and

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he built two more rooms to his house, he would have a house with the same accommodation as his neighbour. Then why should he pay rates on £100 only and his neighbour on £120? The test was what rent the house would produce, and the reason for that was that the larger the house was the greater the number living in it, who got the benefit of police protection and other matters on which the rates were spent. The right hon. Member the Leader of the Opposition made a reference to Sub-section (2), which provided that this valuation was not to affect railways and canals. The right hon. Gentleman could not find a reason for that. The reason was that when this principle of site values was being discussed in Committee, they ran against the dead wall of railways and canals, because they had no values as building land. The companies were under obligations to use the land for the purpose of the railways and canals, and therefore it could have no site values. But the Committee said that would not do. It was the money they wanted, and the principle must go. But that was no kindness to the railways, because if railways were rated on the present principle it might mean that the percentage in the £ would be doubled, and instead of paying, say, 6s. in the £ as they did now they would pay 12s. on the same assessment, and he did not think any railway company in the country could stand it. The principle was all right so long as money was obtained by adopting it, but as soon as the principle ceased to provide money the principle was abandoned, and they stood on the old method of assessment. They had witnesses before the Committee from Glasgow, who were asked how much of a workman's rent was paid to the ground landlord, but they had never taken the trouble to work it out. The Committee worked it out, and it came to 15s. a year at most. Was it to be contended that if people were forced to give builders a bargain, for that was what it came to, which enabled the tenant to pay 7s. 6d. a year instead of 15s., they were going to settle the housing question for the other 7s. 6d. a year? What about the housing question? For the rich and middle classes there was no housing question. Mr. Harper,
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the statistical officer of the County Council, admitted that there were houses by the hundred in every suburb of London which could be bought for less than the mortgage money. In Dulwich, Norwood, and other suburbs, houses of £20, £50, £70, and £100 rental could be bought for less than the mortgage money, which was usually two-thirds or three -fourths of the value, and the other fourth might be written off for ground value. Mr. Harper also admitted that there was land in any quantity in Poplar and in other districts that might be had. Sir Samuel Montagu had offered to the London County Council 25 acres for nothing on which to build workmen's dwellings, and the County Council had refused the offer. The reason of overcrowding was insufficiency of income among the workpeople, who could not afford the rent of the houses which were built. Even if they had the ground for nothing they could not build houses which could be let at a rent which the poor class of workpeople could afford, and which would give a return to the builder. The reason of this insufficiency of income was that there were great numbers of men who did not receive regular wages; they only earned on the average from 15s. to 25s. a week, and they could not afford to pay the rent of any decent house which might be built for them. If anyone attended the police courts they would hear applications for separation and alimony by this very class of workpeople. The Legislature years ago gave the magistrates power to grant separation orders, and he found that in England during the year 1904–5 —he could not get the figures for 1906—the number of separation orders granted was no less than 6,750 in each of those years. That was a very serious thing. In three years, at the rate separation orders were granted, they had about 20,000 workpeople who, instead of requiring 20,000 houses, under these separation orders would require 40,000 houses to house themselves and their wives and families. [Laughter.] It was all very well to laugh. He was in the police court the other day—[laughter]—not in the dock but on the Bench—and what happened? A woman who had five children applied for arrears of separation allowance; and another woman, who made a similar

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application, had four children. Women in such circumstances as these were too poor to rent any houses which they could build for them, even if they got the land for nothing on which to build. It might be that some provision would have to be made to meet the needs of these people, but at any rate let them all subscribe to that work; let them not take one particular form of investment and confiscate it, but let every investment share and share alike in the burden. He observed that a good many people who favoured these proposals had their money very carefully invested in private industrial undertakings where it could not be attacked. In opposing the Second Reading of the Bill he did not feel that he was opposing the Government. He felt that the Government had got entangled with those who held the doctrines of Henry George. The Prime Minister had thrown them over on the question of the feu duties; and when they got this valuation he believed that the Prime Minister would throw the doctrine on which it proceeded over also. As a humble supporter of the Government he felt it his duty to oppose the Bill. He warned the Government that if this or any other confiscatory doctrine was coquetted with or adopted it would split the Liberal Party in a way that it had never been split before. The country would reject any such principle as that of Henry George, a principle which he was certain was at the bottom of this proposal. He could only say that he was very sorry that he should have to oppose the Bill, but he felt that it contained proposals which were a great danger to the Party, and that being so, he would oppose this first, and any further steps which he believed would lead to disaster to the Liberal Party.
*MR. WOODsaid his hon. friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire had complained that the majority of the Committee were pledged to a particular view on this subject. But he thought it might be said of the minority of the Committee that they came equally pledged. The fact of the matter was that it was perfectly impossible to form a Committee of Members who were not pledged to a view on this
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matter. Hundreds of Members in that House were pledged to the taxation of land values, and he supposed hon. Members opposite were equally pledged against it. With regard to women separated from their husbands, the hon. Member said that they mostly belonged to the working classes. He did not think they did out of due proportion.
MR. J. M. HENDERSON: I omitted to state that the Home Secretary gave me a return of the orders made in the Probate Court, and the figures were twenty-two and twenty-five for 1904 and 1905, respectively. ["What about the divorce cases?"]
*MR. WOODsaid that undoubtedly many thousands of the working classes could not obtain the house-room they required. Those who advocated the taxation of land values thought it was a reform which would do something to remedy the existing condition of things. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition had described the proposal of the Government as robbery; he had assumed that they were going to change the whole incidence of rating at a single operation and without any regard for existing contracts, and then drew strange conclusions from that assumption. He did not think the assumption was at all borne out by any language used by the Prime Minister or any Member of the Government. The conclusion at which the Leader of the Opposition had arrived was that the rate on the land would be 24s. in the £, and that therefore the landlord would pay away the whole of his rent and another 4s. in the £. As one with a little practical experience of rating, it seemed to him that if, as the right hon. Gentleman assumed, they reduced the value of the land to nothing at all, then even a rate of 24s. in the £. would produce nothing. This question of the taxation of land values was closely bound up with the housing question. It was represented as a mere measure for taking away from the present occupying ratepayer the burden which he bore, and placing it on someone else; that was not so much their object as that by altering the basis of rating they should relieve industry

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and assist commerce by lightening the burden upon building and improvements. That question had been adequately dealt with, and he would confine his remarks to the question of housing. He did not think they could more radically touch the housing question than by this reform. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire had referred to an experience of the London County Council. On one occasion a well-known and respected Member of that House offered them some land for housing purposes, for nothing. Of course, the land had value, no doubt considerable value, and it was offered to them for nothing to build workmen's houses upon. His hon. friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire seemed to think that their refusal of the offer told in favour of his case, whereas it told in favour of the case for the other side. They could have erected buildings on the land and let them at reasonable rents, and made it a profitable speculation both to the ratepayers and the occupiers of the houses; but when they took into account the fact that the rates were about 8s. or 9s. in the £, and that they had to be paid, not on the value of the land only, but on the composite subject—the buildings and the land, they found that the burden was such as to prevent their building on the ground. It was obvious that the land upon which building must take place for the working-classes must be the cheaper land. It had been said that the effect of this reform would be to drive the working classes out of the neighbourhoods where the land was costly. That process was now going on in some parts of London, where warehouses were taking the place of dwellings, whilst in other parts the population were being displaced by the erection of large banks and insurance offices. This Bill would provide in such cases other land to which the working classes could go to obtain houses at reasonable rents when they were driven out of the central parts of large towns. If they could by degrees and with due regard to justice and equity alter the basis of rating from the composite subject to the land, they would be able to get building land on the outskirts of towns where workmen's dwellings might be erected at a cheap rate. The London County
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Council had been criticised for not building houses for the lowest and poorest class of the population. As a matter of fact, they could not do that without charity rents, but they would be assisted to do so if the proposed reform were carried. Some hon. Members seemed to be proceeding on the assumption that this Bill was going to do something which was utterly absurd. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire seemed to have fallen into that error. All they desired was to know what the value of the land was before a scheme was formulated and placed before the House. He happened to be a Member of the Committee which dealt with the Scottish Bill, and they had had widely different estimates given as to the value of the land. One witness said that the annual value of the land in Glasgow was a little over half a million, the figure given being £577,000. but the assessor for Glasgow put it at nearly £2,500,000. This Bill had been represented as a predatory proposal, but he believed it was one which would bring about very considerable economic results. It was not me rely a question of shifting the incidence of rating, but of shifting the burden of rating from the objects of industry and from what was a vital necessity of the people, namely, houseroom, to the basis of the land. It had been the favourite argument of hon. Gentlemen opposite that whatever burdens were placed upon the rates ultimately fell upon the land. He was not prepared to accept that argument without qualification, but undoubtedly there was some truth in it, because if there were no rates the landlord would obtain a much larger rent for his land. How did that agree with the arguments put forward to-day? Hon. Members opposite sometimes used the argument that it was no use to tax ground values because the burden would be shifted, but occasionally they world argue that it was unfair to tax the land because it was a new subject of taxation and would be making people pay who had never paid before. The burden did to a large extent fall on the land, but it fell unequally and unfairly, and it would be an enormous advantage if it fell more equally. The occupying ratepayers did not appear to feel the burden of taxes so acutely as they felt the burden of the rates.

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They imagined that if rates were relieved by doles from the taxes that they were the gainers. This reform would bring about clearness of vision on the part of the electors, and that was a most desirable thing. He hoped they would get this Bill for Scotland, and then they would be able to discover the real value of the land.
*MR. MUNRO FERGUSONsaid he was afraid that his experience of rating in towns was somewhat out of date, because it was many years since he served on the Small Holdings Committee. That Committee, however, gave him an opportunity of forming certain conclusions, and they were quite in harmony with the proposals of this Bill. He thought it was necessary to have a separate valuation for urban houses and land, and it was quite feasible to provide for that separate valuation. The question of the cost had been raised, but he did not think the expense thrown upon the occupiers would be very heavy, and the returns could very easily be made. A good deal of work might be thrown upon the assessors, and in view of the novel character of the new form of taxation there might be considerable litigation. He thought under the circumstances that a grant in aid of costs should be given. The town council in his constituency had asked that three years should be allowed to elapse after the passing of the Bill before it came into operation. Nothing could be simpler than the proposal of this Bill. It did not provide for the carrying out of the scheme of Henry George, but it was a Bill to clear the way for rating land separately from houses. His opinion was that there should be a higher tax upon land than upon houses, because the rental of land was a net rental. He had always felt that unoccupied building land ought to bear a fair proportion of local taxation. To his mind that was one of the strongest reasons for making progress with this Bill. He was not a man holding extreme views in regard to the land question, but so far from thinking this an extravagant proposal he had himself brought in a Bill under which local authorities would have been able to place a valuation upon all building land within their areas and under which at any sub-
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sequent period they might take over the land at that valuation plus anything done by the owners to increase its value. He thought local authorities ought to own the whole of the land values created through the increase of the population. He could not understand from the legal phraseology used by the Solicitor-General whether there was any difference between him and the Lord-Advocate as to the placing of taxation on existing contracts. Much built-on land had changed hands so often that it would not be possible to put the ordinary incidence of local taxation on the existing contracts without doing an injustice and raising an amount of opposition which would be fatal to the progress of any legislation of this kind. As regarded urban land, he saw no difficulty whatever in the working of this proposal, nor did he see any difficulty in the way of gradually building up a system of local taxation much fairer in its incidence than that which they had to-day. He had even suggested that a small tax should be put on existing feu duties on the ground that municipal expenditure tended to run up the value of those duties. Feu duties, however, had not been rising in value of late. He doubted very much whether much change could be made in applying the Bill to the landward districts. The whole value of arable land really consisted in the capital expended on it, and if that was not rated, he did not quite see what was to be. There were many parishes where but for the buildings, fixtures, and equipment on the land there would be little left to rate at all. He was sorry that the Report of the joint Secretaries of the Treasury had not received more consideration in this discussion. He had taken part in inquiries himself and he had followed closely what had been done by others, and he looked upon the Report of the joint Secretaries as by far the most stable foundation on which to build. If the Government went upon the lines laid down in that Report there would not be much wrong in their policy. The pressure of the rates was so great that, if they found a subject such as unoccupied building land to which the community had given the whole of its value, it could surely not be expected that that subject should continue to escape local taxation as it had

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done up to now. The great justification of this Bill and of the further legislation which was contemplated was that it would remedy the unfair incidence of existing taxation. The Bill did not by any means cover the whole of the urban land question, but it gave a basis which for dealing with the reform of local taxation was essential to all parties, and he warmly welcomed it, but, like every other Member, he retained his liberty to discuss the details of any new methods which might be proposed.
*MR. BARRIEsaid he wished to remind the House of the change which had taken place since the Bill was introduced. There was when the Bill was introduced opposition from every quarter of Scotland, chiefly, or at least largely, because of the direct attack it was making on existing feu duties. It was not for him to comment at length on the explanations offered by the Solicitor-General for Scotland of the change of policy on the part of the Government in that matter, or to inquire how far the hon. and learned Gentleman remained in agreement with, or continued to differ from, the Lord-Advocate. In the opinion of those best able to judge, the proposal made by the Solicitor-General in the Committee, and carried by a bare majority, was not approved by any volume of public opinion in Scotland. Therefore many Members of the House were distinctly relieved when they found the Prime Minister, wisely interpreting the signs of the times, and seeing that the opposition to the proposal was going to be overwhelming, gave an assurance that the proposed attack on existing feu duties was not to be proceeded with. He acknowledged the earnest, faithful, and fair-minded manner in which the Solicitor-General had discharged his duties as chairman of the Committee, and if he and others on his side of the House attacked the line which the Report took, they did not in the slightest degree wish to minimise the skill and courtesy with which the hon. and learned Gentleman had discharged the duty laid upon him by the Government. The movement which had led up to the measure now before the House originated in the doctrine promulgated by the late
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Henry George, who was the first to preach it in Scotland, after he had—with little or no success—preached it in America. After Henry George had preached his new gospel of restoring the land to the people, a number of associations were formed to promote reforms in land tenure and local taxation, and he thought he was correct in saying that several of those who now sat on the Treasury Bench had been actively associated with, and had publicly supported, the views of the Scottish Association for the Taxation of Land Values. The corporation of Glasgow had started an active propaganda in favour of those views. Why were they so active in supporting them? It was because of the constantly increasing taxation, and the necessity for finding relief in some new form of revenue. That desire to find a new source of revenue was, he thought, the key to the whole of the agitation which followed. It was not a redistribution of the burden on a more equitable basis that was called for; the doctrine preached was that the land was escaping its fair share of taxation. It was undoubtedly an attractive doctrine. "Unearned increment" and "betterment" were nice-sounding titles which were attractive, and needy corporations, advanced socialists, and municipal traders joined hands. The owners of sites were numerically a small body, and it was easy to mark them down for prey and to make them the scapegoats of this special legislation. At a very early stage the corporation of Glasgow adopted, by a majority of one, a Bill on the lines of the measure of last session. That corporation in its enthusiasm sent missionaries all over the country preaching the new doctrine. About £2,500 of public funds were expended in exploiting it, and so far as he could gather from the public prints, the English and Scottish corporations who had associated themselves in the work had been remarkably slow in paying their quota of the expenditure. It had now been declared to be an illegal expenditure, and it would be interesting to see whether they did pay or not. The ratepayers of Glasgow had a special interest in this subject, because a large proportion of them were, and had been, strongly against the propaganda to which he

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referred. The views held by certain members of the Glasgow Corporation were of the most extraordinary character. Ex-Bailie Burt, one of the most active members of the Scottish Association for the Taxation of Land Values, gave evidence before the Royal Commission on Local Taxation. He would read the following extract from that gentleman's evidence:—
"Q. —But all I understand this proposal is put before us to do is to shift the burden of rating from one class of owner to another?
"A. —The proposal starts with altering the basis of taxation in relation to rentals; that is, instead of being, as at present, on the annual rent they receive from the tenant, they shall pay upon the annual value of the ground; that is the beginning of the principle, or foundation of the principle, for altering the incidence of taxation altogether.
"Q. —What is to be the next step?
"A. —Increase the tax upon the value of the ground.
"Q. —Until you take it all?
"A. —Until you take 20s. in the £."
He would read to the House the examination of Bailie John Ferguson, also an eloquent exponent of this new gospel:—
"Q. —What is your proposal as regards the rating of this valuation of the site?
"A. —Having separated the sites or ground and houses, as by a motion which we have carried in the Glasgow Corporation to have a Bill formulated to present to Parliament; having separated the house value from the land value, we would shift the burden of the local taxation upon the site value, beginning with a certain amount.
"Q. —All local taxation, or the owner's share of it only?
"A. —We would put all local taxation on site values, and set everything free that is the product of individual labour and capital from taxation.
"Q. —At present, I understand, you would put upon that the whole of the rating of Glasgow, owner and occupier?
"A. —£600,000; the municipal rates of the city of Glasgow.
"Q. —Both on owner and occupier?
"A. —Both. We would take the whole£600,000, not necessarily in a rapid method, but by a transition method.
"Q. —What do you mean by not necessarily in a rapid way?
"A. —Supposing you were to put 2s. in the £, or a tax not exceeding that, upon the whole land values of the city of Glasgow—that is to say, £2,000,000 sterling—that would give us a certain sum.
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"Q. —But you do not limit your demand upon this fund to either £200,000 or £400,000 a year?
"A. —No.
"Q. —If the voters in Glasgow desire it, would you think it right to take the whole of the £2,000000?
"A. —Yes. Except that the Imperial Taxes have to be considered, and the Imperial Government has a right to a portion."
That, they would understand, was the advocacy—confined, he thought, to this witness—of quite a new aspect of this matter. Questions by members of the Royal Commission addressed to witnesses as regarded the equity of this course were followed by reluctant admission of the Imperial claim, but the witnesses last Session before the Select Committee did not agree in that suggestion. His last extract was a brief one. It was from the examination of Lord Provost Chisholm, now Sir Samuel Chisholm:—
"Q. —Mr. Ferguson, whom you know, told me quite candidly that he would go the length of 20s. in the £. Would you agree?
"A. —It all depends upon how that is to be interpreted. I recognise that land values belong to the community. But if any one were to propose that the moment this schedule is adopted as the basis of valuation and of taxation we should then rate land values at 10s., 15s., or 20s. per £, I could not on any consideration agree to it, because I would regard it as what your Lordship has said—as revolutionary—and I think it would be attended with so much hardship and suffering that it would be unwise or wrong to propose it. But recognising, as I do, that land values belong to the community, I would be quite prepared to see a very slow advance in the amount of rating chargeable to the land values, though it should be only at the rate of addition of 1 per cent. per annum.
"Q. —But, like Mr. Ferguson, you look ultimately to getting the whole 20s.?
"A. —I recognise the land values as the creation of the community.
"Q. —I think I am right in the view that your final object is that the land in every town should belong to the public authority of that town?
"A. —Yes, you may put it that way."
All these witnesses of whom he had spoken were estimable gentlemen in their private capacity, but they had clearly had a distorted vision as regarded the question of land values and the appropriation of the whole value of the soil. The late Sir James Warwick, Town Clerk of Glasgow, advised against the legality of the Corporation expending funds in exploiting

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this scheme. Since then, as he had already mentioned, a considerable sum having been spent, this opinion had been forced upon the Corporation, and he was glad to note, even at this late date, that that expenditure had now finally ceased. He was also glad to think that there was evidence that the Glasgow Corporation had begun to take a saner view upon this important subject, and that there was also a growing indication amongst that body of a desire to reconsider their attitude towards what had long been looked upon as one of the best and safest forms of investment in Scotland. They had had different illustrations that afternoon as to how this clause might work out, and others must be within the knowledge of every member who had taken the trouble to dip into the Blue-book giving the work of that Committee. But he would take an illustration of two prominent buildings close together in Glasgow on opposite sides of St. Vincent Street. There was the Western Club, which occupied 1,295 square yards of land. The site and building were valued by the assessor of Glasgow at £2,500 per annum, which equalled £15 10s. per square yard. They crossed the street, and they had there the National Bank building, occupying 1,218 square yards, the site and building being annually assessed at £6,011, equal to £65 per yard. Now, what he would like to suggest to the House was, if the legislation of which this was a preliminary were passed into law, how could any assessor declare what would be the true value of either the one side or the other of these sites? They had other cases equally remarkable brought before the Select Committee. The Lord Advocate would find in the Blue-book numerous and striking illustrations. On the corner of a certain street they found one comparatively modern building yielding four times per square yard what another did. He pressed, in examination, the Glasgow assessor—one of the fairest witnesses they had before them, although they might disagree with his views, but he gave his evidence in the most frank and straightforward manner—he pressed him as regarded these illustrations, but all the Committee could get from him was that he would be reasonable under such circumstances, and he thought he added that he would accept the prices paid for
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each for valuation purposes. The matter at issue, however, was far too important to be left to what might be the reasonable interpretation of any individual assessor. The views of the promoters could not be called either moderate or reasonable. When they came to dealing with such amazing differences as had cropped up they would see how involved and difficult the subject was, and the immense trouble and worry and litigation any such measure would lead to. He had already said how fair he considered the evidence of the Glasgow assessor, and yet he told them that he believed that the increment should belong to the assessing body, the Corporation, not to the persons or company who improved the fabric! In answer to that he thought every Member who knew the West of Scotland would bear in mind the striking illustration supplied in Clydebank. Before the great Singer Company went down to Clydebank it was purely a farming district. They, a little ahead of others, went there and purchased a large slice of the countryside, and he thought it was a matter of world-wide knowledge how they had developed their industry there, and given large employment and brought much prosperity to what was now a flourishing township. Under the measure which they believed this Bill led up to, they would be penalising the Singer Company for their early enterprise. They would be assessing them on the present value to which they had so directly and so largely contributed, rather than on the value which they originally paid for the land and which they had developed, bringing the community to the land. They had heard a great deal about the principle of betterment, but was there not also a principle of worsement in these matters? Until he studied this question in Committee he was under the impression that the cost of land surrounding all our great cities was perhaps slowly in some cases but continuously going up, and he was considerably surprised when a statement was put in by one of the most influential witnesses who came before them, Mr. Birnie, of Glasgow, showing how altogether erroneous that view was. The information that statement disclosed was, he thought, of such importance that he must

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ask the House to allow him to make a brief reference to it. Mr. Birnie handed in a list of eleven estates, large estates all convenient to the centre of the city—he did not think any of them was more than four miles from the centre of the city—and in every case it was brought out that there had been a sharp fall in value during the last twenty-five years, rather than an increase. On the Govanhill Estate between 1875 and 1877 from 20s. to 27s. per square yard was obtained; in 1899 feuing took place at 14s.; in 1901 14,700 yards were feued as low as 12s. Then there was the Hilling-ton Estate. In 1877 it was sold for £21,829 for 29 acres, and in 1905 it was re-sold for £10,000. On the Scotstoun Estate in 1877 15 acres were feued at 9s. per yard; in 1897 it was refeued at prices averaging 6s. 4d. per yard; and in 1904 another part was refeued at 6s. per yard. He might go on with the list which throughout showed a substantial fall, but he did not wish to make an unreasonable demand upon the House. Another matter was brought before them, equally important, viz., that at the close of last year there was unlet property in Glasgow to the annual value of £307,000. He thought that legislation on these lines was detrimental to the object which the professed friends of all such legislation had in view. They carefully analysed in Committee at how much a reduction, even of 25 per cent., on the value of land would work out when they considered the rent at which the houses could be let to working men, and the value of the land when they were dealing with tenants was so small compared with the value of the fabric that it was found that 3d. per week was the very greatest difference that that would make. Reference had been made that afternoon to the effect which even the suggestion of legislation on the lines of the Report of that Committee had had in Scotland. He was bound to support the Leader of the Opposition as to the effect which that Report had on feu duties in Scotland. They had hitherto been regarded as gilt-edged securities, but immediately on the publication of the Report, coupled with the want of confidence in the Government, large blocks of feu duties had been taken off the market as there was no free and open market for
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them until people knew how far the Government were going. Relief followed immediately upon the declaration of the Prime Minister. The Lord Advocate declared this to be an uncontroversial Bill; he was alone in that opinion, for unless there was something behind it, some intention to go further, there would be no necessity to trespass upon the time of the House with such a measure.
MR. C. E. PRICEexpressed regret that this measure was not introduced before the last measure dealing with land in Scotland. If it had been, it would have been passed in a very short time. He thought the land should bear the burdens of the State instead of commercial industry, energy, and enterprise bearing the burdens of the land. He, therefore, welcomed the Bill, because he believed it would have the effect of forcing land into the market and make it bear a fair share of the burdens that were now cast upon the industry and the enterprise of the community. The ex-Prime Minister had said that the Edinburgh Merchant Corporation was a wealthy body which spent its money upon beneficent objects, but how did it come by its wealth? By putting its money in land round Edinburgh, and he said that for these few people to derive the benefit of the increased value of the land was morally wrong.
MR. R. DUNCANasked whether that remark would apply to a Friendly Society.
MR. C. E. PRICEsaid it would apply to anybody, because it affected the whole community if land lying round towns passed into the hands of a few individuals. This Merchant Company held land in a district in which his firm took a feu. The price was formerly a £40 feu, but when the firm with which he was connected took it it was £60. The Merchant Company had done nothing to increase the value of that feu by £20, but still his firm took it at £60 an acre, and the Company got the benefit. The moment they took that feu, the land on the other side of the street was advanced to £120 and other land in the neighbourhood advanced to £200. The

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value of the land increased from the fact that his firm put a factory there and employed a large number of workers, and thus the increased price of the land had come about through the energy of people like his firm. He would show how that worked out. Having erected a factory, they went through the sad experience of having it burned down, and they then made up their minds that, so far as it could be done, the place should be rebuilt in such a way and be of such a nature that the whole place could not be burned down. They, therefore, took every precaution, division doors were erected and every appliance was used to prevent such a catastrophe. When they had done that the Factory Inspector for Scotland congratulated them upon the erection of such a building, but the assessor inquired what money they had spent and they were practically fined in the way of rates for their own virtue. They said that that was absolutely wrong, and it was because they wanted to alter that system that this Bill was brought in. Lying alongside them was vacant land which was being "held up" until someone wanted it. How was that rated? At practically agricultural value. They said that was wrong after their experience in taking the land and building a factory and also rebuilding it. This case illustrated the iniquity of the present system, and it was because they wanted to alter it that this Bill was brought in. In Edinburgh a friend of his the other day purchased for £21,000 property which changed hands twenty years ago for £3,000, In another case, land which had been worth £26,000 was sold for £62,000. This increase in value had been brought about by the whole community, who should have the benefit of it. As to the question of feuduties, he was exceedingly sorry that the Prime Minister had departed from the recommendations of the Report of that Committee which dealt with the value of them. What security had they for those feu duties? Nothing but the good government of the place by the community, and if they excluded feu duties from this Bill it would create great confusion in the future. The great basis of all taxation of land was value, and these people were getting from the
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community what was their value. He thought, however, the Bill would work a revolution in Scotland, and on this ground he gave it his hearty support.
MR. HART-DAVIESwished to relate to the House a personal experience as to how land was dealt with in Canada. Some years ago he was inspired by the example of the great London landlords, such as the Duke of Westminster and the Earl of Cadogan and Mr. Astor. He bought land in Canada on the outskirts of a city, hoping that other people would make the land valuable for him—a thing one could do in England with absolute ease—but after a time he found he had entered on an extremely losing speculation. That was owing to the separate land valuation from year to year and the heavy taxation he had to pay upon it. On representing to one of the local officials that he had been rather hardly dealt with, he was told, "You are exactly the kind of man we want to get rid of; you are checking the development of the city by holding the land for purely personal motives." He arrived at the conclusion that the official was right. That was in his unregenerate days before he became a land reformer, but he got the value of his money in the moral teaching which he received. They or, that side felt that when land was a monopoly and when other people than those who owned it made the value of it, it was only fair that those who made the value should have the benefit of it and that it should go to a community. This system was in vogue all over America, New Zealand, and Canada. It was a perfectly cheap process and he thought it could be carried out here. That was why he was strongly in favour of this Valuation Bill for Scotland, and he only hoped that in a short time they should have a similar Bill for England.
MR. RICHARDSON,speaking on behalf of the Labour Party, supported the Bill, in the first place, because, they had been told by the Solicitor-General for Scotland that the measure was the forerunner of another measure in which they were interested, and, in the second place, because he believed that when the measure was passed it would be

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a pattern on which a like measure would be based in the interests of this country. It had been said during the debate that whatever the intention of the framers of the laws relating to the incidence of rating, as a matter of fact rates were levied on the rental value of buildings, whether they were dwelling houses, factories, or workshops. Seeing that the occupiers of these places—in the main workshops and factories—were chiefly those who did the work of the country, the rates were levied not upon the landlords but upon industry. According to the statement of Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton, who was one of the very greatest authorities on this question, half the rates levied in our large cities and towns were spent on new streets, parks, and the like, all of which benefited financially one class, namely, the landlords who did not work, while all this expense came out of the pockets of those who did the whole of the work, namely, the workmen. The landlord as such did not contribute anything towards the rate, and the tenant or the worker found the whole of the rate. The direct result of spending half the rates in public improvement was that the landlord immediately raised the rent. In his own city a few years ago the district rate was increased for the purposes of education, and circulars were sent out to the occupiers of industrial dwellings by house agents, stating that on account of this increase the rent of their houses would be increased by 6d. a week. He took it that the Bill was in the main intended to relieve the industrial classes and place the burden upon the shoulders of those who not only were best able to bear it but had not done a hand stroke except as members of the community to increase the value of the land on which the property was built. If they taxed occupied land inside a borough area they made it produce more wealth, but if they taxed industry they handicapped industry. Therefore in the interests of the whole community he believed that unoccupied lands in large cities and towns should be taxed. For these reasons he would have pleasure in supporting the Bill.
*MR. MCCRAEsaid he had listened very carefully to the
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arguments advanced in support of the Amendment and in his opinion they had largely added to the strength of the arguments adduced by the supporters of the Bill as to the necessity for its being passed. The Leader of the Opposition was a student of economy but he must have laid aside John Stuart Mill before he made the speech which he had delivered that afternoon. The right hon. Gentleman had evidently not made himself acquainted with the facts of the case, otherwise he would not have committed himself to the statement that all the steam would betaken out of the agitation for the taxation of land values if feu duties were taken out of it. All who had given the slightest study to the taxation of land values must realise that the taxation of feu duties was only a fringe of the question. The right hon. Gentleman said his friends who had moved and seconded the rejection of this Bill had based themselves on the highest authority in Scotland with regard to the question of expense. The right hon. Gentleman surely could not have read the evidence before the Committee, because that was exactly what the opponents of this Bill did not do. Instead of basing themselves on persons qualified to give an opinion they acted on the evidence of those who gave opinions on matters requiring expert knowledge which they did not possess. Dr. Murray, of Glasgow, was a very able lawyer, but he knew nothing whatever about valuation and assessment. The hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Amendment accepted the authority of Dr. Murray against the authority of the expert assessor of the city of Glasgow, who was dealing with a question with which he was intimately connected. The question of expense with regard to valuation was inquired into very carefully by the Royal Commission. The minority stated that the separation of the land from the buildings could be made without any great expense. Those who raised this question of expense forgot that if the Bill was passed to-morrow it would not necessitate the creation of a new office and machinery. The machinery existed at the present time, and all that would be needed for the first year would be an

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addition to the staff of the assessors, who were perfectly competent to make these valuations, and who at the present time had to deal with practically similar questions. What was required with regard to this question of land values was information, and both sides ought to support this Bill because it was a Bill to obtain information as to the value of land. The hon. Member for West Aberdeen should welcome the Bill, because if he was right it would demonstrate the soundness of his opinion, whilst those who held opposite views advocated the change because they held that the taxation of land values was not only practicable but eminently just. This Bill, if it became an Act, would afford machinery by which land would be taxed by either of two methods. He had given some little attention to this subject to the length of introducing Bills which proceeded on the lines that valuation must be the first step to be taken in this matter, and he was glad that the Lord Advocate had taken this course, because when they had the valuation it would be open to them to decide whether they should make a complete change in the basis of rating. Though logically, and on economic grounds, the position for an alteration of the standard of rating was unassailable, he for one had not shut the door to the other alternative, namely, that it might be the best course to put a new and additional rate on land values. But that was a question which they would be able to decide when they had all the materials before them, when they had the actual value of the land which this Bill would give them. He passed on one side altogether the question whether it was impossible to separate the land from the buildings. That was held very tenaciously, but he thought that the Committee which sat last year, and supplemented the evidence given, by the Report of the Royal Commission, would wholly dispel that delusion. Until they had the facts with regard to the value of the land, it was impossible to come to a conclusion as to what was a just system of taxation for either local or Imperial purposes. Those who sat on the Committee which considered the income-tax were very much impressed by the fact that this country
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was behind almost every other country of importance, and behind the Colonies, in the statistical information which was really essential before deciding what wag a just system of taxation. That applied to income-tax and certainly to land values. He would read one passage from the Report of Mr. Goschen in 1870 in which he said—
"Speaking very broadly, in England fifty years ago the land bore two-thirds of the local taxation, and real property and houses and other property one-third. The latter now bear two-thirds, whilst land bears one-third."
That was an entire reversal of the position up to 1868. What was the position since? The last official information was in the Report on local taxation by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, in 1803, when he was President of the Local Government Board. The one-third which was borne by land in 1868, or 33 per cent. of the whole, had fallen in 1891 to 15 per cent., and houses then bore 85 per cent. of the local taxation. It was only fair to point out that these figures were quite misleading, for this reason, that the division was an arbitrary and an unjust one. There had been what he might call an economic transfer as between land and houses. The figures given there were for houses, and included, of course, the value of the land on which the houses were built. Therefore, that went further to show that the present system of taxation was based on a foundation which had not enabled them really to ascertain whether it was a just or an unjust one. Therefore, to his mind the proposals of this measure would have a much more far-reaching effect than some hon. Members on the other side realised, because he believed that it would place at the disposal of the State information of the greatest possible value, which would guide them in considering not only problems of local taxation but problems of Imperial taxation. A good deal had been said on the other side as to the effect of these proposals. He would give the House one illustration. It would show what the taxation of land values meant in the case of unbuilton land in the City of Edinburgh. He was glad to think that a great change had come over the opinion of the other side of the House with regard to the taxation

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of unbuilt-on land. He did not wonder at it, because the case he was about to cite showed the utter absurdity of the present system. In Edinburgh the result was that out of a total taxation of £360,000, the unbuilt-on land, which was about one-fourth of the land of the city, only paid to the taxation of the city £420. He had taken the trouble to make a calculation, and he found that if that land was rated at only one-half of the feuing rate—which was allowing a very fair margin—the City of Edinburgh instead of receiving £420would receive £30,000 per annum. If they looked at it from the point of view of taxation, there they had a new source of revenue. If they said that land ought not to be taxed at its real value, but only on the agricultural rent, then he replied by saying that if the land was required for public purposes it ought to be bought by the municipality on its rental value. If it was a question of rating, then the land was to be taken on its agricultural value. But if it was a question of purchase, it was a matter of ascertaining its real value; then there was no difficulty in finding out what that real value was. When the City of Edinburgh wanted new gas works they had to buy ground. There were 105 acres of land which was let at £5 10s. an acre; it belonged to a nobleman in the vicinity of Edinburgh. The Edinburgh and Leith Corporation Gas Commissioners thought that thirty years purchase would have been a very fair thing. That was a very generous calculation of the value of the land. Instead of paying thirty years purchase the Corporation had to pay 212 years purchase of the annual value. That transaction had taken place within the last few years, and it proved, he thought, that some such measure as that now before the House was very much wanted. He was glad that his right hon. friend was proceeding on the lines of first dealing with valuation, and, having then the real facts of the case before them, they would be able to arrive at a fair and just decision as to what course should be followed with regard to taxation.
MR. R. DUNCANsaid the Leader of the Opposition had devoted his argument to showing what would be
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the consequences of the Bill. Personally he did not think that there was very much danger in trying to distinguish between sites and the buildings on them. But the Leader of the Opposition had remarked that there was something more dangerous behind, and that suggestion had not been repudiated by anyone in authority on the other side of the House. If they were really waiting for proposals of an extreme character such as had been indicated by his hon. friend, who had quoted the evidence, then he thought that they ought to make a stand and show that they would not do anything that would be a repudiation of a fair and honest bargain. Landowners were not always individual men; land was owned by friendly societies and other voluntary organisations, composed of men who laid their heads together and very often their slender purses for worthy purposes which required that they should obtain land. There were many on both sides of the House who were afraid that they were embarking on methods that were not really honest— that they were aiming at plundering one class for the benefit of another. They had heard a very honest admission from one hon. Member of the House—he referred to the hon. Member who came from Greater Britain, one of those Canadians or New Zealanders who came to this country and obtained seats in the House, and spoke with, authority on these subjects. He had found, in passing through a severe ordeal of heckling in a Scottish constituency, that what was generally at the back of the opinion of the heckler was the practice of men who tried to secure land in the hope that the community would come and live round so that the price might rise and thus enable the owner to make a fortune. He thought the community should always have the right to acquire the land at a fair valuation, and that would check any such process as that. He found that his hecklers were generally satisfied with that answer. If it could be shown that land near a town or in any part of the country was not being put to a fair use, but was being held up, then the community should have the right of acquiring that land at a fair valuation; he presumed that they had that power now, and no effective

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resistance could be offered to such a transaction as that. With regard to the ulterior object of the Government, he did not think that they could face that House as honest men if they really desired to confiscate the property of the landlords, whether that landlord happened to be an individual or a society. Did they propose to resort to extreme measures and put taxation entirely on the land? No one had yet replied to one of the main arguments put by the Leader of the Opposition that the effect of the process inaugurated by this Bill would be that land would fall in value. It was said that the taxing of land values would benefit industry. He was a manufacturer, and as such he rejected this attempt to bribe him dishonestly at the expense of the landlord.
*MR. GULLANDsaid that to him it seemed very difficult to understand the policy of the Opposition upon this question. Usually they described all measures introduced by the present Government as revolutionary, which ought not to be entered upon without a full inquiry; but when the Government suggested an inquiry they took the other line and argued that the Government had no right to inquire unless they stated the ultimate object of the future Bill to be introduced. This Bill seemed to him to be rightly founded upon theory and practice, and the difficulties which had been raised by hon. Members opposite were quite imaginary. It was always easy to find excellent reasons for doing nothing. The Leader of the Opposition said the House ought to consider the equities of the case, and he quite agreed with that argument. Anyone who had had any experience of municipal work in Scotland must know of numerous instances of the great injustice of the present system. Personally he had, for a long time, been a strong supporter of the principle of the taxation of land values. As a member of the Edinburgh Town Council his view on that subject had been greatly strengthened, and in municipal work one might find a great many object lessons upon which to strengthen one's theoretical belief. Two cases came before his notice on the town council which convinced him that the present system
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was not satisfactory. Some electors in his constituency brought before his notice the case of a road in East Edinburgh which was badly lighted, and he found upon inquiry that the road was too narrow and dark because on one side of it there was a field of a few acres belonging to a firm who were holding it up. That particular road led to a large district in which there had been erected artisans' tenements, and the people had to go to their houses along this dark, badly-paved road because that firm was holding up that large field almost in the centre of Edinburgh. He discovered that that land was let at a rental of £5 a year for feeding donkeys, and it paid rates on a sum of £1 5s., being one-quarter of its agricultural value. That piece of land was growing in value every day, because it was being gradually surrounded by houses, and the owners were holding it up until they might feu it at a large price. In another instance there was a piece of ground in Edinburgh in a central position which had not been used very profitably, and an enterprising Methodist Mission took it and built a number of shops upon it, which were now yielding big rents and rates, and on the top of the shops they built a church which they called a hall, and which they used for the benefit of the community on Sunday and week-day. Because they called it a hall and let it, the council rated it and assessed its value at £800 a year, and it had to pay about £200 a year in rates. At the present time property was assessed at its rental value. The owner made a return and it was accepted or modified by the assessor, and if the owner had any fault to find and could not come to terms with the assessor, he could appeal to the town council, which was generally composed of shrewd, common-sense business men who knew local circumstances and were advised on points of law by the town clerk. There need not be any fear that the men would not get justice. That system had in the past worked perfectly smoothly. The hon. Member for Ayr Burghs had said that practically there never was any appeal to the Court of Sessions. That was quite true, the only exception being where a large sum of money was involved; the ordinary run of cases was decided in the easiest

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and smoothest possible manner. As had been the case in the past, so it would be in the future. In Scotland the assessors held a very high position, and enjoyed the confidence of the public. About ten years ago a case occurred in his own personal experience. He was going to be the tenant for storage purposes of part of a large building which was being erected. He could not agree with the owner about the rent, and he suggested that they should leave the matter to the assessor to decide. The assessor fixed a sum for rent which was something between the owner's price and his own, and they both agreed to it in the most friendly way. In Scotland the assessor was considered to be a very fair man in whom the public had every confidence. Some new system was desirable, and there was a strong feeling in Scotland that the right hon. Gentleman was taking the right line in this Bill which would not lead to unnecessary friction.
*MR. MITCHELL-THOMSONsaid the debate had shown a tendency to range over a very wide field. He would not follow the hon. Member opposite in his disquisition upon the taxation of land values in the colonies, beyond stating that although the South Australian municipalities had the power to tax land values they had never availed themselves of it. The Committee had stated in their Report that no material conclusion could be drawn from Colonial experience. The first proposition laid down by the Solicitor-General for Scotland was that the proposals in the Bill were equitable. What was the principle on which the proposals rested? He could not do better than quote the words of the Committee. The Report said—
"The main principle which in the opinion of your Committee underlies proposals to tax Land Values is the setting up of a standard of rating whereby the ratepayer's contribution to the rates is determined by the yearly value of the land, which he owns or occupies, apart from the buildings and improvements upon it, the object being to measure the ratepayer's contributions, not by the value of the improvements in the land to any extent, but solely by the yearly value of the land itself."
The justification given in the Report was stated in the following manner—
"The justification given for the adoption of the new standard is that land owes the creation and maintenance of its value to the presence,
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enterprise, and expenditure of the surrounding community."
The House would see that this Bill was merely, as the hon. Member for the Dumfries Burghs had said, an exploring Bill. It was a measure which proposed to set up a fishing inquiry in order to find out what were to be the practical details of the new standard of rating, because the House would have already recognised that the principle which underlay the proposals in the Bill was not that a new and additional rate was to be imposed, but that there was to be an alteration in the standard of rating. The hon. Member for Tyneside had said that the institution of a system of taxation of land values would enable them to provide a fund out of which old-age pensions could be paid. If he or the Lord Advocate thought that under the provisions of this Bill they would be able to tap some unknown source of revenue, some gold mine not hitherto worked, they would find that they were making a mistake. This was not a Bill to tap any new source of revenue, but to make an alteration in the system of rating. [MINISTERIAL Cheers.] He was glad to hear these cheers. The only way in which any material fresh contribution to the revenue, local or Imperial, would have accrued would have been by the adoption of the proposal of the Solicitor-General to tax the owners of existing feu duties. But that proposal had been put out of court by the Prime Minister. The original proposition of the Solicitor-General for Scotland was to take for local purposes 10 per cent. of the value of feu duties in existence. The Lord Advocate said last year that the Government could not accept Clause 7 of the Bill then before the House because existing contracts must be respected. What happened? The Solicitor-General went up and down Scotland preaching the new doctrine of the taxation of feu duties, and not one word of contradiction came from any member on the Treasury Bench until at last a most representative deputation waited on the Prime Minister and stated their case. Then only was the declaration made that, whatever happened, no taxation would be imposed on existing feu duties. That being so, this Bill would not provide any material accession to the revenue, but it would have far-reaching effects. It was introduced not for what it would bring in, but

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for what it would do. That was a departure by the Government from the free-trade principle of taxation for revenue only. What were the grounds on which a departure from the present system was proposed? They were told that the present system was assessment on rental. That was true. So far as the owner of property was concerned, it was assessment on rental; but it was more than that. It was assessment upon his income. What the owner paid was, as it were, a local income-tax. So far as the occupier was concerned, it was assessment on rental, but the rent which he paid was a measure of his ability to pay the assessment. He was taxed according, to use a well-known Scottish phrase, to his means and substance. If he paid a certain amount of rent, it was presumed that he was in a position to pay it, and it was further presumed that he was able to pay taxes upon it for the purposes of the local exchequer. He was far from saying that the present system of local taxation was perfect. He did not think it was. It was only a rough approximation to justice, but he thought it was a nearer approximation to justice than would be obtained under the proposals of the Solicitor-General. One objection which had been stated to the present system was that it allowed a tax on industry. If that was so, Scotland was not the only country which suffered from the injustice. In Prussia there was not only a land tax, but an additional tax was deliberatley imposed on the lines of the existing system of taxation in Scotland. He had never known a case in which a man refused to make improvements, or to build a new house, because he was afraid of the burden of rates which might ensue. Supposing they took it for granted that the idea underlying the Bill was correct, did the Bill carry it out? Not a bit. The theory was that there ought to be no taxes on industry. This Bill deliberately imposed a tax on improvements. He had looked through the Bill, and he did not find any exemption even in favour of reclaimed land. It was said that land was not a product of industry. That was true in a sense. No doubt the actual silica was not the product of industry, but before land was fit for agriculture, or for the erection of buildings, money had to be spent upon it. He now came to the second position that this Bill proposed to create—the
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equality of sacrifice in the payment of rates. He had some doubts as to that doctrine. There was a passage in Mill, who was often quoted as an authority on this subject, where he said with a great deal of force that whether the person with£10,000 a year cared less for £1,000 than the person with £1,000 cared for £100, and if so how much less, did not appear to him capable of being decided with that degree of certainty on which a legislator or a financier ought to act. But supposing they admitted the doctrine of equality of sacrifice, did the Bill carry that doctrine out? Not a bit of it. So far from bringing about equality of sacrifice, it accentuated the inequality. It had been pointed out that the practical effect of this Bill in the great cities of the country would be to drive the poor into the slums. Land, it was said, must be taxed according to its full use; if it was not being fully used it was not bearing its full value in producing capacity to the community. It followed therefore, that if they had land with comparatively poor houses on it, the proposal of the Government was to say to the occupiers of those houses: ''You have no right to be here; you have got to pay for the full value of this house if you stay, and if you will not pay these rates you must go away from this quarter of the town and live in another quarter of the town which is fit for the poor." That, reduced to all its nakedness, was the proposition of the Government. Let them see how the equality of sacrifice came in in another way. Let them take one of the Secretary for Scotland's small holdings. A man lived and worked on his plot of 50 acres and paid, say, a rent of £50 a year. Next door to him lived a great captain of industry, who also had a plot of 50 acres, on which he had built a magnificent villa, with pleasure grounds, hot-houses, fish ponds, and all the other appurtenances of luxury, and he paid £1,000 a year in rent. Under the existing system these men were rated according to their ability to pay. The small holder would be rated on £50, and the captain of industry on £1,000. Under the system proposed by the Government, these two men would pay the same amount in rates because they were both living on the same amount of land. The doctrine of the equality of

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sacrifice was being stretched to pretty lengths if that was to be the result. Then he came to the third proposition, the doctrine of the unearned increment. He must say that that was an odd proposition coming from the free-trade Party—that any restraint of trade should be enforced by law. But he let that pass. The doctrine of the unearned increment had been defined that day, and it was said that there ought to be an appropriation of the increase in the value of plots of land which had been earned by the community. The hon. Member for South Edinburgh had said it was an absurdity and that it was hard and intolerable that a man who sat still and did nothing should see his land increase in value from£3 10s. to £25 per acre per annum; that that obviously called for redress. But let the House consider that the increment from £3 10s. to £25 was not the product of a day. The land while that increment was going on was "extra commercium," it was locked up, but so was the capital. And let the House further consider that £25 a year per acre meant, roughly speaking, about £500 for a purchase price. £500 to-day for a purchase price was £70 fifty years ago, and £70 fifty years ago was £3 10s. per annum. The result was that if a man sold his land for £25 to-day, that land was at once rated by the community at £25, and moreover, when they came to consider the unearned increment for the past fifty years they had been rating it at £3 10s. Therefore, they got the result that the community for fifty years had been rating the land at £3 10s., and that £3 10s. increasing over fifty years brought out exactly the same sum of £25 per annum which was realised by the value of the land to-day. That was purely a fortuitous instance proving the correctness of the theory that the increment in value was not the product of a day, but had got to be looked at over a series of years. As to the second point of the proposition "earned by the community," there were increments in value—the Thames Embankment, for instance—which were caused by special improvements made by the municipality. In Scotland the municipality levied what was called an improvement rate on those whose properties were supposed to have been improved. A rate was levied, and
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ex hypothesi those people who shared in the benefits were supposed to contribute towards its cost. And they did. But that was not the paint at issue. It was the general industry of the community which had created the increased value. It was an increase in demand, but what created an increase in demand? Let him put a case to the House. Was the increase in the demand invariably created, or largely created, or at all created by the presence of the community? Let them take a case that had happened recently, where a manufacturer went down to a country district—to Alexandria—the other day. He put up works and workmen's cottages. He not only put up those houses in value, but all the land values in Alexandria. Did the hon. Members say that that was directly attributable to the community? Supposing the manufacturer manufactured for the foreign market, and not for the English market. Let them take Glasgow. Glasgow was the Clyde, and the Clyde was Glasgow. If the Clyde were to become a ditch with a foot of water in it to-morrow the prosperity of Glasgow would be gone. Glasgow lived by its oversea trade, and if to any community was to be ascribed the rise in land value, in the case of manufacturers who found their market in the community overseas, it was the community overseas to whom the rise should be ascribed. And if they were going to give the result of that increment to any community, to be logical they should give the result of the rise in land value in Lancashire to the communities in India, China, and Japan. Further, let them suppose they had a manufacturer who was carrying on a flourishing industry. By his skill and enterprise he had built up his industry; his works had increased the land value; then for some reason or another, from the operation of some foreign tariff or other, he was cut out of his overseas market, and he closed his mills; down went the land value, and the community would be there all the same. The community could not save the land value. There were then the other clouds of glory which were supposed to follow in the wake of this Bill. It was suggested that the Bill would stimulate building and reduce rents. The only remark he had

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to make on that was that it was absolutely certain it would reduce the margin of profit for the builder. And whatever reduced the margin of profit, reduced the inducement to build; that therefore reduced building, and reduced building would invariably mean increased rents. He could develop that if he liked, but hon. Members who were interested in its development could read it in the minority report of the Committee on the Taxation of Land Values. One thing was certain, and that was that the value of certain premises would be lowered. Upon large works which were now paying a large return it would be lowered; upon property which stood upon a comparatively small square of land and brought in a large rental; and upon public houses. In all other cases the value would be increased to a limit in many cases far beyond 20s. in the £. There were places in the north of Scotland where 20s. in the £ was the basis of rates now, and if they were to take this basis it lessened the amount of the assessable rental, and it followed that the rate of imposition would have to be increased, and increased in many places considerably beyond 20s. in the £. As to the contention that the Bill was practicable, he had said already that it was a fishing inquiry, and, if so why did not the Government select certain areas for the purposes of their experiment? Why experiment with the whole of the land of Scotland? It had come down to this: that valuation was a matter of opinion, a matter of uncertainty, and that accuracy and precision were unattainable and unintelligible. But the Bill proposed to enact that the owner was to make a return and estimate the value of his property. He was to make a guess. If he did not make a guess he was fined £20, if he made a wrong guess £50, and if he did not pay he was to be sent to prison. Those penalties were imposed by the Act of 1854 in relation to a valuation on facts, and if a man did not make a return he did it wilfully, if he made a wrong return he made it knowingly, and hence the penalties. They were continued by this Bill, where accuracy was impossible and unintelligible. Was it such an easy matter? The Solicitor-General suggested that the assessors did it now. What
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were the real facts at present? In the ordinary case the valuer had to find the value to a hypothetical tenant. He took the actual facts, buildings and circumstances, and he estimated for a hypothetical tenant. He either estimated the cost of the buildings and took a percentage of the cost, or he took a reasonable percentage on the profit the man made out of the building. Both those methods had repeatedly been condemned by the Courts as unjust. Those valuations were made on actual facts with only one unknown factor in the equation, and yet they were not felt to be satisfactory by the Courts. How was it supposed that the Courts would regard an estimate founded upon a hypothetical buyer of a hypothetical property under hypothetical circumstances? That was the proposition in the Bill. It was suggested that they might apply the rule of thumb; that they might deduct the value of the building from the site, if sold in the open market. That view was carefully inquired into in the Committee and disapproved, because it was shown that it would lead to fallacious results. A case was brought forward of a house which cost £5,000 to build but which to-day could be purchased for £3,000, and if they deducted the value of the building from the value of the site they were left in that case with a minus quantity. They were therefore left with the proposal that individual valuations should be made. That would take a long time and would be very costly. One assessor before the Committee said he could, in. the ordinary "jog-trot" of business of an assessor, value sites apart from the buildings in five minutes. It rather savoured of " valuation while you wait" but, taking five minutes for each valuation, if six skilled assessors were to start valuing the sites of Glasgow—225,000 of them—and went on working day and night without cessation for meals or rest, they would only just complete that valuation by Christmas. If they were to value the site on the basis that it was the only site in the market, it would be intelligible; but if it was valued as a site that was clear and on the assumption that all the other sites were in the market at the time, the former valuation must be fallacious. Any man could give a valuation, for instance, of £1,000 of Great Northern

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Stock, but no concatenation of experts could give the value of £100,000 of Great Northern Stock if it was all put upon the market at the same time. The Government professed to be a free trade Government. Mr. Lowe, in his Budget speech of 1883, said that the grand principle of free trade—far more valuable than free trade itself—was that no class of the community should be made tributary to any other class. [Cheers.] Hon. Gentlemen cheered that. He commended that to the attention of the seventy hon. Members who sat in various parts of the House, and to those hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who sat on the Treasury Bench, who were members of the league for the nationalisation of land. The doctrine of Henry George had been received with certain modifications and accepted by a considerable number of hon. Gentlemen opposite; but he and those with whom he sat continued to believe with John Stuart Mill that the principle of an exclusive tax such as a tax on land was a principle foreign to common honesty. Should such a scheme ever enlist a large Party in its support, that fact would indicate a laxity of pecuniary integrity in national affairs.
*MR. BARNESsaid he desired to associate himself with this Bill, which he regarded as a first step in the direction of restoring to the community that which had been earned by the community. The matter of increased value accruing to land and of the tilting of that value into the buckets of those who did nothing for it, had gone on so long that it was a marvel that the people had been so patient as to allow it. He had in his mind the case of a shop in the main street in the city of Glasgow the rent of which during the occupancy of the present tenant had risen from £150 to £450. Who had put on that increased value? It was the industry and enterprise of the occupier together with the presence and necessities of the surrounding community. There was certainly no increased value in the building during the last thirty or forty years, because whatever the value might have been when it was erected it was of less value now owing to the deterioration of the bricks and mortar which had
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depreciated in value as all products must. The increase value was therefore due to the industry of the occupier and the necessities of the surrounding population. Yet everything sold in that shop had to be increased in price because of the rates that had to-be paid and also of the rent. He did not think that the analogy of the Alexandria manufactory had any relevance to this discussion. Far too much was made of the foreign demand as against the home demand which exceeded the foreign by at least ten times. This Bill was preparing the ground for something which was to follow. As had been said by another speaker in the debate, it was not so much increased revenue that was looked for in this Bill and the one which he hoped would follow on, but that it would open up areas for the workers which wore now closed to labour by the private land owners. In the outskirts of towns land was held idle in the anticipation of obtaining an increased value, and other land was artificially increased in value and the demand for labour decreased. The main and practical thing was that the supply of land would be increased and the price diminished and rent would be decreased as a natural consequence. Reference had been made to trade union and friendly societies being largely interested in land values just as other corporations were interested and that therefore the Labour representatives should be loth to put their hands on land values. The interest of friendly societies and trade unions in land values was infinitesimal as compared with their interests as citizens. He welcomed this Bill, and he hoped that the Government would go on with it. The last speaker had put his finger on a weak spot in regard to the taxation of land values, and that was that in the towns, and especially on the outer fringe of towns, the value of land was so great that if it was taxed according to value it would be impossible to get land for cottages and gardens, and the cottager would be driven elsewhere; but he would remind the hon. Member that that was just what took place now. The centres of large towns were frequently taken up by warehouses or other high buildings of six or eight stories, and it was impossible for workmen to get land for their dwellings, with the result that they were driven out four, five, or six miles, and they had to travel that distance to and from their work

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every day. Though the taxation of land values might have the effect of perpetuating that state of things, yet the advantage on the other side was so great that he thought it overbalanced the disadvantage. For his part he was ready to support what he believed to be the right principle, even taking that slight disadvantage into account, for he believed that the advantage to the community would be immense, and that the demand for labour would be such that they would soon have something towards old age pensions, or at all events wages would be larger as a result of this reform, while the money which ought long ago to have gone to the remedying of social evils would now be devoted to that purpose instead of going into the pockets of those who had not earned it.
*MR. COCHRANEsaid that of all the reasons which had been given in support of the Bill he thought the most astonishing was that given by the hon. Member for the Blackfriars Division. They were to have old-age pensions, cheaper houses, and larger wages, and all this was read into a Bill which the Lord Advocate had said was for information only and to add one column to the valuation roll. If these were the expectations which were entertained of the Bill he was not surprised that it should have given rise to considerable debate and expressions of opinion on both sides of the House. Expressions of opinion hostile to the Bill had not been confined to one side, and some very trenchant criticism had come from an hon. Member opposite. The hon. Member for South Edinburgh had invited the House to follow the example of Australia and New Zealand: it seemed rather strange that he should ask the House to adopt a system existing in some of our Colonies as regarded rating, and yet he of all others would be the first to say that on fiscal questions we were to pay no regard to either their example or their desires whatever. The hon. Member had adduced some very strange propositions, for he had said that a poor man who lived in a big house ought therefore to pay lower rates. What were the objects of rates after all? They were to provide for policing, tramways, lighting, and poor rates. The Solicitor-General had told them that agricultural land within what he called the zone
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would have a substantial increase of rates; and the hon. Gentleman poured his sympathy on the man who lived in "a sumptuous house" and said he must pay lower rates. For his part his sympathy was for the agriculturist. Why should he have to pay a higher rate than the man who lived in a sumptuous mansion? On the contrary, in the case of the agriculturist who had to earn his living they ought rather to reduce the rates which he had to pay. Why should the man with a sumptuous house escape with a lower rate? He could not see any reason. The Solicitor-General had given them an example which was familiar to them—that of a corner house in Edinburgh which had been pulled down and rebuilt to a height of seven storeys. The man had laid out capital on the building in order to get additional trade; and, if there was any unearned increment in the case, it ought to go to the railway company who had brought from every part the tourists who dealt with that very shop and enabled the owner, from the profits which he made, to add to his premises. But the learned Solicitor-General said that because he had put up this building he should rather pay a lower than a higher rate. He ventured to say that if he had put up this expensive building as a profitable speculation, it was in some degree a test of the owner's ability to pay the rate, and he-could see no earthly reason why he should be relieved of any portion of the rates at the expense of some of his neighbours. They all knew that at the present moment the landed interest seemed to be fair sport for the Radical Party, who from Scottish and English Grand Committees shot at those unfortunate persons who were interested in land, and who were now being attacked in respect of land values. They hid fair to make the investment of capital in enterprises connected with land impossible in the future. What was to be the position of an unfortunate proprietor under the Lord Advocate's Bill? His duty now was to furnish a return, and if he failed to do so he was liable to heavy penalties under the Act of 1854. The smaller the proprietor the-more difficulty would he find in making his return. A large proprietor had his agents and factors, but what would be the position of the small proprietor who had nobody to help him? To compel the small proprietor to make the proposed.

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return would inflict a grievous burden upon Mm. The statement that no immediate taxation was to follow would give him a false sense of security. He would say why should he incur this expense if no taxation was to follow, and the result would be that the assessors would each fix the valuation according to his fancy and the opinions he might hold, and so the figures of the third column would be arbitrary, haphazard, and unreliable, and they would have a misleading series of valuations which would possibly be used afterwards to lend colour to some Socialistic experiment on the part of the present Government. The Lord-Advocate said on the First Reading that Parliament would be able to note those facts in the valuation as a basis not of assessment alone but for land transfer. If it was intended to base a system of land transfer upon a valuation return made up in that way he ventured to say that the figures upon which they would have to rely would not be at all suitable for any purpose of that kind. Why should they depart from the existing practice under the Act of 1854? Under that system there was a uniform valuation of land in Scotland which was familiar, which had worked extremely well, and from which, according to the Lord Advocate, had worked with "smoothness, precision, and efficiency," and on the admission of the Solicitor-General, there had been this year no appeals. That being so, a strong and definite case ought to be made out before they set up a different system. Rent was considered to be some test of the capacity of a man to pay rates, and it would be a much safer test than the hypothetical value provided for in this Bill. One man might have a large mansion and another a small building occupying the same space of ground, and in estimating the value of those sites why should they exclude all the buildings and erections and other improvements. The result would be that they would have the small man occupying a site not fully covered by a comparatively small house paying the same rate as the man who lived in a large building, on a site contiguous and of the same size, and the Solicitor-General argued that that was quite proper because the smaller man was occupying a site which was unsuitable. Was it suggested that people should be divided up into classes? Were the men occupying large houses to be driven into one part of the town and the
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small men into another part? Was the Solicitor-General not aware that it was one of the most important necessities in the life of a working man that he should have a dwelling place as near to his work as possible? The present system was, in his opinion, a far fairer system than that proposed in this Bill. He would like to ask who sought this change and upon what grounds. He knew there had been men going about Scotland advocating a single tax on land, but notwithstanding what had been said by the hon. Member for Blackfriars, the Socialist Party were not all in favour of this system of a single tax. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil had repudiated the single tax proposal. They wore told that nothing was to happen until Parliament otherwise determined. It was evidently contemplated that there was to be some further legislation, but they had not heard so far any clear definition of the shape that legislation was to take. Judging from the speeches of the Solicitor-General in the country, and from an address delivered by the Lord Advocate at a meeting in connection with an association which had for its basis the nationalisation of land values, he thought the present Bill might be taken as merely the fingerpost that pointed in the direction of absolute confiscation of the whole of the land values. It was not enough for the Lord Advocate to say that it was merely a matter of filling up a column which would be added to the valuation roll. There were certain practical difficulties which would present themselves to everyone familiar with the subject. In urban districts the proprietor who was responsible for making the valuation would have to estimate the value of the site apart from the buildings or structural improvements, but his position would be nothing as compared with that of the unfortunate owner of a farm, who would be required under this Bill to imagine his property divested of its house, its farm buildings, and its stone walls, but still retaining its hedges and trees. Why, too, should the sums spent on drainage be included in the value of the land, when drainage was not to be taken into consideration as an improvement, as a stone wall or building was? The Government were asking the landowners to perform an impossible task when they asked them to discriminate between the value of the land and the value of the buildings on it.

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The Local Taxation Commission went carefully into that question, and, after hearing witnesses, they came to the conclusion that to value land and the buildings upon it separately would be a matter of the greatest difficulty, and, indeed, that it would be practically impossible. Various estimates had been put forward as to the cost of these proceedings, and the authority of Dr. Murray had been quoted. Whatever the figure might be, the amount would be enormous, and it was to be put on the ratepayers. For what reason? Everyone admitted that the present system worked on the whole extremely well, and any change of which the country could approve would require very great evidence and weight of opinion behind it. It was estimated that the local authorities in Scotland had borrowed £61,000,000 on the security of the rates. The proposed change in the form of the security would practically paralyse the finances of these local authorities. While the taxation of land values would not ease any of the burdens which now fell upon the ratepayers, it would still further depreciate the already depressed value of securities which were largely held by charities, benefit societies, and the working classes in Scotland. He challenged any hon. Member for Scotland to deny the depreciation which had taken place in the value of feu duties in Scotland since this class of legislation was first introduced into the House, and that in consequence the value of that favorite security of the working classes had been largely reduced. He thought it would shake the confidence of the small investors and discourage thrift, and, above all things, drive the poor man who now occupied a house in a position suitable for his work from that position, because he would have to pay a higher rate than at present. He thought it would inflict a great amount of hardship, and he had failed so far to hear one single argument in favour of the proposals of the Government.
MR. THOMAS SHAW: The debate on this Bill has in more than one respect been very gratifying to its authors. I think the whole House will bear me out if I say that while there have been here and there criticisms of the principle underlying the Bill, so far as the shape and frame of the Bill is concerned there has not been delivered
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from either side of the House any criticism except one by the right hon. Gentleman the late Prime Minister, and that criticism affected the clause as to definition of improvements, which is a fair subject for inquiry, and I propose to address myself to that subject. Apart from that statement it will be observed that so far as the frame of the Bill is concerned nothing has arisen to shake its structure, and, so far as the one criticism affecting it is concerned, it is purely a Committee point which is capable of adjustment and amendment. My hon. friend who has just addressed the House has put the whole case in regard to the opposition to this Bill in the well-known formula, "Why depart from the existing system?" That is the whole case against the Bill—why depart from the existing system?—and that query is presented to us by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition as if we were living in a land of obstruction, and as if we, like himself, were haunted by the spectre of no other person than Henry George. The fact is that this Bill is presented to the House after numerous preliminary inquiries and after the discussion in this House year after year of numerous Bills affecting this question. During the last Parliament a majority was obtained for a Bill having a principle underlying it which is the principle to be approached by the present Bill, and indeed at that time—and I can hardly conceive that it was in view of a possible appeal to the electors—the Tory Party in this House voted by a very considerable majority, of which I shall give the figures, in favour of the principle of just such a Bill as this. The development of opinion in this country on the subject, not theoretical opinion, but the opinion of practical and skilled men upon this important social topic, has been very marked, and if the House will forgive me, I do not mean to shirk the issue which is contained in the questions that have been addressed as to what is behind this Bill. This is a Valuation Bill pure and simple, confined absolutely to that, and by expressed terms it leaves out the whole question of assessment and rating, but that assessment and rating are behind it, that they will in future years take account of the standard which is now to be set up, either wholly or partly, or in circumstances such as Parliament will

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then determine, I do not for a moment mean to deny, and indeed I should not be here urging the Second Reading of this Bill unless I were convinced that behind it there is to be provided a remedy for the present state of matters, more particularly in our municipal centres. I was proposing to show that we are not acting from mere theory, but after a very careful scrutiny of very powerful and skilled advisers. Hon. Members will have heard of the Housing Commission so far back as June twenty years ago, in 1885. What was the verdict of that Commission? If the House will permit me I will read this passage—
"At present land available for building in the neighbourhood of our populous centres, though its capital value is very great, is probably producing a small yearly return until it is let for building, and they can thus afford to keep their land out of the market, and to part with it only in small quantities, so as to raise the price even beyond the natural monopoly price. Meantime, the general expenditure of the town on improvements is increasing the value of their property. If this land were rated, say, at 4 per cent. on its selling value the owners would have a more direct incentive to part with it, and a twofold advantage would result to the community. First of all, the valuable property would contribute to the rates, and thus the burden of the occupiers would be diminished by the increase in the rateable property; secondly, the owners of the building land would be forced to offer their land for sale, and thus their competition with one another would bring down the price of building land and so diminish the tax in the shape of ground-rent or price paid for the land which is now levied by the adjacent landowners—a tax, be it remembered, which is no recompense for any industry or expenditure on their part, but is the natural result of the industry and activity of the townspeople themselves."
If there ever was a demonstration of the need for a transaction which will change the standard of rating, this is that demonstration. But it does not end there. Reference has been made in the course of the debate—too little reference, I think—to the Minority Report of the year 1891. I wonder if the right hon. Gentlemen the late Prime Minister thinks that that Minority Report was dictated or animated by the principles of Henry George. It was written by the late Lord Kinross, a well-known and most eminent authority on rating both in Scotland and in this country, a man whose opinion and whose arbitrative power were appealed to on both sides of the border. Who concurred
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with him in this revolutionary minority? There was Sir J. B. Balfour, there was Lord Balfour of Burleigh, there was Sir Edward Hamilton, late Secretary to the Treasury, and there was Sir George Murray, present Secretary to the Treasury, and these are the authorities, and not Henry George, although with regard to Mr. Henry George, I will venture in the face of Parliament to make this observation, that he is one of those authors whom, if you carefully read, you will ever afterwards avoid sneering at. You may differ from him, but that you are dealing with a master mind no one who has ever carefully studied that great author will deny. I differ from him. Coming back to this Minority Report, what did these revolutionary authorities reply to the question, "Why change the present standard?" They said—
"There is a strong argument for rating site values on the ground of public policy, regard being had to the effect of the tax on industries and developments. Our present rate indisputably hampers building. Buildings are necessary to life and necessary to business of every kind. Now the tendency of our present rate must be to discourage building, to make houses fewer, worse, and dearer."
Anyone who knows the condition, as I happen to know it, of some of our congested districts, not only in the towns of Scotland, but in very remote districts will endorse that statement. If I had said that I should have been denounced as using most explosive language, but that is the written testimony of these highly skilled persons. In answer to the question "Why change the present standard of rating?" our answer is, "We stand upon writings such as these, which have been presented to the House and the country in the skilled Reports and the documents prepared by skilled people."
MR. YOUNGER: Do they suggest this as the basis of rating?
MR. THOMAS SHAW: Yes, they suggest it as the basis of rating, and their summary and conclusion is—
"It will do something towards lightening burdens in respect of buildings, and it will do something towards solving the difficult and urgent housing question."
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was good enough to say that he wondered why the land problem was always presented in a Scottish form first, and most acutely. He seemed

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to think that we were a corpus vile, as one distinguished speaker called his country, for experiment. To that I answer that we have the most acute experience in Scotland of any country in Europe of the evils of overcrowding in the housing of our population, and the Government are determined, if they can, to address themselves to the remedying of that social question. [Cheers.] That seems to be assented to by both sides of the House. My further proposition is that if we want radically to attack the housing question we must attack the valuation of land, as shown by these skilled Commissioners. The question is often put, "Is land held up?" If land is not held up, this Bill will show it. If land is held up, this Bill will show it. That is a fact worthy of being ascertained by Parliament. We do not hear so much now of the impracticability of valuation. The time was when my learned friend Mr. Cripps and I would break a lance over this question of valuation. Mr. Cripps' point was that it was an impossible job, but everyone who has had experience, as men of my own profession have had, of the practicability of valuing land separately from houses knows that it is done every day. The idea that it is an impracticable task cannot be maintained. It is not a novel experiment. The Leader of the Opposition seems to think the Government have got this by some sudden inspiration from the clouds, and that they have for the first time put it into Parliamentary shape. It is not so. There is experience much nearer home than South Australia or New Zealand. The Manchester Corporation Act was passed having this specially in view, and under that Act it is the duty of the assessing authority to lay the value of the assessment on the land as distinct from the houses. The London County Council Improvements Act with regard to the purchase of the Tower Bridge has a clause of exactly the same kind. I maintain, therefore, that we are following, not only the Reports of Royal Commissions, but almost the text of certain clauses and sections which have passed through this House. I am aware that the Bill will tend to the better development of land and the throwing of land open, but the cardinal consideration in my mind, however, is that our proposal will ameliorate the acuteness of the problem as to housing in our great cities.
1716
But there was another object. The hon. Gentleman who last spoke said that I had thrown out the suggestion that this assessment of land values might be of Parliamentary use in the question of land transfer. I hope it will be reported far and wide that in the opinion of the Government when these capital values are obtained they may be taken notice of in the future by Parliament in the case of the transfer of land. The instances are so familiar. [Hear, hear.] I suppose the other side defend them, judging from the cheer of the hon. Member for Lanarkshire, but we have not forgotten them. There is the Rosyth case in which a most estimable Lord in Scotland, acting under the most skilled advice, dealt with the Government of the day, and obtained for agriculture land eighty-five years purchase. We remember the case of Granton where 105 acres rated at £5 10s. an acre which, with an equivalent of thirty years purchase, would have given £17,300 was sold for public purposes to the Edinburgh Corporation for £224,000, or 124 years purchase. But there is a further and more acute case than that, namely, the case of the Water Trust of Edinburgh, who required some land for a small reservoir. They purchased forty-five acres of land rated at £3 5s. an acre, the total value of which at thirty years purchase was £4,387, and the actual price paid was £20,000 or 136 years purchase. A further case which were member is the Clyde Trust, which, in the neigbourhood of Renfrew, acquired 110 acres of land at a price equivalent to 435 years purchase. I venture to say that apart altogether from rating, even if the fact of the capital value had to be disclosed year by year these lands would, never have appeared in the valuation roll of Scotland with a capital value of anything like that. If there be an attempt to keep down the capital value in future negotiations to an unduly small figure, I think that attempt would be baulked by the possibility that the public fact and the capital value record will remain as a thing to be taken note of. With regard to expense there has been a great deal of wild language. It is said that it will cost £160,000 to the assessors of Glasgow to value Glasgow; the assessor himself says the figure will be only £6,000. Who is going to judge between the man

1717
who is not a valuer, and the man who has been a valuer for forty years? I will take Mr. Harper, the statistical officer of the London County Council. He said he could value the land in London at an expense for the first year of only £25,000, and afterwards of £5,000 a year. I think that at once dispels the fears of the people of Scotland or their spokesmen in this House with regard to the question of expenses. The Leader of the Opposition remarked that there was no steam behind the Bill if we left out of it a proposal to tax under existing contracts feu duties. I do not blame him in any way, but may I explain that the best support for this Bill in all these municipal agitations, where 500 public bodies have demanded this reform, has come from the large corporations in England? They want to get at the value of the land by taxing the owner for the time being. The idea that the want of these little items as to existing feu duties is to take off steam from the agitation is grossly to miscalculate the real social forces which are behind the measure. But the right hon. Gentleman said, if the community has made the value, and the community are to gel it, who are the community? They are our citizens. Some of them in past generations have been working up these values, and this is only a restoration, and the answer of the present community is that this mischief has been going on for generations; that the injustice has been going on for a long time, and we are determined to deal with it. The right hon. Gentleman asked why railways and canals were not included in the scheme. If we were going to start a new system of rating altogether, as at the beginning of things, we should no doubt make the state of affairs somewhat different from what it is, but I will try and explain in as untechnical language as possible the situation with regard to railways and canals. The situation with regard to railways and canals, as the House knows, is that they form a series of threads passing over the areas of a large number of municipal, parish, and county authorities. We can only take a railway as a unit, which has a monopoly granted by the State that can only be valued by a reference to its returns, and there are elaborate provisions for taking stock of the receipts of railways, of estimates, of
1718
values, of stations, and wharves and docks, and then for taking the entire line and dividing certain actuarial results which are thus produced over the whole chain of operations. It is perfectly manifest that this requires a separate set of considerations, and for over fifty years in Scotland it has required also a separate set of officials. We have determined to take the line of least resistance, and we have taken the line which is in accordance with the precedent of the last fifty years in Scotland. When we have got the whole of these returns, with all the experience, I know not what we will do, but, as at present advised, I shall certainly be very slow indeed over to suggest that railways and canals should come under the same system of rating. It is said with regard to agricultural land that the schedule of improvements here is so specific that it deals with what I may call visible improvements, fencing, building, dwelling-houses, and the like, and with that visibility attaching, it necessarily, says the right hon. Gentleman, leaves out of account those improvements which may have gone on from the time of Noah and the Flood until now. Of course it does, and I can imagine an argument which would have delighted the House if we had attempted to begin at the point of prairie value; but because we rigorously confine the scope of the improvement which can be inexpensively dealt with, in the sense of its being visible to all parties, and being the subject of ordinary everyday estimates, we are told that we have violated the theory that improvements should be separated from the land. We have not violated any theory at all. We have taken what in practice will prove to be a very fair and sound method of getting at the value of the land, less the improvements which are the subject of ordinary-estimate. I hope I have not put this too technically in answering the request made to me. There is one final request which the right hon. Gentleman made to me, and that is with regard to woods. Upon that I will concede that while we have only included the buildings, erections, and structural improvements, there may well be a point for fair consideration in Committee whether woods should not also be included. The Government is in no way against that. We deal with woods as an ordinary crop, and that is the value of the crop along with the land, but if it

1719
be thought that the woods come into the value of the land we are quite open to conviction, and I think probably a word or two might effect the Amendment. In conclusion, with regard to the whole Bill, I will state one or two propositions. This Bill will establish definitely the relation that land value bears to the capitalised rental value. The House is hardly aware of how much confusion and contradiction there is on this subject. Some people hold that the site value is only equal to one-half, and some say it is equal to one-tenth of the whole existing capital value. There are other difficult and troublesome questions of that kind which can only be settled when we have ascertained the facts, and this Bill will ascertain them. My second proposition is, that it will provide an annual record, which may be of extreme advantage, of the increment of land values as such. This would go on from year to year. Every district will be distinct in the Parliamentary Return, to which each proprietor would be a party. It will then be open for consideration whether there should not, in the terms of the Minority Report, be a distinct clause also for site values. There are many serious cases, I believe, of land held up from building or profitable uses as agricultural land. That will aggravate the case, because agricultural land is favoured by the Legislature, and was particularly favoured by the late House of Commons. Therefore the hardship is two-fold. It is favoured in point of taxation to begin with, but when it is agricultural land inside the ambit of a borough, it is going to get an additional favour; it escapes the value of the capitalised sum, and, being also agricultural land, it is specially favoured by the Legislature. Our view is that there will be revelations made by this Return which will make demonstrable, especially in urban and suburban areas, and even in the districts surrounding villages, that the cases are such as to be dealt with practically on capitalised value. Furthermore, the Bill will give a return of the capitalised value

AYES.

Abraham, William (Rhondda)

Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

Benn, W.(T'w'rHamlets,S.Geo.)

Alden, Percy

Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

Bennett, E. N.

Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)

Barker, John

Berridge, T. H. D.

Armitage, R.

Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

Black, Arthur W.

Astbury, John Meir

Barnes, G. N.

Boland, John

Baker, JosephA (Finsbury,E.)

Beale, W. P. ,

Brace, William

of unoccupied land in the country, which is not at present rated at all. There is a large amount of agricultural land which is rated at too little, but there is a large amount which is not rated at all, and, so far as these two elements are concerned the community and the local authorities will undoubtedly tap a fresh source of additional revenue. Besides, it will definitely show the feasibility of transactions, whether of taxation or transfer, with land value as the basis. Then I think it will pave the way for gradually lessening the burden of taxation upon improvements, and for securing that the value which is made by the community, in increasing the value of the land, shall share all the burdens of the community, so that, in fact, the value which the communal activity has made shall be recognised as a subject for recouping the community. Now the importance of these reforms is conceded on all hands. But we also concede that it is a very complex subject. No man can handle it without feeling that it is a very complex subject indeed, and the urgency of reform is apt to be lost sight of in its appalling complexity. If we remove that complexity we shall be able to give more attention to its urgency. Not only is this a rating question, but it is undoubtedly associated with housing, the health of the people, and social reform. At the root of all this lies the land question. This in town or in country is a peculiarly arduous task for any Party to tackle, but, though arduous, it is an honourable one. The Government are impelled to it by the desire for greater and more equitable activity in the community, and among the humblest of the population we have this in view, that the conditions of health and housing will be promoted by the reforms of which I hope this will be the happy inauguration.
Question put.
The House divided; Ayes, 294; Noes; 76. (Division List, No. 274.)

Branch. James

Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

M'Killop, W.

Brigg, John

Greenwood, Hamar (York)

M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester)

Bright, J. A.

Guest, Hon. Ivor Churchill

Maddison, Frederick

Brodie, H. C.

Gulland, John W.

Mallet, Charles, E.

Brooke, Stopford

Gurdon,RtHn.Sir W.Brampton

Marks,G.Croydon(Launceston)

Brunner,J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)

Hall, Frederick

Marnham, F. J.

Brunner, RtHnSirJ.T(Cheshire

Halpin, J.

Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)

Bryce, J. Annan

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis

Massie, J.

Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn

Harmsworth,. Cecil B. (Worc'r

Menzies, Walter

Burns, Rt. Hon. John

Harmsworth,R.L.(Caithn'ss-sh

Micklem, Nathaniel

Burnyeat, W. J. D.

Hart-Davies, T.

Molteno, Percy Alport

Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

Mond, A.

Buxton, Rt. Hn.Sydney Charles

Harvey,W.E. (Derbyshire, N.E.

Montgomery, H. G.

Byles, William Pollard

Harwood, George

Mooney, J. J.

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H.

Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

Carr-Gomm, H. W.

Haworth, Arthur A.

Morley, Rt. Hon. John

Causton,Rt.Hn.RichardKnight

Hayden, John Patrick

Morrell, Philip

Cawley, Sir Frederick

Hazel, Dr. A. E.

Morse, L. L.

Chance, Frederick William

Hazleton, Richard

Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

Channing, Sir Francis Allston

Helme, Norval Watson

Murray, James

Cheetham, John Frederick

Hemmerde, Edward George

Napier, T. B.

Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

Nicholls. George

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.

Henry, Charles S.

Nolan, Joseph

Cleland, J. W.

Hobart, Sir Robert

Norman, Sir Henry

Clough, William

Hogan, Michael

Norton, Capt. Cecil William

Clynes, J. R,

Holt, Richard Durning

O'Brien,Kendal(TipperaryMid

Coats,SirT.Glen(Renfrew, W.)

Hope, W.Bateman(Somers't,N

O'Donnell, G J. (Walworth)

Cobbold, Felix Thornley

Horniman, Emslie John

O'Grady, J.

Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

Horridge, Thomas Gardner

O'Malley, William

Collins,SirWm.J.(S.Pancras, W

Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Cooper, G. J.

Hudson, Walter

Parker, James (Halifax)

Corbett,CH(Sussex,E.Grinst'd)

Hyde, Clarendon

Pearce, Robert (Staffs. Leek)

Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

Illingworth, Percy H.

Pearson, W. H. M.(Suffolk, Eye)

Cory, Clifford John

Isaacs, Rufus Daniel

Philipps,Col.Ivor(S'thampton)

Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

Jackson, R. S.

Philipps, J. Wynford (Pembroke

Cowan, W. H.

Jacoby, Sir James Alfred

Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)

Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)

Jardine, Sir J.

Power, Patrick Joseph

Crean, Eugene

Johnson, John (Gateshead)

Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh,Central)

Cremer, Sir William Randal

Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

Price, Robert John(Norfolk, E.)

Crombie, John William

Jones, Leif (Appleby)

Priestley, W. E. B.(Bradford, E.)

Crooks, William

Jones,William(Carnarvonshire)

Radford, G. H.

Crossley. William J.

Jowett, F. W.

Rainy, A. Rolland]

Cullinan, J.

Joyce, Michael

Raphael, Herbert H.

Curran, Peter Francis

Kearley, Hudson E.

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Dalziel, James Henry

Kekewich, Sir George

Redmond, William (Clare)

Davies,David(MontgomeryCo.

Kelley, George D.

Rees, J. D.

Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

Kilbride, Denis

Richards,T.F.(Wolverh'mpt'n)

Davies, Timothy (Fulham)

Kincaid-Smith, Captain

Richardson, A.

Devlin, Joseph

Laidlaw, Robert

Ridsdale, E. A.

Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster

Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

Dickinson, W.H.(St. Pancras,N.

Lambert, George

Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

Duffy, William J.

Lamont, Norman

Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.)

Duncan, C.(Barrow-in-Furness

Lardner, James Carrige Rushe

Robertson,SirG.Scott(Bradf'rd

Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)

Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside

Dunne, Major E. Martin(Walsall)

Layland-Barratt, Francis

Robinson, S.

Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

Lehmann, R. C.

Robson, Sir William Snowdon

Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)

Levy, Sir Maurice

Roche, Augustine (Cork)

Elibank, Master of

Lewis, John Herbert

Roche, John (Galway, East)

Erskine, David C.

Lough, Thomas

Roe, Sir Thomas

Esslemont, George Birnie

Lupton, Arnold

Rowlands, J.

Evans, Samuel T.

Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

Russell, T. W.

Fenwick, Charles

Lyell, Charles Henry

Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

Ferens. T. R.

Lynch, H. B.

Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)

Ferguson. R, C. Munro

Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter

Macdonald,J.M.(FalkirkB'ghs

Scarisbrick, T. T. L.

Freeman-Thomas, Freeman

Mackarness, Frederic C.

Scott,A.H.(Ashton under Lyne)

Fuller, John Michael F.

Maclean, Donald

Seaverns, J. H.

Fullerton, Hugh

Macnamara, D. Thomas J.

Seddon, J.

Gibb, James (Harrow)

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift

Seely, Major J. B.

Gill, A. H.

Macpherson, J. T.

Shackleton, David James

Gladstone,Rt.Hn. Herbert John

MacVeigh,Charles(Donegal,E.)

Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford)

Goddard, Daniel Ford

M'Crae, George

Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)

Gooch, George Peabody

M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

Shipman, Dr. John G.

Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E

Whitehead, Rowland

Silcock, Thomas Ball

Thorne, William

Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

Sinclair, Rt. Hon. John

Toulmin, George

Wiles, Thomas

Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Wilkie, Alexander

Smith, F. E. (Liverpool, Walton)

Ure, Alexander

Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

Snowden, P.

Verney, F. W.

Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)

Spicer, Sir Albert

Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)

Williamson, A.

Stanger, H. Y.

Walsh, Stephen

Wills, Arthur Walters

Steadman, W. C.

Walton, Sir John L. (Leeds,S.)

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

Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)

Wason, Rt. Hn. E. (Clackmannan

Wilson, J. H. (.Middlesbrough)

Strachey, Sir Edward

Waterlow, D. S.

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

Straus, B. S. (Mile End)

Watt, Henry A.

Wilson, W. T. I Westhoughton)

Stuart, James (Sunderland)

Wedgwood, Josiah C.

Winfrey, R.

Summerbell, T.

Weir, James Galloway

Wood, T. M'Kinnon

Sutherland, J. E.

Whitbread, Howard

Young, Samuel

Taylor, Theodore C(Radcliffe)

White, George (Norfolk)

Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

White, J. D. (Dumbartonshire)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES—MR.

Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

White, Luke (York, E.R.)

Whiteley and Mr. J. A.

Thomasson, Franklin

White, Partick (Meath, North)

Pease.

NOES.

Anson, Sir William Reynell

Faber, George Denison (York)

Parkes, Ebenezer

Anstruther-Gray, Major

Fell, Arthur

Pease, Herbert Pike(Darlington

Arkwright, John Stanhope

Fletcher, J. S.

Percy, Earl

Balcarres, Lord

Forster, Henry William

Rawlinson,JohnFrederickPeel

Balfour,Rt Hn.A.J.(CityLond.)

Gretton, John

Remnant, James Farquharson

Banbury, Sir Frederick George

Hardy,Laurence(Kent, Ashford

Roberts,S.(,Sheffield, Ecclesall)

Beach,Hn. MichaelHughHicks

Harris, Frederick Leverton

Ronaldshay, Karl of

Beckett, Hon. Gervase

Helmsley, Viscount

Salter, Arthur Clavell

Boyle, Sir Edward

Hill, Sir Clement (Shrewsbury)

Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

Bridgeman, W. Clive

Houston, Robert Paterson

Sheffield,SirBerkeleyGeorgeD.

Burdett-Coutts, W.

Hunt, Rowland

Smith,Abel H.(Hertford,East)

Butcher, Samuel Henry

Kennaway,Rt. Hon.SirJohnH.

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

Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.

Kenyon-Slaney,Rt.Hon.Col.W.

Stanley, Hon. Arthur(Ormskirk

Carlile, E. Hildred

Keswick, William

Starkey, John R.

Castlereagh, Viscount

Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

Cave, George

Lane-Fox, G. R.

Tennant,SirEdward (Salisbury)

Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

Lockwood,Rt.Hn.Lt.-Col.A.R,

Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)

Cecil,LordR.(Marylebone, E.)

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

Thornton, Percy M.

Coates,E.Feetham(Lewisham)

Lowe, Sir Francis William

Walrond, Hon. Lionel

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

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)

Corbett,A.Cameron(Glasgow)

Mason, James F. (Windsor)

Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

Meysey-Thomson, E. C.

Younger, George

Courthope, G. Loyd

Middlemore, JohnThrogmorton

Craig,CharlesCurtis(Antrim,S.

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir

Craik, Sir Henry

Morpeth, Viscount

Alexander Acland- Hood and

Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

Viscount Valentia.

Duncan,Robert(Lanark,Govan

Nield, Herbert

EVICTED TENANTS (IRELAND) [EXPENSES].
Committee to consider of authorising the payment, out of moneys provided by Parliament, of compensation and expenses incurred under any Act of the present session to facilitate the provision of land for certain evicted tenants in
1724
Ireland, and for other purposes connected therewith, and of authorising the National Debt Commissioners to make advances for the purposes of such Act (King's Recommendation signified), To-morrow.—(Mr. Whiteley.)
And, it being half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at twelve minutes before Twelve o'clock.

PRIVATE BILL BUSINESS.
Kingston-upon-Hull Corporation Bill. Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
King Edward's Hospital Fund for London Bill [H.L.]; Heywood and Middleton Water Board Bill [H.L.]. Commons' Amendments considered and agreed to.
Central London Railway Bill. Moved, That the order made on the 20th day of March last, "That no Private Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after the 18th day of June next," be dispensed with, and that the Bill be now read 2a; agreed to: Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed.
Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Bill [H.L.]. Amendments reported (according to order), and Bill to be read 3a To-morrow.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 9) Bill. [No. 106]; Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 12) Bill. [No. 107]; Local Government Provisional Order (No. 15) Bill. [No. 108.] Brought from the Commons. Read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill; Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill [H.L.]; Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [H.L.]. House in Committee (according to order). The Amendments proposed by the Committee made; Standing Committee negatived. The Report of Amendments to be received To-morrow.
Portobello and Musselburgh Tramways (Levenhall Extension) Order Confirmation Bill [H.L.]. Read 3a (according to order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

RETURNS, REPORTS, ETC.
COLONIES-ANNUAL.
No. 527. Ceylon.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES.
Report of the Departmental Committee appointed to inquire into the accounts of local authorities.
Vol. I. Report.
Vol. II. Minutes of evidence; with digest of evidence and index to evidence.

TREATY SERIES.
No. 16. (1907.) Convention between the United Kingdom and Belgium supplementing Article XIV. of the Treaty of Extradition of 29th October, 1901; signed at London, 5th March, 1907. (Ratifications exchanged at London, 17th April, 1907.)
No 17. (1907.) Agreement between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Costa Rica for the exchange of postal money orders; signed at San José de Costa Rica, 26th April, 1907.

TRADE REPORTS—MISCELLANEOUS SERIES.
No. 662. (Imports into Mexico from the United Kingdom and Germany.)

LIGHT RAILWAYS ACT, 1896.
Orders made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and confirmed by the Board of Trade—
I. Amending the East Sussex Light Railway Orders, 1901 and 1905.
II. Reviving the powers granted and extending the periods limited by the Central Essex Light Railway Orders, 1901 to 1905, for the compulsory purchase of lands and extending the periods limited by those orders for the completion of the railways and works thereby authorised.
Order made by the Light Railway Commissioners, and modified and confirmed by the Board of Trade, authorising the Wolverhampton and Cannock Chase Railway Company to construct and work their authorised railways as a light railway under the Light Railways Act, 1896, and for other purposes.
Presented (by Command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

SUPERANNUATION.
Treasury Minute, dated 5th July, 1907, declaring that for the due and efficient discharge of the duties of the office of Director of the National Galleries of Scotland professional or other peculiar qualifications not ordinarily to be acquired on the public service are required: Laid before the House (pursuant to Act), and ordered to lie on the Table.
BOARD OF EDUCATION (ROYSTON NON-PROVIDED SCHOOL).
Return of official correspondence relating to the appeal of the managers of the Royston Church of England School against the refusal of the local education authority to consent to the appointment of Mr. O. B. Milnes as head teacher of the school: Laid before the House (pursuant to order of the 27th of June last), and to be printed. (No. 103.)
PALACE OF WESTMINSTER.
Report from the Select Committee (with the proceedings of the Committee) made, and to be printed. (No. 104). Minutes of evidence, together with an appendix, laid upon the Table, and to be delivered out.

THE MERCHANT SERVICE.
LORD MUSKERRY: My Lords, I rise to call attention to the alleged shortage of officers engaged in the merchant service; to the conditions under which those officers labour; to a resolution adopted at the last annual meeting of the Chamber of Shipping, calling upon the Board of Trade to remove any obstacles and give greater facilities to men desiring to obtain certificates of competency as second officers; to a proposal of the Liverpool Steamship Owners' Association that the qualifying time for a second officer's certificate be reduced from four to three years; and to ask what attitude the Board of Trade propose to adopt on these several matters.
I am calling attention to this subject, not so much in the interests of British shipowners—who are well able to look after their own interests—but in the interests of the country, of safety of life at sea, of the further development of our shipping trade, and in the interests of those who devote themselves to a hard life at sea. Though we are getting nearer to it every day, we seem, as yet, far from able to realise the importance to the nation of our merchant service and of those engaged in it. Our food supply mainly depends upon it: our Army depends upon it for transport, and without it our troops are useless for operations outside these islands; our ships in the Royal Navy and our Naval depots abroad depend on it for coal and
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all other supplies, whilst in its officers and men we have a Reserve which is certain to be called on whenever we are engaged in a maritime war. Therefore, when we hear of a shortage of officers in our merchant service it is, I venture to think, a subject which should be brought to your Lordships' notice. I say this more especially as the schemes which are mooted for the purpose of creating an artificial supply will tend to produce large numbers of inefficient and inexperienced officers, and this would greatly endanger life at sea.
When we are travelling on the high seas we entrust our lives to the care of the captain or officer on the bridge. We naturally expect that he is fully competent, careful, and, above all, an experienced and resourceful navigator. But if we allow these so-called schemes, proposing to make it much more easy to obtain certificates of competency, to slip through, we shall find that we have, without a protest, reduced the standard of safety and lessoned the efficiency of those who, as officers of merchant vessels, have such serious responsibilities vested in them so far as life and property are concerned. It is this attempt to tamper with efficient and safe navigation that has caused the Merchant Service Guild to address emphatic protests to the Board of Trade.
I understand that the proposal of the Liverpool Steamship Owners' Association is to reduce the period of qualifying time for a second officer's certificate from four to three years. I hope that the Board of Trade will not entertain this proposal for a single moment. It is a very serious change of front that the British shipowner, who hitherto has always required men of experience, should now urge that three years training is sufficient to enable a youth to become a full-fledged officer and take his place on the bridge with many lives in his hands. Then, again, the Chamber of Shipping, which is the representative body of British shipowners, requests the Board of Trade to remove obstacles and give greater facilities for second mates—the lowest certificated grade—to obtain such certificates. I trust that the Board of Trade are not going to allow themselves to be hoodwinked in this matter, and lend their aid

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to methods and schemes which are proposed, not in the interests of safety or efficiency, as we have that already, but for the purpose of once more glutting the market with captains and officers who will have to accept employment on any conditions.
We have a striking contrast to the present attitude of the British shipowner when we turn to Japan, where cadets for the mercantile marine are drawn from the most successful scholars in the higher schools. Two and a-half years they must spend at the Imperial National College at Tokio, and they receive there thorough instruction in navigation and seamanship. Then there is six months in gunnery training at the naval depot, from whence the youths proceed to a Japanese seagoing training ship for two years. Then a further six months must be spent on a steamship. It therefore takes them five and a-half years before they can pass for second officer, and, on doing so, they are entered in the Naval Reserve. Japan has lately taught a lesson in maritime war to the world. When war is going on between other countries we send accredited representatives of our forces to learn the lessons of failure and success. But what I would like to know is, do we ever send representatives to ascertain what part the merchant services of other countries play during the struggle? I venture to think that inquiries would show that Japan's merchant service officers proved a very valuable asset at the time to which I allude.
Reverting to our own service, I may say that our shipowners have now got hold of the wrong end of the stick. They will never do any good for themselves or their interests by promoting a a large supply of immature officers. The plain fact is that owing to their treatment of captains and officers in past years, the calling of the sea has become absolutely discredited so far as its conditions are concerned. it seems a pity to have to say it, but we cannot ignore facts, and the difficulty is best solved by looking them square in the face. Niggardly pay, inferior, insufficient, and perhaps insanitary accommodation, no guarantee of continuous employment, dismissals for trivial or no reasons, unjust suspensions of certificates, no leave from their arduous duties, continuous labour from day to day and night
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to night, frequent Sunday labour, long absences from home and friends and families, absence of proper rest through an insufficiency of officers on board — many ships carry only two officers—these and other reasons, combined with the fact that a good deal of the romance of the sea is dead, are responsible for the present position of which British shipowners complain.
Had I no regard for your Lordships' patience, I could give at great length the actual experiences of captains and officers which have been placed in my hands merely as samples, and which show what bad treatment members of the nautical profession receive. The existence of the Imperial Merchant Service Guild to-day is for no other reason than that members of the profession, tired of hoping for proper consideration, joined in forming; an organisation which, I am glad to say, has succeeded in doing an immense amount of good for them. But there is much more to be done, and it is for the Legislature and for British shipowners to co-operate in the work.
If your Lordships will allow me, I will refer to a few instances of the treatment of merchant service captains and officers. A case has lately come to my notice where a captain of a sailing vessel arrived home after a voyage of over four years. The size of the ship was over 2,000 tons and the owners, who are well known, assess his pay at £12 10s. per month, or we may say £3 3s. a week, whilst they deduct 15s. per week for the time his wife was on board. One of the leading shipowners on the north-east coast and a gentleman well-known in Parliamentary circles pays the masters of some of his large steamers at the rate of £13 per month, making them find their own charts, which are pretty expensive, and return to the owners all gratuities and commissions they may receive. From £15 to £16 per month is very common pay for masters of large vessels, and an accident usually means that they must start elsewhere as an officer at £6 to £7 per month. I have a letter from an officer who says—
"One hears a lot at present about the scarcity of officers, but I am thinking it is a bit of a fairy tale, for I can assure you for the last two months during which I have been out and looking for employment, I have come across a good number who are in the same position as myself at present."

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Quite recently, eight masters in the steamers of one of the leading and largest firms in the country threw up their positions and returned home rather than submit to the treatment they received. An announcement recently appeared in the Press to the effect that they had increased the pay of their officers all round, and the new rates were given. This has been a paper increase, as I am advised that in most cases the increase is conspicuous by its absence. As showing how little shipowners have advanced with the times in the matter of remuneration I may tell your Lordships that, according to official figures, and despite all the wonderful developments in connection with merchant ships, both in regard to size and the immense amount of additional work which has to be carried on on board of them by our merchant officers at the present time, their pay is much as it was twenty-five years ago.
A subject which I have previously brought to your Lordships' notice is that of accommodation provided on board for officers. In most cases, both in liners and other vessels, the accommodation provided for officers is very inferior. I have been looking over the annual report lately issued by Dr. Howard Jones, Medical Officer of Health for the port of Newport, Monmouthshire. These are certain observations in an extract from this Report referring to merchant ships. Dr. Jones says—
"After the vessels have been passed by the Board of Trade and arrive at a British port during a voyage, they come under the observation of the Port Sanitary Authority, and it is not an uncommon occurrence for the latter to insist on structural alterations, in order to remedy nuisances soon after being passed by the Board of Trade. This is naturally a source of annoyance and expense to the owners, and an unpleasant duty on the part of the Port Sanitary Officials.…Officers' quarters also frequently exhibit gross errors in design in this respect; as will be seen by the following example: —
" 'January 27th, S.S.M. — I—, newly launched. The officers quarters afforded accommodation for nine officers, etc; one w. c. adjoining captain's cabin, and separated from latter by thin matchboard partition, which allowed test gases to pass between the boards freely.' "
As illustrating the work that an officer is expected to perform, I have before me the case of an officer of a large steamer in receipt of £8 per month as pay. The steamer being at anchor, this officer had been tallying cargo from 8 a.m. until
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10 p.m., or rather, by the time he had seen that hatches were on and attended to other details, it was 11 p.m. On the following day he had to start work at 6 a.m. and tally cargo until 8.30 a.m.; after half an hour for breakfast he continued tallying until about 1 p.m. After an interval of an hour for dinner the tallying was carried on till 6 p.m., and after tea the work was proceeded with until 11.30 p.m., when this officer and the third officer were told that they would have to keep on working watch and watch—that is, one would require to relieve the other every four hours. In the steamers which carry two officers only—and there are very many—the approximate amount of duty an officer must put in per diem is something like fourteen or fifteen hours. In ports abroad, or where vessels are engaged in trading between a large number of ports only shortly removed from each other— such, for instance, as the Mediterranean trade—the physical strain imposed upon the officers in regard to hours of labour is intolerable, and whilst stevedores and others engaged in the work of cargo, as also seamen and firemen, are paid overtime, this, in practically all cases, does not apply to the officers.
I have a letter by me from a member of the profession, who speaks of his trade being one where they load out for five to eight ports and take others for loading homewards, frequently touching at twelve to fifteen ports in a six weeks voyage. This gentleman, who is a shipmaster, says that on Sunday work is becoming more and more prevalent instead of less, and though the owners in this case pay overtime, thereby setting, an example to many other lines of ships, yet it is said that the two officers of this particular ship are frequently very fagged when the ship is ready for sea. It does not say very much for the sea as a lucrative profession when we see officers with extra masters' certificates, Royal Naval Reserve commissions, and other qualifications, who have been four or five years in leading lines and whose total service at sea has been probably ten or twelve years, earning the munificent remuneration of £8 per month, with expensive uniform to provide.
We should remember that "tramp'' steamers—the word "tramp" is a very

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unfortunate and misleading appellation —represent over 80 per cent. of the shipping industry. It is not only in these, but in almost all the large lines that officers bitterly complain of their treatment. Promotion is very slow, their pay is poor and certainly not what it should be having regard to their enormous responsibilities, they are relegated to take their meals in inferior mess-rooms, lodged probably amongst steerage passengers and humiliated in other ways. They must provide them selves with expensive uniform, and altogether the lot of the "liner" officer is very different from what people imagine when they see him in uniform on the bridge or about the decks.
I say remove all this discontent and give proper inducements for the right sort of boy to outer on a sea life and the shipowner need never fear for an adequate supply of officers in the future. And let him treat them as men and as gentlemen and his interests will be well rewarded. The Merchant Service Guild tell mo that it is no uncommon thing to lay courteous representations before firms of shipowners which do not elicit even an acknowledgment. This sort of thing is not calculated to make things better or to promote that kindly feeling between employer and employee which is so desirable. Furthermore, I have it on the authority of the Guild that there is no real lack of officers. They inform me that for any position where, say, £8 or £9 per month is offered, any number of suitable officers can be had. Surely if such small pay as this can command an ample supply there is not much basis for the cry about a shortage of officers.
I hope to hear that the Board of Trade will unhesitatingly oppose any proposals which will tamper with the efficiency and safety of merchant ships. We require to maintain capable and highly experienced captains and officers in them such as we have now. It will be an ill day for this country when we reduce the standard in this respect, and thus not only still further endanger life at sea, but play into the hands of other maritime Powers whose fierce competition appears to be of such great moment to the British shipowners at the present time.
*THE EARL OF GRANARD: My Lords, I am sure we all admit our indebtedness to the merchant service in the building up of this great Empire and for their valuable services during the South African war. With regard to the points raised by the noble Lord, the Board of Trade are inclined to agree that there is no shortage of officers. There may be some slight shortage in the coasting trade, in regard to which we have received complaints from junior officers, especially as to the rate of pay and Sunday work, but the Board do not think that that condition is very prevalent in the foreign trade. I can give a very simple answer to the noble Lord's inquiry as to the intention of the Board of Trade with regard to the examination for second-mate's certificates. The Board have no intention whatever of departing from the present rule as to sea service before a man is able to take out his certificate. He will still have to serve four years at sea before he can go up for his second mate's certificate, though the rule is somewhat modified in the case of boys serving in the training ships "Conway" and "Worcester," who can sit for their certificates after three years. As I am on this point I may inform your Lordships that though the number of second-mate certificates taken out has shown a decrease in recent years, yet while in 1905 only 616 such certificates were issued, last year this number had increased to 759. With regard to the training of boys for the British mercantile marine, a Committee is now sitting at the Board of Trade with the object of, if possible, evolving some plan by which boys of British nationality may be more attracted to the sea. It seems to me that the only way to get boys for this purpose is to make the following of the sea attractive. Until that is done I am afraid we shall find it very hard to increase the number of British subjects serving in our mercantile marine.
LORD ELLENBOROUGH: My Lords, I was exceedingly glad to hear so satisfactory an answer from the noble Earl who represents the Board of Trade. I confess I was under some apprehension that the qualification, as tested by examination, of second mate officers was to be reduced. Such a course would

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have increased the dangers of navigation. I agree that there is no shortage of officers. There is, however, among many shipowners a shortage of inducements both to enter and to remain in the service, and that ought not to be met by any reduction of the standard of examination.
*THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I think the Answer of the noble Earl was a satisfactory one, and I rise merely for the purpose of expressing my hope that the Board of Trade will adhere to their attitude, and be extremely careful not in any way to relax their requirements in regard to the efficiency and competency of these officers. The matter, as the noble Lord who brought this subject to our notice this evening truly said, is not one which we ought to consider merely from the point of view either of officers or shipowners. It is a question which concerns the carrying trade of the country and the lives of all who serve in these ships or travel on board of them. It is, therefore, of great Imperial moment. I understand that the shipowners allege a shortage of officers, and are putting pressure on the Board of Trade to obtain relaxation of the conditions on which the Board of Trade have insisted. On the other side it is urged—and, so far as I can make out, with much force—that this shortage does not exist, or is not so serious as has been represented, and that the inducements offered to young men to join the service have not improved in the same degree as those in other professions. I must say that some figures which have been shown to me seem to support the latter contention. I hope we shall bear in mind that the carrying trade of this country is a matter of the greatest possible moment, and that nothing will be done which might, directly or indirectly, tend to diminish the efficiency of the mercantile service of these islands.

IRISH EVICTED TENANTS.
THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORErose to move for a Return giving the names of the evicted tenants in Ireland whom His Majesty's Government intend to restore, the date of their eviction, a statement as to whether they were or were not Plan of Campaign tenants, whether they were judicial tenants or not, the amount of rent in arrear when they were evicted,
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the name of the landlord, and the town-land, parish, barony, and county in which their holdings were situated.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I venture to call your attention this evening for a few moments to a very important subject, but not one which His Majesty's Government considered of sufficient importance to be mentioned in the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament, although that Speech contained references of more than usual importance to Ireland. The Motion has been on the Paper for a considerable time, and was put down before the introduction of the Evicted Tenants Bill in another place, to which I have no intention of referring; I do not propose to criticise the machinery of of that measure or to comment on the debates in the other House, though I am very much tempted to do so by the speech delivered by the new Vice-President of the Irish Board of Agriculture upon the Second Reading, which contained some of the most fantastic statements about this matter I have ever heard. I do not wish, however, to anticipate a debate that may very likely take place in this House later on in the session, though according to the progress His Majesty's Government are making with business in another place I do not think we are likely to receive the Bill until well on towards the end of September.
Your Lordships will remember that considerable notice was taken of the question of the evicted tenants in 1903 during the passing of the Irish Land Act of that year, and we are told that in that year a bargain was entered into for the restoration of the evicted tenants. But I do not think that some of the speakers who have raised the question of this bargain have entirely recollected what the nature of that bargain was. We are asked to believe that the bargain was that the evicted tenants were to be restored; we are almost asked to believe that that was the primary object of the Act of 1903, and we are accused of having broken that bargain.
Now, what was the bargain? It originated in a paragraph in the Land Conference Report saying that any project for the solution of the Irish land question should be accompanied by

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a settlement of the evicted tenants question upon an equitable basis. Your Lorships will notice the words "should be accompanied." It was distinctly agreed that the solution of this question should proceed pari passu with the solution of the whole land question. There was no suggestion that this question was to be settled in priority to all others; nor was it suggested that any inconvenience was to be caused to landowners or to other tenants by the settling of the question. The settlement was to proceed on voluntary lines, and upon the giving of, to quote the words of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, an honest price. I think we in Ireland have very great reason to be grateful to the Lord Chancellor for the use of that phrase, but I do not think that His Majesty's Government will be very pleased by the end of the session that the phrase was ever used. I am perfectly certain that some of their supporters will be extremely angry that it was used, because nearly the whole of the agitation which is now going on in Ireland has for its object the avoidance of an honest price.
We stated in 1903 that we had no objection to the restoration of evicted tenants, but we claimed that the restoration should be undertaken only on estates where sales were taking place; and that fact was recognised by the Government of the day, as is shown by the Regulation made by the Lord-Lieutenant to the effect that—
"The Estates Commissioners should only consider the question of providing a holding for a tenant evicted from any holding comprised in an estate, upon the sale of that estate."
That condition carried out the undertaking accepted on all sides in 1903, and it was broken by .Mr. Bryce, who entirely on his own initiative altered the Regulation so as to remove the limitation.
The second condition of the bargain was that the process should be entirely voluntary. Sections 2 and 8 of the Act under which these proceedings take place state quite clearly that parcels of land may be purchased for, among other purposes, the benefit of evicted tenants, and it was made quite clear that no loss was to be incurred by the landlord and that no pressure was to be brought on the landlord or on any other tenant. This part of the bargain has not been
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kept. It is common knowledge in Ireland that pressure is being brought to bear on landlords by the Estates Commissioners to restore their evicted tenants, under the threat that if they do not their estate will not be declared an estate and that they will not therefore obtain their share of the bonus. And whether that is so or not, we all know that it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to break through this second condition of the bargain by legislation.
The third condition of the bargain was, in our opinion, equally important. We made it quite clear that whilst we would aid in the restoration of evicted tenants we would take no share in the dispossessing of those who had come forward during the bad times and assisted us by taking their places; and my noble friend Lord Westmeath, I remember, moved an Amendment to that effect while the Bill was passing through Committee in your Lordships House, and it was one of the few important points on which we, the Irish landlords, failed to beat the Government. But, although we failed to get these words inserted in the Bill, we obtained declarations from the Government of the day which left absolutely no room for misunderstanding. Mr. Wyndham stated in the House of Commons that the landlords' representatives had dwelt on the necessity of allowing nothing in the Bill to bring pressure to bear, directly or indirectly, on men who had taken up holdings which others had left; and to that he agreed. That position was accepted by Mr. Redmond a few days later; and the words used by the noble Marquess behind me, Lord Lansdowne, were that—
"He would be sorry to be a party to any arrangement which contemplated their abandonment and their exclusion from the holdings they now occupied."
Those were the three main features of the bargain. The first has been repudiated by the Government, the second the Government intend to repudiate, and I cannot help thinking that they would be glad to repudiate the third if they dared.
It is complained that the process of restoration under the Act of 1903 has been too slow. But it has gone on faster than that of dealing with estates, for it is stated in the special Report by the Estates Commissioners of their proceedings up to

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31st May last that the total number of evicted tenants, or other representatives, who have been restored to their former holdings or provided with new holdings up to date is 1,033, out of a total number of claims that the Government seem to have admitted of about 3,040. That rate of progress is slightly faster than the proportion of estates dealt with to estates in connection with which originating agreements have been lodged. And remember that the bargain was that the evicted tenants should be reinstated pari passu with sales as a whole. There is a remarkable paragraph in this Report in which the Estates Commissioners give their reasons for their failure. They say (paragraph 40) —
"The purchase of untenanted land under the powers given by the Act of 1903 is necessarily slow, inasmuch as it depends on the consent of the owner and proof of title to the purchase money."
I would ask permission for a moment to examine those reasons.
First, there is delay in administering the Act. Whose fault is that? It is the fault of the Government of the day in the first place, and, I suppose, of the Estates Commissioners in the second place. But is that any reason for breaking up the bargain which was acquiesced in by all parties in 1903? What is the next reason? It is that it is difficult to purchase untenanted land because it depends on the consent of the owner. Is that not left rather vague in the hope that the public will assume that owners have been recalcitrant in selling land? What is the real position? Not a single owner, at any rate but a very small percentage of owners—I have not heard of a case—have refused to sell untenanted land which was not part of their demesne if offered an honest price. But, as a matter of fact, the Estates Commissioners will not offer what I would describe as the market price of the day for the land.
I will cite a case within my own personal experience where a considerable piece of untenanted land was offered to the Estates Commissioners by a landlord for the purpose now under discussion. The landlord said to the Estates Commissioners—
"I approve of the policy of reinstating evicted tenants. The grazing tenants on this land are prepared to buy it at a certain price—at the price I want. But in my anxiety to
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help you I am ready to lot you have this land over their heads for the same price, because I consider it is public policy to assist you in this matter if I can."
The offer of the Estates Commissioners, given three or four months ago, was 25 per cent. below the price which the grazing tenants were ready to give, and 25 per cent., therefore, below the market price, or the honest price, to use the words of the Lord Chancellor. The Estates Commissioners cannot expect to buy grazing land, which is generally the best land in the district, unless they are prepared to give the price that the present grazing tenants are ready to pay. I am perfectly certain that there are other cases which could be produced from all over Ireland in which the Estates Commissioners have not been ready to give a fair price to the landlord, and, if that is so, it is not, I think, quite fair to state in a public document that the difficulty of obtaining untenanted land is complicated by the fact that so much depends upon the consent of the owner.
What is the position now? The number of claims have very greatly increased. At the time of the Mathew Commission in 1893 they had before them claims amounting in all to 3,639; the claims now which we understand have been made amount to 8,401. Since 1903 1,033 evicted tenants have been reinstated, and 2,000 more will have to be reinstated—a total of 3,033. Therefore it comes to this, that we are asked to believe that of the claims that were submitted to the Mathew Commission 83 per cent. were genuine. I believe nothing of the kind. If you have restored 1,033 tenants under this Act I do not believe another 2,000 genuine cases can be produced. That is why I have ventured to move the Motion standing in my name. The Government have all the information to hand. On page 10 of this Report appears a form—the form of application furnished to persons seeking reinstatement as evicted tenants or their representatives—which practically gives all the information for which I have asked, and such being the case I hope the Government will consent to grant the Return.
The suggestion has been offered that if the Government published the names of the claims that were considered genuine now, they would got into awful

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trouble with their Irish supporters in the other House. But this state of things cannot go on for ever, and it would be much better to know now what claims were genuine and what were not. The Irish landlords are anxious to help the Government in restoring every genuine case under the terms of the bargain made in 1903. I realise also that the Government are in a difficult position. The failure of their Irish Council Bill has led to an estrangement among the Government, their supporters, and the Nationalists, and it has lowered the credit of the Nationalists in Ireland. It seems to be thought, however, that the proposals of the Government as to evicted tenants may be the means of re-establishing the old friendly relations, and that if the Bill were passed something would be done to rehabilitate the credit of the Nationalist leaders in Ireland. If it is the object of the Government to lend themselves to the support of such results I can understand that they will refuse the Return asked for. But if they are really anxious honestly to go forward with the arrangement of 1903 they can scarcely object to grant my request. I can promise, on behalf of my fellow-landlords, that we will continue to do our best to expedite the policy in which the Government are interested in accordance with the arrangements made four years ago.
Moved, "That there be laid before the House a Return giving the names of the evicted tenants in Ireland whom His Majesty's Government intend to restore, the date of their eviction, a statement, as to whether they were or were not Plan of Campaign tenants, whether they were judicial tenants or not, the amount of rent in arrear when they wore evicted, the name of the landlord, and the townland, parish, barony, and county in which their holdings were situated." —(The Earl of Donoughmore.)
*LORD DENMAN: My Lords, in the effective speech to which we have just listened the noble Earl has stated some reasons, but not, after all, very many, why the Return for which he has asked should be laid on the Table. He dealt, in the course of his speech, with very many matters which are not strictly relevant to the Question he has placed on the Paper. He dealt with the Land Act
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of 1903, with what the Lord Chancellor had said, with what Mr. Bryce had done, with the Irish Council Bill, and with many other matters; and I would like to point out that a good many of the statements he made and the arguments he used would have been at least equally appropriate to the Second Reading stage of the Evicted Tenants Bill when that measure reaches your Lordships' House.
One thing the noble Earl said did particularly depress me. He expressed the opinion that the Evicted Tenants Bill would not reach this House until the end of September. I hope for all our sakes that that was a pessimistic and gloomy view to take, and that we shall have an opportunity of discussing that measure at any rate before the autumn is reached. I am not, of course, complaining because the noble Earl has chosen to go rather far a field from the Question on the Paper, as I know that is generally the custom in this House; but if the Committee on Procedure which is now sitting does in its Report recommend that discussion should be more strictly relevant to the Question on the Paper, and if your Lordships think fit to adopt that particular portion of the Report, I am sure no one will be more grateful than the individual, whoever he may be, who has the privilege—I suppose privilege is the right word—to be the unofficial representative of the Irish Office in your Lordships' House.
As regards the notice on the Paper, over 8,000 cases have been investigated by the Estates Commissioners, and it is estimated that some 2,000 of these will be reinstated under the Bill. The Government are unable to comply with the Motion of the noble Lord for the simple reason that it would enormously increase the difficult and the onerous task which the Estates Commissioners have already in hand. It is perfectly obvious that were we to publish the names of those 2,000 comparatively speaking fortunate people, naturally the Department would receive bitter complaints from the 5,000 or more persons whose applications had to be refused. They would compare their cases with that of those who were more fortunate than themselves. In other words, the thing would lead to endless commotion and disturbance. I am under the impression that there are plenty of people in Ireland already who have a

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grievance, and if we acceded to the Motion of the noble Earl we should immediately add an enormous number to that category. It is impossible for us to do business in this way. There is no desire for secrecy, but we have to adopt this course in order that we may expedite the policy of the Government of Ireland. Suppose we were to publish those names, then the 8,000 cases would have to be reopened. In the majority of cases I have no doubt they would have to be heard again. If only two hours were spent on each particular case, the labour entailed would amount to the work of years. Therefore, we say that the matter must be left to the discretion of the Estates Commissioners, who are skilled in this particular class of work.
The noble Earl expressed the belief that a large proportion of the 2,000 cases are not genuine; in other words, he implied that the Estates Commissioners are not an impartial tribunal to adjudicate upon this question. As noble Lords from Ireland know, the Estates Commissioners are three in number, and owing to the large duties which they were given under the Land Act of 1903, a considerable amount of attention has been directed to their individual opinions on political matters. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Wrench, is commonly known as a landlords' man, and Mr. Bailey is, I believe, known as a tenants' man. The third Commissioner, Mr. Finucane, was a distinguished Indian Civil Servant, and has a very high record of service, having served for over thirty years with great distinction in that part of the Empire. I cannot see what ground there is for impugning the impartiality of these three gentlemen.
THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: I do not think I said anything which could be taken as impugning their impartiality. What I said was that I did not think there were 2,000 genuine cases remaining. It has been the common opinion in Ireland for years that the number of cases was very much less than 3,033.
*LORD DENMAN: I am glad to hear that disclaimer, but when the noble Earl said that a large number of these cases were not genuine, it did appear that he was making an attack upon
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the Commissioners. I am glad to hear that that is not so. I would remind the House that these gentlemen were appointed by the late Government to do almost identically similar work to that which they are now performing, and which they are performing in relation to the question of evicted tenants. As the noble Earl has mentioned the special Report which they have lately made, I would point out that they have all three signed the Report, and, so far as I know, they have been in complete agreement on the matter.
Then the noble Earl raised the general question of the policy of His Majesty's Government. I do not intend to go into that; it would perhaps, be hardly appropriate for me to do so in the subordinate position which I hold in relation to this matter. But I should like to call the attention of the House to some remarks which were made by a very distinguished authority on the subject when the Land Act of 1903 was before Parliament. He put it very concisely. He said—
"In dealing with the category of those who once had an occupying tendency in land and lost it, they must not stop to inquire for what reason, or under what circumstances, they lost their tenancies. They could not pick out here and there those who were misguided, others who had been fraudulent, and others who had been misled. If they did they were raking up the past. They must look beyond this, that it was desirable, if they could, to give these men another chance."
THE EARL OF MAYO: Who said that?
*LORD DENMANMr. Wyndham in the House of Commons when the Act of 1903 was before Parliament. That is exactly the policy of the Government to-day—to give these men another chance. It very often happens in the stress of modern life that men do not get another chance; but if hardship, suffering, and privation do give them a claim upon the sympathy of those whose lot in life has fallen in pleasanter places, then I believe there are no class of men to whom the average Englishman would more readily hold out a helping hand than the evicted tenants of Ireland.
*LORD ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just sat down invited your Lordships, in the closing

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words of his speech, to express sympathy with the evicted tenants in Ireland. I am not aware that my noble friend who moved this Motion said anything calculated to show a lack of sympathy with these tenants or of a desire that relief should be given to those who fairly came within that category. While sympathising with the evicted tenants and desiring to see a fair measure of relief given there should be no mistake as to the issues involved in this matter. It is said that we must trust to the discretion of the Estates Commissioners. We fully recognise, of course, that they are honourable men, and we are prepared to trust choir discretion in a reasonable way. But now it is proposed to make the discretion of the Commissioners boundless, in a way never contemplated when the Act of 1903 was passed. The Return already furnished is interesting and, so far as it goes, valuable; but it is not complete, and it needs supplementing. And with reference to the objection that the Return asked for would entail work, surely it is reasonable that a public Department should employ some of their public time in meeting a public demand, which is for legitimate information. There may be something in the objection to giving all the names, but there are other particulars for which we have a right to press with considerable insistence.
It is mentioned incidentally that there were seventeen Plan of Campaign estates, and that in fifteen of these the landlords have voluntarily settled. Does not that let in a flood of light as to the way in which the landlords have met the poor tenants who were duped into the action which led to their eviction? Surely it is creditable to the landlords to the last degree, and it indicates, as has been pointed out, that the landlords wore willing to meet the demand, subject only to the condition that they obtained an honest price. One of the two campaign estates in connection with which there has been no settlement is the Lewis estate, county Galway, and the reason for the efforts of the Commissioners to effect a settlement proving fruitless in this case was that the representatives of the landlord said they could not afford to sell unless they were given the price which they asked. The matter was ended by the Estates Com-
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missioners saying that they would not give that price. Surely that is a point which should be dealt with at greater length in the Report.
There has been an enormous increase year by year in the class of evicted tenants. It seems to have become a matter of business to be an evicted tenant. There are thousands of tenants in Ireland with farms of five, ten, or fifteen acres poorly equipped, and if it is declared that evicted tenants are to be given substantial farms, organised and well equipped, and have house and offices built for them, it is a great temptation to these people to become evicted tenants. Therefore it is desirable to know how the Commissioners have exercised their discretion in the past in reference to tenants who have been evicted, not only in the Plan of Campaign, but in the ordinary course of law for the non-payment of rent.
The reasons that have been given for delay are curious. In the paragraph in the Report which my noble friend Lord Donoughmore referred to the delay was attributed to the fact that the consent of the owner and proof of title to the purchase money had to be obtained; but in the earlier portion of the same paragraph it is pointed out that the evicted tenants were unwilling to take land at a distance from their former holdings. Surely it is rendered oven more desirable to become an evicted tenant if the tenant is to be not only restored to a bigger farm than before and to have it equipped, but to be given the choice of where he should be placed. The Report indicates that over 2,000 claims have been rejected, and the grounds on which they have been rejected suggest to me that many people did not know where to stop in making their applications. It seemed to be generally thought that a great many elastic claims would be considered, and that one man stood as good a chance as another. I do not think that the notice which claimants were required to fill up was sufficiently precise, and I think I should have required the applicants to sign a more detailed form.
We are also entitled to know the dates of eviction; that is a date of first-class importance which it could do no harm to anyone to publish. Surely in the case of a man evicted twenty-five years before

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the Act of 1903 came into force, who had been all over the world and done nothing in particular ever since, it would not be reasonable to consider putting him back on the farm and displacing the occupying tenant who had probably been working, and toiling, and tilling for the past twenty years. I do not discuss that, but it is obviously desirable to have these dates for our guidance in forming a judgment. Another point on which we want information is as to what arrears—this is not confined to Plan of Campaign tenants— were due by the evicted tenant when he left the holding. Then I think it would be important to know what is the present position of the applicant, what he has been doing from the time he was evicted, whether he has been thrifty or thriftless, what he is doing now, his age, and other circumstances about him; and it would also be desirable to know whether each holding on which evicted tenants have been placed was at the time of the restoration in the possession of another tenant. The date should also be indicated when the new tenants came into possession.
This is a large question, and I submit that it does not display a want of sympathy with the evicted tenants to ask how you are going to work the Code intended for their benefit. We cannot say, except by the merest speculation, how the Estates Commissioners have exercised their great functions without the information, or a good deal of the information, for which I ask. I take things as I find them. I take the circumstances of the case now before the country, and I say that we are entitled to further information to enable us to judge how the Estates Commissioners have exercised the vast discretion entrusted to them, particularly at a time when it is suggested that further discretion of a sweeping character, and without appeal, should be given to them. It is impossible not to disappoint people. I have no doubt that the 2,000 or 2,500 applicants whose claims do not stand investigation and who have to be sent empty away will be full of sorrow and grief, but in this world you cannot please everybody. The art of saying "no" is one of the things a Minister must learn, and the sooner "no" is said in this case the better, because it will prevent these men continuing to entertain hopes which are only
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doomed to disappointment. I have no desire to cause embarrassment to the Government, but I hope the Government will indicate willingness to furnish in some form the information upon which those interested can base their judgment.
THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN: My Lords, into the general question, however interesting and fascinating, I do not propose to enter. In fact, I do not see how anyone can very well do so without transgressing the rule against commenting on a Bill which is before the other House. But I wish to guard against the possible misapprehension that might arise as to my own views upon one point.
My noble friend Lord Donoughmore quoted a recommendation of the Land Conference to the effect that any measure for the settlement of the land question should be accompanied by a settlement of the evicted tenant question on an equitable basis; and my noble friend argued from that that the reinstatement of evicted tenants should proceed pari passu. with the sale of the estates. With that in a general way I do not cavil; but I do not wish it for a moment to be imagined that I assume that the evicted tenants, or a certain number of them, who ought to be restored to their holdings or given other holdings, are not to be so restored until the last estate in Ireland has been sold. That would be quite apart from my idea. On the contrary, I think this question of evicted tenants is an urgent phase of the agrarian question in Ireland, and I do not wish it to be assumed that in my opinion the restoration of evicted tenants should be delayed until the whole transfer of land in Ireland is concluded. Nor am I sure that I am quite in agreement with my noble friend as to one part of the bargain of the Land Conference being that restorations should only occur on estates as they were sold. That is not quite my impression. I agree with him, however, that the reinstatement of an evicted tenant should be solely for the purpose of his purchasing, but I do not go so far as my noble friend in holding the opinion that he should only be restored on the sale of the estate.
As to the Motion on the Paper, I must admit that I sympathise a good deal with the noble Lord who

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represents the Irish Office, for I honestly do not think that any one of your Lordships could have gathered from this Motion that my noble friend was going to call attention to the special Report of the Estates Commissioners. With regard to the Motion itself, I am not very much surprised at the Government's demurring to give these Returns. I should like to ask my noble friend this: Supposing he gets them, what will he do with them? My noble and learned friend who has just sat down mentioned other points on which he thought information was desirable, but the most important information is that asked for in the Motion itself. But what are your Lordships to do when you get the names and addresses of the 2,000 tenants whom His Majesty's Government propose to restore, and the various other particulars con-corning them? Are we going to sit in judgment on the list and comment upon the decisions of the Estates Commissioners and say whether those tenants should be reinstated or not? If that is to be the object surely we ought to know the particulars of all the claimants, otherwise how is it possible to judge properly?
What I think my noble and learned friend really requires is to know what data the Estates Commissioners took into consideration in settling whether a tenant should be restored or not, and I am bound to say I think further information on that point might be very useful to the House. As to the publication of the names and addresses and the other particulars of these 2,000 people, I confess that I think it would lead to a great deal of confusion and heartburning in Ireland, and I cannot see what practical purpose would be achieved by the publication of that Return. Therefore, I support His Majesty's Government in not agreeing to the Motion of my noble friend.
*THE EARL OF MAYO: Notwithstanding what the noble Earl who has just sat down, and who was chairman of the Land Conference, has said, I shall, as one of the members of that Conference, adhere to the statement of my noble friend Lord Donoughmore as to one part of the bargain being that any prospect for the solution of the Irish land question should be accompanied by a settlement of the evicted tenants question on equitable principles; and when the
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Evicted Tenants Bill reaches this House I hope care will be taken that it is dealt with on an equitable basis, and on the terms referred to the other day by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. We have asked for a Return of the 2,000 evicted tenants, and the noble Lord who represents the Irish Office said that if this Return wore granted they would have to go into all the claims of all the others and so again into the whole question. I should like to ask, have the Government settled who these 2,000 tenants are, or have they not? The murder will out some day. The Government seem to be in a funk lost the other 6,000 tenants fall upon thorn and say, "Pat Murphy is being restored; why should not another Pat be restored as well?" During the debate in 1903, Mr. John Dillon said the evicted tenants in Ireland were only about 400, and Mr. Redmond stated that £100,000 would settle the whole thing. That was very different from this scheme. This scheme will cost a million—
*THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (The Earl of CREWE): May I ask whether the noble Lord is not going beyond this Motion and discussing the Evicted Tenants Bill?
*THE EARL OF MAYO: The Government propose to reinstate 2,000 tenants, and I was dealing with that matter.
*THE EARL OF CREWE: The noble Earl is only entitled to deal with the question raised by the noble Lord on the Front Bench.
*THE EARL OF MAYO: I will, then, deal with another matter. The noble Lord who replied on behalf of the Government labelled one Commissioner a landlords' man and another a tenants' man, and said that the third was an official from India. I have had dealings with these Estates Commissioners and can testify to the fact that they have acted all through those dealings in a straightforward manner. I think it is curious that the labelling of these Commissioners should come from the other side of the House. We have every confidence in the Commissioners, The reason the evicted tenants have had to be dealt with on this enormous scale is that the Government, through the Lord-Lieutenant, have altered the rules

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made in dealing with this question, and the efforts of the Commissioners have been diverted from land purchase to dealing with these evicted tenants. We have asked for this Return because we have a strong suspicion that a great many of these cases have been manufactured, and manufactured in consequence of the orders given by the Lord-Lieutenant. Lord Denman quoted from a speech by Mr. Wyndham in the House of Commons in 1903, in which he spoke of giving the evicted tenants another chance. I contend that it was giving them another chance under the bargain of 1903. But that is quite a different thing from dealing with evicted tenants in the present manner. Therefore I do not think the noble Lord had any right to quote the words of Mr. Wyndham in connection with the new state of things which has come about in consequence of the alteration of the rules of the Estates Commissioners.
*THE EARL OF CREWE: My Lords, I hope the noble Earl who has just sat down did not in any way resent my interrupting him, but, as a matter of fact, this debate has wandered over a somewhat large field, and even the noble Earl who initiated it, in spite of the self-denying ordinance with which he began, travelled at some length in his speech—his very interesting speech—over the greater part of this whole question of evicted tenants.
I should like to say one word about what has been called the bargain made between the landed interest in Ireland and those who spoke for the tenants before the Land Act of 1903. I was very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Dunraven, for correcting what I can only venture to call, so far as one point was concerned, a travesty of that bargain as it has been understood by everybody, as I believe, from that day to this. I have never heard anyone before intimate, as I understood the Earl of Donoughmore to intimate, that this particular question of the evicted tenants was no more urgent than the general question of land purchase in Ireland, and that it might easily be possible that fourteen or fifteen years might pass before some of these evicted tenants were restored to their holdings. I cannot read this into anything that was said by the Government of
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the day, and I should be very much surprised if the noble Earl, or anybody else, could show me any passage in the speeches of the Irish Members of Parliament which showed that they put this colour on the statements which were made by Mr. Wyndham at that time. I think it is really beyond dispute that, although the whole question of land purchase was an urgent one in the sense that it was desirable to deal with it in as few years as possible, this question of the evicted tenants was considered infinitely more urgent, and that it certainly was the general expectation that it would be dealt with in a fewer number of years than the land question as a whole.
With regard to the large and ever-increasing number of people who claim to be evicted tenants, I think it is important to draw a distinction between an evicted tenant and a tenant who has been evicted. Evicted tenant has become—I am sorry it should be so—almost a technical term; and what I think is clearly understood by evicted tenants when they are spoken of as a class in Ireland are those who have lost their holdings owing to the agrarian disputes which have existed in that country, and that, therefore, when there was a desire that there should be a general eirenicon at the time of the Land Bill—as Mr. Wyndham said, that bygones should be bygones—these men were to be treated on precisely the same terms as those who were tenants of farms. But no one ever imagined that, when evicted tenants were thus spoken of, every man who had lost his farm, whether it was because he was an impossible tenant, or a bad farmer, or a generally undesirable person, should necessarily be reinstated. You have only to study the debates on this subject to see that, when the Irish Members of Parliament spoke of evicted tenants, it was to those who had suffered in the land war that they confined their remarks.
I am very glad to note that noble Lords opposite speak of the Commissioners in high terms. I have the advantage of knowing much of these three gentlemen, and I can entirely confirm everything that has been said in praise of their high character, of their ability, and of the devotion which they give to their work. The noble Lord opposite has said that this demand for a

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Return of the tenants whom His Majesty's Government intend to restore did not show any mistrust of the Commissioners. I join with Lord Dunraven in asking what is the object of having this Return, unless you mistrust the Commissioners? Our contention is that it is perfectly safe to leave to them the selection as between those who are genuine evicted tenants in the sense intended by the Act of 1903, and those who are not. If noble Lords ask for a Return of names, it can only be to look into the individual cases and, in some way, to revise the discretion exercised by the Commissioners. That shows you have not confidence in the Commissioners, and that you desire to constitute yourselves or somebody else into a Court of Appeal from the Commissioners.
It seems to me that the real question is, What do you mean by a genuine evicted tenant? I use the words in the sense I have just indicated, as that of a man who had been evicted owing to agrarian conditions in Ireland. But if by "genuine" you mean to go behind those conditions and to ask, in individual cases, whether a man is a generally deserving person, whether through all the changes and chances of life he has behaved exactly as he ought to have behaved, then you are in conflict with the declaration of Mr. Wyndham when he particularly said that you ought not to go into those matters, and that, so far as those matters were concerned, he would desire to allow bygones to be bygones. It seems to me impossible t o supply a sort of biography—a land of "Who's who?" —of all those evicted tenants, and I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Dunraven that, even if this list were produced at great trouble and expense, your Lordships would really not know what to do with it.
The noble and learned Lord opposite asked for some account of the principles on which the Commissioners had acted in the past. As to that, my right hon. friend the Chief Secretary said in the House of Commons that, so far as regards the evicted tenants or their representatives who have already been reinstated or provided with new homos, there was no objection to giving a Return of the particulars asked for. I stand, of course,
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by the declaration of my right hon. friend as far as the past is concerned, but, as regards the future, I, for the reasons which my noble friend has stated so clearly, am not able to give the Return.
The noble Earl Lord Donoughmore spoke of the dispossession of those who have taken evicted farms. It seems to me that the hon. Gentlemen who sit for Ireland spoke very fairly indeed on that subject in the course of the debates. I think both Mr. Redmond and Mr. O'Brien dealt with it, and that they held the view, which His Majesty's Government also hold, that where it is shown that a man is a bona fide farmer, working his farm to advantage and desiring to retain it, he certainly ought not to be dispossessed. But there were a certain number of cases where men were put into farms who were not bona fide farmers, to whom it was of no advantage to remain, and those cases stand on a different footing. I hope noble Lords opposite will be content with the interesting discussion that has taken place and will not press us for Papers beyond the extent to which my right hon. friend has indicated his willingness to go.
*THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I rise with more than my usual feeling of trepidation because I feel sure that before I have proceeded very far with my remarks I shall be called to order by the Lord President, who so effectually checked the eloquence of my noble friend behind me. Lord Mayo is not, as a rule, very easily repressed, and I was somewhat surprised at the readiness with which, at a moment when he was making observations which seemed to me perfectly relevant to the Motion before the House, he was interrupted by the noble Earl.
I am not going to enter on a discussion of the famous so-called bargain of 1903. I would only say this of it, that there were two elements in it, the presence of which will not be contested. It was, in the first place, to be on a voluntary basis, and, in the next place, on what is spoken of as an equitable basis. A passage from a speech delivered by Mr. Wyndham has been quoted by the other side; but surely I may venture to quote, from a passage which really governs the whole of the policy of which

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Mr. Wyndham was then the exponent, these words—
"He had laid down three principles for dealing with this question. The first was that there should be no compulsion, the second, that they must give equal treatment to all classes of persons with whom the Act would deal, and the third, that there must be no special mention of evicted tenants."
That is a clear and succinct description of Mr. Wyndham's policy. At any rate, whether the scope of this supposed bargain was wider or narrower than we imagined, no one ever supposed that it was to lead to the kind of proposals which have now been placed before Parliament by His Majesty's Government.
I think my noble Friend is fully entitled to bring up this question. He does not desire at this moment to call in question the Government Bill, but he does rightly desire to call attention to the data on which this proposal or any other proposals for dealing with the. evicted tenants must be based. What is the position of this House? Is it not extremely important that the ground should be cleared for us by the production of some evidence at any rate as to the lines on which the Government intend to proceed? We shall have this Bill, a Bill of the most controversial description, embodying principles which no one has yet accepted(and least of all His Majesty's Government), in the last days, or even in the last hours, of the session; and it will be discussed under great pressure of time. It will certainly be discussed, too, under pressure, I will not say of threats, but I will say of suggestions that it is of urgent importance for the sake of peace and good order in Ireland that the Bill should be passed into law without further delay. Is it not natural that we should desire now to elicit information as to the very foundations on which the Government measure is supposed to rest?
With regard to our attitude on this side of the House, I may say that we are entirely ready to approach this question in no narrow or grudging spirit. We admit that, if there is to be a great settlement of the Irish land question on lines of purchase, that settlement may well include a measure for the reinstatement, under careful restrictions, of a number of those who have
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lost their farms owing to agrarian disputes during the last few years. But we certainly assume that, if a settlement of this kind is to take place in regard to the evicted tenants, it should be upon the distinct assumption that the other part of the bargain of 1903, that part which dealt with the sale and purchase of land, should be carried out loyally and in the spirit which characterised the negotiations which then took place. I have, however, vet to learn that any one on this side of the House, or on that, is in favour of an indiscriminate restoration of the whole of the evicted tenants who have lost their farms during the last twenty-five years. His Majesty's Government are evidently themselves not in favour of such a restoration, for they are selecting somewhere about 2,000 cases out of a grand total which is variously estimated at 6,000 or 8,000.
Are we too curious when we ask his Majesty's Government to give us some idea of the criterion which has been applied? Where have they drawn the frontier line between those who are to be admitted to these immense and unusual advantages and those to whom they are to be denied? Whom have they consulted? We know that agents of the Land Commission have been travelling about the country collecting information. Have they consulted any representatives of the owners of the estates from which these people were evicted? The noble Lord spoke of the confidence which was due to the Estates Commissioners; but he surely does not ask us to believe that every one of these 8,000 cases was personally examined into by the three Commissioners themselves. It is obvious that they depended to a great extent on local information.
I assume, as the noble Earl allows me to assume, that it is not intended that every broken down farmer who has lost his farm during the last twenty-five years is to be put back. If that were contemplated, it would involve as a consequence that the same privilege should be extended to unfortunate farmers in other parts of the United Kingdom as well as in Ireland, and no one proposes that. Nor, again, is the Government's proposal confined to those who are only spoken of as "Plan of Campaign tenants." We know that they

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have been virtually provided for already. Out of a total of 1,600, there are only about 160 unprovided for, and they belong to two estates only.
There must be a criterion of some kind which has been applied by the Estates Commissioners, and we want to get at what that test was. My noble friend proposes that the names of the selected tenants should be published. His Majesty's Government see a difficulty in that course. I can quite understand one difficulty which, no doubt, weighs very considerably with them, and that is the feeling of exasperation which will be produced when 4,000 find themselves left out, and only 2,000 find themselves left in. That will be a rude awakening which may be deferred, but which has to come; and I do not think the Government of Ireland will have a very happy quarter of an hour when two-thirds of the flock become aware that they are on the side of the goats and not on the side of the sheep. If we cannot have the names—and I admit that in some respects the information provided by the mere production of the names would not be of a very convincing or satisfactory character—can His Majesty's Government not give us the information which my noble friend seeks in some other shape such as that suggested by my noble and learned friend Lord Ashbourne? It cannot be difficult. We have been told during the last three days by a member of the Government that they now know the exact number of those who have a just claim to reinstatement. Let us be told how that exact number has been arrived at.
I hope noble Lords opposite will not think that the feeling of suspicion—for I can use no other word—with which we regard these proposals is altogether unreasonable. Look at the portentous, the immense growth which this evicted tenants problem has undergone within the last year or two. In 1894 Mr. John Morley announced that a sum of £100,000—afterwards raised to £250,000—would settle the whole question. In 1899 Mr. Michael Davitt estimated the whole number of tenants to be dealt with at a 1,000. In 1903 Mr. John Dillon said that, in his opinion, a sum of £200,000 would be sufficient to settle the question and to settle it in a generous way. What has happened since? How do His Majesty's Government account for the extraordinary
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increase in the number of those who are now applying for and of those who are now going to obtain this great privilege of reinstatement? We are alarmed at the manner in which the lesson which has been taught them has been learnt by the tenant farmers of Ireland. We are not less alarmed because we fear that the great sum which will be required to carry out this measure—a sum estimated at £2,000,000, to which must be added the expense (which cannot fail to be very great) of equipping the holdings which these tenants are to occupy and the expense of supplying them with capital with which to begin their enterprise—is likely to be diverted from funds which would be. more properly employed in carrying out the great operation of land purchase in Ireland. We doubt very much whether you will get these two or three millions as an extra allowance from the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and if you do not, so surely will that sum be diverted from funds whose legitimate destination is the promotion of land purchase. That is why we have raised this question. Our feeling is that, unless you restrict this privilege carefully, and exclude from this boon all those tenants whose cases are not really deserving, you will put an immense premium upon the repudiation of contracts in Ireland, and that you will start all over the country a new wave of insecurity, owing to the compulsory shuffling of tenancies to which you will be obliged to resort if you are going to make room for anything like the contemplated proportion of these numerous applicants.
The seriousness of this matter cannot be overrated. And remember, the victims of this attempt will be, on the one hand, the sitting tenants, whom, unless I misunderstand the proposal, you are going to remove from their farms in order to make room for other and less deserving people whom you are to bring from a distance—on the one hand the sitting tenants, men who have fulfilled their obligations honourably and against whom not a word is to be said; and, on the other hand, landlords who, perhaps, have never had any difficulty on their estates, with whom everything has gone quietly and happily, and who yet may be called upon to give up land which is as much theirs as the clothes upon their backs, and to disposses tenants who have as much right to

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remain where they are as any tenants in any part of the United Kingdom. And all this is in order to facilitate this dangerous enterprise. I am afraid that unless it is carried out under the most careful restriction you will by this operation saddle the Land Commissioners —who will in future become the landlords of the greater part of Ireland—with a class of tenants who will owe their position, not to the fact that they are the survival of the fittest, but to the fact that they have successfully repudiated their obligations and extorted by participation in a dangerous agitation a privilege which honest and law-abiding farmers will never be allowed to obtain.
*THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE: My Lords, after the speeches of my noble friends behind me I do not intend to press my Motion to a division; but I certainly hope we shall see the Return which has already been promised in another place. I shall, of course, consult with my noble friends as to whether we cannot move for a Return containing the data which have been asked for.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

LIMITED PARTNERSHIPS BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order.)
[The Earl of ONSLOW in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
Clause 4: —
THE EARL OF GRANARDsaid the object of the Amendment standing in his name to this Clause was to bring the Bill on all fours with the Companies Act, in which it was enacted that a partnership carrying on the business of banking could not consist of more than ten persons, and in the case of general concerns of not more than twenty persons.
Amendment moved—
"In page 1, line 22, after the word ' partnership,' to insert the words' shall not consist, in the case of a partnership carrying on the business of banking, of more than ten persons, and, in the case of any other partnership, of more than twenty persons.'" — (The Earl of Granard.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Drafting Amendment agreed to.
LORD AVEBURYmoved to amend sub-section (2)—
"A limited partnership must contain one or more persons called general partners, who shall be liable for all debts and obligations incurred in the usual course of the partnership business by or on behalf of the firm, etc.,"
by omitting the words "incurred in the usual course of the partnership business by or on behalf." It was thought that the words as they stood might sometimes raise unnecessary and difficult questions.
Amendment moved—
"In page 1, lines 24 and 25, to leave out the words' incurred in the usual course of the partnership business by or on behalf.'"—(Lord Avebury.)
THE EARL OF GRANARD:accepted the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD AVEBURYmoved to amend the latter half of the same sub-section, which provided that the one or more persons to be called limited partners—
"shall at the time of entering into such partnership contribute, or undertake to contribute, thereto a sum or sums as capital or property valued at a stated amount, and shall not be liable for the debts or obligations of the firm beyond the amount so contributed or to be contributed,"
by omitting the words "or undertake to contribute." He said that these words were not to be found in any of the foreign codes, and they were objected to by many good judges.
Amendment moved—
"In page 2, line 1, to leave out the words 'or undertake to contribute.'"— (Lord Avebury.)
THE EARL OF GRANARDsaid the Board of Trade did not oppose the Amendment if the noble Lord desired to press it. He pointed out, however, that uncalled liability had been a source of strength in this country in banking and limited liability concerns.
LORD AVEBURYagreed, but said it would facilitate the passing of the Bill if the words were omitted.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE EARL OF GRANARDhad an Amendment to Sub-section (3), which ran—
"(3) A limited partner shall not during the continuance of the partnership draw out or

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receive back any part of his contribution, and if he does so draw out or receive back any such part shall be liable for the debts and obligations of the firm as if he had agreed to contribute the amount so drawn out or received back, in addition to the sum (if any) which he is liable to contribute independently of this provision."
He moved to insert, after the word "partnership," the words "either directly or indirectly," the object being to prevent a limited partner receiving back by way of loan any of the money he had invested in a limited partnership.
Amendment moved—
"In page 2, line 6, after the word 'partnership,' to insert the words 'either directly or indirectly.'"—(The Earl of Granard.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE EARL OF GRANARDmoved the insertion of a now sub-section to enable a body corporate to become a limited partner.
Amendment moved—
"In page 2, line 13, after the word 'name,' to insert as a new sub-section:'(5) A body corporate may be a limited partner.'"—(The Earl of Granard.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6: —
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNsaid the object of his Amendment to Clause 6 was to give to a limited partner power to have an audit of the accounts, which was obviously a matter of very great interest and importance to him.
Amendment moved—
"In page 2, line 21, after the word 'thereon,' to insert the words' and he may also require that the said books shall be audited by a person who publicly carries on business as an accountant.'"—(The Earl of Camperdown.)
THE EARL OF GRANARDsaid the Board of Trade were very much opposed to the insertion of these words, as a limited partner was already fully safeguarded. He could inspect the books of the company with an agent, and there was nothing to prevent the agent being an accountant. Moreover, a limited partner
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could make any arrangement he liked before investing his money. If the Amendment were accepted, the result would be that the expense of the audit would fall on the partnership.
LORD JOICEYsupported the Amendment. He thought it desirable that the limited partner should have the power of insisting that the books should be audited by a public accountant. The cost of the audit was not a serious matter, and he hoped the Board of Trade would withdraw their opposition.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Loreburn)said that already a limited partner could, by himself or his agent, from time to time inspect the books of the firm. If he liked to employ a public accountant for the purpose the clause as it stood enabled him to do so. Anyone who was at liberty by his agent to examine the books could get an audit made, and the only question was whether he should pay for it himself or be able to impose it on the partnership. He thought the limited partner should pay for it himself.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
THE EARL OF GRANARDmoved to delete Clause 6, and to insert a new clause which had been suggested by Lord Lindley.
Amendment moved—
"To leave out Clause 6, and to insert the following new clause: —6. — (1) A limited partner shall not take part in the management of the partnership business, and shall not have power to bind the firm; provided that a limited partner may by himself or his agent at any time inspect the books of the firm and examine into the state and prospects of the partnership business, and may advise with the partners thereon. If a limited partner takes part in the management of the partnership business he shall be liable for all debts and obligations of the firm incurred while he so takes part in the management as though he were a general partner. (2) A limited partner shall not be entitled to dissolve the partnership by notice. (3) A limited partnership shall not be dissolved by the death or bankruptcy of a limited partner, and the lunacy of a limited partner shall not be a ground for dissolution of the partnership by the Court unless the lunatic's share cannot be otherwise ascertained and realised. (4) In the event of the dissolution of a limited partnership its affairs shall be wound up by the general partners unless the Court otherwise orders. (5) Subject to any agreement expressed or implied

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between the partners— (a) Any difference arising as to ordinary matters connected with the partnership business may be decided by a majority of the general partners, (b) A limited partner may, with the consent of the general partners, assign his share in the partnership, and upon such an assignment the assignee shall become a limited partner with all the rights of the assignor, (c) The other partners shall not be entitled to dissolve the partnership by reason of any limited partner suffering his share to be charged for his separate debt, (d) A person may be introduced as a partner without the consent of the existing limited partners. (e)Applications to the Court to wind up a limited partnership shall be by petition under the Companies Acts, 1862 to 1900."—(The Earl of Granard.)
LORD AVEBURYexpressed his indebtedness to Lord Lindley. The new clause was an improvement.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8: —
Drafting and verbal Amendments agreed to.
Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 9: —
Drafting Amendments agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 10: —
Drafting Amendments agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11: —
Verbal Amendment agreed to.
Clause 11 as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Standing Committee negatived. The Report of Amendments to be received on Tuesday next; and Bill to be printed as amended. (No. 105.)

ALL SAINTS' SCHOOL, HALIFAX.
*LORD BARNARD: My Lords, I rise to call attention to the action of the
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Board of Education with regard to All Saints' School, Salterhebble, Halifax; and to move for Papers. In doing so it is necessary that I should refer to the facts relating to the case. For some sixty years past a national school has existed at this place. Naturally in the course of that time the building had become old and out of date, and in the month of February, 1904, the managers recognised this and instructed their architect to prepare plans for a new building and at the same time to ascertain whether the municipal authorities wanted any of the site for road widening; and in April of that year they informed the Board of their decision. On 28th May in the same year—that is, three months after their decision—they received from the Board of Education a copy of the inspector's report on the premises, which naturally was not very flattering. The Board intimated that the grant to the school could not be continued after 31st March, 1906—
"Unless by that date satisfactory progress has been made towards providing suitable accommodation to replace it."
Not that the new building should have been erected, but that satisfactory progress should have been made towards providing fresh accommodation.
Flans were shortly afterwards sent in to the corporation. Various delays occurred, for which the managers disclaim all responsibility; and in the course of the negotiations the corporation changed its attitude two or three times. No less than three sets of plans had to be prepared and approved, the corporation admitting that they were to a great extent wrong in the matter by paying the managers £30 for one set of plans. At last, in November, 1905 the plans were approved by the corporation. They were forwarded to the Board of Education and had to be sent back again for some slight alteration; but eventually, on 26th March, 1906, the Board of Education returned them. They were, I believe, not actually received by the local education authority till a little later, but that authority finally approved them on 2nd May. You will mark that the Board of Education in March, and the local education authority in May, finally approved the plans, and to all intents and purposes the matter was absolutely settled.

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The House will remember that in the interval the Education Bill had been introduced, and it could hardly be expected that the managers would proceed, with that Bill hanging over their heads, to spend a considerable sum of money on a new school the fate of which they could not at that time foresee, and consequently they suspended their operations. This view of the matter was fully understood both by the Board of Education and the local authority, for during the interval neither of those bodies moved a step in the matter. In the month of December, 1906, as your Lordships well know, the Education Bill was withdrawn by the Government. In the following month the proceedings began again. The local education authority wrote to ask the Board of Education—I suppose their tempers had not been rendered extra pleasant by the fate of the Bill—for authority to discontinue the maintenance of this school.
At that date, however, the Board of Education took a very fair and proper view of the position. They wrote first of all to the managers and said that the local education authority had approached them and had pointed out that nothing had been done. The Board asked the managers what they were doing. Thereupon the managers explained to the Board of Education the reasons why they had suspended operations, and stated that they had actually arranged to proceed at once with the erection of the school, which, as a matter of fact, they did the same week. This answer—and this is the most important point in the whole of the proceedings—was evidently satisfactory to the Board of Education, for the Board wrote to the local education authority forwarding a copy of the managers' letter and stating—
"This Board of Education ion hope that this assurance of the managers will enable the authority to reconsider their decision to discontinue the maintenance of the school."
That was an absolutely fair letter, but it did not at all meet the wishes of the local education authority, who, from all that I have been able to ascertain, were thirsting for the blood of this wretched little Church school.
What happened next no man knows. And that is my reason for trying to obtain further information from the Government. At any rate, the local education
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authority immediately after that pressed the Board and urged that no buildings had actually been begun. They also said that another year must elapse, and, although the architect and the managers had explained very fully that they could have half the school ready and in occupation by the end of the summer, they brought all the pressure they possibly could to bear on the Board of Education. The next step which the Board of Education took was to give two days notice that they would send down an inspector. That inspector visited the school, but the principal manager, who had had to do with the business, had other matters to attend to and could not be present. In due course the inspector sent in his report to the Board of Education, and the result was that on 1st May last, in spite of their previous letter, they wrote that in consideration of all the facts they were not prepared to oppose the local education authority in their desire to close the school.
It is obvious that some pressure was brought to bear on the Board of Education to induce them to change their mind. I would remind your Lordships of the parallel case referred to the other day by my noble friend Lord Dartmouth. The present position is this. The local people—as the local Press would show—are naturally very sore about this. Their school, as a matter of fact, is closed, and they consider that they have been very badly treated. They think that either some secret and unfair influence has been brought to bear on the Board of Education in London, or that the Board must have some information which has induced them to change their mind which has not been communicated to the public.
There are two reasons which may be asserted for the action of the Board. One is the delay, but I think I have explained sufficiently the cause of the delay and shown that the Board of Education were satisfied that the delay was not an insuperable objection so late as February last. The other reason may be the assertion of the local education authority that the buildings were unhealthy and unsafe. The managers admit that the buildings were not up to modern requirements, but they have the authority of their own architect, who has known the buildings for years, for stating that they are

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neither unhealthy nor unsafe. Sufficient repairs have been done to make them adequate for all temporary purposes, and for the few months which would elapse before the new building would be ready for occupation. The parents of nearly all the children in the school have memorialised the Board of Education to preserve the school to them. They say they have no opportunity of getting such Church of England religious instruction as they desire within reasonable distance if the school is closed. Here the people wish to have certain religious instruction, and are told by a Government Department that they cannot have it. I think in this matter the will of the people, of which we have heard so much lately, should be supreme. We were told yesterday in the discussion on the Army Bill, when the question of giving military drill to children under sixteen years of age was being considered, that the opinion of certain Members of the House of Commons must be regarded because it expressed the wishes of the parents themselves. Well, why should not the wishes of the parents be considered when they express a determined wish to have Church of England instruction?
Another point I should like to press very urgently on the attention of the House is that this case absolutely differs from the typical case which politicians frequently declaim, in which it is said that the clergy and the Bishops are at the back of it all. From the beginning to the end of this matter the Bishop has never been mentioned, and by a curious coincidence the vicarage became vacant during the course of the proceedings. The late vicar was not mentioned at all, and beyond the fact that the new vicar presided at a recent meeting no clergyman has taken any part in these proceedings at all. I would like also to draw your Lordships' attention to the extreme energy of some of the managers and others interested. This is not a "one man show." A working man took the trouble to come up to London from Halifax to see the Minister for Education in order to try and induce him to change his views. This is a case in which working men and women have determined to do their utmost to try and retain such religious teaching for their children as they desire, and which, so far
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as I can ascertain, they are being entirely denied.
The information which, I venture to submit, the Board of Education ought to place before the public in this matter is such official documents as contain the evidence which induced them to change the views they so clearly expressed in February to the views they expressed in their later letter of May, in which they declined to press the local education authority to continue the maintenance of this school. The principal evidence in the matter would be the instructions given to the inspector and the report of the inspector. I know that it is not always convenient to give the whole of the report of an inspector, but in a question of such vital importance as this so much of the report could be given as would justify the action of the Board of Education. The Board of Education is one of the greatest Government Departments, and unless that and all other Government Departments can maintain the confidence of the people of this country I fear that the administrative duties of Government will become very much more difficult for both Parties in the State in the future than they have been in the past.
I trust that His Majesty's Government will see fit to grant my Motion, and so not only meet me but other Members of this House who wish to be satisfied that no unfair or undue influence has been brought to bear in effecting the crushing out of this small Church school. I for one shall feel perfectly willing to acquiesce in any evidence that may be given across the floor of the House which can satisfy me on that point. Failing that I fear that the people of this district, as well as the Members of your Lordships' House and the public at large, will have to come to the conclusion that the decision of the Board of Education was dictated, not by the interests of the children, but by political expedience; not by the welfare of the public, but by sectarian malice and Party spite. I beg to move.
Moved, That there be laid before the House papers relating to the Salter-hobble, Halifax, All Saints School. —(Lord Barnard.)
*THE EARL OF CREWE: My Lords, I am anxious not to trouble the House

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with any repetition of the circumstances stated by the noble Lord. He informed the House that in the spring of the year 1904 the managers recognised that the school was in a somewhat dilapidated and ancient condition and proposed to rebuild it. But he did not state that what induced them to do so was a letter from the Board of Education in September, 1903, declining to recognise the school except temporarily. Then negotiations proceeded, as the noble Lord has described, and the most important point was that in May, 1904, the Board received a further report on the premises from the inspector, and then informed the managers that no grant could be made to the school after 31st May, 1906, unless by that date satisfactory progress had been made in the provision of proper accommodation to replace the old. Surely that was adequate notice. The extension to 1906, under the circumstances, was exceedingly liberal, as I think must generally be admitted.
Then the plans were sent in in January, 1906, and were approved by the Board of Education at the end of March. The local education authority then wrote to the Board of Education and said that nearly three years had passed since the original notice was given to the managers, and they did not see any sign of a new school being erected. Three years is a considerable time, when all is said and done, and in considering this case it is important to bear the fact in mind when either the local education authority or the Board of Education are accused of having exhibited partiality in this matter. They went on to say that the premises were quite unsuitable for teaching purposes, and there were grave doubts about the safety of the roof. They proposed, therefore, to discontinue maintenance. The Board of Education on that desired to put it to the local education authority whether, having shown considerable patience, they might not show a little more, and the local education authority replied that they could not see any reason for departing from the course suggested in their letter.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: What date has the noble Earl got to?
*THE EARL OF CREWE: 15th February of this year. They proposed, therefore,
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to notify the managers at the expiration of three months that they would no longer be responsible for the maintenance of the school. Then the Board of Education, anxious still to act as peacemakers, entered into communication with the managers, who agreed to advertise at once for tenders. The Board informed the local authority to that effect, adding that if any unnecessary delay took place in carrying out the work the Board would be prepared to support the action of the local authority. The local authority replied that the school was unsafe, and that already three years had passed, and it would be another year before this insecure school could be replaced by another building. They added that for all the children attending this school there was ample room in a school within a few minutes' walk where there were all the advantages of modern equipment. Taking all these points into consideration the local education authority decided that, in the interests of the children, it was their duty to refuse further responsibility for the maintenance of this school. The Board of Education finally replied that they saw no reason for interfering with the decision of the local authority.
I do not think it is disputed that the buildings are entirely unsatisfactory. That will be admitted by all who have knowledge of the circumstances. The noble Lord said that it was not to be expected that the managers could proceed with their building while the Education Bill was in a hopeful, though precarious, condition. That, under certain circumstances, might be a good and sound argument, but it really is not relevant to the question the Board of Education had to consider, which was whether they were prepared to take the responsibility of saying that for one year more this school should continue; and upon that, of course, the question of the condition of the school is the material fact. On that there were, as I am afraid very often happens in such cases, directly contrary statements of fact, and the Board sent an inspector to inquire what the condition of affairs really was. He visited the school in December, 1906, and his further Report stated that plaster was falling from the walls in a dangerous way, and he also stated that in his opinion the roof was insecure. Therefore, my Lords, you will see that the answer to the noble

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Lord's Question really is not whether the managers did or did not do all in their power to build a new school in time— that is a separate point, on which the noble Lord may have one opinion and other people may have another—but could the Board of Education take the responsibility of over-ruling the local authority when the local authority said that the condition of the school was not such as to make it safe that it should be continued as a school for another year, and when the Board's inspector confirmed that opinion? The noble Lord seemed to consider it a matter of complaint that the inspector went down at two days' notice.
*LORD BARNARD: I did not complain, I only tried to point out that it placed the managers in some difficulty.
*THE EARL OF CREWE: When the question was as to the stability of a building the point as to whether the inspector went at two days' notice or a week's notice could not very much affect the fact. The question of notice might be relevant in some cases, as it was in the ease brought forward by Lord Dartmouth the other day, but I cannot see, when it is a question of the stability of the roof, that notice has very much to do with it one way or the other. Then the noble Lord said that the parents desired the school to continue. I do not dispute that fact. I do not suppose that ever a school is closed or discontinued but that you will find some parents who would desire it to remain open.
The noble Lord really invited me, I think, to reopen the whole of the question as to how far the wishes of the parents ought to be considered in the question either of the provision or the continuance of schools. The opinions of the Government are very well known on that point. You have to set the wishes of the parents, even by the present law, against the question of the rates, and upon that, where a new school is concerned, the President of the Board of Education has to form an unassisted opinion. I do not know that I have anything further to add except to say this, that my right hon. friend is certainly not prepared in a matter of this kind, which lies within his discretion to decide upon the facts of the case as presented to him, to
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present the Report of the inspector with regard to the building, which is the one I presume the noble Lord means; and I think the noble Lord will have noticed that my right hon. friend has already expressed his regret in another place that he was unable to give that information.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, the noble Earl has based the very unsatisfactory answer which he has given to my noble friend mainly on the condition of the building. Now, why will the Government play with this subject? Do they really expect your Lordships and the country to believe that the whole of this question merely arose because the building was bad, and that there were no other considerations which governed the local education authority in Halifax, and made them anxious, if they possibly could, to get rid of the only Church school which was left in that town? Why does the noble Earl treat us like children, as if we were really going to accept from him the idea that it was merely on account of the badness of the building that the school was abolished? The original warning which my noble friend has related to us set forth that if something substantial were done by May, 1906, the Board of Education did not think that any case arose.
*THE EARL OF CREWE: That warning was given by the late Government in 1903.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Let me repudiate at once, in a matter of the Departmental administration, this division between one Government and another. It is not a matter to be decided as a Party question whether a school building is or is not in a fit condition. The same Department and the same officials were concerned, and the same sanitary rules bound both Governments. The first intimation was that if something substantial were done by May, 1906, the Board saw no reason why the school should be closed. As a matter of fact, as far as the Church managers were concerned they were well ahead of their time. They pushed forward the matter with great despatch, and the delay which arose was not from their fault but was due to the local town council. That council—a hostile body—delayed the

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plans as long as they could, and placed the managers in a position of great difficulty. But, notwithstanding these difficulties thrown in their way by their enemies, the managers were up to their time, and by the period of grace which was allowed them they had made substantial progress and had got the plans passed both by the Board of Education and the local education authority.
Then came the policy of the present Government, which, I think, involved a very natural delay on the part of the managers. They felt that they could not proceed with their work while the Bill of last year was pending before Parliament, but the moment the fate of that Bill was settled they proceeded with the work. The noble Earl says the present Government are not responsible. How can he explain the letter which was sent by the present Government in February of this year expressing the hope that the assurance which had been received from the managers would enable the local authority to reconsider their decision to discontinue their maintenance of the school? In other words, the Board of Education, having considered a communication from the managers, decided in their favour, and were of opinion that the local education authority ought to continue the school. That was in February of this year. I forgot whether Mr. Birrell resigned before May. I think it is very possible he did, and passed to the other Department. It then appears that the policy of the Government had changed, and that this letter which they had written to the managers in February was to be repudiated. What my noble friend has asked is, "What passed in the interval?'' What material fact arose in the interval which caused the Government to change their mind? And if no material fact took place except the change in the presidency of the Board from Mr. Birrell to Mr. McKenna, then we want to know from the Government what possible ground they had for changing the decision at which they arrived in February.
What makes this case particularly hard is that in this part of Halifax there is only this single Church school. We
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heard a great deal about this question last year. The local education authority at Halifax does not allow any syllabus of religious education. The religious instruction given is of the most jejune character. Very little is allowed at all, and that which is allowed must be given by the head teacher, and the head teacher alone. Anybody who has had experience of a large school knows what that means. Halifax is a town where religion in the elementary schools is treated with this marked disrespect; yet this single church school is the one selected by the present head of the Board of Education for this harsh blow. I wonder that the Government are not ashamed of themselves that they use this Departmental pressure in order to oppress the religious consciences of the people. At any rate, this discussion has been of importance because it has shown what we have to expect in our schools from the action of the present authorities at the Board of Education. The country will take note of the kind of treatment which is to be meted out, and I am quite sure they will know how to meet such oppression with the resistance which is appropriate to the occasion.
*LORD BARNARD: I very much regret that the noble Earl the Lord President has been unable to remove the very bad impression which this action on the part of the Board of Education has created amongst the working-class Church people in Halifax. My noble friend Lord Dartmouth pointed out a few days ago that there were several cases of this kind. I have also received information which has led me to the same conclusion; in fact, I personally know of one other case. Therefore, I suppose we are to take it that Church people must bow their heads to oppression of the character which these unfortunate people in Salterhebble, in Halifax, have suffered without having any reason or explanation whatever given to them of the course pursued by His Majesty's Government. I beg to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at a quarter be for Eight o'clock, till Tomorrow, half past Ten o'clock.