Sitting of 11 May 1909

Preamble
Mr. SPEAKER took the chair at a Quarter before Three of the clock.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Aldershot Gas and Water Bill,
Cork, Bandon and South Coast Railway Bill,
Read the third time, and passed.
Heckmondwike and Liversedge Gas Bill [Lords],
Read the third time, and passed with amendments.
Newry, Keady and Tynan Railway Bill,
As amended considered; to be read the third time.
Donington Water Bill [Lords] (by order),
Read a second time, and committed.

RETURNS.
  NAVAL EXPENDITURE (PRINCIPAL NAVAL POWERS).
  Return ordered of the naval expenditure of each of the principal naval powers, showing their total estimated naval expenditure in each of the last ten years, their expenditure in each of the years named on new construction, including armament, and the amount of their new construction in each of those years expressed in tonnage.—[Mr. Thomasson.]
  IRISH LAND ACT, 1903.
  Return ordered relative to the working of the Irish Land Act, 1903, in respect of such of the purchase agreements lodged from the passing of the Act to the 1st day of November, 1908, as have been classified and analysed by the Estates Commissioners, and in the form of the table published by the Commissioners at the foot of page iv. of their last Report.—[Viscount Castlereagh.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Lado Enclave.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked if negotiations are taking place with the Belgian Government on the subject of the Lado enclave; if His Majesty's Government hold the view that the lease of the territory to
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  the Congo Free State expired with the disappearance of the Congo Free State; and whether the negotiations, if any, now proceeding are distinct from the general question of Congo misgovernment, which is occupying the attention of the Secretary of State?
  The SECRETARY Of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): The status of the Lado enclave has naturally to be considered in connection with the annexation by Belgium of the Congo State, but no negotiations are now proceeding on the subject.

  British Consuls in Germany.
  Sir GILBERT PARKERasked how many Consuls and Vice-Consuls represent His Majesty's Government in Germany; and how many of these are by birth and nationality English and German respectively?
  Sir E. GREY: The number of British Consular officers in Germany is 34. Six belong to the salaried service, and these salaried officers are all natural-born British subjects. Of the remainder, six are natural-born British subjects, 20 were born and have remained German subjects; one is a naturalised British subject of German origin, and one a naturalised United States citizen of German origin.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: In the case of these Consuls, who have no salary, is not it the case that they have an official allowance?
  Sir E. GREY: Yes. There is an office allowance. Where the interests of the State require it a salaried Consular officer, who is a British subject if possible, is appointed. Where the place is not so important as to warrant this course, the services of some suitable resident are utilised, and he is paid an office allowance, but not a salary.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: Is it satisfactory that we should have so many members of the German nationality representing this country in Germany?
  Sir E. GREY: Of course, if you are to have salaried officers in all these places it can only be done by a large increase in the Consular Estimate. I have ascertained, as far as I can, what the practise of these countries is. I find that Germany has five salaried Consuls here, and we have six in Germany.
  Mr. WATT: Is a preference given to military men in these appointments?
  Sir E. GREY: In which appointments?
  Mr. WATT: In the unsalaried.
  Sir E. GREY: In the case of the unsalaried the practice is first of all to find somebody who is willing to undertake it, and those whom we find most suitable, if they are resident or locally engaged in trade, are appointed.
  Mr. BELLAIRSasked if Great Britain is represented at the German naval port of Kiel by a German Vice-Consul; and whether the naval port of Wilhelmshaven lies in the consular district of a British representative who is of German nationality?
  Sir E. GREY: The British Vice-Consul at Kiel is a German subject. Wilhelmshaven is in the district assigned to his Majesty's Consul-General at Hamburg, who is a British subject.
  Mr. BELLAIRSasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any information as to the number of Consular representatives Germany has in this country; how many of these are Germans; and how many are in receipt of salaries from the German Government?
  Sir E. GREY: If the hon. Member will refer to pages 510, 511 of the Foreign Office List for this year he will find the names and posts of the various German Consular officers in the United Kingdom. I cannot make any definite statement as to their national status, but a statement of the emoluments which they enjoy can be found by referring to the German Foreign Office Estimates for 1908, which have been published.

  Outrage at Kertch.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has received any details of the maltreatment of British-Indian traders and their families at Kertch, Crimea, by a gang of roughs; whether the culprits have been arrested and punished; and whether His Majesty's Government will demand compensation to be made to the victims of the outrage?
  Sir E. GREY: The British Vice-Consul at Kertch, telegraphing on the 8th inst., reported that a British-Indian subject named Mahomet Ali Omar, and a certain Zorab Samat, applied to him for assistance on May 2nd, Zorab's brother having been robbed and wounded at a boarding-house. The Vice-Consul brought the matter to the notice of the local authorities, and three of the aggressors have now been arrested. A full report has been called
  1638
  for, and must be awaited before a reply can be given on the last point mentioned in the question.

  Egyptian Ministers' Vacation.
  Mr. JOHN ROBERTSONasked whether it has been decided that the Native Ministers in the Egyptian Government shall henceforth so arange their summer vacations that at least four of them shall always be at Cairo to supervise the work of administration.
  Sir E. GREY: I have no desire to deprecate such a decision, but I have no information respecting it.

  Damietta Fishermen's Complaints.
  Mr. JOHN ROBERTSONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether his attention has been called to the complaint of the chief fishermen and notables of Matarieh and Ezbet-el-Burg, Damietta, as to the bestowal of the monopoly of the fish market there upon the Lake Menzala Company; whether he is aware that this monopoly amounts to the suppression of the rights of free sale formerly enjoyed by the fishermen; whether it is further proposed to compel the fishermen to use new fishing implements; whether such compulsion is necessitated or defended on humanitarian grounds; and whether he will urge upon the Egyptian Government the expediency of restoring to the fishermen their former market rights?
  Sir E. GREY: The matter referred to has been brought to my notice. I am not aware of the reasons for which the Egyptian Government adopted the course complained of, but I will address an inquiry on the subject to His Majesty's Agent and Consul-General at Cairo.

  Russian Troops in Persia.
  Mr. PONSONBYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if the Persian Cossacks despatched to Kherraj against the revolutionaries are under the command of a Russian officer; and whether that officer is in the Shah's service or in the service of the Russian Government?
  Sir E. GREY: The Russian Chargé d'Affaires at Teheran informed His Majesty's Minister there on the 8th instant that the Russian officer was returning to Teheran that day.
  Mr. PONSONBYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has any official information to the effect that it is the intention of the Russian Government to despatch troops to guard the Teheran Caspian road against the revolutionaries?
  Sir E. GREY: It is understood that, should the traffic on this road, which forms an important Russian concession, be interrupted through the action of either political party in Persia, the Russian Government would feel themselves compelled to take some action with a view to keeping open the main route of communication between Europe and Teheran, and thus guarding the pecuniary interests of Russian subjects. Such a situation has, however, not yet arisen.
  Dr. RUTHERFORDasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any official information that Cossacks, commanded by Captain Sapolski, a Russian officer, have been despatched to Kherraj to oppose the constitutional forces; and, if so, whether he proposes to make any representations to the Russian Government?
  Sir E. GREY: I have to refer the hon. Member to my reply to-day to the hon. Member for the Stirling Burghs.

  Cavalry Chargers (Regulations).
  Viscount CASTLEREAGH (for Mr. Lane-Fox)asked whether Army Order 1 of 1903 ordains that two chargers will be supplied at the public expense to each officer serving in a regiment of cavalry of the line, and gives further privileges as to hiring chargers; whether, on a regiment being ordered to India, these privileges are withdrawn and each officer is only allowed to hire one charger from the Government, having to buy the second charger at his own expense; and whether the Government of India can see their way to remove the hardship involved by the difference in these regulations?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE (in the absence of Mr. Buchanan): The conditions of service in India differ from those obtaining here, and the Indian Regulations are as stated in the Question. The Government of India in 1904 received authority to relax the existing limitation on the hiring of chargers as soon as financial conditions should admit of it. The Secretary of State will invite their attention to the subject.

  Deported Indians (Petition).
  Mr. MACKARNESSasked whether the Secretary of State for India has received information that a petition has been presented to the Viceroy of India by inhabitants of Calcutta praying for the release of Mr. Krishna Kumar Mittra, who was deported from his home in December last without charge or trial; whether he can
  1640
  state the terms of the petition; and what, reply was given by the Viceroy?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: No such petition has been received by the Government of India.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked whether any petition or other form of representation has been received by the Government of India by or on behalf of any of the nine Indian gentlemen who were arrested and deported without trial in December last; what is the nature of such representations; and what replies have been made thereto?
  Mr. MACKARNESSasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether any representations have been made to the Government of India by any of the nine Indian gentlemen who were deported from their homes in December last without charge or trial; and, if so, whether he will inform the House what is the nature of those representations, and what replies, have been made to them by the Government?
  Mr. GEORGE GOOCHasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether any representations have been made to the Government of India by any of the nine Indian gentlemen who were deported from their homes in December last without charge or trial; and, if so, whether he will inform the House what is the nature of those representations, and what replies have been made?
  Mr. FLYNNasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether any representations have been made to the Government by any of the nine Indian gentlemen who were deported from their homes in December last without charge or trial; and, if so, whether he will inform the House what is the nature of those representations, and what replies have been made?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: A number of representations having reference to various-subjects have been made to the Government of India by the persons deported, or by other persons in their behalf; but it is not practicable to give within the limits of an answer to a question particulars as to the nature of the representation and of the reply in each case.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: May I ask whether a petition has been received on behalf of Aswini Kumar Dutt, of Barisal, asking for his release on the grounds of ill-health?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I answered a question addressed to the Under-Secretary of State for India 8 or 10 days ago. If the hon. Gentleman will refer to that, he will see all the facts stated.
  Mr. FLYNN: Has the Secretary of State for India taken any pains to see whether the petition has been forwarded or not, or is it left entirely to the discretion of the Government of India?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: No. I saw myself this morning nearly all the statements referred to.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: When will there be an opportunity of placing these details before the House?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am only acting on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary for India, and I cannot possibly make a statement.
  Mr. MACKARNESS: Is it a fact that all the representations made by the deported persons contain protestations of their innocence of any offence, and requests to be made acquainted with the grounds on which they have been deported?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I believe that is so.

  National Defence (Colonial Conference in London).
  Mr. CECIL HARMSWORTHasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the reference to the Colonial Conference that is to assemble in London in July is to be confined to the question of imperial defence; and, if not, whether he will consult with the several Colonial Governments as to the advisability of including in the terms of reference the question of Asiatic immigration into the self-governing Colonies, with a view to the establishment of a general imperial policy?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY for the COLONIES (Colonel Seely): The proposed conference has been suggested for the sole purpose of discussing defence questions, and it is not proposed to include the question referred to.

  Rand Mines (Native Death Rate).
  Mr. FELLasked the Under-Secretary for the Colonies when the information respecting the increased death rate amongst the natives employed in the Rand mines was received, and when inquiry into the cause of this increase was made?
  Colonel SEELY: The quarterly return for the last three months of 1908, which first showed a considerable increase, was in a "Gazette" of 2nd April, which reached the Colonial Office three weeks later. A despatch on the subject went by last mail.

  "Coach and Horses" Public-house (Portsmouth).
  Captain FABERasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state what was the cost of the licence paid for the "Coach and Horses" public-house at Portsmouth, when owned by the Government; and what will be the cost of the licence under the new Budget scheme, seeing that the house was sold for £10,000?
  The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd-George): The annual value of the house for the purpose of licence duty, when it was owned by the Government, was £152. The licence duty paid on this value was £30. Under my proposals, if the value remains the same, the duty will be £76.
  Captain FABER: Is it not a fact that the licence will be £570 under the new scheme?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I cannot see how it can possibly be £570, if the annual value is £152 and the charge 50 per cent. The hon. Member can work the sum as well as I can.
  Captain FABER: Would not the annual value be £1,250 and the licence £570.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: That is what the owner says. I can only give the information supplied to me, that the annual value of the house for the purpose of the licence is £152.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will the annual value remain the same under the right hon. Gentleman's proposal?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: Certainly. I explained to the House that there will be a revaluation, and when I get the revaluation I mean to recast the scale.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Will the right hon. Gentleman receive a deputation on the subject?

  Petrol Tax (Commercial Vehicles).
  Sir SAMUEL SCOTTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that owing to the total absence of machinery by which traders can obtain the rebate of 1½d. per gallon upon petrol supplied to taxicabs and commercial vehicles, they have been compelled to charge an extra 3d. per gallon upon all petrol, whether supplied to taxicabs or private individuals; and whether, in view of the hardship thereby sustained by both

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  the drivers of taxicabs and the traders in petrol, he can give prompt information as to the method by which rebate can be claimed?
  Mr. RENWICKasked whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention has been called to circulars issued by the importers of petrol and its products raising the price of same by 4d. per gallon whether for use by motor-cars or for other purposes; and will he take steps to ensure a rebate of the 4d., or at least 3d. per gallon, the amount of the duty, being returned to those who have already paid the enhanced price or who are called upon to pay it in the future in cases when the petrol or its products are used otherwise than in motor vehicles?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I must refer the hon. Members to the answer which I gave yesterday to the hon. Member for Hammersmith. The rebate of either the whole or part of the duty on petrol will, of course, only be allowed in cases where it can be shown that duty has been paid on such petrol, and I cannot accept responsibility for the action of dealers who have raised the price of petrol imported prior to the imposition of the duty.
  Mr. RENWICK: Will the right hon. Gentleman state how those who have purchased at the enhanced price can recover rebate in case those who have sold the oil will not allow it?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: They cannot get rebate except in respect of duty paid. Of course, if the duty has not been paid the Government cannot be asked to return money it has never received.

  Finance Bill (Reversion and other Taxes).
  Mr. RENTONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what part of the reversioner's interest is intended to be affected by the reversion tax besides the increase in the value of the land which is subject to the increment tax?
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked whether, in the event of a free licensed house, held upon lease, the whole of the increased licence duty will, under his proposals, fall upon the tenant, or whether it will fall upon the landlord?
  The HON. MEMBERfurther asked whether the proposed tax of 20 per cent. on increment of values will apply to a person whose business it is to deal in land, and, if so, whether such tax will be placed
  1644
  on the balance of income of such business at the end of the current financial year, allowing for losses made on unprofitable transactions; and whether, in assessing the income, allowance will be made for repairs, renovations, alterations, legal charges, stamp duties, office expenses, etc., incurred by the purchaser in the period between purchase and sale?
  Captain CRAIGasked whether ground partly used as a garden and partly for grazing purposes, over an acre in extent, surrounding a residence inside a town boundary, will be treated as undeveloped land and taxed accordingly, even though thousands of dwelling houses inside the town boundary are to let?
  Mr. ASHLEYasked upon what scale he proposes that licence duties should be levied in such places of amusement, not being theatres, as the Tower Palace and Winter Gardens at Blackpool, in which intoxicating liquors are sold and amusements provided within the same buildings?
  Colonel LOCKWOODasked if the reference to theatres in the Budget Resolutions includes music halls in the same category as working under public-house licences?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: With reference to this question and those put to me by the Hon. Member for North-West Manchester, the hon. and gallant Member for East Down, the hon. Member for Blackpool, and by the right hon. Member for the Epping Division, I have already explained that I do not think it is desirable for me to deal with points of this kind until the text of the Finance Bill is in the hands of the House.
  Mr. JAMES HOPE: Will the right hon. Gentleman adopt the suggestion I made yesterday, and put the House in possession of the text of the Bill in a White Paper?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: It would be absolutely without precedent, though that is not absolutely conclusive, I admit; at the same time, I do not think it is possible for any Minister to circulate a Bill before the. House gives him leave to introduce it.
  Mr. J. HOPE: The circulation of the Resolutions was without precedent.
  Captain CRAIG: As to question 28, may I approach the right hon. Gentleman in the guise of a newspaper correspondent, and will he give me an answer?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: After several endeavours the hon. and gallant Member has got his point in at last. But may I

  1645
  point out to him that I never answer the questions of any newspaper correspondents in respect of matters on which I have declined to give information to the House? On the contrary, I have absolutely refused to answer questions which have been put to me repeatedly by newspaper correspondents on grounds similar to those which I have given to the House.

  Payment of Tax Collectors.
  Lord BALCARRES (for Mr. Gretton)asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if any public officials are rewarded according to the amount of the collection of taxes for which they are responsible, either in the form of a commission, bonus, or increase of status or salary?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: So far as taxes under the management of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue are concerned remuneration for collection is generally by fixed salary. In the cases where it takes, in whole or in part, the form of a commission or bonus, all pertinent circumstances (including the amount to be collected) are taken into consideration.
  Lord BALCARRES: Am I to understand that a bonus is paid to income-tax officers who show special zeal and success in the collection of money in that Department?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I rather gather from information coming from the Inland Revenue that in the vast majority of cases the general rule is that they get a fixed salary. Occasionally there is a commission paid, and there, of course, the amount is taken into account. Those, however, are exceptional cases.

  Customs Duties on Wines.
  Mr. FELLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he proposes to increase the Customs duties on wines to such an amount as will tax the spirit contained in such wines to an amount approximating to the amount of the Excise duty on spirits manufactured in the United Kingdom?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I have already informed the hon. Member that I do not propose to alter the existing scale of Customs duties on wines.
  Mr. FELL: Is it the fact that the duty on spirits coming in the form of foreign wines at present comes to 5s. 3d. a gallon, whereas it will be over 14s. under the Budget, and will not this have the effect of giving a great preference to foreign countries?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: That is a question which ought to be put down. It involves the calculation of the quantity of proof spirits in various grades of wine.
  Mr. FELL: Are not the facts as I stated them in a question I asked two or three days ago?
  Mr. J. C. FLYNN: Does not the question largely turn on the comparison as between foreign wines and home-made spirits?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: That is a question which I think it worth while asking the hon. Gentleman to put down.
  Mr. PIKE PEASE: Is it not the fact that some foreign wines contain 25 per cent. of proof spirits?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: That bears on the answer I have given. I really cannot give the percentage of proof spirits in various grades of wine without notice.

  Pension Committees (Ireland).
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIENasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether any provision exists for the obtaining by pension committees in Ireland of legal advice, other than official, on the numerous questions of difficulty arising in the course of their administration of the Old Age Pensions Act; whether he is aware that several committees in Ireland desire to test the important question whether decisions of the Local Government Board, in spite of their apparent finality in the terms of the Act, are subject to review by certiorari in the High Court on questions of law, principle, and procedure; and whether any facilities would be granted to one or more pension committees in Ireland, on behalf of the rest, to obtain eminent legal opinion, other than official, on this important question, and, if so advised, to raise the question in the High Court by a suitable test case?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: No such provision exists, and I do not think it would be desirable to afford facilities to pension committees for taking action, which is not a part of their proper functions.

  Income Tax Abatements (Residents Abroad).
  Mr. SMEATONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether residents abroad to whom rebates or abatements of income tax are not in future to be allowed include foreigners only, or whether British subjects resident in India, the Colonies, or elsewhere abroad will be included; and

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  whether Government officials resident out of India in the execution of their duty will be debarred from claiming such abatements or exemption as they have hitherto enjoyed?
  The words "out of India" appearing on the paper ought to be "in India." It is a misprint.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: The hon. Member is now putting to me a different question. I must refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave yesterday to questions on this subject asked by himself, by the hon. Member for the Oswestry Division, and by the hon. Baronet the Member for Wandsworth.
  Mr. SMEATON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the funds which come from these officers in India are really savings from their salaries, and are partly devoted to the upkeep of their homes and families, and will he consider their claim to abatement?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I think that is the answer I gave yesterday, and I thought my hon. Friend had overlooked it, namely, that I was prepared to take into consideration the circumstances in regard to abatements.

  Humber Navigable Channels.
  Mr. STANLEY WILSONasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he can now say if it is the intention of the Government to carry out the recommendations contained in a Report recently made to the Board of Trade by Captain G. C. Frederick, R.N., and Sir William Matthews, K.C.M.G., and referred to the Treasury by that Department, with regard to the protection of the navigable channel of the Humber and the communications with the Spurn?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The matter is still under consideration, and I am unable at present to make any statement as to the course which will be adopted by the Government.
  Mr. STANLEY WILSON: When may we expect an answer to this question?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The question has been under consideration for some months. There are difficult negotiations going on, and I am afraid I cannot give the information for which the hon. Gentleman asks. The hon. Member knows I am considering the question, and I will do my best to get a decision arrived at as soon as possible.
  Mr. STANLEY WILSON: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that unless immediate action is taken by the Government there is probability of their having to spend very large sums of money in the near future to defend the navigable channel in the Humber?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: That question contains a good many propositions with which I am not entirely prepared to agree.

  New Motor Duty (Unit of Horse-Power).
  Mr. WATTasked the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state what will be the unit of horse-power for the purpose of the new motor duty which will be issued under regulation by his Department?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am unable to give any information on this subject, pending the introduction of the Finance Bill.

  Meat Warranty.
  Captain FABERasked the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he will state whether any arrangement has been come to between the farmers and butchers on the subject of meat warranty; and, if so, what that arrangement is?
  The TREASURER of the HOUSEHOLD (Sir E. Strachey): I understand that no general agreement on this subject has as yet been arrived at.

  Glanders in London.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether his attention has been directed to the reports of the prevalence of the disease of glanders amongst horses in London; and whether he intends to take any steps in order to stamp it out?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The London County Council are and have been for some time past taking all possible steps to eradicate glanders in London, and we hope that the strict enforcement of the provisions of the Glanders Order of 1907—a copy of which I shall be pleased to send the hon. and gallant Member—will prove of considerable service for the purpose. The disease is not nearly so prevalent in London as it was a few years ago; in 1904, for instance, the number of outbreaks was 1,038, whereas last year the number was 495.

  Horse Breeding.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the hon. Member for South Somerset whether he can now make any statement with

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  regard to the acceptance of the offer of a sum of money from a private gentleman in aid of horse-breeding, or when he will be able to make a statement on the subject?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: I am not at present able to make any statement on the subject, nor do I think that it will be possible for me to do so until the proposals of the Government with regard to agricultural development have been considered by the House.

  Glasgow Courts Business.
  Mr. WATTasked the Lord Advocate if he has taken into his consideration the advisability of appointing an extra sheriff-substitute in the Glasgow district in order to cope with the congestion of business in the courts there; and, if so, will he state the result to the House?
  The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Ure): I am not in a position to add anything to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend on 28th April.
  Mr. WATT: Is he aware his Department made a temporary appointment, and that he was doing good work and very necessary work there?
  Mr. URE: Yes; but the situation in the Sheriff's Court is at present being carefully considered.

  Captain Bacon's Letter.
  Captain FABERasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he will now state by whom the footnote attached to Captain Bacon's letter was written?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKenna): Captain Bacon.
  Captain FABER: May I ask whether the footnote as well as the letter was printed merely for Lord Tweedmouth's information?
  Mr. McKENNA: The reason why the letter was printed was not only for the information of the First Lord of the day but also for purposes of record.
  Captain FABER: Twenty-five copies of the footnote as well as the letter—
  Mr. McKENNA: The footnote and the letter were one and the same.
  Captain FABER: Under the same heading, were they?
  Mr. McKENNA: They were written by Captain Bacon.
  Lord BALCARRES: Why is it necessary that the Admiralty should print secret documents to place on record Captain Bacon's views—

  Harwich Flotilla.
  Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that for some time past six submarines of the Harwich flotilla have been in dockyard hands at Sheerness; whether that flotilla consists nominally of nine vessels; how long the six vessels referred to have been in dockyard hands; and whether it is in accordance with official ideas of readiness for war that 66 per cent. of a flotilla should be in dockyard hands at one time?
  Mr. McKENNA: Six of the nine submarines of the Harwich flotilla were in dockyard hands together at Sheerness from 12th March to 24th April last. Three of them were taken in hand on 11th December, 1908, and three on 12th March last. The hon. Gentleman will excuse me if I refrain from taking up time by replying to the satire contained in the last part of his question.

  Battleships and Cruisers (Construction).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how many battleships and armoured cruisers were under construction on May 1st in the years 1900, 1904, and 1909, respectively?
  Mr. McKENNA:

  Battleships.

  Armoured Cruisers.

  1st May, 1900

  15

  14

  1st May, 1904

  10

  13

  1st May, 1909

  6

  1

  Mr. ASHLEY: Will he say whether the decrease in foreign shipbuilding has justified—
  Mr. McKENNA: If the hon. Gentleman would be so good as to put down a question on the Paper, I would answer more in detail as to foreign shipbuilding.

  Protected Cruisers.
  Mr. ASHLEYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how many protected cruisers of a speed of 23 knots or over are permanently attached to the German High Sea Fleet; and what is the speed of the protected cruisers attached to the two battle squadrons of the British Home Fleet and to the Atlantic Fleet?
  Mr. McKENNA: The answer to the first part of the question is four. With regard to the second part, the measured mile speed of one of the protected cruisers is over 23 knots, and of the others, 19½ knots.
  Mr. ASHLEY: We have only got one over 20 knots in our fleet as compared with four in the German fleet.
  Mr. McKENNA: The hon. Gentleman must not assume that. The Admiralty prefer to keep their fastest cruisers or scouts with the destroyers.

  All-Red Route Committee.
  Mr. FELLasked the Prime Minister what are the names of the persons who form the Committee which is inquiring into the question of the All-Red Route; and when a Report on the matter may be expected?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE (for the Prime Minister): My right hon. Friend regrets that he is not in a position to add anything to the information given to the hon. Member by my very hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade on 1st December last. The Committee is an informal Committee of Ministers, assisted by permanent officials, and I understand that no date can yet be named for the publication of their Report.
  Mr. FELL: May I ask if the names of those gentlemen, or, at any rate, those who are not officials, can be supplied, so that we may see who is considering this question, and can he say if the Report will be received during the present Session of Parliament, say October or November next?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: That is a question to which the Prime Minister declined to give information in his answer.

  Anti-Torpedo Armament.
  Mr. MIDDLEMOREasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the naval advisers of His Majesty's Government will again consider the desirability of substituting a heavier anti-torpedo armament for the three-pounder guns now carried in the armoured cruisers of the "Warrior" class; and, as that vessel is now undergoing refit, can the substitution be taken in hand at once?
  Mr. McKENNA: It is not proposed to alter the armament of the "Warrior" class.
  Mr. MIDDLEMORE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that those three-pound popguns are laughed at universally throughout the Navy?
  Mr. SPEAKER: Hon. Gentlemen cannot expect answers to questions put in that form.
  Mr. MIDDLEMORE: May I say that—
  Mr. SPEAKER: I think the hon. Member had better consider his question a little more carefully.

  Battleship Mountings.
  Mr. BELLAIRSasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the contracts for the gun-mountings, guns, and armour of the two battleships to be laid down in July have yet been signed; and, if so, orb what date?
  Mr. McKENNA: Tenders for the gun-mountings have been invited and the orders will shortly be placed.
  Mr. ARTHUR S. WILSON (Holderness): "shortly," They ought to have been placed before now.
  Mr. McKENNA: Tenders for guns are about to be invited. With regard to armour, the orders will be placed in good time.
  Mr. SPEAKER: I must ask the hon. Member for Holderness not to keep up a running comment. It is most unusual in the procedure of Parliament. It is extremely inconvenient both for Ministers and for Members who wish to listen to the answers.
  Mr. STANLEY WILSON: I apologise. I am afraid I was rather carried away by the answer of the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. BELLAIRS: Is it not the fact that on March 16th he gave a specific pledge to this House that the orders for those spare parts, gun mountings, etc., would be given at once. The words "at once" were used.
  Mr. McKENNA: I have not referred to the words, and my hon. Friend has not given me any notice that he intended to refer to the words, but so far as the substance of that reply is concerned the reply was strictly accurate. Communication was made in ample time to the contractors, who had taken all necessary steps to ensure the delivery of gun mountings in time. The mere fact that a specific order was not given has not the faintest bearing on the actual date.
  Mr. BELLAIRS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware the contractors require specific orders, and his pledge was that orders would be given at once. That was on 16th March; we are now at 11th May, going into eight weeks afterwards?
  Mr. McKENNA: No, because in the case of gun mountings, which are made at the present time by only two firms, the ordinary rules of trade that specific orders must be given do not apply. Those two contractors are fully aware they would get

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  the orders. Arrangements have been made with the contractors at the time that I say.

  Church Endowments (Wales).
  Mr. PIKE PEASE (for Mr. Joynson-Hicks)asked the Prime Minister whether, in view of his selection of the year 1662 as the discriminating date with regard to the endowments of the Church in Wales, he can state approximately the amount of revenue derived from property in Wales and Monmouthshire which belonged to the Church prior to 1662, and the amount of revenue derived from property acquired since 1662?
  The SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir Samuel Evans, for the Prime Minister): The calculation of the revenue in sections as suggested in the question is complicated by the grants made by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and by the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty. These amounted in 1906 to the sums of £49,646 and £37,284 respectively. Apart from these grants, the income of benefices in Wales and Monmouthshire (to which I assume the hon. Member refers) from Church property which existed before 1662, is about £134,000 per annum, and from private benefactions made since 1662 is about £20,000 per annum. These sums do not include the incomes of bishoprics, archdeaconries, or the deans and chapters; nor, of course, the annual value of fabrics, ecclesiastical residences, and so forth. The two volumes of evidence about to be published by the Royal Commission will contain statistical tables of Welsh Church property which will give in full detail all the information available.
  Lord R. CECIL: Can he say if the evidence will be published?
  Sir SAMUEL EVANS: I am not able to say. That depends on the decision of the Committee. I understand it is about to be published and that a promise was made, through the Home Secretary, that would be so not very long ago.

  Unarmoured Cruisers (Armaments).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked whether in view of the fact that the unarmoured cruisers "Bahia" and "Rie Grande do Sul," now building in this country for the Brazilian navy, had a displacement of 3,400 tons, an armament comprising ten 45-pounder quick-firing guns, and a speed of 26.5 knots, he would state why the British unarmoured cruiser "Boadicea," of 3,300
  1654
  tons, now completing, had an amament of only six 25-pounders and a speed of 25 knots?
  Mr. McKENNA: Comparisons including only two or three of the principal features of the respective designs are misleading. All the qualities possessed by both ships need to be taken into account. The actual speed on trial of the "Boadicea" was, however, 25¾ knots; and the weight of projectile exceeds that stated in the question.
  Mr. ASHLEY: The right hon. Gentleman has not answered the specific question why the "Boadicea" has only six 25-pounders while the other ships have a very much heavier armament.
  Mr. McKENNA: I have stated that the hon. Member has named only two features. There are other features, such as coal-carrying capacity, which affect the radius of action of a cruiser, and that is one of the items which the Board of Admiralty have taken into account.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Why have we only six of these guns while the German ships operating in the same sea have ten?

  British and German Destroyers.
  Lord ROBERT CECILasked when the 12 destroyers of the German 1907–8 programme were laid down, and when they were completed for sea; and when the five British destroyers of the same year's, programme were laid down?
  Mr. McKENNA: The destroyers of the German 1907–8 programme were laid down between April, 1907, and the end of that year. They were completed between December, 1907, and December, 1908. The actual dates of ordering of the five British destroyers are:—

  "Nubian"

  6th January, 1908

  "Viking"

  20th February, 1908

  "Crusader"

  6th January, 1908

  "Maori"

  20th February, 1908

  "Zulu"

  25th February, 1908

  Mr. ASHLEY: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why it takes us 16 months to build destroyers, when the Germans, as stated in his answer, can build them in from nine to 12 months?
  Mr. McKENNA: I did not state that in my answer. I said that they were laid down between April and December in one year and completed between then and December in the next year. That gives a margin of 21 months.

  Battleships (Armaments).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked what would be the armament of the United States battleships of the current year's programme, and what would be the weight of their broadside; and what proportion their broadside would bear to that of the British "Dreadnoughts" down to and including the "Neptune."
  Mr. McKENNA: The battleships of the current year's programme in the United States will have an armament of 10 12-inch guns and 16 5-inch guns, with a weight of broadside fire of 9,100 pounds. The weight of broadside fire for the "Dreadnought" is 7,034 pounds; for the "Bellerophon" class, 7,110 pounds; and for the "St. Vincent" class, 7,172 pounds. It is not desirable to give the information as regards the "Neptune."
  Mr. ASHLEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is officially announced to Congress that they will have not 10, but 12 12-inch guns?
  Mr. McKENNA: The hon. Member refers to ships of this year's programme?
  Mr. ASHLEY: Yes.
  Mr. McKENNA: I think he is in error when he refers to this year's programme.
  Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if he increases the cost of the armament of these ships be will stop a number of subscriptions to charities?

  Post Office Servants (Hobhouse Report).
  Mr. SUMMERBELLasked the Postmaster-General if he could state, in regard to paragraph 99 of the Hobhouse Report, which stated that an officer employed in substituting another of superior rank on full-time duties for any period exceeding two months in each year should be paid, until he resumed his ordinary duty, the minimum salary of the class to which the officer he substituted belongs, whether it was the intention of the Committee that the officer performing the higher duty should be paid only for the period over and above two months; and whether the period of two months was regarded as the qualifying period, or whether it was intended that a period of two months should be deducted in each successive year of an officer's performance of higher duties?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Sydney Buxton): The qualifying period used to be six months. This, on the recommendation of the Parliamentary Com-
  1656
  mittee, I have reduced to two months. I understand their recommendation to be that each calendar year is regarded separately for this purpose. Cases in which hardship is caused by this rule are treated exceptionally.

  Clogher Petty Sessions (Case of W. M'Dowell).
  Mr. VINCENT KENNEDY (on behalf of Mr. Lardner)asked the Attorney-General for Ireland if he was aware that a certain William M'Dowell was brought before the Clogher petty sessions on 9th March last on four summonses charging him with certain offences in reference to 10 females named in the summonses, and that in the first case heard only one witness was examined, and in the second case heard two witnesses were examined, and that the magistrates dismissed these two cases, although there were other witnesses in court who might have been examined and were not, and that District-Inspector Patrick, in view of these decisions, declined to go on with the other two summonses; would he state the names of the magistrates adjudicating in these cases, and whether the decisions were unanimous or by a majority, and, in the latter case, give the names of the magistrates voting for a dismissal, or against, or who declined to vote; and would he now state what further steps, if any, he proposes to take in these cases?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Cherry): I am informed that four summonses were issued against William M'Dowell, as stated in the question, charging him with the offences referred to. Two of these were heard by the magistrates at the Clogher Petty Sessions on 9th March last, and dismissed by a majority of the magistrates present. The reason the magistrates did not hear the evidence of more witnesses was because they were informed that it would not throw any more light upon the question, and would be precisely similar to the evidence already given. I regret that I cannot give the names of the magistrates present or of those who decided in any particular way, as I am informed that no regular poll was taken and that there is no record of the names of the magistrates who took part in the decisions. I do not propose to take any further steps in the cases.

  Instructors in Dairying (Ireland).
  Mr. SHEEHANasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture (Ireland) if he would state what special

  1657
  qualifications were required to fill the office of instructor in dairying under his Department; had candidates to submit themselves to any qualifying examination, and, if so, would he state who set the papers at these examinations and what subjects they embraced; and whether those interested in these appointments, such as the members of the Creamery Managers' Organisation, had ever been consulted beforehand or afforded an opportunity of orally explaining their views?
  Mr. CHERRY (for Mr. T. W. Russell): The special qualifications required for the position of instructor in dairying, in connection with the scheme for improvement in the management of creameries, include a knowledge of the principles on which the practice of dairying is based, as well as a technical knowledge of dairying machinery and of the construction, equipment, and management of a creamery. Besides this, the candidate must give indication of ability to impart instruction to others, and of those personal qualifications which command respect. Candidates have to submit to an oral examination by the chief officers of the Department. The Department have not hitherto consulted any organisation of creamery managers with regard to appointments of this nature, nor do they propose to do so in future. The Department are well aware of the views of creamery managers on this question.

  Empire Day (Flag on Board of Trade Offices).
  Captain CRAIGasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he would permit the national flag to be flown on the offices of the Board of Trade on forthcoming Empire Day?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY of the BOARD OF TRADE: (Mr. H. J. Tennant): This would appear a matter in which the Board of Trade should follow rather than lead other Departments.
  Captain CRAIG: Why was a flag pole erected on the building?
  Mr. TENNANT: The flag pole was erected many years ago, but it was put in such a position that very few people are able to observe it.
  Captain FABER: When did the President of the Board of Trade begin to follow instead of lead?

  Vacant Land Cultivation Society.
  Mr. WEDGWOODasked the President of the Local Government Board whether
  1658
  he was aware that the Vacant Land Cultivation Society had provided means whereby a number of families had got opportunity to grow their own food on land within the metropolitan area which would, otherwise have been unused; and whether this method of reducing unemployment had the approval of the Local Government Board?
  The Hon. MEMBERfurther asked the President of the Local Government Board (1) whether an application made to him by the Central (Unemployed) Body for a grant of £298 8s. to be expended in the clearance of unoccupied pieces of land in Westminster, loaned by the London County Council to the Vacant Land Cultivation Society, had been refused; and, if so, on what grounds; (2) whether an application made to him by the Central (Unemployed) Body for a grant of £516 19s., to be expended in the making of a sewer on Osea Island, off the coast of Essex, was granted; who was; the owner of the land benefited by the making of the sewer; and how much did he contribute towards the cost of this improvement?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. John Burns)read the replies as printed in the Official Report, 10th May, 1909 (cols. 1,576–1,578).
  Mr. WEDGWOOD: On what grounds; were the funds of the Central (Unemployed) Body used for improving the land of private persons, and refused when it was a question of improving the land of the London County Council; and, further, why were relief works provided on Osea Island, nearly 100 miles from London, instead of in the centre of London?
  Mr. BURNS: The work on Osea Island, for public purposes and the benefit of the poor of East London, and from which no one derives any personal profit, was suggested to me by the Central (Unemployed) Body as a useful means of providing a number of men with work. On the condition that the owners of Osea Island provided the materials and bore many other expenses, I consented to give a certain sum towards the cost of the manual labour.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: Have not the Central (Unemployed) Body preferred a similar request with regard to these vacant lots?
  Mr. BURNS: Yes, and in the exercise of our discretion, we declined to accede to it. Personally, I think that vacant lots or sites within three miles of Charing Cross, in

  1659
  congested districts, ought, preferably, if they are cleared, to be used for children's playgrounds, rather than for their fathers to use them for perfunctory agricultural operations instead of looking for work.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: In the event of the Central (Unemployed) Body applying for a grant to have these vacant lots cleared as playgrounds, will a grant then be made?
  Mr. BURNS: That I must deal with when the special circumstances of each case are brought before me.
  Major RENTON: What amount and what kind of food was grown on the vacant land specified in the first question.
  Mr. BURNS: I have no information, but my experience in my own neighbourhood was that small plots of land were mostly used for growing consumptive cabbages.

  Aliens on Juries.
  Mr. BOTTOMLEYasked the Attorney-General whether he was aware that under the existing law aliens were qualified to sit upon juries in the English courts; whether, in pursuance of this right, a large proportion of jurymen, especially in county courts, were aliens; and whether he would consider the expediency of advising His Majesty's Government to amend the Jurors' Act so as to secure that all British subjects should be tried by their own countrymen?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir William Robson): The only aliens qualified to serve on juries are those who have been domiciled in this country for 10 years and are qualified in other respects. The presence on juries of such aliens has not, so far as I know, been made the subject of any complaint, and it is frequently an advantage in certain districts. I am not prepared to recommend any alteration in the law, but, of course, that is not a matter for me to decide.

  Assize Indictments (Ireland).
  Mr. JEREMIAH MacVEAGHasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he can state the total number of indictments presented at the last assizes for the 32 counties of Ireland, exclusive of the cities of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Derry; the average number for every county; the average number for each million of the population; and the total number for each province?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The number of in-
  1660
  dictments at Spring Assizes for 31 counties in Ireland and at the February Commission for the county of Dublin was 224, or an average of seven per county and 60 per million of the population. These figures are exclusive of the cities of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Londonderry. The number of indictments for each province, exclusive of these cities, was as follows: Leinster, 56; Ulster, 57; Munster, 57; Connaught, 54.

  St. Mels Cathedral.
  Mr. JOHN PHILIPSasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, now that the Fetherston property at Ardagh, county Longford, is sold to the tenants, will he take effective measures to vest the old ruins of St. Mels Cathedral, founded in the fifth century by St. Patrick, in the custody of the Longford County Council, in view of its proper preservation in the future, as it is one of the oldest ruins in Ireland?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I understand that the ruins in question, which are vested in the Representative Church Body, are not included in the sale which is now pending. The provisions of the Irish Land Act, 1903, with respect to the preservation of ancient monuments do not, therefore, apply.

  Free Force of Constabulary (County Longford).
  Mr. JOHN PHILIPSasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he will restore the regular number of the free force of constabulary, 132, as it stood in 1902, to the county Longford, instead of the extra men now stationed there, and not penalise the ratepayers, who are not accountable for any of the alleged disorder in the county?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The distribution of the constabulary force in Ireland is at present under consideration, and it is not possible for me to say at present how many men may be allotted to any particular county.

  Estates Commissioners (Congestion in County Kerry).
  Mr. JOHN MURPHYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if the Estates Commissioners propose to take any steps to deal with the congestion on the M'Cartie estate at Headfort, county Kerry, or do they intend to allow the sale to go through without making any effort to deal with the economic conditions existing upon it?
  Mr. BIRRELL: As I have explained to the hon. Member, in reply to his previous questions, the assumption that there is un-

  1661
  tenanted land on this estate available for the relief of congestion is incorrect. No portion of the estate was sold to the Commissioners as untenanted land.
  Mr. MURPHY: I did not ask the right hon. Gentleman about untenanted land: I asked him whether the Estates Commissioners proposed to do anything to relieve congestion, which everybody agrees exists in that particular district?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I thought the hon. Member referred to the distribution of untenanted land amongst those tenants who are anxious to purchase their holdings.
  Mr. MURPHY: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask if the Estates Commissioners can do something to relieve the shocking congestion that exists in the district?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I am perfectly willing to ask the Estates Commissioners that question. What answer they will give to it I cannot say.

  Lord Ardilaun and Muckross.
  Mr. JOHN MURPHYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that Lord Ardilaun purchased the holdings of about 30 tenants on the Herbert estate, county Kerry, over the heads of those tenants, when the estate was being sold about ten years ago; and whether in the forthcoming Land Bill there will be any provision by which a sale to these tenants must take place, so as to put them in the same position as their neighbours who have purchased already?
  Mr. BIRRELL: It is a matter of common knowledge that about 10 years ago Lord Ardilaun purchased the mansion and demesne of Muckross, comprising several thousand acres, which formed portion of the Herbert estate. The Land Commission understand that a few tenancies were comprised in the lands so purchased. Whether these tenancies would be excluded from the compulsory provisions of the Land Bill as forming part of a demesne is a legal question on which I cannot offer an opinion.

  Congested Districts Board (Kenmare Estate).
  Mr. JOHN MURPHYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if the Congested Districts Board intend to take any further steps to deal with and relieve the congestion on part of the Kenmare estate, county Kerry; and whether the Board can only be induced to move in the matter when the people in the districts referred
  1662
  to take some vigorous action to expose their condition?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Congested Districts Board do not at present propose to reopen negotiations for the purchase of portion of Lord Kenmare's estate. As I have already informed the hon. Member in reply to his question of 25th November, 1908, the state of the Board's funds will not, until pending legislation is passed, permit of their purchasing any estates beyond those for which they are already in negotiation.
  Mr. MURPHY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he can explain how it is that the Congested Districts Board say that they have no funds for the purchase of Kenmare estate, yet at the same time they proceed to puchase Lord Ventry's estate in the same county and the same locality?
  Mr. BIRRELL: It is, of course, for the Congested Districts Board to exercise their discretion, having regard to the limited funds at their disposal, as to what estates shall be purchased.

  National Board Inspectors (Irish Language).
  Mr. BOLANDasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that, within the last three years, eight inspectors, only three of whom knew Irish, have been appointed by the National Board, and that out of its 80 inspectors only about 10 are competent to examine in Irish; and whether, in view of the fact that in about 3,000 national schools Irish is now being taught, that the bilingual programme is in operation in about 150 schools, and that the work of examination is in arrear, he will see that two competent Irish speakers should be appointed to take, the places of the two competent Irish-speaking inspectors who have lately retired?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Commissioners of National Education inform me that of the eight inspectors referred to, four have a knowledge of Irish. There are 74 inspectors at present in the Board's service, and 15 of these are competent, to inspect Irish classes. Besides these there are six organisers of Irish language instruction. The Commissioners, with whom the appointments rest, desire to appoint the most eligible persons to fill the two existing vacancies, and they would prefer that the selected candidates should have a competent knowledge of Irish.

  Extra Police, County Heath.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland how many extra police were drafted into county Meath during the year 1908, from what counties they were drafted, and what was the cost of transferring the men?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The number of sergeants and constables drafted into Meath in 1908 from other counties was as follows:—From Carlow 2, from Cork 10, from Kerry 4, from Limerick 10; total 26. These 26 men were sent to replace a like number who had been drafted into Meath in 1907 from counties other than the four which I have mentioned, but who could no longer be spared from their own stations. Twenty-four sergeants and constables were also drafted into Meath in 1908 from the reserve. The books of the Royal Irish Constabulary are not kept in such a form as to enable the cost of transferring men in particular cases to be furnished.
  Mr. WHITE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how long these men that were drafted there remained in the county of Meath?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, Sir. The hon. Member should give me notice of that question.
  Mr. HAZLETON: If the right, hon. Gentleman cannot ascertain the cost of transferring these men, how can he fix the charges on the County Councils?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Well, I will inquire into that; but I should explain that that does not really arise on the question.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether, having regard to the decrease in the free constabulary force in the county of Meath from 248 in 1903 to 172 in 1908, he will consider the equity of exercising the power vested in him and remit the charges attempted to be levied on the county council for extra men temporarily drafted into the county while the free force is so much reduced?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The county council is legally liable for these charges, and no remission can be made.
  Mr. WHITE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if the charge cannot be made unless the Lord Lieutenant directs; if he does so direct has he not the power also to remit?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Well, I think not. The charge having been authorised to be made
  1664
  by the Lord Lieutenant, I do not think there is any power to remit it.
  Mr. FLYNN: If the books are not kept, in such a way as to set forth the charges, how can the Inspector-General of Constabulary arrive at the cost that is charged the county councils?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Well, the whole question of the cost of transferring these policemen is not merely the cost of their railway fares, but other items. I will make inquiry.
  Mr. WHITE: May I ask if the charges are not higher than in the time of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I will inquire into that.

  Free Constabulary Force (County Meath).
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he can state upon whose recommendation and upon whose authority the free constabulary force in county Meath was reduced in recent years; and whether he will explain why the force was reduced below the average requirements, seeing that, if afterwards found necessary to temporarily increase it, the local rates are charged with the cost of the increase, which was in reality due to-miscalculation on the part of some official?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The free constabulary force for each county and city is fixed triennially by His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant by and with the advice of the Privy Council, as authorised by the Constabulary (Ireland) Redistribution Act, 1885, and the present free force of 172 sergeants and constables allotted to the county of Meath is that which was considered to be required at the time the total force of Ireland was last distributed.
  Mr. WHITE: If more police are required, will they be charged upon the county?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I imagine that they will. Every three years we make a calculation as to what the requirements of each county may be, and we have at that time to make the best calculation we can. Of course, the circumstances may alter after each redistribution has been made, and that is what we have to consider.
  Mr. WHITE: Is it not a disadvantage under that system to deplete the constabulary to-day to an abnormally low level, and to-morrow to increase it there, thereby being an increased charge on the rates instead of on the Imperial charges?
  Mr. BIRRELL: That can only be done if the Irish Government shamefully neglect their duty.
  Mr. DELANY: During the last three years the constabulary have increased abnormally. Can the right hon. Gentleman say why?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The altered condition of things in the county of Meath. During the last two years things have been different than at the time the last redistribution was made.
  Mr. HAZLETON: Will the authorities in Ireland consult the Irish county councils before deciding what the next free quota of policemen shall be?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, Sir; I do not think that would lead to any satisfactory results.
  Mr. KILBRIDE: Is it not the fact that the free quota in the different counties is regulated according to the population of the different counties?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, Sir; it is regulated according to the necessities of each county.
  Mr. WHITE: Arising out of that question—
  Mr. SPEAKER: Order, order. I think the hon. Gentleman had better put down a question. He has had a very good innings.

  War Office Land, Tidworth (Question of Shops).
  Captain FABERasked the Secretary of State for War if he will state whether any opinion adverse to allowing shops to be built on War Office land at Tidworth has ever been expressed by any commanding officer; and, if he will consider the un-desirability of allowing any trading buildings to be so built, looking at the proximity to the Tidworth Barracks?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY of the WAR OFFICE (Mr. F. D. Acland): The reply to both question is in the negative. The shops are much wanted to cater for the requirements of the troops, and the use of the site selected will not interfere with the general purposes for which the land on Salisbury Plain was acquired.
  Captain FABER: Will they come under the War Office or the Local Government Board with regard to the water, lighting, and drainage?
  Mr. ACLAND: I think notice of that question should be given.

  Orders for Rifles.
  Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked the Secretary of State for War whether the orders for rifles to be made by private firms during the present financial year have been allocated; and, if so, what orders have been placed with the Birmingham Small Arms Company, Limited?
  Mr. ACLAND: The orders for rifles in the current year have been placed, but I do not consider it desirable to state the amount of the order given to any particular firm—at any rate, during the progress of the contract.

  War Office and Pimlico Clothing Factory.
  Mr. T. F. RICHARDSasked the Secretary of State for War whether he is aware that the buttonholers at the Pimlico Clothing Factory have had their wages reduced from 3s. to 5s. in the pound without any legitimate reason being given other than that of economy; and whether he is prepared to meet a deputation from the women affected, accompanied by the officials of their union?
  Mr. ACLAND: The piece-work rates for button-holing have recently been revised on a new basis. The average earnings of the machinists have fallen from 28s. 0½d. weekly to 25s. 9d. weekly, which is a very good wage. In reply to the second part of the question, all the women concerned, after being seen by the chief ordnance officer were informed that they might send a deputation to the War Office, but after appointing representatives for this purpose have decided not to send the deputation. If, however, any section of them desire to attend as a deputation I shall be very glad to see them, and they may be accompanied by any official or officials of their union or of the United Government Workers' Federation. I cannot, however, after what has occurred in this case and in view of what has occurred in similar cases in the past, regard such a deputation as representative of the whole class concerned.
  Mr. T. F. RICHARDS: I understand then the hon. Gentleman is prepared to receive this deputation as requested in the memorial?
  Mr. ACLAND: I have not seen the memorial, but I am quite prepared to receive the deputation.

  Hampshire Council School (Dowse Charity Funds).
  Captain FABERasked the President of the Board of Education if he will state whether, under section 13 of The Educa-

  1667
  tion Act, 1902, under no circumstances can the funds of the Dowse Charity be used for the purposes of county council elementary schools without the consent of the trustees; will he state whether this means that there can be no relief to the rates from this source for the projected new school at Broughton, in Hampshire; whether the estimated cost of this school has already increased from the £2,000 mentioned at the time of inquiry to over £3,000; and whether he will cause further inquiry to be made?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Runciman): The income of Dowse's Charity amounts to about £90 per annum, and in view of the trusts, so long as Dowse's School is maintained as a voluntary public elementary school, there must be paid to the local education authority under section 13 of The Education Act, 1902, so much as may be agreed between the local education authority and the trustees, or, in default of such agreement, be determined by the Board of Education. The amount paid to the local authority must be applied by them for relief of the rates of the parish of Broughton in manner specified by section 13 (2) of the Act, irrespectively of the provision of a new council school in the parish. The school is estimated to cost about £3,000, out of which a grant of £1,200 has been provisionally allocated by the Board. As I previously stated, a public inquiry has already been held, and I am not prepared to reopen the question.

  Secondary Schools (New Regulations).
  Mr. BOLANDasked the President of the Board of Education whether he can state when the new Regulations for secondary schools will be published?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I hope it may be possible to issue these Regulations next week, but I cannot yet pledge myself to any particular date.

  Historical Teaching in Secondary Schools.
  Mr. BOLANDasked the President of the Board of Education whether he has concluded his inquiry into the method of historical teaching carried on in one of the Birmingham council secondary schools, to which his attention has already been directed; and, if so, what is the result of his inquiry?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: Yes, Sir; but my inquiries do not tend to corroborate the statements made in the anonymous letter
  1668
  which the hon. Member sent me. Those statements appear to be based on a single remark made by one of the teachers, which was certainly unwise, but is in no way typical of the methods of instruction prevailing in the school.

  Empire Day (National Flag).
  Captain CRAIGasked the President of the Board of Education whether he will permit the national flag to be flown over the offices of the Board of Education on forthcoming Empire Day.
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I beg to refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the Prime Minister on 19th May last year, which, so far as I am concerned, still holds good.
  Captain CRAIG: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he knows anybody outside the Cabinet who objects to the flying of the flag on Empire Day?
  Mr. STANLEY WILSON: Are we to understand that in the opinion of the present Government Empire Day is a day not worthy of celebration?

  Indictments at Assizes.
  Mr. JEREMIAH MacVEAGHasked the Lord Advocate whether he can state the total number of indictments presented at the last assizes for all the counties in Scotland, exclusive of Glasgow and Edinburgh; the average number for every county; and the average number for each million of the population?
  Mr. ALEXANDER URE: The total number of indictments presented at the sittings of the High Court of Justiciary for all the counties in Scotland (exclusive of Glasgow and Edinburgh) during the year 1908 was 45, the average per county 1.363, and the average per million of population 9.473.
  Mr. JEREMIAH MacVEAGHasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the total number of indictments presented at the last assizes for all the counties in England and Wales, exclusive of the chief cities, the average number for every county, and the average number for each million of the population?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of the HOME OFFICE (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The Secretary of State cannot give the total number of indictments presented at the last assizes without imposing a heavier task on his staff than appears to him to be justified, as the figures are not classified

  1669
  on that basis. The hon. Member will, however, find very full information as to the number of indictable offences committed and tried in the recently-published Criminal Judicial Statistics for 1907, the last year for which figures are available. The tables at pages 48, 52, 56, show that in 1907 there were 3,769 persons for trial at assizes and 8,828 at quarter sessions, making, with two for trial in the High Court, a total of 12,599. The table at page 58 gives the classification of these persons according to counties, and that at page 94 shows the indictable offences, apprehensions, and prosecutions in each police district.
  Mr. MACVEAGH: Am I to understand that the right hon. Gentleman cannot give
  the total number of cases put forward at assizes because the number is so large that the staff of the Home Office has not time to count them up?

SUSPENSION OF ELEVEN O'CLOCK RULE.

  BUSINESS or THE HOUSE (WAYS AND MEANS).
  Motion made and Question proposed: "That the Proceedings of the Committee of Ways and Means, if under consideration at Eleven o'clock this night, be not interrupted under the Standing Order (Sittings of the House)."—[The Chancellor of the Exchequer].
  The House divided: Ayes, 240; Noes, 103.

  Division No. 94.]

  AYES.

  [3.45 p.m.

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Dewar, Sir J. A. (Inverness-shire)

  Laidlaw, Robert

  Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)

  Agnew, George William

  Duckworth, Sir James

  Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Duncan, c. (Barrow-in-Furness)

  Lambert, George

  Alden, Percy

  Duncan, J. Hastings (York, Otley)

  Lamont, Norman

  Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

  Dunn, A. Edward

  Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

  Leese, Sir John F. (Accrington)

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Ellis, Rt. Hon. John Edward

  Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Erskine, David C.

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

  Essex, R. W.

  Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David

  Barker, Sir John

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

  Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

  Evans, Sir S. T.

  Lyell, Charles Henry

  Barnard, E. B.

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

  Barnes, G. N.

  Fenwick, Charles

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Barran, Sir John Nicholson

  Ferens, T. R.

  Mackarness, Frederic C.

  Beale, W. P.

  Ffrench, Peter

  Maclean, Donald

  Bellairs, Carlyon

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonport)

  Fuller, John Michael F.

  M'Callum, John M.

  Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

  Fullerton, Hugh

  M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

  Bennett, E. N.

  Gibb, James (Harrow)

  M'Micking, Major G.

  Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

  Gill, A. H.

  Maddison, Frederick

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)

  Mallett, Charles E.

  Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Marnham, F. J.

  Black, Arthur W.

  Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

  Massie, J.

  Bottomley, Horatio

  Grant, Corrie

  Menzies, Walter

  Boulton, A. C. F.

  Greenwood, Hamar (York)

  Middlebrook, William

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Gulland, John W.

  Molteno, Percy Alport

  Brace, William

  Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

  Money, L. G. Chiozza

  Bramsdon, T. A.

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

  Montagu, Hon. E. S.

  Branch, James

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

  Brockiehurst, W. B.

  Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Brodie, H. C.

  Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

  Morrell, Philip

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Napier, T. B.

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

  Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.

  Nicholls, George

  Cameron, Robert

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

  Causton, Rt. Hon, Richard Knight

  Helme, Norval Watson

  Norton, Captain Cecil William

  Cawley, Sir Frederick

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Chance, Frederick William

  Henry, Charles S.

  Nuttall, Harry

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

  O'Connor, James (Wlcklow, W.)

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Higham, John Sharp

  O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

  Cleland, J. W.

  Hobart, Sir Robert

  O'Grady, J.

  Clough, William

  Hobhouse, Charles E. H.

  O'Malley, William

  Cobbold, Felix Thornley

  Hodge, John

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Partington, Oswald

  Compton-Rickett, Sir J.

  Hutton, Alfred Eddison

  Paulton, James Mellor

  Cooper, G. J.

  Hyde, Clarendon G.

  Pearce, William (Limehouse)

  Corbett, C. H (Sussex, E. Grinstaed)

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton)

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Jackson, R. S.

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Cox, Harold

  Jardine, Sir J.

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)

  Johnson, John (Gateshead)

  Pointer, J.

  Crosfield, A. H.

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Pollard, Dr. G. H.

  Crossley, William J.

  Jones, Sir D. Brynmer (Swansea)

  Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

  Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan)

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

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

  Pullar, Sir Robert

  Silcock, Thomas Ball

  Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

  Radford, G. H.

  Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie

  Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)

  Rainy, A. Rolland

  Soames, Arthur Wellesley

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Raphael, Herbert H.

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

  Watt, Henry A.

  Rees, J. D.

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Wedgwood, Josiah C.

  Rendall, Athelstan

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Weir, James Galloway

  Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

  Straus, B. S. (Mile End)

  Whitbread, S. Howard

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

  Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

  White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

  Richardson, A.

  Summerbell, T.

  White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Sutherland, J. E.

  Whitehead, Rowland

  Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

  Taylor, John W. (Durham)

  Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

  Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Ratcliffe)

  Wilkie, Alexander

  Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

  Williams, A. Osmond (Merioneth)

  Robinson, S.

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

  Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

  Robson, Sir William Snowdon

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

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

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

  Tomkinson, James

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

  Rose, Charles Day

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

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

  Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

  Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

  Vivian, Henry

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.— Mr. Joseph Pease and the Master of Ellbank.

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Walsh, Stephen

  Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)

  Walters, John Tudor

  Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne)

  Walton, Joseph

  Seely, Colonel

  Waring, Walter

  NOES.

  Anson, Sir William Reynell

  Guinness, W. E. (Bury St. Edmunds)

  Percy, Earl

  Anstruther-Gray, Major

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

  Ashley, W. W.

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Pretyman, E. G.

  Balcarres, Lord

  Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

  Randles, Sir John Scurrah

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

  Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City Lend.)

  Helmsley, Viscount

  Renton, Leslie

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Hill, Sir Clement

  Renwick, George

  Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Hunt, Rowland

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Jowett, F. W.

  Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

  Bowles, G. Stewart

  Joynson-Hicks, William

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Bridgeman, W. Clive

  Kavanagh, Walter M.

  Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert

  Carlile, E. Hildred

  Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

  Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Kennedy, Vincent Paul

  Sloan, Thomas Henry

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Kerry, Earl of

  Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)

  Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

  Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.

  Snowden, P.

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

  Lane-Fox, G. R.

  Starkey, John R.

  Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E.

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

  Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

  Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

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

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Lonsdale, John Brownlee

  Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

  Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  Doughty, Sir George

  M'Arthur, Charles

  Thornton, Percy M.

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  M'Calmont, Col. James

  Tuke, Sir John Batty

  Du Cros, Arthur

  Magnus, Sir Philip

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Duffy, William J.

  Marks, H. H. (Kent)

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

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

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

  Fiber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)

  Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

  Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

  Fardell, Sir T. George

  Middlemore, John Throgmorton

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

  Fell, Arthur

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  Fletcher, J. S.

  Morrison-Bell, Capt.

  Young, Samuel

  Gardner, Ernest

  Murphy, John (Kerry, East)

  Younger, George

  Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

  Newdegate, F. A. N.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir A. Acland-Hood and Mr. H. W. Forster.

  Glover, Thomas

  Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

  Gordon, J.

  Oddy, John James

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

  Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

WAYS AND MEANS.
CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE.

BUDGET RESOLUTIONS.
[MR. EMMOTT in the chair.]
(IN THE COMMITTEE.)
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUERmoved the following Resolution:—

BUDGET RESOLUTIONS.

  BEER.—CUSTOMS.
  "That in addition to the duties of Customs now payable on beer imported
  1672
  into Great Britain or Ireland there shall, on and after the 11th day of May, nineteen hundred and nine, be charged the following duties, that to say:—
  In the case of beer called or similar to mum, spruce, black beer, or Berlin white beer, or other preparations, whether fermented or not fermented, of a similar character:—
  For every thirty-six gallons where the worts thereof are or were before fermentation of a specific gravity:—

  1673

  s.

  d.

  Not exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen degrees, a duty of

  1

  0

  Exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen degrees, a duty of

  1

  2

  In the case of every description of beer other than that above specified:—
  For every thirty-six gallons, where the worts thereof were, before fermentation, of a specific gravity of one thousand and fifty-five degrees, a duty of … threepence
  and so in proportion for any difference in gravity."
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday that I wished to raise a point of detail, although it is one of some importance, on this Resolution. I had intended to communicate with the right hon. Gentleman by a letter this morning what the matter was, in order that he should have had a little time to deal with it. I am sorry that I was not able to do so, but the fact is that my correspondence has been increased so much by the right hon. Gentleman's Budget that I had a great deal more than I could do this morning, and I am obliged to put my question across the House, and I will be very brief. I must say in passing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not seem to understand the reason why we attach importance to this Resolution. No doubt the fiscal result would be very small, like the result of a great many duties we now charge, but the trade result of the absence of such a corresponding duty when you are taxing the home-made article might be out of proportion to the fiscal result which you obtain by taxing it. There is, I know, the principle that if there is no preference to our own people there should be no preference to the foreigner, but in addition to that there was reason to consider that a preference even of this amount to the foreigner might largely divert the course of trade, because a very small matter very often has a great effect in trade affairs.
  I will not develop that argument any further, but I will come to the specific matter to which I wish to draw the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr has a different point which he wishes to raise, which refers to the charge of the duty on
  1674
  the home produce whilst on the bulk of imported beer the charge is by gravity. But my point is a different one. As I understand the brewer's licence duty and the charge on the home beer it is in the form of a brewer's licence duty, and I understand that the brewer's licence duty is paid on October every year in advance.
  The brewer, therefore, will be out of his money for the whole of this duty for a shorter or longer period, according to the time which elapses between the time when he pays his duty and the time when he is able to sell his beer. How does that compare with the case of imported beer? The importer will pay the duty only when he takes his beer out of bond at the moment of sale. He will not have to charge himself except on the capital, and he will be able to recover the amount of the duty. The home producer will, on the contrary, have to charge himself with the interest on the money. Throughout our Customs and Excise duties that necessity is recognised whenever it occurs by a difference between two scales of duty. The Customs duties are made higher than the exact equivalent of the Excise duties, in order to compensate him for the indirect charges which the levy of the Excise places upon him. I submit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that in framing his Budget this matter has escaped his attention. In some cases the charges will be very small, but in some cases they may be very considerable. A great deal of the beer which goes into home consumption is drunk within a short time after it is brewed. Some is kept for a considerable time longer, and the export beer, I am informed by people in a position to know, is sometimes kept for eighteen months, or even a longer period, before it is sent out; but the brewer will have to pay not only at the moment of brewing, but in advance, and he may have to wait something like two years in these cases before he can recover from the consumer. I hope that I have made my point clear to the Committee, and I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer sees it, and I hope that he will tell us that he has considered the matter and what he thinks is necessary to do. The effect of the duty will fall upon the export trade. It is an export duty on beer as well as the beer consumed at home. Did the Chancellor of the Exchequer know that? On what ground do the Government say that an export duty on coal is injurious to the trade of this country, but that an export duty on beer

  1675
  can be imposed without any injurious effect? That is a matter of consequence, and of some principle which we may have to recur to at a later stage.
  Mr. WALTER GUINNESS: Quite apart from the comparatively small point which the Member for Ayr Burghs wishes to raise on the question of standard barrelage, I think that the concession of the Chancellor of the Exchequer obviously calls for a certain amount of comment from a general point of view of Tariff Reform. I think for that reason that the right hon. Gentleman will be very well advised to try to prevent any discussion on this novel method of getting money by the Budget. The licences proposed in the original Budget were quite clearly a preferential arrangement for the foreigner. This is not the only tax which gives the preference to the foreigner, and throws undue burdens on the British manufacturer and lets the foreigner off scot free. I should like to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the advance which he has made in this direction. He has admitted that there is a justification for an import duty apart from the necessity of raising Revenue. He has realised that there are other duties besides Excise taxes, and that the cost of manufacture may be a burden on the industries of this country. It is very generally believed that the right hon. Gentleman's experience at the Board of Trade showed him that the free import theory was not quite so water-tight as is generally believed on his side of the House. This is a small step, but it is still a step which hon. Members on this side wish to go in the direction of Tariff Reform. The right hon. Gentleman has apparently treated this duty on the brewers in quite a different way to other duties, but he ought to charge a higher duty against the foreigners to compensate the manufacturers in this country for the greatly increased cost which will be necessary for the production of their articles owing to the retailers' duty. I think that the retailers' duty in this trade is quite different from any other trade. It is a tax which will fall almost entirely on the brewers. I think that nine-tenths of the licensed premises are tied to some brewer or another, and that the effect will be to destroy the majority of free houses. In the case of free houses the tax can only be borne by the retail trader, but in the case of tied houses the wholesale traders will bear part of the additional burden.
  1676
  I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to go a little further and put on an import duty which will have the effect of countervailing the increased burden on the manufacturers in this country. I am told that the London brewers have stated that the retailers' tax will amount to 2s. 6d. per barrel on their output. Already before these duties were imposed the brewers, like every other trader in this country, were bearing a larger amount of taxation than their German competitors. In Germany the taxation per head of the population—I mean Imperial taxation—is only half what it is in this country, while local taxation is as 10 to 25 compared with similar taxation in this country. For that reason it is absolutely essential that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should make this duty on imports a little more effectual than he has done. I am prevented by the rules of the House from proposing that this duty should be increased, but we on this side wish to put it on record that we regard this duty as quite inadequate, and that the action of the Government in proposing only 3d. is not founded on any principle of logic or has any regard to the general burden of taxation on the trading community of this country.
  Mr. G. YOUNGER: I do not propose to trouble the House with my views on fiscal reform. This morning I had a letter from a pretty large trader in Scotland, who tells me that an extremely energetic German trader told him that whatever the effect on prices here might be Germany will supply beer at the old prices. The point which I wish to deal with is this. The right hon. Gentleman proposes very properly to place an equivalent duty on imported beer. He proposes to charge the British brewer 3d. on the bulk barrel. The standard barrel is 55 degrees. I have not been able to take out the figures, but I think I am right in saying that the average gravity of the bulk barrel last year was something like 1,052 degrees, while on the standard barrel it was 1,055 degrees. It is proposed to put 3d. on 1,052 degrees, and only 2d. on 1,055 degrees. To that extent he is precluding himself, unless at a later period he charges the licence duty against the brewers on standard value, which it is quite within his power to do, from putting the matter right if the Resolution is passed in its present form. I understand he cannot raise any tax later on without recommitting the Bill, and an alteration

  1677
  of the standard would be in the nature of a rise in this new tax. How is he going to get over that difficulty? If he is prepared to tell me that at a later stage he will arrange that the charges on the brewers' licence will be on the standard barrel, then I shall have nothing more to say; but if he adheres to the bulk barrel—which, in my opinion, is an unfair way of taxing the beer—he will place a serious drawback upon the brewers who brew light beers. If he is not prepared now to say the duty will be on the standard barrel, then I would recommend him, in order to keep himself on the safe side, and until his advisers have an opportunity of discussing the matter with him, to alter the 1,055 in the Resolution to 1,050, and that, I think, would enable him to make the adjustment afterwards without recommitting the resolution. I do not know whether he has consulted the Somerset House officials, but I would suggest that this would get him out of his difficulty.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I think I had better reply at once to the hon. Member who has spoken on this subject with special knowledge of the matter. Indeed, I wish the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition had given way to me in the first place. The point is a rather difficult one, and it is of a very technical nature, but I may say at once that I have had time to consult some of the officials who are in charge of this branch of the revenue. I will take the first point with regard to gravity or bulk. I think there is a good deal in the suggestions made this afternoon, and I am quite prepared to consider whether the barrelage which we are charging the British brewer should not rather be on the standard than on the bulk barrel. The Resolution which has been already carried will enable me to do this, because, after all, it only represents the maximum. The same thing applies with regard to the question of the export duty on beer. I can do that also in my Resolution. As the right hon. Gentleman knows very well, you can make a rebate although you cannot put up a tax, and that I am prepared to do later on, as we have no desire at all to be unfair to the British brewer. As long as I get the money that I want within limitations I am willing to consider all these matters which affect the trade. On these two points I repeat I think I shall be able to meet the criticisms of right hon. and hon. Members opposite. Now I come to the
  1678
  question of interest. That is really, on the whole, a very small matter. The total of the new duty on foreign beer only comes to about £600 or £700. I am not at all sure it will reach the lower figure. The interest on the total is a very small matter to the trade, and cannot be taken as giving any considerable preference to the foreign brewer. As the right hon. Gentleman knows very well, the British brewer pays once a month, and sometimes his beer is sold before he is called upon to pay the duty.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I beg your pardon. I want to get this point quite clear. The right hon. Gentleman is now talking about the brewers' payment of Excise duties. They no doubt are paid once a month, but the licence duty is paid once a year, and the duty which the right hon. Gentleman is now about to impose takes the form of a licence duty, and unless he makes separate provision, of which he has not yet said a word, it will have to be paid at the same time as the ordinary licence duty.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: That is so. I only want to show that as far as the brewer is concerned he does get an advantage, inasmuch as very often his beer is sold and drunk before he is called upon to pay the duty. That is not the case with the foreign brewer, who has to pay the duty before the beer can be released from bond. Further than that, as the right hon. Gentleman knows very well, there is at the present moment a preference of 3d. in favour of the British brewer. I believe the British brewer pays 7s. 9d. per barrel, whereas the foreign brewer pays 8s., and that really covers these charges for interest, etc. In what I have done I am following strict precedent. When Mr. Goschen put 3d. on the duty he placed a corresponding duty on the foreigner. There was no distinction at all. And when Lord St. Aldwyn put 1s. on, he, too, made no distinction between the British and the foreign brewer.
  Mr. YOUNGER: Both were on the standard barrel.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: Well, I have conceded that point to the hon. Member. I have told him I think I shall be able to meet him. But this other point of interest is an exceedingly small matter. It is the question of interest on £700 not for a whole year, but perhaps for two or three months at the end of the year. I

  1679
  should not think this would amount to more than £20 or £30, and I do not think the right hon. Gentleman can possibly suggest that such a sum would constitute a difference between preference for a particular trade and putting it on the basis of absolute equality. Further than that I do not really see how I could spread £20 over the whole trade. It would be such an infinitesimal fraction, and it would add so much to the trouble, expense and difficulties of the Revenue that it would hardly be worth while to do it. This Resolution was put down on the suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition, and I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his suggestion. I think we have been able practically to meet his views.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not want to raise any unnecessary difficulty about the Resolution, which, as the right hon. Gentleman says, was put down in reply to the criticisms of my right hon. Friend. But I really cannot follow him, and I would like, therefore, to ask one or two specific questions. He says that neither Mr. Goschen nor Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, when they increased the Excise on beer, increased the Customs duty by more than the exact equivalent. No, Sir, but the Excise on beer is, as the right hon. Gentleman says, paid month by month, and there is practically no lock-up of capital, whereas in the case of imported beer it has not to be paid until the beer is taken out of bond. The right hon. Gentleman's proposal is to charge not an Excise but a licence duty; he is charging barrelage under the name of a licence duty, and that duty will have to be paid once for all, consequently the lock-up is very much more than in the case of the Excise. That is where I think the right hon. Gentleman does not understand my point. He does not realise the distinction between the two. I do not understand his point either. He says the whole charge can only amount to £700. What does he mean by that? Where does he get his £700 from? Is he thinking of the yield of his import duty?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: The yield of the additional import duty will be £600 or £700.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That has nothing to do with what the brewer is going to pay. The English brewer is not going to pay the additional duty on imported German beer. He is to pay 3d. per barrel for all the beer he brews himself. That is not a matter merely of £600 or
  1680
  £700, it is an enormously greater sum which is at stake. I do not know what amount the right hon. Gentleman has calculated it at, but he clearly has confused two entirely different things.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: The only point I make is this: that the yield of the additional import duty on foreign beer will come to about £600 or £700; that is really the measure of the difference between the two. Taking the interest on that sum at five per cent., it would give about £17 10s., and that really is a very small matter indeed.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That affects only the foreign brewer. What I want the right hon. Gentleman to look at is the charge he is putting on the British trader. If the right hon. Gentleman will for a moment consent to forget the foreign trader and devote his ability to considering the position of the British trader I think he will see that the question is a much bigger one than he suggests. I cannot work out the exact equivalent, because naturally it requires some knowledge as to what is the average lock-up of the brewery companies. But nothing the right hon. Gentleman has said removes my feeling that the basis on which he has calculated his Customs duty is unsound, and is not in accordance with the general spirit of our other Customs duties.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I just want to ask one question. I gather the whole difference between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. Friend is that the former is stating what he thinks the amount of the additional import duty will be, while my right hon. Friend is dealing with the amount of the Excise duty payable in this country. My right hon. Friend thinks the Excise duty which will have to be paid will involve a very considerable loss of interest, and that the difficulty should be met by placing a higher duty on the beer imported. Now the question I rise to ask is this. I presume the Chancellor of the Exchequer has fixed his figure £700 on the basis of the quantity of beer now imported. May I ask whether he has taken into consideration the fact that under these new duties a different state of affairs may arise, and that a very much larger amount of foreign beer may be imported when the home trade is placed at a disadvantage?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: How can it be at a disadvantage?
  Sir F. BANBURY: The increased taxation will cause one of two things. Either

  1681
  the home trade will die out, or they will have to raise the price of the beer; and that may induce the foreigner to come in with a larger quantity of beer.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: How can he sell his beer! The duty is on the licences of the houses which are selling it.
  Sir F. BANBURY: The British trader will have to get a higher price for it here to compensate him for the increased amount which is charged for the licence. The English brewer must make up the loss which he is going to be called upon to pay. I do not care whether it is by a tax on the barrel or whether by tax by way of licence duty—it comes to exactly the same thing. He has got to pay the money and must make his loss good. If he is to get it back from the consumer he will have to raise his prices, and that may give a bounty to the foreigner, who will send a much larger amount of foreign beer into this country. The desire of my right hon. Friend is to put the foreign producer of beer upon an equality with the English producer of beer, and he considers—and I think he is right—that the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are not sufficient.
  Mr. E. B. BARNARD: I think there is a great deal of confusion in this matter. Whether the beer which the retailer sells comes from the foreigner or is produced in this country it is obvious that if you are charging merely a licence to the retailer the same condition applies to the foreign of beer by our own people and by the matter to be considered is to what extent this proposal meets equally the production of beer by our own people and by the foreigner. The Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to charge 12s. only on 50 barrels. According to the recent Report, he chose to take—and I am not arguing it—the bulk barrel. The bulk barrel works out in the Report, one of the speakers said—I think the Member for Bury St. Edmunds—about 1,053 gravity. I am willing to take it at 1,054. I am dealing with 12s. on 50 barrels; and I find 3d. a barrel would be 12s. 6d. on 50 at 1,054. There is no case whatever, so far as I can judge—I do not like some of the proposals of the right hon. Gentleman—but there is no case for saying that the English brewer on mere production of the material is injured in any way by the imposition of the licence duty. The licence duty is open to the gravest argument, but in this matter there is no injustice whatever between the English brewer and the foreign brewer.
  Mr. BONAR LAW: I quite agree that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made a good defence on the question of the amount of preference as shown in this particular case. It does not amount to a great deal, but I do not think that covers the whole ground. The right hon. Gentleman admits that to the extent of the interest, whatever it is, £30 or £17, the foreign producer of beer does get a small preference.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: No; I do not.
  Mr. BONAR LAW: The right hon. Gentleman admitted it in his speech, but whether he does or not it is the fact. The point I wish to make is far more serious than this, in my opinion. The mistake which the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends make in this question is to assume that trade is going to continue on exactly the same conditions in the future that it proceeds on now. I remember in the Debates of last year the argument of the Prime Minister was to take the actual trade between this country and the various Colonies, and say it is very small, and what is the use of it. But it is not a case of what it is now, but of what it may be. I say precisely the same in this instance. The interest is not in itself a big thing, but this is going to alter the trade in a great many respects. The right hon. Gentleman says that the people who pay the licences will have to pay them whether they deal in foreign beer or English beer; but everyone knows that a large part of the trade of this country is carried on by brewers who sell their own beer, and these licences will undoubtedly make a great difference to them, and they will have to add to the price of the beer what they pay for the licences. That is going to change the trade, and I say it may just as well take the trade from the brewers who have tied houses and give it to the foreign brewers as take the trade from the brewers who have tied houses and give it to other English brewers. There is undoubtedly in this case a slight preference being given to the foreign brewer. To put it very mildly, if the right hon. Gentleman has determined, as we all know he has, to get a certain amount of taxation out of these duties, would it not be reasonable to make it certain that the foreign producer is not put in a better position than the home producer? Would there be any objection to put the home producer of beer in the same position as the right hon. Gentleman puts

  1683
  the home producer of cocoa? Why not make it perfectly clear that the home producer will get some advantage as against the foreign producer? That is the whole point, and I think it is one in which he ought to give the advantage to the home producer rather than the foreign producer.
  Mr. T. M. HEALY: I wish to say a word as to the effect on the small trader of these proposals. In my Constituency there are several small breweries, three or four on account of the excellent barley grown in that country, which is better than that in any other part of the country. In my opinion the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman would mean the immediate destruction of at least two of those breweries. Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed the extraordinary fact that since his Budget was introduced Guinness' shares rose £1 in value. Why? Because everyone recognises that the big man will be helped and the small man will be hit by this Budget. So far as the beer tax goes, it is a capitalist Budget. Guinness' will pay the duty out of their profits, and the consumer of their article will not be charged a single farthing extra. They can afford it, because out of the enormous revenue which comes to Guinness you have seen, the other day, that they were even able to split their shares. In the case of Guinness this is a distinct tax upon the brewer. But take the case of the small brewer; one of the small breweries to which I referred has not of recent years been able to pay a dividend, and they will try if they can to put this extra tax upon the consumer. That means, of course, that they will have to raise the price of their article, but the moment they try to do so, of course the big brewer who does not raise the price of his article, gets an advantage over the poorer man. Guinness would be able to send their beer by arrangement with the railway companies to Tralee, 180 miles, at the same price as the brewers can send it from Cork, which has not half the mileage. The moment will arrive when the small man will have to consider whether he shall raise the price of his article against the consumer, but Guinness, who is the chief conductor of the orchestra, will not allow him.
  The CHAIRMAN: I do not quite see how the remarks of the hon. Member come within the scope of the Resolution.
  Mr. T. M. HEALY: I am attacking the tax. Of course, if this was purely the
  1684
  3d. I am out of order, but I understood that the Resolution was being debated as a whole.
  The CHAIRMAN: So far as I understand the hon. and learned Member is discussing another point in regard to the duties which we were discussing yesterday. This is only upon the Customs duty upon foreign imports, and although the question of home production as against foreign importation may be mentioned as a matter of contrast, I do not see how the question as between the large producer and the small producer at home is in order.
  Mr. T. M. HEALY: I was going to conclude upon that end of the question, and I think it is practically the same. The foreign producer who is protected in his own country from English importations is undoubtedly in the position of the capitalist whose case I have put, but we are told by an hon. Gentleman above the Gangway of considerable experience, that the German will continue to sell his beer in this country at the same price as of old. Why? Because he is protected in his own country against British importation. In other words, he has practically a bonus from his Government for selling, which enables him to dump his beer in England. It is exactly the same case as the case which I put with regard to the large brewer, but instead of getting his aid from capital, he gets it from the State, and I think it would be far fairer for the right hon. Gentleman to introduce a tax which would obviously fall upon the consumer in every case, instead of a tax which, in one case, if you attempt to put it upon the consumer, some arrangement of foreigners will prevent you from doing so, and, in the other case, will enable the large capitalist at home to sell at a low price to the detriment of the smaller brewer.
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: There is one aspect of the question which has not yet been touched upon, of which I think we ought to have, what we have not had, some explanation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not know the important details of the effects of this scheme which the Chancellor of the Exchequer put forward, which have been mentioned by my hon. and right hon. Friends, but I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take them into account before he frames his Budget Bill and endeavour to meet the legitimate objections that have been raised. This is, I think, the only oppor-

  1685
  tunity we have, so far as I am aware, of really asking the Government what is their view of the scheme of taxation with regard to which the right hon. Gentleman now finds himself compelled to put on a Customs duty. He represented that scheme of taxation to us in his Budget speech as not being a tax upon the consumer, but as a tax upon the brewer. He represented it as a licence duty which will fall upon the trade, and he deliberately said he did not propose to put any tax upon the consumer of beer, if I remember aright, for two reasons, one of which was that any tax upon consumers of beer would have to be much bigger if it was to be properly paid, and he pointed out in the second place that he thought he had put additional taxation of an indirect kind upon the consumers of alcoholic liquors in other parts of his Budget, and he did not propose to put an additional tax upon them here. That was the Budget statement, but I gathered that in reality this was a tax upon the consumer and would require to have a Customs balance. The Government assented to that, and they say the case is unanswerable. The matter is not a very big one, though, as far as it goes, there is an unanswerable case for putting on a Customs duty, and that is the matter we are now discussing. If that view be true, the old view must be abandoned. If it be true that this, indeed, is a tax upon the Excise of a kind which requires to be balanced by Customs, then it is a tax which falls upon the consumer, and the Government have themselves said so. I think the right hon. Gentleman has said so, and I know the Prime Minister said so when he made the final speech concluding the Debate for his party on the general discussion which took place on Monday week.
  Under these circumstances we have two entirely different views of the particular scheme of taxation of which the Customs duty is the foreign part—one the view of the Budget speech and one the view of the Prime Minister in reply, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he deals with newspaper reporters, and of the whole of the Government when they put on this Customs duty and gave a drawback upon the export. We have it now that the Government regards this as a duty on the consumer. How is that to be reconciled with the fact that in the first place the Chancellor of the Exchequer said he did not wish to have a tax on the consumer, and in the second place with the statement, made over and over again,
  1686
  that if it is a tax on the consumer, and if the price is raised on the consumer, the consumer will pay a great deal more than the State gets, and, as was explained yesterday, that this will be a great endowment of the brewing industry? I think this is the proper time for the Government to give us a perfectly clear view of what this double taxation really means. I mean the Excise taxation which was passed last night and the Customs taxation which we are about to pass now. Do they intend it, as they originally said, to be a tax on the brewer or do they intend it to be, as they now say, a tax on the consumer, and, if the latter, how can they put a tax on the consumer which they say must of necessity put a large bonus into the pockets of the brewers? The brewer is not to blame for it. He can only raise the retail article by a given fraction. The Government say that fraction will be far more than will go into the Exchequer. Of course it must go into the pocket of the brewer if that argument were sound. We have not had any explanation of the Government's attitude since the general discussion of the question. We ought perhaps to have been able to obtain a full explanation last night upon the Excise portion of the taxation, but it is not too late to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now that we have come to the Customs portion of it, to give us a clear and full statement of the Government policy.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: The right hon. Gentleman has raised a very large issue of policy, which I cannot possibly really discuss within the limits of order on this particular Resolution. It is clearly a question which ought to be, and has been, raised first of all upon the general discussion which we had three days of, and it might conceivably have been raised yesterday. One thing is perfectly clear. This 3d. on the 30,000 barrels of foreign beer which come into this country is not going to make a difference to the consumer. If there is going to be any difference to the consumer it is in respect of the heavier tax discussed yesterday. If I were to enter into that I should be discussing a Resolution already passed, and it would be absolutely out of order if I were to pursue the very large questions of policy which have been raised, rather too late, by the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. BALFOUR: You did not give us a chance last night.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: The right hon. Gentleman can really not say that. We were discussing it for ten hours, and that question was never raised at all, and yet the right hon. Gentleman says it underlies the whole policy of the Government on this question—yet during the whole of these ten hours the principle which underlay the whole policy of the Government was never mentioned, and it is only mentioned on a Resolution to which it is not in the slightest degree relevant. I could only enter into it by referring to a Resolution which was passed, and three-fourths of my observations must be out of order. If I do not follow the right hon. Gentleman there he must not imagine that it is out of any lack of courtesy to him. It is purely because I am anxious to conform to the rules of the House. With regard to this particular 3d. I am still of opinion that it is a duty on brewers, but the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters say it is not. It is perfectly true that it is paid in the form of a licence, they say, but it will handicap us in our competition with foreign producers. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dulwich says, on the whole, you ought to give the benefit of the doubt if there is any difficulty at all about it. We are doing it. What is the charge which we are making on the foreign brewer? We are making a charge of 3d. Our charge on British beer is 2.88d. It is a difference of 6d. a barrel in favour of the British brewer, and I thought he was rather going to claim me as a Protectionist. This difference of 6d. far more than covers the interest, which is a very small matter. When we come to work out our scheme of specific gravity if it is still found that the British brewer is under any disadvantage I shall be quite willing to consider any points which may be raised, but I trust that, having put off the Debate until to-day in response to the invitation of hon. Members opposite, they will allow us now to get the Resolution.
  Mr. JAMES HOPE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what is the official definition of "mum" and "spruce"?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: A very famous predecessor of mine, Mr. Gladstone, had that question put to him, and he said no human being was ever able to find it out.
  Resolved,

  BEER.—CUSTOMS.
  "That in addition to the duties of Customs now payable on beer imported into
  1688
  Great Britain or Ireland there shall, on and after the day of, nineteen hundred and nine, be charged the following duties, that is to say:—
  In the case of beer called or similar to mum, spruce, black beer, or Berlin white beer, or other preparations, whether fermented or not fermented, of a similar character:—
  For every thirty-six gallons where the worts thereof are or were before fermentation of a specific gravity:—

  Not exceeding one thousand

  s.

  d.

  two hundred and fifteen degrees, a duty of

  1

  0

  Exceeding one thousand two hundred and fifteen degrees, a duty of

  1

  2

  In the case of every description of beer other than that above specified—

  For every thirty-six gallons, where the worts thereof were, before fermentation, of a specific gravity of one thousand and fifty-five degrees, a duty of

  0

  3

  and so in proportion for any difference in gravity."—[Mr. Lloyd-George.]

  DUTY IN RESPECT or INTOXICATING LIQUOR SUPPLIED IN CLUBS.
  Motion made and Question proposed: "That in the year beginning the first day of January, nineteen hundred and ten, and in every subsequent year, a statement shall be made of the receipts from intoxicating liquor supplied in every club during the preceding year, and an Excise duty shall be charged at the rate of three pence for every pound of those receipts." [Mr. Lloyd-George.]
  Mr. YOUNGER: The right hon. Gentleman last night after I spoke was good enough to take notice of a remark I made about the incidence of taxation on clubs and licensed houses in which I pointed out that, as I understood it, in London a tax of 1s. 4d. a £ on takings would be required in order to equalise the conditions. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to imagine that I thought he ought to tax clubs to that extent. I never said so at all. I only pointed out what the difference was, and I warned him, as a revenue official, that he was entering upon extremely dangerous ground in putting heavy taxation on large hotels and

  1689
  profitable revenue - producing public-houses without putting some more nearly corresponding duty on clubs. I know perfectly well it is a most difficult question for the right hon. Gentleman, and he has shown a considerable amount of courage in attacking it. There has been a good deal said on the other side of the House this year and last about clubs being put in a proper position and so forth, but that was all in the air. No one opposite ever proposed to put them in that position, and the right hon. Gentleman has done something at all events in that direction, and I think he is to be credited not only with good intentions, but with carrying out to some extent what many of his followers have said in the past on this particular subject. I was misunderstood by the right hon. Gentleman if he thought I meant that. I still think 3d. on takings is too small, and I think it ought to be increased, but there is a very dangerous feature in the case namely, that the channels of distribution may gradually be changed, and that we may lose a great deal of revenue, and that clubs, being in a very strong position, and having strong voting power, are not in a position which this or any successive House can interfere with in the same way that it can with the licensed trade.
  Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD: There are one or two rather important matters which ought to be before the Committee. The way the Resolution is worded, and the way it is intended to take effect, will create a good deal of unnecessary trouble and work in every club. I have given notice of an Amendment which I do not propose to move, but which I propose to suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this point. The effect of the Amendment would be that instead of the duty being charged upon the receipt of the club it should be charged upon purchases. The reason is obvious. An ordinary club will probably buy £20 worth of alcoholic liquors, which will be sold in twopenny-worths and threepenny-worths. If every club is charged with a duty of making a bookkeeping entry on every 1½d., 2d., or 4d. a very great deal of bookkeeping and an immense amount of trouble will be necessitated. I am told there is one very large-club in London where it would necessitate three more clerks being employed to keep accounts. It is not a club which belongs to my political side of the House, but to the other. If, instead of charging 3d. upon the receipts of the club, a charge
  1690
  was made upon the purchased articles, the account could be kept with a twentieth or a fortieth of the trouble, and it would be very much simpler in every respect.
  There are two other small points that I should like to mention. There is a very great difference between clubs. There is a very great difference in principle between clubs which belong to members and clubs which are being run by people for their own profit. I, for one, have never been able to see why a club which does not belong entirely to the members should not be put on exactly the same footing as a licensed house. At all events, I only make that comment. The third little point is this very important question of the accounts. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer insists upon this Resolution remaining in the shape in which it has been drawn, and if he insists upon accounts being kept of the sales, then it is obvious that there will have to be some inspection in regard to the books and accounts. There would have to be power to inspect on the part of the Excise, and power to assess on the sales which had taken place according to the books produced, and the accounts would have to be verified by statutory declaration or by some other method of that kind. A great deal of trouble, inconvenience, annoyance, and expense would be inflicted upon clubs for a very small return. I think if the inside workings of clubs and their convenience were to be consulted at all—and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would like to consult their convenience—the clubs upon which he is imposing this duty would probably be willing to consider favourably the alternative suggestion I have made as to putting the duty on purchases instead of on receipts. That would simplify the matter to an enormous extent.
  Mr. HART-DAVIES: I do not rise to offer any opposition to this tax, although, I confess, I do not altogether like it. But we apprehended that something of this kind would be introduced in this Budget, and I think the clubs are prepared not to offer violent opposition to the proposal. I wish to emphasise what the hon. Gentleman opposite said, that the main objection is with respect to the difficulty of keeping the accounts. That will involve some clubs in considerable expense. Everyone knows that it will cost a considerable sum to have the accounts kept in a satisfactory form to show what has been spent on alcoholic refreshments. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will

  1691
  think the matter over with the view of seeing whether in some way it would not be easier and cheaper to collect the duty by imposing it on purchases. I think the suggestion of the hon. Gentleman opposite is a very good one, namely, that the duty should be paid on purchases and not on sales. I think that method would be feasible, and I should think that the clubs will not object to it. The hon. Member for the Ayr Burghs said that you cannot altogether compare public-houses with clubs, because clubs have to keep up a staff of porters and people at the doors to prevent those who are not members from coming into the clubs. That is, of course, not the case with public-houses. Clubs have considerable expense in that way which public-houses have not got, and I think it is hardly fair to compare an ordinary licensed public-house with a club. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to meet the wishes of clubs in the matter of the mode in which they are to keep their accounts for the purpose of assessing the duty.
  Mr. SAMUEL ROBERTS: I wish to join my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool in congratulating the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon his courage in facing this question. We all know that there has been great abuse of clubs, especially in London, and we on this side of the House have brought forward instances of these abuses—cases where clubs have been connected with breweries, and cases where the clubs have been practically Sunday entertainment houses. At these places a great deal of liquor has been consumed in competition with public-houses, which cannot be kept open except at certain hours. At the clubs there is no police supervision, and there are no statutory closing hours to prevent them from being kept open all night. I believe the licensed victuallers feel intensely on this question. A gentleman in my own Constituency said to me the other day: "Well, the Government are taxing us fairly. They want more money, and if only we could go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and get some promise from him that he will not continually tease our trade, that he will look after the clubs, and see that we have not unfair competition from them—if we felt that we had such security for the future we might, be more willing to find the money." I believe that is the feeling of the trade. Those connected with the
  1692
  trade feel that money must be found for the revenue. The Leader of the Opposition has told you emphatically that if we come into power this money must be found from some source. I should like to ask the Chancellor one question, namely: What machinery does he propose to establish to check the amount of the sales of liquors in clubs? Is he going to make an annual audit of each club? If so, what officers are to do it? I presume that the officials of the club would have to keep very strict accounts, which would have to be certified and audited. I would like to ask what the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do, and whether it would be an annual return and audit, or quarterly, or what?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I may be allowed to reply to the questions which have been put to me on the subject of clubs. The hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool suggests that the duty instead of being put on receipts should be put on purchases. As the hon. Gentleman points out very accurately, you would have to put up the duty in that case. I should say that it ought to be at least 4d. if it is not to be on the receipts. [An HON. MEMBER: "Sixpence."] Well, I do not think they charge double. I think on the whole 4d. would be sufficient. I have not had full opportunity of consulting the officials of clubs on this matter, but I think if, in the course of the proceedings, there should be a general feeling that it would be fairer to clubs, and more effective, to charge the duty on purchases instead of on receipts, the proposal could be altered, so long as there was no increase in the charge. Therefore I wish rather to have an open mind at the present moment on this question, and I should like later on to deal with it when we come to the club clauses. I have no doubt they will be criticised in detail, and I would rather wait before I make up my mind about that, in order to hear the general view. But I think there is a great deal to be said for the suggestion which has been put forward that it would be much easier for the Excise officers in checking the accounts to charge on the amount of purchases rather than on the amount of receipts. I hope the Committee will not make up its mind on this question at the present moment. All that is necessary now is general authority to charge clubs on this basis.
  I agree with the hon. and learned Member that the duty on clubs does not quite correspond to the duties charged on

  1693
  publicans; but still, on the whole, I do not think one ought to charge quite as much in the case of clubs. If it were possible to discriminate between clubs which are proprietary institutions, and which are in every practical sense public-houses in another form, then it might be desirable to charge more in respect of those clubs; but that is a very difficult thing to do. I know that there are clubs of that kind. I have known brewers offering to run clubs as practically tied clubs in connection with their breweries. They have offered to run them as political clubs on either side of politics. They are quite impartial in this matter. After all, these are public-houses, and they ought to be charged on that basis. A very remarkable speech was delivered by the hon. Member for Sheffield in regard to the attitude of the trade towards the Budget proposals. Since I made my Budget statement I have met several representatives of the trade, and I must say that they met me very fairly. They said: "We do not object to finding our share of the money." I think it is fair to them to say that they are willing to contribute their share of the money, and that they do not object to pay the share I have allocated to them. [Cries of "Oh."] If they object, I have never heard it. They have not, in the interviews I have had with them, complained of the share I allocate to them, but they have made complaints as to the method in which I have done it, and they have suggested other ways of doing it. They have not complained of taking their share, and even taking the share the Government have allocated. The hon. Member for Sheffield asked me a question as to the way in which we propose to check the accounts. He wishes to know whether there is going to be an audit. Well, of course there must be an audit for the purposes of the Inland Revenue. The accounts would have to be submitted to them, and that circumstance might induce many clubs to keep accounts which at present are not in the way of keeping accounts. It would be a very useful thing from that point of view. That is the only audit we propose. The accounts would have to be submitted at the end of the year when the tax comes to be charged to the officer of Inland Revenue. I have dealt with the question in regard to receipts and purchases asked by the hon. Member for North Hackney. It is practically the point which was raised by the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool. I do not make any promise
  1694
  on that point at present, I would rather wait until we come to the discussion of the club clauses.
  Sir EDWARD CARSON: I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he can tell us how much he expects to get from this tax on clubs, and if he can put before the Committee either now or at some other stage how the estimate is made out. On what is it based? Many of us find it difficult, in going through these various taxes, to come to conclusions as to what is really the amount of revenue coming under these various heads. It is very generally believed that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has very much under-estimated the revenue under the various heads. I ask now specifically as regards clubs, and we will be very much obliged if the right hon. Gentleman will let us know the data on which he is going in estimating the probable results of the tax.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: My recollection is that we estimate that we shall probably get about £250,000 from these clubs. I do not think we will get it in the first year, because it depends so much on the checks on the purchases and sales by the clubs.
  Sir E. CARSON: What will you get afterwards?
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: A quarter of a million is what we expect in an ordinary year, but in the first year it is very difficult to estimate with anything approaching accuracy what we will receive. It will depend on the extent to which the clubs will supply us with statements of their accounts. I have no doubt that the vast majority will supply accounts on which we may absolutely rely, but I doubt whether they would all do that, not because they desire to defraud the Revenue, but because they have not got accounts and have not kept accounts with a view to this tax being imposed, so in the first year I do not expect we will get anything like our estimate. With regard to the basis of the estimate, the right hon. Gentleman knows how very difficult it is to get an estimate in the case of a new tax, and in a case of this kind to get, with anything like approximate accuracy, the quantity of liquor which is consumed in clubs. There is really no reliable data with regard to that. We made such inquiries as we could indifferent parts of the country. We know fairly well the amount of liquor which is consumed by the London clubs, but there are certain clubs which practically keep no

  1695
  accounts at all. However, from such total as we have got we have arrived at the conclusion that in a normal year we shall probably get a quarter of a million.
  Mr. F. B. MILDMAY: The hon. Member for Liverpool just now said there are clubs and clubs. The hon. Gentleman next me said, with the approval of the House, that there were certain clubs in London which everyone would like to see dealt with. There must be some means of dealing with these bogus clubs. We all know that when men and women will drink at any hour in the morning these clubs are attended with great ruin and degradation, but I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer said just now that it is very difficult to distinguish for legislative purposes between such clubs in a Bill. Surely there is one great distinction between the clubs I have mentioned and other clubs. In these clubs there is one pernicious provision, which lays down that membership of a single club shall confer membership of all the affiliated clubs, of which, I believe, there are hundreds in London, so that a man has any number of drinking houses to go round to from one to the other. They are, to all intents and purposes, drinking shops. They are not used for social purposes. It does seem to me that the right hon. Gentleman might be able to mete out more drastic duties to these affiliated clubs, because it is the affiliation which is the evil in this case, and it distinguishes these clubs which ought not to be supported from the more respectable clubs.
  Mr. F. W. VERNEY: I venture to think that the hon. Member who has just now spoken is not accurate. Some of the best clubs in England are affiliated, and affiliation, so far from being a source of danger, is a great protection, and a great test, in many cases, of respectability. For many years I was a member of the Club and Institute Union in Clerkenwell Road, and it was conducted on the very highest principles. I can go back some 35 years, and I can assure you that the affiliation to that institution is only given on pretty fair proof that the club is conducted on respectable lines, and the non-affiliated clubs are by far the worst. There are clubs which have been affiliated, and which have been turned out of that union because they are not respectable. Therefore I do hope that the House will not come to the conclusion in a hurry that the affiliated clubs are, on account of affiliation, disreputable clubs. I do not want to deny for
  1696
  a moment that certain clubs have degraded the whole idea of clubs, and are utterly unfit for the support of anybody or any political party, or any person of reputable character. But I venture to say that there is no public body in London which is so heartily ashamed and sorry for that fact as the Club and Institute Union. I do not pretend to hold a brief for every club that it comes into contact with. At the same time I want this House to understand, at all events, that the Club and Institute Union of London, with which are affiliated a great many country clubs as well, does its best to keep the clubs on proper lines, and prevent them from sinking to being merely drinking clubs.
  Mr. MILDMAY: Perhaps I was rather too sweeping in my statement. I am quite willing to admit that there may be affiliated clubs which may be of a most respectable character. But some distinction must be made between the affiliated clubs to which I refer and the respectable clubs.
  Viscount DALRYMPLE: I think a distinction might be made between clubs that belong to their members and clubs that do not. With a club in which everything in it already belongs to the members, the drink already belongs to them, and when the drinks are actually taken they are not exactly being sold to the members. They are already their property, and it is merely dividing the cost. Regimental messes are an example of this. They buy drink in a lump, and divide it among them as they want it. I do not know whether they are actually clubs or not. I know that in the case of some messes the cost is divided equally between the different members. They all pay their share of the original price of the drink, and drink whatever suits them. There is no difference in the price, no matter what a man takes. As far as I can see the clubs which belong to the members might put themselves on the same plane, and not sell their drink at all, but divide it in the same manner.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has given any answer to the question which has been put by my Noble Friend. What is and what will be the position under this proposal of all officers' messes as clubs? I believe that the great bulk of them are already registered as clubs. Of course, the majority of them are in a wholly different position from the ordinary club, but I do not conceive that it is the intention of the Government to place them under

  1697
  this category. But I should like to know specifically at this stage, before we proceed further with the Resolution, whether he intends them to be so charged or not, and I would extend the inquiry to soldiers' and sailors' canteens. I believe, although I am not quite sure, that these also have to be registered as clubs—the wet canteens in naval barracks for instance, and I suppose similar institutions in military barracks—and I should be glad to know what are the Government's proposals in regard to them. I wish we might have from the Government a little more information than the Chancellor gave us as to how they arrive at a charge of 3d. in the pound. What sort of proportion do they believe themselves to be establishing between the new taxation on licences or the new and old taxation put together on licences and the new taxations on clubs? I think the right hon. Gentleman indicated he did not intend to put an exactly similar tax on clubs, and indeed he thought the tax on clubs should not be as high as the tax on licensed houses. But what proportion does he think it ought to be? What principle does he invoke to justify the particular sum which he has chosen and the particular proportion which that bears to the charges upon licences?
  I share the doubts that have been expressed on both sides of the House as to whether the right hon. Gentleman has chosen the best method of levying his new charge on clubs. I think it will be found that the levying on the ordinary poundage on the receipts of the clubs is, as hon. Members have said, both for the purpose of club sales and for Inland Revenue, a much more cumbrous, expensive, and unsatisfactory procedure than to levy on the purchase of the liquor as purchased by the club, which would be much more easily ascertained. The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself was struck with this, and I thought he indicated a likelihood that he would alter the basis of the tax, and that he would impose the higher duty upon the purchases instead of upon the sales. What I want to point out to the Committee is, unless you deal with the Question in that way the matter will pass out of the keeping of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or, at any rate, it will pass out of the keeping of the Chancellor of the Exchequer unless he is prepared to interrupt the progress of his Finance Bill by moving a new Resolution to justify the first method of taxing. Is it not certain that if you alter the basis of
  1698
  your taxation from a percentage poundage on receipt to a poundage on purchase you will alter the incidence of the tax, that in some cases you will lower the tax on particular institutions, and in other cases you will raise it? I think that stands to reason. It is quite certain that every club that sells liquor makes a profit on the liquor that it sells. But all clubs do not make the same profit. Some clubs are content with a very small profit; other clubs, and probably all the proprietary clubs who will come under this category, make a very high profit. The moment we change that from a poundage on receipts to a poundage on purchases, you will alter the incidence of the tax on particular clubs. You will charge those clubs which make a small profit on the liquor more, and those clubs which make a large profit on the liquor less. In the first place, I think what you want to do is—you introduce obligations which the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have to consider—perhaps you may have to do what you want to do. I have not thought that out. On the whole, I withdraw the observation. I cannot think it out while I am addressing the House. But at any rate, I venture to say that is a thing which you cannot do on this Resolution if passed in this form.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary for the Home Department is following what I say, and he will see that it would be out of order, and contrary to the rules of the House, to make such a variation in the incidence of the charge authorised by the Resolution which is contemplated in the change proposed by Members on both sides of the House, and rather welcomed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I hope he will convey that to the Chancellor as soon as the Chancellor returns, and that before we pass from this Resolution that the matter might be considered at once. In any case, having brought it to the notice of the Government now, we ought not to be estopped on any technical plea of that class from raising the question in Committee and fully debating it there if the Committee cannot deal with it at once.
  Passing from that, I want to suggest another point for the consideration of the right hon. Gentleman. It is alternative to that made by himself, or to that of my hon. Friend, and, though not necessarily hostile, it possibly could be worked in addition. Everybody in this House wants to distinguish as far as they can between what is called a good club and what is

  1699
  called a bad club—a club which is a club in no sense of the word, but is merely a drinking shop under another name, a drinking shop of the worst class, where drink can be obtained at all hours, subject to no control, and where in many cases all those evils which are driven out of the public-house by reason of our strict control flourish unchecked. Hitherto it has puzzled the House and Chancellors of the Exchequer to see how that distinction is to be effected. Why should not you apply in conjunction with their present scale the new scale of the kind foreshadowed by the Chancellor, whereby their assessment to this tax would vary in proportion to the relation which their total receipts bear to their receipts from drink. In the case of drinking clubs they, in fact, draw the whole of their revenue from drink, and nothing else. I am not treating this as a fiscal proposal; the Government do not treat it as a fiscal proposal; it is treated as a matter of social or moral control and reform. Is it not the case that very bad clubs have minimum subscriptions and minimum receipts from all other sources but drink. Did we not, when discussing the Licensing Bill last year, have case after case where the balance sheets of clubs were produced, showing that the whole of their receipts were derived from the sale of drink—perhaps in some cases even to a greater extent than the receipts of public-houses themselves, certainly to a greater extent than the receipts of anything like the restaurant, where the sale of drink is combined with the sale of food, and even greater in some cases than the receipts of the pure public-house? I suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he should take this proposal of mine into consideration, and see whether he cannot apply to the club a kind of sliding scale arrangement which he has himself suggested for hotels, by means of which the poundage or the sum he takes would become higher in proportion as the receipts drawn by the club from drink grew larger compared with the receipts from other sources. If my suggestion is one that is workable, and one which would meet the case of the mere drinking clubs, passing under the names of ordinary clubs, then I think it is one which could be received by all sides of the House, irrespective of party. At any rate, I offer it for the consideration of the Chancellor.
  Mr. W. MENZIES: Before passing these Resolutions. I would like to ask the Chan-
  1700
  cellor of the Exchequer whether it is possible, when his Budget Bill comes up for discussion in this House, to propose that the charge upon proprietory clubs should be 6d. or 1s. per pound of income. It appears to me that the charge of 3d. is altogether unfair to the usual licence-holder. I received this morning a letter from an hotel manager, and I think other Members have each received such a letter, which states that this licence duty, which we have already passed, will amount to something like 5s. or 6s. per pound on the trade from liquor. I should imagine that this is a very exaggerated view to take, and it may be that it will be 1s. or 1s. 6d. Still, it appears to me that we are giving great and undue advantage to the club which is only charged 3d. Why should we on this side, or anyone in the House of Commons, try to give an advantage to clubs for the sale of liquor? Why should the club be able to sell drink cheaper than the man in the public-house? I can see no reason why clubs should be given this undue advantage. I only rose to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it would be in order on the Budget Bill to suggest that the charge should be 6d. per pound instead of 3d.
  Mr. J. O'GRADY: I rise to enter my protest against what has been said by the hon. Member for one of the divisions of Devonshire on this side of the House, with reference to workmen's clubs. I happen to be a member of a workmen's club which is affiliated, and, therefore, when I travel I am in a position to drop into other clubs. I visited the club which is in the hon. Member for Burnley's Division, and a delightful club it is. I would only remark that when an hon. Member makes these reflections he should be wary of his facts. In the first place, there is nothing in connection with these clubs which could cause them to be described as drinking clubs in any sense of the term. I would point out that all these workmen's clubs have institutions attached to them which are deserving of the very highest praise. Nearly the whole of their profits are used for the purpose of maintaining the Club and Institute Union Convalescent Home at Pegwell Bay, an institution to which workmen are sent by their club until they are sufficiently recuperated to go back to their work. These clubs also have libraries, some of them very valuable libraries, and others have meeting halls where they hold polical gatherings. With regard to the club mentioned by the hon. Member for Totten-

  1701
  ham, I myself have been in that club, and I have seen workmen take their wives and children there. I have seen them at table, and I should have thought this was the last club which the hon. Member above the Gangway would have selected as the subject of his criticisms. They have actually got shooting competitions, and I should have thought the hon. Gentleman would have encouraged the patriotic spirit which is so much in evidence among hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway. After all, there are other features in connection with these clubs. I find in Gloucester and in Lancashire that a number of clubs are devoted exclusively to forwarding the interests of their trade, and they have meeting places to which they go instead of to the ordinary public-house. In reference to the question of the morals of these clubs, I wish the hon. Member would go with me to some of them before he comes to this House and speaks in disparaging terms about them. Frequently I take my own wife and children to one of these clubs. There are clubs in London to which I would not take my wife and children. I agree with what has been said as to the charge to be put upon clubs. Perhaps the easiest way would be to make the charge on purchase rather than upon receipts. It would involve less work to the officials and managers of the clubs, and I think it would give the Chancellor of the Exchequer the best possible return.
  Mr. A. B. MARKHAM: I would like to ask your ruling, Mr. Caldwell, as to what the position would be if this Resolution were passed. In respect to the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcester, would we be tied by the Resolution to the maximum charge of 3d. in the pound, or would we have power to increase the charge when we are discussing the Finance Bill, beyond the limit contained in the Resolution. I ask that question.
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Caldwell): The Finance Bill cannot go beyond the terms of the Resolution passed in Committee of Ways and Means.
  Mr. MARKHAM: In that case then I understand that the House would be powerless, even if the majority of the House desired to alter the Resolution. [An HON. MEMBER: "When it is taken."] Yes, the Resolution has not been taken yet. It has been rightly pointed out by an hon. Member on this side of the House that a
  1702
  number of clubs in this country are neither more nor less than drinking shops. I have myself established three clubs in which drink is sold. The majority of the members of those clubs are miners. I am not going for a moment to say that a miner and the man who sits on a stool all day are in the same position. The miner is a man who really can drink, and does drink, and possibly has a right to drink more than a man who never takes physical exercise. It seems to me a wholly inequitable basis of taxation that clubs on the one hand and licensed houses on the other should not be equal. The hon. Member said he takes his wife and family to these so-called social or Liberal clubs. I am surprised to hear that any Member of this House takes his wife and children to these variety concerts on a Sunday afternoon.
  Mr. O'GRADY: I think the hon. Gentleman is under a slight mistake. I never suggested that I took my wife and children on Sunday afternoons.
  Mr. MARKHAM: I understood the hon. Member to say that he took his wife and children to these clubs on Sunday.
  Mr. O'GRADY: No, I did not.
  Mr. MARKHAM: I beg the hon. Member's pardon. I was under a wrong impression. But the hon. Member's experience of these clubs is very different from mine. What are these affiliated clubs in London? During the time of the Licensing Bill I sent two of my grooms to the so-called Paddington Liberal Club. I asked them to go there as a favour. I said: "I do not care what your politics are, but I want you to go to the Liberal Club to oblige me, and say you want to become members." They went to the club. They were received by an official who, without knowing them in any way whatever, without knowing what they were, put them down as members of the club, and in due course they were elected. Before they left the club they were supplied with liquor by the hall porter. That statement remains uncontradicted, but it was said that those men were not supplied officially by the club. I stated that they went to the club and tried to get drink, and they became members freely in accordance with the rules of the club. I went into a number of these London clubs, and I could not get any Member of this House who is a Member of those clubs to give me the tickets, and so I had to go under another name to make an examination of them myself. At a later stage I am going to give

  1703
  some figures to the House as to some of my own personal observations as to what I have seen in those clubs. I want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to bear in mind that beer is sold in clubs, or at all events, in the clubs with which I am associated. We sell beer in those clubs at a penny per glass or per half pint. There are 16 half pints in a gallon, and, therefore, the price we get for the beer is 1s. 4d. We pay far that beer about 10d. Therefore, what you are asked to do by this tax is to give the Chancellor of the Exchequer the price of one glass out of every 80. For every sovereign he spends he gets 240 glasses, and for that quantity he has only to pay the value of three glasses. I consider that a wholly inadequate quantity.
  In my Constituency there are a very large number of clubs, and in a town in that Constituency there was established not very long ago a club with a membership of from 1,500 to 2,000. It was proved that that club was used for the purpose of drinking and gambling, and the magistrates, after due inquiry, closed that club. When the examination of the club came out it was shown that the Worthington Brewery Company had advanced the money to the people who were running that club, and it was nothing more or less than a club in which liquor was sold for the benefit of the brewery company. That is a well-established fact, and it is entirely within the knowledge of the House that numbers of public-houses, especially in Lancashire, have been closed and reopened as clubs. I think it is extremely unfair to place a burden on the licensed victualler unless you place a corresponding duty on the clubs. My contention is that to levy taxes which are only 1.2 on the receipts of this liquor consumed in clubs is insufficient. I would ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to see whether he could not meet the views expressed by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer on this matter, and that is to impose a lower rate where refreshment other than liquors have been consumed, and a larger rate where the receipts are largely from drink. I am sure if he did so he would meet the wishes of all sides of the House, but, according to your ruling, the Chancellor has not this power if this Resolution is passed. If we came to a general agreement on both sides of the House when the Debate terminates the Chancellor might keep this Resolution to a future time, so that he might meet the suggestion of the late Chancellor. The
  1704
  Chancellor would meet the views of hon. Members on this side of the House if he did so, and I am sure he will give entire satisfaction to certain hon. Members on the other side who share the views of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Mr. LEIF JONES: I join with the hon. Member for Sheffield in congratulating the right hon. Genleman in making a beginning with these clubs. So long as the licence duty was at present on its very small scale, while the competition of the clubs sometimes pressed very unduly on the victuallers, I do not know that it is a grievance that we should concern ourselves about. But now that the licence duties have been very considerably raised, the difference between the clubs and the public-houses will be intensified. While we are raising the licence duties we should also put the same taxes upon the liquor sold in clubs. I think, as far as possible, the Chancellor ought to aim at making the taxes approximately the same. I do not see any reason why he should facilitate the sale or distribution of drink in clubs as against the sale in public-houses. I believe the Chancellor will find if he can see his way to raise the 3d., which obviously is nothing like an equivalent of the licence duty, he would be meeting a very general feeling on both sides of the House. With regard to the question as to whether taxes should be on purchases or sales, I think I should incline rather to say on purchase, because I am very much taken with the suggestion of the hon. Member for East Worcestershire that the poundage should be greater in the clubs where the total receipts from liquor show a very much larger percentage than receipts from any other source. That could only be done if the poundage is taken on sales, and not on purchase.
  I think my right hon. Friend must have made a mistake in his reply to the question of the hon. Member for East Worcestershire when he said he hoped to get a quarter of a million from this tax. A quarter of a million at 3d. in the £ means a sum of £20,000,000 on sales of liquor in the clubs in the country. There are 80,000 registered clubs, and that would mean an average sale of £2,500 per annum of liquor. I have no knowledge of what the actual figures are, but there must be a great number of clubs in which it is nothing like £2,500 per year. Even in the very great London clubs a figure of from £10,000 to £12,000 a year would be somewhere about the sale of liquor

  1705
  per cent. I believe the National Liberal Club is a standard of luxury in this matter. I sometimes glance at the balance-sheet of that club, of which I am a member. I hesitate to state the figure, but I think it is somewhere about £10,000 or £12,000 upon the sale of liquor. I am speaking entirely from memory. I may be wholly wrong, but on that basis I cannot believe that the average sale of drink in clubs in this country amounts to £2,500 per year. I would ask the Chancellor to verify those figures, or let us know on what basis he arrives at them.
  Earl WINTERTON: I did not intend to speak had it not been for the speech of the hon. Member for Mansfield, the very sincere and courageous speech which he delivered. It does not concern us on this side of the House what goes on in the Paddington Liberal Club or any other club belonging to the Liberal party. I am bound to say I do not envy the state of mind of hon. Members opposite, who, on the one hand, speak on platforms of the hideous drink traffic, and, on the other hand, in private condone, if they do not actually support, such clubs as the Paddington club referred to by the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr.MARKHAM: I did not say that the club was badly conducted. As a matter of fact, my servants told me that it was well conducted.
  Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY: Since the Noble Lord has referred to orators getting up on platforms and talking about the drink traffic he may be interested to know that when the hon. Member for Paddington, on the platform of the Paddington Liberal Club, explained the provisions of the Licensing Bill, he was vociferously cheered by the members of the club, who seemed to appreciate its provisions.
  Earl WINTERTON: The hon. Gentleman's interruption has intensified and strengthened the position we take up.
  Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY: The Bill of last year was regarded in many quarters as an attack upon clubs, and, indeed, the secretary of the Club and Institute Union strongly resisted many of its provisions. I only interrupted him to say that at any rate the members of this club are not of a character which have been reflected upon in this House.
  Earl WINTERTON: The hon. Member has entirely misunderstood me and the whole course of the Debate. I was making
  1706
  no accusation against the way in which the club was conducted. I have no doubt, as the Member for Mansfield was informed, that it is conducted in a most admirable way. In fact, I have no objection to clubs. I am one of those who believe that a man should be able to take reasonable refreshment in this or any other country. The hon. Gentleman laughs at me, and no doubt he thinks it is not right that a man should obtain reasonable refreshment. If that be so his view is shared by an infinitesimally small proportion of the people of this country and of the people all over the world. The hon. Member laughs, but we on this side have no objection to the people obtaining reasonable refreshment. My whole point is that it is not a consistent or logical attitude for hon. Gentlemen opposite to take up, on the one hand to attack public drinking bars in the liquor trade on the ground not that they conduct their trade in a wrong way, but simply that they deal in what they are pleased to term a hideous traffic; in other words, that what they sell is not for the good of the people. I say it is not a consistent and logical attitude to take such a view, and at the same time to either condone or support those clubs referred to by the hon. Gentleman, and where it is obvious it is the easiest thing in the world to go in, become a member, and obtain drink. The hon. Gentleman's interruption with reference to the attitude taken up by the hon. Member for Paddington has nothing whatever to do with the point. If anything, indeed, it strengthens the case we have taken up on this side of the House. I only hope that we have heard the last of that attitude. If they wish to attack the liquor trade let them attack it on the ground that it is badly conducted, and not on the ground that the mere fact of selling liquor is a bad trade, and that the drink traffic is a bad thing for the country. I challenge the hon. Member for the Appleby Division to deny that that is the attitude which he has taken up in the past. His line of argument has been that the drink traffic may be conducted in a perfectly proper way, and that the people who sell drink may be perfectly responsible citizens, but that the mere fact that drink is sold is a bad thing for the country. If the hon. Member dissents from that, all I can say is that his attitude has changed within the last six months. If you take up such an attitude it is not consistent to support the kind of clubs which hon. Members opposite do support. We on this side

  1707
  of the House are not in the least anxious—indeed there is nothing we desire less—to see heavier burdens placed upon legitimate clubs. We recognise that working men, or any other men, have a perfect right to go to clubs, and I am very pleased that the hon. Member below the Gangway took up such a broad and courageous view. He said he was not ashamed to take his wife and family to a properly conducted club; I hope he will go further, and admit that he is not ashamed to take them to a properly conducted public-house. I hope we have heard the last of the kind of argument used on this club question during the discussions on the Licensing Bill. The hon. Member opposite suggested that clubs in which the sale of liquor formed only a small part of the total business should be taxed at a lower rate than those clubs whose income is mainly derived from the sale of liquor. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will consider that proposal, as I think personally it is a very fair one. We all know of such clubs, and in making such a differentiation I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have support from all quarters of the House.
  Mr. E. B. BARNARD: I welcome very heartily the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer now under discussion, and I was more than glad to hear the views which have been put forward by the right hon. Gentleman of the Front Opposition Bench. We need not discuss a particular club, or assume bad management. For my part, I desire that these clubs should be levied upon in the same way as other distributors of liquor. What is the position? The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us of certain interviews which he has had with representatives of the trade. I was glad to hear him say that they were ready and expected to contribute to this Budget. Undoubtedly they have got to contribute. In this connection we have a light to bear in mind that last year hon. Members on the other side of the House continually objected to certain propositions dealing with public-houses because they did not touch clubs. Within the last fortnight I have been a member of the Committee dealing with the Sunday Closing Bill, and one of the leading brewers in this House, in a speech which I shall not readily forget, said that if clubs were included in the proposals of the promoters of that Bill he would vote for them. I am willing
  1708
  to take that statement, and in the face of it to hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will adopt the suggestion made by the right hon. Member for East Worcestershire. What does the suggestion amount to? It means, as I understand it, that we should extend this Resolution and make it more elastic, so that a higher rate can be charged. It will not necessarily mean that the higher rate shall be charged, but it will give a latitude within which the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to calculate the difference between purchases and sales. Personally, I think it would be much better that purchases should be the regulating element, because I do not at all see how it would be easily possible for the parties concerned to decide in the takings what amount was derived from alcohol and what from other commodities. The Chancellor of the Exchequer suggests in this Resolution that 3d. in the £ should be the amount levied on the sales. It would be a great advantage if he would tell the House how he arrives at that figure, and also on what basis he fixes the figure with regard to grocers' licences, and make them pay not 3d., but in some instances something nearer 5s. or 6s. or 7s. in the £.
  The CHAIRMAN: I must remind the hon. Member that we are not now dealing with the question of grocers' licences.
  Mr. BARNARD: I bow to your decision, Sir, but I would point out that as there is a new principle involved in this proposal, it would be a considerable advantage if we knew the reasons for the totally different figures in these two cases, and provided it could be done under the rules of the House it would be a matter of satisfaction to many Members if the right hon. Gentleman would give the information which I desire.
  Mr. G. R. LANE-FOX: I desire to take this opportunity of expressing the strong feeling which undoubtedly exists on both sides of the House that by this proposal the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not carrying into effect the suggestion made in his Budget speech. The defence which he gave of his other licensing proposals yesterday, when it was alleged that they were too high, was that it was necessary in this Resolution to put them at the highest level at which they would be levied, but that it would be possible to levy them at a lower rate than was named in the Resolution. But if we once pass this Resolution in its present form, whatever the

  1709
  wishes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer may be, it will be absolutely impossible for him in the future to draw up any elastic scale or make any differentiation on the higher side. Therefore, before it is too late, I want to suggest that he should take steps to make the scale more elastic. It has been suggested that he will not be able to get the money which he proposes to get by the tax as it stands. That I leave to the experts; but it is admitted on all sides that under the tax as proposed there will not be a fair basis for taxation as between liquor sold in clubs and liquor sold elsewhere. Without saying what that basis should be, I submit that there ought to be a fair basis; and that it is not fair, in a Budget alleged to be produced in the interests of the moral regeneration of the people, to tax one form of the liquor interest on a totally different basis from another. As regards the statement of the hon. Member for East Leeds, every Member of this House is probably a member of several clubs, and it is not necessary to tell us that there are many respectable clubs. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer distinctly told us in his Budget speech that he hoped so to discriminate as to levy higher taxation on clubs which exist merely for the purpose of drinking. Under this Resolution it would be impossible for him to discriminate in such a way as to put the liquor consumed in the purely drinking clubs even on a level with the liquor sold elsewhere. The opinion on this point of all interested in work among the poor in our great mining and industrial districts is practically unanimous. I was speaking the other day to a clergyman, well beloved among his people, in a great mining district in Yorkshire, who, if he were in politics, would undoubtedly be sitting with hon. Members opposite, and he told me that there could be no question whatever that the evil which in his part of the world wanted dealing with was the clubs which are growing up so rapidly. In the Debates on the Licensing Bill we had a speech from the hon. Member for the Rhondda Valley Division, in which he strongly emphasised the great evils of the clubs, and I think he rather unkindly suggested that it was the work of the Tory party. At any case, the House will agree that it is the unanimous feeling of those who work in the districts where these clubs are doing most harm that something should be done at the earliest possible date, if not to put them down, at any rate to put them on a level with other forms of liquor selling in the country.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: Perhaps I may be allowed to make a statement in response to the appeal made to me by the right hon. Member for East Worcestershire. There seems to be a general feeling in all quarters of the House that, at any rate, we should not prejudge the question at this stage, and that the House ought to be free, when we get into Committee on the Finance Bill, first of all, to decide as between sales and purchases, and, in the second place, to judge as between 3d. and 6d. Of course, if purchases be substituted for sales, it is perfectly clear that 3d. is quite inadequate. Threepence on purchases would hardly be equal to 1½d. or 2d. on sales. I am not quite sure of that; it depends entirely on the club. Take the case cited by the hon. Member for the Mansfield Division. I think he was dealing with a club where beer bought for 4d. was sold at a 1s.
  Mr. MARKHAM: Bought at 10d. and sold at 1s. 4d. There is a very small difference taking clubs as a whole.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: There is often a considerable difference, and that makes it very necessary that the Resolution should be more elastic. If that is the general view of the Committee, I should be prepared to meet it by moving the Resolution in an amended form, with a view to leaving the Committee free when they come to discuss the actual clauses of the Bill. I shall introduce the Finance Bill in its present form, but if the Resolution is amended in the way I am about to suggest it will enable the Committee to amend the Bill without the Chairman being compelled to get up and rule the Amendments out of order. I am quite willing that it should read as follows:—
  "That in the year beginning the first day of January, nineteen hundred and ten, and in every subsequent year, a statement shall be made of the receipts from intoxicating liquor supplied in every club, and of the purchases of intoxicating liquor by such club, during the preceding year, and an Excise duty shall be charged at the rate of three pence for every pound of those receipts, or at the rate of 6d. for every £1 purchased."
  That will leave it an enabling Resolution, and it will be perfectly in order for any Member to move the substituting of 6d. for 3d. I think that ought to meet with the approval of every member of the Committee.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: May I ask if the right hon. Gentleman has con-

  1711
  sidered the suggestion which I ventured to put before the Committee, and which I am glad to say has been received with considerable favour—I am not sure about the hon. Members who spoke from the Labour Benches—but from all other parts of the House. My proposal was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should consider the advisability of applying to clubs something in the nature of the scale which he proposes to apply to hotels; that the poundage, whether calculated on the purchases or percentage, should be higher in the case of the club which takes practically the whole of its receipts from drink than in the case of the one which takes only half of its receipts from drink; that, in fact, that the duty should be graduated according to the proportion of the receipts from liquor or the receipts from other sources. That would really favour the good club, which gives other accommodation and refreshments of other sorts; which provides billiard rooms, reading rooms, bowling games, and outdoor recreation, as some of these clubs do. It would favour such clubs as these as against those which are merely drinking clubs. It would hit—which is the avowed object of everybody—the hard drinker.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I will consider that, but I am afraid it will not answer, for the clubs would simply have to raise their subscriptions and lower the price of their liquor. Hence the proportion between the two would not correspond. That is the danger. I agree that the purchases are a totally different matter.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not see that my proposal would alter the fact, though it might introduce some complication into what I call bad clubs, and would adversely affect those clubs. Their raising their subscriptions in the first place might not induce a man to pay much more easily for his drink when he gets it. Whether he would pay more at an early date for the purpose of getting his drink cheap subsequently is a moot point.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: They could pay weekly or daily subscriptions.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think much of the club where a daily subscription constitutes membership. It ought not to be treated as a club at all. It ought to be treated as an unlicensed, illegal, public-house.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE made an observation inaudible to the reporters.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The Chancellor of the Exchequer appears to think that rather conclusive against my proposal. I do not know how it strikes other hon. Gentlemen, but it commends, itself to me. It does not appear to me that the mere raising of the subscription would in itself be a deterrent, for the matter would bear unequally even amongst members of such clubs, and upon different members. The member who drank most would pay less for his drink, and the member who consumed the largest amount of intoxicating liquor would spread his subscription over a larger number of glasses, and, therefore, pay the less for each particular glass. All those members of clubs who were not hard drinkers would object to have their subscriptions raised in order to enable the hard drinkers to get their supply on the cheap. At any rate, I, for one, should like to see the experiment I have suggested tried, and if we found that it was largely evaded, we might proceed by other steps to deal with the evasions which arose. Of course, it would be very simple indeed to deal with any evasion which brought the price of liquor down below cost price, or to cost price, and which gave the liquor practically at cost price by virtue of the subscription. I do wish the Chancellor of the Exchequer would at any rate keep his Resolution open, and consider that question and try and get it argued out by his advisers before we come to the Bill. I would also like to remind the Chancellor of the Exchequer of several other questions which I put, and which perhaps he will answer in the course of the discussion. There are other important points. For instance, how did he arrive at 3d. at all? What is the position of officers' messes; and soldiers and sailors' canteens? Again, one question I forgot to put was: Why should the duty on clubs only come into force on 1st of January for the succeeding year? You do not deal in that way with licence-holders and brewers. You put the duty on at once.
  Mr. LEIF JONES: May I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I do not consider his reply quite satisfactory, but I only got up to ask whether he could not leave the Motion open until we come to discuss it on the Finance Bill. If he then cares to give a preference to the good club as against the drinking club; if he can put a higher figure in regard to the sale of intoxicants and put on 6d. all round, and leave it to the House to deal with it

  1713
  when we come to it, that would, I think, be well. Or he might consider these duties between now and then, and in that way I think he would be meeting the wishes of the House.
  Mr. T. SUMMERBELL: I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before making that change that he proposes will not be influenced by any extreme statements that he may have heard in regard to workmen's clubs. I am a member of a workmen's club, and I am quite satisfied with what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has suggested, and I can only add that the extreme statements which have been made do not apply to the clubs of the Independent Labour Party. Last year I took occasion to say something in regard to the many hard things which were said about workmen's clubs. I beg to say that some of the clubs which have been pictured here to-night are the exception and not the rule. Statements have been made about clubs in mining centres. It has been stated that some of them are purely drinking and gambling clubs. ["Hear, hear."] I beg to say that if that is the experience of the hon. Member opposite of the district to which he belongs, it is not so in the county of Durham. I can speak from personal experience of the county of Durham, and I venture to say that you will not find in one club out of every ten there the conditions indicated here tonight. There seems at the present moment to be great concern about the clubs, particularly workmen's clubs. It is a most extraordinary thing that for a large number of years we have had private and political clubs of one kind and another up and down the country. We do know of many of these clubs that they never have had the least politics about them; that they were more gambling and drinking clubs than anything else. When hon. Gentlemen this side of the House talk about consistency and logic, I want to ask where they have been all these years during which we have had these political clubs, at which we have had gambling night after night, and drinking up to the early hours of the morning? Nothing has been said on the floor of the House with regard to legislation for them.
  Well, I was in a workmen's club the other Saturday night. It is with a view of reminding the Chancellor of the Exchequer that there are really good clubs among the working men of this country that I mention this. This club has a membership of 2,300. Gambling? It was entirely absent. Drinking? The least
  1714
  possible. I found in connection with this club a splendid male voice choir, which gave a concert on this particular night. The club has a large string band, an ambulance class, a leek club, a bird club, a fishing club, a reading room, a library of 500 volumes, and a football club. Of the 2,300 members of this miners' club there were 700 total abstainers. When, hon. Members get up in this House and try to make the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the country believe that the working men's clubs are principally drinking and gambling clubs—
  Mr. MARKHAM: No one said so.
  Mr. SUMMERBELL: The statement is unfair to the working men of this country. If the clubs have to be dealt with, let them, at all events, be dealt with on fair and legitimate terms. We on these benches will be prepared to give every support in order that all clubs shall be treated alike. We are not defenders of the purely drinking and gambling clubs. By all means deal with the clubs started by brewers, as also those started in houses from which licenses have been taken away, and we will help you. But, as a member of a working men's club, I am not going to hear statements which have been made with regard to working men's clubs during the last few years quietly when I know they are not correct. If you are going to deal with the workmen and the miner's clubs along, certain lines, let the same treatment apply to the gentlemen's clubs and to Conservative and Liberal clubs. [Cries of "Agreed."] I am very glad to hear it, but so far as any effort in the direction which the addresses indicate is concerned I have yet to see it made on the floor of the House. In conclusion, I do want to say that I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will bear in mind that good clubs are the rule, and not the exception; that there are a large number of clubs where a working man can go and enjoy himself in a quiet, respectable manner without having to go to the public-house. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deal with the question from that point of view I venture to think he will not be encouraged, as some Members of the House would encourage him to deal harshly and unfairly with working men's clubs.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I can assure the hon. Member who has just spoken that there is no need to be so indignant as he is in reference to working men's clubs. I do not think there is any one who is in

  1715
  the least opposed to well conducted working men's clubs. I do not know whether the hon. Member bad me in his mind when he became so eloquent against certain Members of the House. He attacked me before on this subject; but, at all events, he will bear me out when I say that I have been consistent on the subject of clubs. I did not begin my attack upon badly conducted clubs when I entered this House. I have spoken for years past in condemnation of evily conducted clubs, and I never said a word with regard to well conducted and well regulated clubs, which, I am sure, are the majority. The whole discussion last year dealt with evilly conducted clubs, formed for the purpose of drink rather than for the purpose of mutual encouragement, and for the purpose of having those badly conducted and evil entertainments details of which I am not going to enter into now, but which were attacked and fully exposed last year. When the hon. Member tells us that there are no badly conducted clubs in Durham, I remember very distinctly a year ago hearing from one of the benches of magistrates in one of the divisions of Durham complaints of the evils there were in the district owing to the number of drinking clubs which were in existence. I was very glad to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Barkston Ash standing up and saying that all who work amongst those who are the victims of strong drink are unanimous in saying that the evilly conducted club is far worse and more dangerous to the morals and the well-being of the people than well regulated public-houses. Everybody who works among the victims of alcohol will confirm that view. All we desire is that evilly conducted clubs should be legislated out of existence.
  Perhaps that does not exactly arise on the proposal to put a tax of 3d. in the pound on liquor sold in clubs, and I rather wanted to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer a question in connection with this matter. On what principle does he proceed in his Budget with regard to the fixing of items of taxation, and particularly with regard to this tax on clubs. If we turn to the licences proposals which we were discussing yesterday it was admitted by many speakers that they were brought in to correct the fact that the Licensing Bill was thrown out last year. They were brought in in order to obtain a portion of the monopoly value from the licence holders; they were a tax upon
  1716
  licence holders. There are other provisions in the Budget which seems to us to be distinctly brought in for a Socialistic object, but I should like to know with what object is this tax on clubs brought in. Is it brought in as a tax upon the consumer or for the purpose of extending the basis of taxation for the consumers of the country, or to correct in any degree the failure of the proposal to pass the clauses relating to clubs in the Licensing Bill of last year? I want to know why the clubs and the licence holders should be treated upon different terms. The licence holder is penalised by the Budget because a certain Bill was not passed last year. The provisions of the Budget with regard to licences are not provisions for the well-being of the licensed trade, they are not provisions in the interest of the well-conducted licensed house, nor are they provisions for the purpose of fixing taxation upon the shoulders of the consumers. The Under-Secretary for the Home Office did suggest that these provisions debated yesterday had a little effect of placing large taxation upon the shoulders of the consumer. I venture to suggest that the taxes which we discussed yesterday were vindictive taxes upon the licence holder, and I want to know now upon what principle the club is treated? Is this tax of 3d. in any sense a corrective for the absence of legislation which this Parliament failed to pass last Session? If so, I venture to suggest it is entirely inadequate. If the provisions of the Licensing Bill of last year with regard to clubs were really brought in as temperance measures and with a view to regulating the morals of the people, and making them more sober, then I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman he should have brought into this House this year these provisions in a temperance measure alone, and not in the Budget proposals.
  The Budget proposal to put 3d. in the £ on clubs is a very poor form, and cannot in any way tend to limit the evils of the unregulated clubs or of the regular drinking clubs, although the proposal made by the right hon. Gentleman would go in a certain degree in the direction of putting a limit in these matters. The club we all object to is the club which makes its living from drinking first and puts all other matters second, and if the right hon. Gentleman will accept the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester and increase the tax in proportion as the proceeds of the club come from liquor rather

  1717
  than from other sources, I venture to suggest that to some extent, at all events, the desire of using this principle in the Budget for limiting the evil which many of us on all sides of the House wish to put down would have some effect, and very badly conducted clubs would very properly suffer. There is only one other point, and that is with regard to Masonic lodges. I think that not only officers' messes and soldiers' canteens, but also Masonic lodges ought to be exempted from this provision. We can all very well remember last year that when discussing the provisions of the Licensing Bill with regard to clubs there was an almost unanimous desire on the part of Members of this House that Masonic lodges duly constituted should be excluded from the provisions relating to clubs. I venture to suggest that these Masonic lodges, inasmuch as the liquor consumed in them has in every other respect paid all the taxes incident to liquor duties, that they should be excluded from the provisions of this Bill.
  Mr. WILLIAM JOHNSON: I rise for the purpose of supporting this provision to put a tax upon clubs. I rather favour the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but before I do that may I correct one little statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester. We heard something recently about stealing other people's clothes. I was in the House before the right hon. Gentleman spoke, and I think it was not he, but one of the hon. Members for Liverpool who made the proposal about putting a tax upon sale and purchase.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: My proposal was a different one from that of the hon. Member.
  Mr. JOHNSON: I thought from something I heard said by an hon. Member behind the right hon. Gentleman that he was giving him credit for it. I do not want to rob anyone of credit. I could say a good deal about clubs, but I do not wish to do so now. There is a question of good clubs and bad clubs—clubs not confined to any particular class, but belonging to the rich as well as to the poor. That is not the point. The point we wish to decide is how to put some tax upon clubs as an equivalent, or something in the nature of an equivalent, to what is placed upon the licensed victualler. You are going to give some preference in the case of hotels because they sell food.
  1718
  We do not want to tax food. We want to place the tax upon the consumer of alcoholic liquor whether in clubs, public-houses, or hotels. The hon. Member for Manchester who last spoke said something as to putting licence duties upon clubs. Yesterday we heard a good deal about putting licences upon large buildings. If you put a licence on clubs according to rateable value it will not come to much in the case of the workmen's club, but if you place it upon the palatial clubs in London and in large cities you would have the same cry raised as was raised against putting a licence duty upon large hotels on the basis of rateable value. We do not want to tax buildings, or food, or games. What we want to tax is the alcoholic liquor sold, and in a fair proportion to the tax placed upon public-houses.
  I am president of I do not know how many workmen's clubs and other clubs, and I say if you place 6d. upon the purchase sale of drink you will get something approaching a fair equivalent to what has been charged on the licensed trader. I heard something about beer costing 10d. and being sold at 4d. That is 60 per cent. under cost price. I know a club where they get beer at 10d. and sell it at 16d., but they have a big discount from the brewer. I know another club, and it pays 1s. 5d., but they get 25 per cent. off, while the licensed victualler does not get any such allowance, although they are in the same town. Therefore, placing a tax upon whatever is sold or bought I think is the best way to deal with the matter. I think 6d. upon the trade done would be the best way to do it. If you put it on sales you will have to keep a clerk, and books will have to be kept, whereas if it is put on the amount of the purchase by the club you can get the bills and produce them with much less cost and much less trouble. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be able to get his Resolution drawn so as to place his tax upon the purchases, and if he will make up his mind to put on 6d. or 1s. in the pound well-conducted clubs will be quite ready and willing to pay it. I know clubs where they do not pay any subscription, which are merely drinking dens, but they are not composed of working men. I could give instances where clubs were promoted purely for the sale of drink, and to-day are in existence in my own Constituency. I do not want to go into detail, but I ask the Committee to support the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to let us get this Resolution through

  1719
  to place a charge, whatever it may be, upon sales or purchases. If we do that we shall be giving the licensed victualler something in the shape of greater fair play in his business.
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I think the House will feel that the discussion of this Resolution is doubly important, because it may bind us in a way that other resolutions do not bind us when we get to the Bill. Some hon. Members are not in favour of increasing the taxation which has been imposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In regard to this particular part of the Budget, if I may take the feeling of the House as represented by the various speeches which have been delivered, there is a strong inclination to increase the actual amount suggested by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Cries of "Hear, hear," and "No, no."] I do not say there is a universal desire, but at any rate there is a very largely-expressed desire amongst the supporters of the Government to increase this tax, and there is undoubtedly another current of opinion which holds that this is not the best way of dealing with it. For instance, if the plan of my right hon. Friend were carried, the House would not be able to amend the Bill in the direction suggested which has met with so much favour. Therefore, I think we are bound to see whether we can leave ourselves elbow room to deal with this matter adequately when we come to the concrete proposals of the Bill.
  I do not think even the new suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman gives us that adequate elbow room. Let me point out that there is a certain absurdity in the way we are dealing with the consumption of liquor. We are dealing with it in three different ways. We are dealing with it by one method in relation to public-houses; by another method in relation to hotels; and now we have a third method in relation to clubs. When we are actually trying to reconstitute in this Bill our method of dealing with the consumption of liquor on these various sorts of premises there ought to be some common principle running through it all, and we ought to know exactly what relation the plan you adopt for hotels bears to public-houses, and what relation the plan adopted for clubs bears to the two other methods of dealing with this Question. My right hon. Friend suggests that instead of having three methods we should have two, namely, the public-house method and the hotel method.
  1720
  It has been suggested that the best way for dealing with hotels is to adopt the club principle, and tax hotels in proportion to the amount of liquor they consume. That is the plan which the right hon. Gentleman proposes with regard to clubs. That is another method of reducing your three existing methods to two, and it makes, your plan more simple and logical.
  Which of these two plans we ought to adopt, or whether we ought to adopt either, it is impossible for us to say without fuller discussion. I confess that I cannot bring myself to believe that we are right in doing anything so utterly illogical as to tax public-houses on one plan, hotels on another plan, and clubs on a third plan. The whole contention of the Government, and everybody on the Ministerial side, and on this side in favour of taxing clubs is that unless you tax the sale of liquor in clubs you unfairly handicap the publican, and you drive the working man and the artisan from the most respectable public-houses into clubs, which may not always be respectable. In view of these arguments we ought to have clearly before us the relation between the proposed taxation on clubs and the taxation on public-houses. That is the point which my hon. Friend made just now when he asked what was the relation between the payment you propose to exact, and we have had no answer to that question. That is an absolutely fundamental and vital question, which has to be determined before we can settle the form of this Resolution. Is the Government prepared to say that the 3d. they propose is to be the highest limit upon receipts, that is the highest we shall be able to put on if we pass this Resolution? Is the Government prepared to show us this evening that that tax will redress the balance between these two classes of institutions, namely, clubs and public-houses, so as to prevent any unfair competition by clubs as against the owner of public-house licences? Surely it is indefensible that we should have been discussing this question for one hour and three-quarters, and that it should never have occurred to the Government on what principle they propose to fix the 3d. and the 6d.
  As their whole object is to prevent unfair competition, they must in their own mind have made some comparison of these two interests. The Government may have arrived at the view—I do not know by what steps—that if you put on 6d. or 3d. you will then have weighted the clubs sufficient to prevent them being unfair com-

  1721
  petitors with licensed premises. Are we going to be told what those calculations are? We have been told that we can frame this Resolution so as to give us that discretion which is absolutely necessary when we come to the Bill. I am convinced that this Resolution, as drawn, does not in the first place give us sufficient latitude in selecting some other plan of dealing with clubs, and it does not give us sufficient freedom of discrimination to see whether we are dealing fairly by these two classes of interest, the licensed interest on the one side, and those interested in clubs on the other, whatever their character may be. For these reasons I venture to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that I believe he would shorten discussion if he would defer the consideration of this Resolution until to-morrow, and by that time perhaps he could bring down to the House a wider scheme which would give us the freedom which I am sure the House will demand at a later stage of our discussions. I am sure if the right hon. Gentleman would do that there would be no desire amongst my hon. Friends, and I do not think in any other part of the House, to use that opportunity as an excuse for additional Debate, or as a means of embarrassing the Government with regard to these Resolutions. I know the Government have power to force through this proposal, but if they do I am convinced that there will be a feeling on all sides of the House that we are not being given that latitude for discussion, which is of such vital importance to the whole social aspect of this Question which I think it is really desirable we should give when we are discussing questions of taxation.
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of the HOME OFFICE (Mr. Herbert Samuel): This discussion began on a note of congratulation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer because he had with great courage, it was said, imposed a just tax on an interest which deserved taxation. It has ended so far in a note of complaint by the right hon. Gentleman that unless the Resolution is put off to another day he may find it necessary to offer a very resolute opposition.
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I said I was quite sure that if the Government would bring forward a new Resolution it would give us more latitude for discussion. I did not use any threat. What I said was that hon. Gentlemen on every side of the House feel that if this Resolution is passed in
  1722
  its present form we shall not get sufficient latitude for discussion at a later stage.
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I think I shall be able to explain that there is really no necessity for the course the right hon. Gentleman has suggested to the House. We all agree that there are in this country a great number of very excellent and useful workmen's clubs, which rather deserve encouragement than suppression. At the same time, there are a number—as to the proportion opinions may differ—which are merely drinking clubs, which are in every way an evil, and which are merely public-houses in another name, or worse, and deserve the severest treatment in matters of taxation and methods of control. The question is whether you can by simple means draw a clear distinction between these two classes by the method suggested by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, which has formed the basis of the observations of the Leader of the Opposition. The question is, Can you, as is suggested, say that this club has a larger proportion of liquor receipts than that club, and can you say by this process that the former is a bad club and the latter a good club? We discussed this Question last year very fully on the Licensing Bill. I remember a very long Debate on the point, and the House came to a clear decision that a mere mathematical ratio of liquor receipts to other receipts was not a satisfactory method of arriving at the bona fides or the general character of clubs.
  There are many clubs established by employers of labour and landowners for the benefit of the people of the village. Those clubs are held by club members either at no rent at all or at a very low rent. Consequently the subscriptions of those clubs are correspondingly low, and if they sell liquor at all their receipts from liquor bear a very large proportion to their total receipts, not because the liquor receipts are excessive, but because their total receipts are low, as they have less expenditure to meet. On the other hand, another club in a town may be almost a mere drinking club, and because it has to pay a heavy rent and has to levy considerable subscriptions on its members it may show primâ facie a better record so far as liquor receipts compared to other receipts go than the other clubs which I have mentioned. I know there is a certain possibility of evasion by a manipulation of prices of liquor and subscriptions from members, which would enable the drinking club in one form

  1723
  or another to show a balance sheet which does not represent its true character. For this reason the House last year, after a full discussion, came to the conclusion that you could not distinguish the white sheep from the black sheep merely by the principle which has been suggested by the right hon. Gentleman. The hon. Member for Wigtownshire, who spoke earlier in this discussion, suggested that a proprietary club ought to be taxed at a higher rate than if the club belonged to members, but I do not think that is a satisfactory method. The hon. Member for Mansfield mentioned that he was the owner of two club buildings which he had established for the benefit of the people working in the industry in which he himself is engaged. These clubs, therefore, are proprietary clubs, and would come under the ban of the Noble Lord.
  Mr. MARKHAM: They can very well afford to pay.
  Mr. SAMUEL: They may be able to pay, but that does not alter my argument. My argument is, and always has been, that this is not a method by which you can draw a distinction between good clubs and bad clubs. It cannot be drawn by the Excise officers, but by the magistrates in each particular case after reviewing all the circumstances. We proposed last year that all clubs should be open to inspection; secondly, that all drinking clubs should be suppressed; and, thirdly, that off-sales should be prohibited, and tied clubs made impossible. Those were our proposals. You cannot effectually deal with this evil of drinking clubs by any system of taxation or any method of duties, especially where they are low, such as those proposed. I hope that I have made clear our views on this subject.
  The late Chancellor of the Exchequer asked one or two specific questions on minor points. He asked what would be the position of officers' or sergeants' messes or Masonic lodges. We cannot go behind the Act of 1902. The Act of 1902 laid down that certain institutions were to be registered as clubs for the purposes of that Act, and were to come under a certain measure of control. We do not see any great reason to depart from that. I understand that sergeants' messes are not defined as clubs. It is a technical and a rather difficult point of law which was discussed last year by the law officers of the Crown, who came to the conclusion that sergeants' messes are not clubs in the ordinary accep-
  1724
  tation of the term. I believe there is a distinction in the case of officers' messes which, of course, can be discussed on the Committee stage of the Finance Bill. In any case, we propose no alteration in the law, and we do not propose to go behind the Act of 1902. It would be very inconvenient to make minute differences, and to have one law with regard to registration and control and another law in reference to taxation.
  I come lastly to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. He says we are dealing in three different ways with three different institutions in which liquor is supplied. He says you have the public-house, you have hotels, and you have the clubs, and for each one you propose a different method of assessment. That is not altogether the case, because with regard to public-houses and hotels the new method of valuation would proceed on a harmonious system, though the charges to be levied are very different. But we do deal with the three classes of sources of supply in different ways, because they are quite different from one another. The public-house exists for the purpose almost wholly of supplying liquors, and it has a distinct monopoly value. The hotel exists not merely for supplying liquors but for other purposes, and its monopoly value is comparatively small compared with the valuation of the premises. The ordinary club exists mainly for social purposes, and the supply of drink is merely an incident, and no monopoly value attaches to the club. So that necessarily we have to deal by different methods with these three institutions. If we had dealt with them on the same lines, I could imagine the speech which the Leader of the Opposition would have made. He would have referred to the differences between clubs and hotels and public-houses, he would have asked whether the ingenuity of the Government was so small that they could not devise different methods for different cases, he would have made one of those speeches which always delight the House, and he would have used his powers of debate to rend the Government in pieces, and leave their scattered limbs upon the floor. There is no mathematical ratio between the club and the public-house. You cannot say that the Carlton Club is equal to ten times or twenty times or thirty times the "Golden Fleece" in Bermondsey. There is no ratio between the two. Clubs are not public-houses and ought not to be regarded in the same light. The average

  1725
  expenditure in intoxicating liquors in a working man's club is about 10d. a week.
  An HON. MEMBER: Per head? Per member? Per week?
  Mr. SAMUEL: Yes. That is for the Liberal clubs which largely are included in the Club and Institute Union. There are also Conservative working men's clubs. They are larger in number, and have a larger membership, and they consume almost precisely the same allowance per head per week of intoxicating liquors. Strangely enough, when you come to the better class of clubs the proportion is often about the same. In the National Liberal Club the consumption of alcoholic liquor is 31s. 4d. per annum.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: That is for the whole of the membership.
  Mr. SAMUEL: Yes. When you take the Constitutional Club it is only a little more. The amount is 33s. 5d. When you come to the City Carlton Club it is 48s., and when you take the Junior Carlton Club the average expenditure is 77s. I quote these figures in order to show that you cannot arrive at any exact or uniform estimate of the alcoholic consumption of club members. My right hon. Friend has endeavoured to meet the views of hon. Members in Committee by amending the Resolution in order that a change may be made from a basis of sale to a basis of the purchase of liquor. The Government regard the amount of the duty as a reasonable charge upon an interest which has hitherto been untaxed.
  Mr. MARKHAM: I am sorry that the Member for Sunderland has left his place. The hon. Member for Sunderland stated that Members on these benches had said that the cases of all clubs were bad, and that their object was drinking. That is wholly incorrect, and wholly untrue in this sense that nobody on these benches has said that clubs were generally bad. What I have said is that a large number of these clubs were nothing more than drinking clubs, and if the united Labour party would communicate with the hon. Member for Glamorganshire they would find that he had stated that clubs were a curse in his county as they are a curse in Derbyshire and in Yorkshire. Why is it that the Chancellor of the Exchequer refuses to accept the proposal for a higher sum in this Resolution? It is the political influence of these clubs. Why has the hon. Member for the Spen Valley been consulted all this evening? When you are taxing the
  1726
  liquor trade so heavily the House should have been given figures comparing the taxes on public-houses and the proposed tax on clubs. In view of all the statements made, and from the figures before us, the tax proposed on clubs is utterly out of proportion to the tax on the trade. Why, therefore, before we enter on the discussion of the Finance Bill, does the Chancellor of the Exchequer deliberately shut the door and refuse to allow the Resolution to be taken on a broad scale? When the House finds later on that it might be desirable to interfere in the matter we shall not be able to alter the Resolution which has been passed this afternoon. Why cannot the Government, if they want to deal with temperance, as they always tell us outside that they do, leave this club question to the House? I am not a politician, and I thank God that I am not, and I hope that I never shall be. I speak as a plain temperance man, who has the object of temperance at heart, and I say that if the Government refuse to deal with the taxation of clubs for the sake of the clubs I shall, at all events, on all the stages of their proposals in this House, vote against the Government.
  Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS: The statement made by the hon. Member for Sunderland has been slightly misunderstood by the hon. Member who last spoke. My hon. Friend simply stated that clubs attached to branches of the Independent Labour Party were temperance organisations; but the hon. Member has gone wider, and included in that category all classes of labour clubs. We must understand that clubs are not comparable with, public-houses, and I do not think that either of the political parties would presume to legislate on those lines. I am rather surprised at the position of those who on this occasion have tried to bring clubs into line with public-houses, and who when they had ample opportunity for legislating on those lines were afraid to avail themselves of it. The truth is the political influence of clubs is not confined to one party. It is an undeniable fact that there are as many Tory clubs as Liberal clubs, and their political influence is just as strong. I have had some experience of club life. In years gone by I acted as secretary of a labour club in this country, and therefore I feel that I can speak with a certain amount of knowledge and experience. The whole trend of this Debate seems on the one hand to express a desire to force the trade into public-houses, while

  1727
  on the other hand we have the belief—held very widely, I believe—that the trade is under a better influence when carried on in well regulated clubs. Membership of workmen's clubs does not involve a necessity of continual drinking. If a man goes into a public-house it is necessary he should keep drinking the whole time he spends there, for, after all, the proprietor of the public-house has to secure profit for his own livelihood, and he has a right to expect those who frequent the place to give him some return for the accommodation he provides. In a club there is no such inducement, as far as my experience goes, for a man to drink when he does not desire so to do. In fact, when I first became connected with club life I was an extreme temperance reformer, and I came ultimately to regard a well conducted club as one of the best temperance reforming agencies. It is an irrevocable habit on the part of people to indulge in drinking, and I contend that that desire, very natural in itself, should be gratified under circumstances which do not offer any inducement to indulge in excessive drinking. When a man joins a club he comes under influences which restrain that desire, and he becomes more sober than he would be if he were forced into a public-house. Again, there is a marked difference between the profits derived from public-house trade and those made in a club. The club profits are not the property of any individual. They are the co-operative ownership of the members, and are invariably devoted to social and educational purposes. I quite agree that the drinking club should be ruthlessly suppressed. We on these benches last year supported the Government in their desire to bring clubs under closer supervision and to take action whereby that objectionable class of club which exists solely for drinking should be suppressed wherever it is to be found.
  I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary for the Home Department that it is utterly impossible to devise any form of taxation that will suppress the drinking club. I believe that this is a matter which must be left entirely to the supervision of the local bench of magistrates, who should have full power to investigate the condition of the clubs in their district and to suppress them when they found them to be conducted on wrong lines. I am of opinion that it would be a very easy matter for the magistrates if they find a club
  1728
  in existence that has not proper accommodation for social and educational purposes to draw the conclusion that it mainly exists for drinking purposes, and if we gave increased power to the magistrates in that direction we should thereby be able to limit this evil of bogus clubs. I know there has been a desire to make political capital out of this matter, and it has been said that when a public-house has been suppressed clubs have sprung up in its stead. Such clubs can only spring up when financed by the brewing trade, and it seems to be somewhat hypocritical for Members who want to force the trade into public-houses to endeavour, when public-houses are suppressed, to direct it into bogus clubs. I am convinced that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is making his proposal more practicable by suggesting that the tax should be upon purchases rather than upon sales. It will simplify the task of the clubs themselves, because my experience is that it is difficult to keep entirely distinct the receipts from the sales of alcoholic liquors and those from the sales of other articles provided in the club. Moreover, this modification by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not hinder the well-regulated club. Both parties in the House will recognise the power of these clubs and their influence for good. I can only say in conclusion that, so far as I am aware, my colleagues on these benches will give their hearty support to the amended proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Lord ROBERT CECIL: I desire to point out how clearly the discussion which we have had this afternoon illustrates the great danger of proceeding in a Budget to try and carry out temperance reform. The speeches to which we have listened have been nothing but speeches either for or against some particular form of temperance reform, and the question of the imposition of taxation for the purpose of raising revenue does not seem to have entered into the minds of either of the two hon. Members who have last spoken. Just see what this form of taxation will lead to. It involves that each particular class will come to the Government and declare that the institution in which it is interested is not being sufficiently encouraged by their system of taxation. The hon. Member for Nottinghamshire says that if you raise a tax on clubs you will lose the club vote, and the hon. Member for Norwich replies that apparently what is really wanted is to drive

  1729
  the people into public-houses. The only question we have to consider is whether the proposed Resolution will constitute a fair balance between different kinds of liquor-selling, and before asking us to tie our hands, as they are doing, I think the Government should give us some figures to show how they arrived at this particular figure of 3d. They must have had some idea which induced them to adopt it. They surely did not decide the point by spinning a coin into the air. Then let them tell the Committee what that idea was; let them explain how they arrived at that particular sum. I earnestly protest against the whole system on which the Budget is founded. It is founded, not on mere revenue or financial considerations, but in order to carry out some fad or project which right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench may think will be popular with some section of their supporters.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: With all respect to the Noble Lord, I do not propose to follow him into his very highly controversial line of argument. Up to the present we have had a discussion of a thoroughly businesslike character. Several suggestions have been made with a view of amending the Resolution, with some of which I have been able to agree. I promised earlier in the evening to propose an Amendment with a view to carrying out the express wishes of Members in all quarters of the House, and I think the time bas now come for me to formally move that Amendment, so that we may get on with the discussion of the Resolution. I propose in line 3, after the word "club," to insert "and of purchases of intoxicating liquors by the club." Then at the end I propose to insert "At a rate not exceeding—for every £ of those purchases." That will simply enable the Committee to discuss the club Resolution and to move an Amendment to substitute 6d. for 3d. when the time comes without being ruled out of order. I think I ought to make a correction to an answer which I gave to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University. He asked me what our estimate was in regard to clubs. I had not the figures before me at the time, but I have since referred to the papers, and I find that the estimate is £80,000 in two years, there being only three months in the first year.
  Amendment proposed: After "club" insert "and of purchases of intoxicating liquors by the club."
  Question put: "That these words be there inserted."—[Mr. Lloyd-George.]
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I do not propose to ask anybody to Divide against this Amendment, but I must repeat my protest that in the first place the Government have not given us any ground for accepting their particular rate of taxation on clubs as being an adequate counterpoise to the taxation on public-houses. My second protest is that whilst certain latitude is given by the Amendment, and while there is a possibility that the House may substitute 6d. on purchases for 3d. on sale, it gives us no further opportunity of amending the Resolution. My own belief is that what the Government ought to do is now to withdraw this Resolution, think it over, and bring it on again at a later stage of our proceedings. I do not wish, if the Government absolutely refuse to accept that proposal, to make that an excuse for further prolonging the Debate to-night, but I feel bound to express the strong opinion which I feel as to the expediency of the policy I have recommended. When, Sir, you put the Resolution, I shall say no word, and I trust that my friends around me will follow my example; but, as a protest against what the Government are doing, I shall formally move that the Debate on this particular Resolution be deferred until to-morrow.
  The CHAIRMAN: I think the only way in which that can be done is to move that I report progress. Of course, if it is moved in that form and for the reasons which the right hon. Gentleman has stated, I shall accept it.
  Mr. BALFOUR: I do not suppose the Motion will be carried, but, of course, if it were carried, neither I nor my Friends desire to-night that the Debate should be stopped on the Budget Resolutions, and the last thing I wish to do is to prevent further discussion. There must be some way of postponing the discussion of a particular Resolution.
  The CHAIRMAN: I believe that no Motion can be made to postpone a Resolution in Committee. I know of no way of doing it. Perhaps some hon. Member can suggest some way of doing it. I quite understand the right hon. Gentleman's motive in the matter and that he does not wish to postpone the whole proceedings, but, so far as I know, and so far as I can find out, we can only do it by a Motion that I report progress.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Would it not be possible for the Committee to be set up again at once if we did report progress?
  The CHAIRMAN: I think the Committee could be set up again. I have not had the case before, but I think that could be done.
  Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I move to report progress.
  Question proposed: "That the Chairman do report progress, and ask leave to sit again."
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I only wish to say one word, but I want the Committee to realise what this means. The Government frame their Resolutions in a form which is in conformity with their Bill. Appeals are made first of all by hon. Members behind the right hon. Gentleman, though they were supported it is true by hon. Members sitting on this side, that the Government should give certain elasticity to the Resolutions in order to enable them to state their objections to the Budget. If I had stood by my Budget Resolutions and refused absolutely to assent to this proposal, the right hon. Gentleman would not have moved to report progress, but purely and simply because I have endeavoured to meet the wishes of the Committee the right hon. Gentleman moves to report progress and says we ought to withdraw our Resolution and reconsider it. I do not think that that is really the desire or in the interests of those whom the right hon. Gentleman represents. I should have thought it would have been to their interests to encourage the Government, if they were prepared to meet the suggestions made by himself and his friends. I have many times appealed to him to take this line when I sat below the Gangway opposite, but I was utterly unable to get him to do it, and I think, on the whole, when Ministers are prepared to give this elasticity in order to enable the House, as it were, to help in fashioning a Bill, to give the House real power instead of making it a registering machine, it would have been in the interests of the Opposition to rather encourage it. But if, every time a Minister meets a suggestion, it is simply to be utilised for the purpose of making suggestions, that he has not considered his proposals, and that he ought to take 24
  1732
  more hours to do it, then it makes business, impossible, and the only thing a Minister can do is absolutely to adhere to his proposals and appeal to his supporters to put them through the House.
  Mr. BALFOUR: I am afraid I must have very imperfectly expressed my meaning, and I think those who have heard such contributions as I have made to the Debate and which those below the Gangway have made will think that the right hon. Gentleman has done me something much less than justice. I will not go into the controversy as to the action of the right hon. Gentleman when he was in Opposition, but I should gather from what he says that he had always been anxious to further Government business, and if it had not been for the stolid obstinacy of the then Leader of the House, there is nothing which would have gone through so smoothly, or so quickly, as such Bills as the Education Bill of 1902. I will not, however, go into these historic questions, but may I say that if I really was open to the charge made by the right hon. Gentleman I should agree with his commentary. If I had used a concession he had made as a ground for forcing further concession or further Debate or discussion upon it, I think he would have been justified in what he said, but that is not the case at all. I think the right hon. Gentleman has given us some further elasticity. If he had given us no further elasticity at all, so far as the Opposition is concerned, the business would not have gone faster but would have gone slower, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that if I now, merely as a protest—we should have finished the Division by this time—I can assure him most seriously that if he thinks anything that we have done to-night is in consequence of his concession, which, although inadequate is real, he is utterly mistaken. I am quite sure that that is not in the mind of a single Gentleman on this side of the House, and I would again remind him by far the strongest speeches which I can quote in support of my case come from below the Gangway opposite. I hope he will not misunderstand our action though he differs from it.
  Question put: "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
  The Committee divided: Ayes, 93; Noes, 288.

  Division No. 95.]

  AYES.

  [7.40 p.m.

  Arkwright, John Stanhope

  Guinness, W. E. (Bury St. Edmunds)

  Oddy, John James

  Balcarres, Lord

  Haddock, George B.

  Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Parkes, Ebenezer

  Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City Lond.)

  Harris, Frederick Leverton

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Hay, Hon. Claude George

  Percy, Earl

  Baring, Capt. Hon. G. (Winchester)

  Hazleton, Richard

  Pretyman, E. G.

  Beckett, Hon. Gervase

  Heaton, John Henniker

  Randles, Sir John Scurrah

  Bignold, Sir Arthur

  Helmsley, Viscount

  Ratclift, Major R. F.

  Bowles, G. Stewart

  Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

  Remnant, James Farquharson

  Bull, Sir William James

  Hills, J. W.

  Renton, Leslie

  Carlile, E. Hildred

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Renwick, George

  Castlereagh, Viscount

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Cave, George

  Joynson-Hicks, William

  Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Kimber, Sir Henry

  Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)

  Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

  King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

  Lane-Fox, G. R.

  Sandys, Col. Thos. Myles

  Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

  Smith, F. E. (Liverpool, Walton)

  Craig, Captain James (Down E.)

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

  Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

  Dalrymple, Viscount

  Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

  Starkey, John R.

  Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-

  Lowe, Sir Francis William

  Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

  Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

  Lyttelton, Rt Hon. Alfred

  Stone, Sir Benjamin

  Du Cros, Arthur

  MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh

  Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

  Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan)

  M'Arthur, Charles

  Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

  Faber, George Denison (York)

  M'Calmont, Colonel James

  Walrond, Hon. Lionel

  Fell, Arthur

  Magnus, Sir Philip

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

  Ffrench, Peter

  Marks, H. H. (Kent)

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

  Fletcher, J. S.

  Mason, James F. (Windsor)

  Winterton, Earl

  Gardner, Ernest

  Middlemore, John Throgmorton

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-

  Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

  Mildmay, Francis Bingham

  Young, Samuel

  Gordon, J.

  Newdegate, F. A. N.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Viscount Valentia and Mr. H. W. Forster.

  Goulding, Edward Alfred

  Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

  Gretton, John

  Nolan, Joseph

  NOES.

  Abraham, William (Rhondda)

  Cobbold, Felix Thornley

  Haworth, Arthur A.

  Acland, Francis Dyke

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Agnew, George William

  Compton-Rickett, Sir J.

  Hedges, A. Paget

  Alden, Percy

  Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

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

  Armstrong, W. C. Heaton

  Cotton, Sir H. J. S.

  Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)

  Ashton, Thomas Gair

  Crosfield, A. H.

  Higham, John Sharp

  Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry

  Crossley, William J.

  Hobhouse, Charles E. H.

  Astbury, John Meir

  Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

  Hodge, John

  Atherley-Jones, L.

  Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan)

  Hogan, Michael

  Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

  Davies, Timothy (Fulham)

  Holland, Sir William Henry

  Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

  Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

  Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

  Barker, Sir John

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

  Horniman, Emslie John

  Barlow, Percy (Bedford)

  Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

  Horridge, Thomas Gardner

  Barnes, G. N.

  Duckworth, Sir James

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Barran, Sir John Nicholson

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

  Hudson, Walter

  Barry, E. (Cork, S.)

  Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)

  Hutton, Alfred Eddison

  Beauchamp, E.

  Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

  Hyde, Clarendon G.

  Bellairs, Carlyon

  Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

  Essex, R. W.

  Isaac, Rufus Daniel

  Bennett, E. N.

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Jardine, Sir J.

  Berridge, T. H. D.

  Evans, Sir Samuel T.

  Jenkins, J.

  Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

  Everett, R. Lacey

  Johnson, John (Gatesheal)

  Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

  Fenwick, Charles

  Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

  Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

  Ferens, T. R.

  Jones, Leif (Appleby)

  Black, Arthur W.

  Findlay, Alexander

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

  Boulton, A. C. F.

  Flynn, James Christopher

  Jowett, F. W.

  Brace, William

  Fullerton, Hugh

  Kavanagh, Walter M.

  Bramsdon, T. A.

  Gibb, James (Harrow)

  Kearley, Sir Hudson E.

  Branch, James

  Gill, A. H.

  Kennedy, Vincent Paul

  Brocklehurst, W. B.

  Ginnell, L.

  Kilbride, Denis

  Brodie, H. C.

  Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)

  King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

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

  Glover, Thomas

  Laidlaw, Robert

  Brunner, Rt. Hon. Sir T. J. (Cheshire)

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)

  Lambert, George

  Buckmaster, Stanley O.

  Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward

  Lamont, Norman

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Griffith, Ellis J.

  Lardner, James Carrige Rushe

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Gulland, John W.

  Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

  Gwynn, Stephen Lucius

  Lehmann, R. C.

  Byles, William Pollard

  Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

  Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

  Cameron, Robert

  Halpin, J.

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Chance, Frederick William

  Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

  Lewis, John Herbert

  Channing, Sir Francis Allston

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David

  Cheetham, John Frederick

  Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

  Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

  Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

  Cleland, J. W.

  Hart-Davies, T.

  Lyell, Charles Henry

  Clough, William

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

  Clynes, J. R.

  Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  1734

  1735

  Mackarness, Frederic C.

  Philipps, Col Ivor (Southampton)

  Straus, B. S. (Mile End)

  Maclean, Donald

  Philips, John (Longford, S.)

  Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

  Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

  Pickersgill, Edward Hare

  Summerbell, T.

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.)

  Pirie, Duncan V.

  Taylor, John W. (Durham)

  M'Callum, John M.

  Pointer, J.

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  M'Kean, John

  Pollard, Dr. G. H.

  Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury)

  M'Laren Sir G. B. (Leicester)

  Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

  Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

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

  Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

  Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

  Maddison, Frederick

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Thomasson, Franklin

  Mallet, Charles E.

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

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

  Manfield, Harry (Northants)

  Radford, G. H.

  Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

  Markham, Arthur Basil

  Raphael, Herbert H.

  Tomkinson, James

  Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)

  Rea, Russell (Gloucester)

  Toulmin, George

  Marnham, F. J.

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Massie, J.

  Redmond, William (Clare)

  Verney, F. W.

  Masterman, C. F. G.

  Rees, J. D.

  Vivian, Henry

  Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

  Rendall, Atheistan

  Walsh, Stephen

  Menzies, Walter

  Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

  Walters, John Tudor

  Middlebrook, William

  Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

  Walton, Joseph

  Molteno, Percy Alport

  Richardson, A.

  Wardle, George J.

  Mond, A.

  Ridsdale, E. A.

  Waring, Walter

  Money, L. G. Chiozza

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)

  Montagu, Hon. E. S.

  Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

  Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

  Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

  Robinson, S.

  Waterlow, D. S.

  Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

  Robson, Sir William Snowdon

  Watt, Henry A.

  Morrell, Philip

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Wedgwood, Josiah C.

  Morse, L. L.

  Roche, John (Galway, East)

  Weir, J. Galloway

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Rogers, F. E. Newman

  White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

  Murphy, N. J. (Kilkenny, S.)

  Rose, Charles Day

  White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)

  Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.)

  Rowlands, J.

  Whitehead, Rowland

  Myer, Horatio

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)

  Napier, T. B.

  Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

  Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

  Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetiaw)

  Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)

  Wiles, Thomas

  Nicholls, George

  Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne)

  Wilkie, Alexander

  Norman, Sir Henry

  Sears, J. E.

  Williams, W. Llewelyn (Carmarthen)

  Norton, Captain Cecil William

  Seaverns, J. H.

  Williams, A. Osmond (Merioneth)

  Nussey, Thomas Willans

  Seely, Colonel

  Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

  Nuttall, Harry

  Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford)

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

  O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid)

  Sheehan, Daniel Daniel

  Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Silcock, Thomas Ball

  Wilson, J. H. (Middlesbrough)

  O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

  Simon, John Allsebrook

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

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

  Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie

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

  O'Dowd, John

  Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.)

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  O'Grady, J.

  Snowden, P.

  Winfrey, R.

  O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

  Soares, Ernest J.

  Wood, T. M'Kinnon

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Spicer, Sir Albert

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and the Master of Elibank

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

  Partington, Oswald

  Steadman, W. C.

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

  Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

  Pearce, William (Limehouse)

  Strachey, Sir Edward

  Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

  Proposed Resolution further amended by adding at the end thereof the words "or at a rate not exceeding sixpence for every pound of those purchases."—[Mr. Lloyd-George.]
  Resolved,

  DUTY IN RESPECT OF INTOXICATING LIQUOR SUPPLIED IN CLUBS.
  "That in the year beginning the first day of January, nineteen hundred and ten, and in every subsequent year, a statement shall be made of the receipts from intoxicating liquor supplied in every club, and of the purchases of intoxicating liquor by the club during the preceding year, and an Excise duty shall be charged at the rate
  1736
  of threepence for every pound of those receipts, or at a rate not exceeding sixpence on every pound of those purchases."
  Captain CRAIG: I wish to ask a point of order, before you put the next Resolution. I wish to call your attention to a precedent in 1905 when the question of redistribution was before the House. Mr. Gibson Bowles asked Mr. Speaker for his ruling on a point of order, namely, whether, when a Resolution contains different propositions, it should not be divided, and each proposition put separately. The Resolution, which you are about to put from the chair, is headed, it is true, "Land Value Duties," but on examining the Resolution, it is resolved, in my opinion, into four separate and distinct principles, which are covered in the first instance by paragraph 1, which is a duty, not an annual one, to be paid in certain eventualities, which is on increment on the occasion of the transfer or the grant of land and on death. No. 2 is a duty, also

  1737
  not an annual one, on a benefit accruing to a lessor by reason of the determination of a lease. No. 3 is an annual duty, a different thing altogether from the other two, dealing with the capital site value of land, and then, and it is here that I would ask your ruling, No. 3 deals not with land alone but with the very wide question of ungotten minerals, which has nothing to do with land values. On 13th July, 1905, Mr. Speaker gave his decision on such a question as this. He said:—
  "I have had an opportunity of taking into consideration all the points which were raised on Thursday last. I have come to the conclusion that to take the Resolution which stands in the name of the President of the Local Government Board in the ordinary way, that is en bloc, after the first Amendment has been disposed of, would not afford to the House a sufficient and adequate opportunity for discussing the various matters and principles which are contained in that Resolution. I think, therefore, the Resolution ought to be divided into at least eight and probably nine Resolutions."
  He then quotes the precedent for the matter, and towards the close says:—
  "Following the precedents of 1858 and 1867, my opinion is that these Resolutions ought to be divided."
  I hold, in the first instance, that this Question has already been decided by the present Speaker, and that the title of the present Resolution is entirely misleading, and that many Members may possibly desire to vote in favour of one of the great principles which is embodied in paragraph 1, and may desire to vote against 2, 3, or 4 about the mines. As this is put in an omnibus character, it is impossible for any Member to divide the principles in any way, and I ask whether they should not be divided into four separate and distinct Resolutions.
  The CHAIRMAN: The hon. and gallant Gentleman has put his point of order to me with sufficient precision, and in reply to it I may say that the precedent which he quotes—the ruling by Mr. Speaker—has no bearing upon this particular case. I have not the exact words, because I have not the book, but in that case Mr. Speaker held it would not be fair in an affair of that magnitude to allow one Amendment to be moved which would prevent detailed consideration of the whole of the remainder of the proposals. In this case no such point arises, because in Committee Amendments are reserved, and therefore it is perfectly open to any hon. Member to move the omission of paragraph 1, and so confine the Debate to that, and then of paragraphs 2 and 3, and so on. With regard to the other subsidiary point which the hon. Member mentioned, about ungotten minerals and the
  1738
  capital site value of land, I think in this connection they may well go together. So far as I am concerned I cannot divide the Resolution.
  Mr. JAMES HOPE: I want to know whether it would be competent for an hon. Member to move an Amendment in the second line to leave out "duties" and insert "duty." That would make the Resolution one referring to the first sub-paragraph only. It would then, of course, be competent for the Government to bring up a second Resolution with regard to No. 2, and the third with regard to No. 3, and so on. I gather that a similar proposition was in order yesterday, and I ask your ruling whether it would be in order to do so to-day?
  The CHAIRMAN: As far as I can see that would certainly be in order if the hon. Member moved such an Amendment.
  Mr. STEWART BOWLES: I desire to ask whether the decision you have given, that these four separate proposals for taxation are to be put in one Resolution, will govern the form in which these questions will have to be put to the House on Report, and whether, therefore, the House will in the end be forced to agree to all four of these proposals together, though the House might desire to agree with one or more and disagree with the others?
  The CHAIRMAN: The Rules of the House prescribe that money Resolutions must originate in Committee of Ways and Means, and therefore we must deal with them according to the Rules of Committee of Ways and Means. Of course an Amendment when we pass it goes up to the House for the Report Stage, and what is done with it there must be left to Mr. Speaker.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,

  LAND VALUE DUTIES.
  "That on and after the thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, the following duties be charged in respect of land:—

  (i) A duty on any increment value accruing after the said date at the rate of one pound for every full five pounds of that value, the duty to be taken on the occasion of the transfer, or the grant of a lease of the land, and on the occasion of the death of any person where the property passing on his death comprises any such land, and in the case of land belonging to a body

  1739
  corporate or unincorporate on such periodical occasions as Parliament may determine;

  (ii) A duty on the value of any benefit accruing to a lessor by reason of the determination of a lease at the rate of one pound for every ten pounds of that value;

  (iii) An annual duty in respect of the capital site value of land which has not been developed for building or other purposes, and the capital value of ungotten minerals, at the rate of one halfpenny for every pound of that value."—[Mr. Lloyd George.]

  Mr. JAMES MASON: The Resolution which you have just put from the chair, I think, is a most important one, because it proposes a complete innovation in the system and in the machinery on which our taxation has hitherto been based, and as for any kind of detailed explanation, either in the question of the incidence or in the question of machinery, I think I may safely say we are completely in the dark. No statement, of course, has been made to clear up the very many difficulties which confront us in attempting to understand the way in which this new taxation of land will work. Without attempting to go into the Question of whether the incidence of the tax will fall on the owner or the occupier, we must remember that the Question of that incidence is an all important one in the consideration of the taxation. Nor shall I dwell upon the question as to whether a tax of this kind is likely to make land cheaper. It is hardly to be expected that the taxing of an article like land will make it cheaper or make anybody more anxious to buy it. But, what seems to me the most interesting aspects of the case are those which concern, firstly, the justice of such taxes, that is to say, whether it is right to tax land on a different principle from that which we employ in taxing other forms of property; and, secondly, the possible machinery which you can set up to collect a tax of this kind with fairness to all concerned, and with a moderate prospect of the State getting what it is attempting to get. As regards the general valuation of land for the purpose of the imposition of what is called here the "unearned increment," I acknowledge that by expending a very large amount of money for a considerable time, so far as I can see, such a valuation is possible. But it must be at the very
  1740
  best of an extremely arbitrary and uncertain nature. The whole question of valuation was dealt with very fully by the Royal Commission which sat on the subject of Local Taxation, and reported in 1901. That Royal Commission emphasised and showed most clearly how very uncertain, and how very complicated, the whole question was, and it pointed out that, even at the best, with the utmost skill we could expect, the results would be, to say the least of it, of a very speculative nature. Of course, there are varying factors, which obviously must render it of that nature. There are the character of the surrounding land, the prospective purposes to which such land can be put, and so forth. But, apart from the very speculative and uncertain nature of the results—that is to say, uncertain as to the effect which such taxation can have on various bodies and individuals—there is, of course, besides that, in the first place, the expense which the State must go to in forming a valuation, and, secondly, the enormous expense which is liable to fall on individuals, owing to the amount of litigation and appeals which this valuation will necessitate.
  Now, the proposal is to value land apart from buildings or improvements which are upon it. It is quite evident that that in itself forms an almost insuperable difficulty. It is quite evident that in the case of valuing for unearned increment you will have, on the first valuation, the land standing without any improvement or with partial improvement; and at the second stage, on the death of the owner, or when the next occasion comes round for a re-valuation of the ground, you may have buildings, perhaps not the original buildings, upon it. But the difficulty really arises in getting a valuation of any land whatever free from the improvements that stand upon it. The report of the Royal Commission, to which I have already referred, quoted a remark of the late Lord Farrar on this Question. He said:—
  "Valuers will no doubt put a valuation on anything, whether they know anything about it or not, but the question is, what is the real basis they have for valuation? The only ultimate basis is the valuer's knowledge, his experience, and the actual market value if the land and the houses upon it were sold or let together. No such basis can exist for separate valuation of the two things."
  I admit that you can, although subject to the difficulties I have pointed out, get a valuation of some kind, in so far as land, or the description of land contemplated in this Resolution, is concerned, but when you come to attempting the valuing of un-

  1741
  developed minerals, it seems to me that you are attempting to do something which is far more difficult. Minerals comprise other things besides coal. I entirely fail to see how you are going to get a valuation of minerals which are undeveloped. Minerals are not developed sufficiently to toe valued until the time comes when they are going to be worked. The valuation of minerals is a costly operation, and certainly no one is going to develop minerals sufficiently to enable you to form any kind of valuation whatever before they are going to be worked. If you attempt to guess the value of minerals lying in the ground before any opening up whatever has been made, then, of course, you are entering upon speculative and merely guesswork valuation. I have personal experience of mineral deposits which have been known to exist for centuries, but which, lying in the ground, had no value whatever, because no one saw any profitable way of working them. At a particular moment it was discovered that a process could be adopted which would make these minerals workable. They were opened out, and they have now developed into some of the richest mines in Europe. But during the period they were undeveloped what value could you put upon these undeveloped minerals? Absolutely none. They had no value before. No means was known by which they could be worked. And in the same way, in default of any explanation—of course we have had none of what is contemplated—it seems to me that until you develop these minerals you cannot form any kind of calculation as to what they are, and you will only develop them at a time when they are going to be worked.
  I referred just now to the arbitrary nature of the valuation of land. When we come to the proposed ½d. annual tax on the capital value of unused building sites, it seems to me that there we are open to very great uncertainty, and the possibility of unfairness far greater than anything we have hitherto attempted. We know that under the present system rates are based on the assessment of buildings, but even that is subject to very great uncertainty and in many cases injustice. I do not hesitate to say that there are a good many houses in London at the present time assessed at a very different sum to what they could possibly be let at; and If difficulty and uncertainty arise in the case of certain buildings in localities where it is not extremely difficult to assess the value, how much greater is
  1742
  the difficulty in the case of unused building sites on which no building stands. To carry it a step further, you propose to value any site which is not built upon. But if you do that it does not follow that there is a buyer for the land. In many cases there will not be a buyer, and if you place a value for building purposes on the site the owner may be utterly unable to pay the tax, because he has no revenue from it in respect of its value for building purposes, and he is unable to sell it. How is he to raise the tax which you put upon it if it is land for which he can derive only agricultural value? If he has no other property he has no means of paying the tax. It seems to me that if the State means to carry out this very difficult proposal of taxing undeveloped sites, as is contemplated, then the State must be prepared to buy those sites at its own valuation if there is no other buyer in the market, for otherwise, though it is not intended, prejudice must be done to the owners of such sites which are not immediately required for buildings, and for which consequently there is no buyer in the market.
  When we come to the question of the justice of the proposals as a whole we find that we have a very good instance in the case of agricultural land all over the country. During last century agricultural land was worth a very great deal more than it is now. We in this country deliberately destroyed our agriculture. I need not go into the question whether it was right or wrong, but we did destroy it by our fiscal system, and that was aggravated, of course, by the decreased cost of transport. In that way we destroyed the value of agricultural land. In many cases it was reduced more than half its value. Now you propose to take from the owners, if ever they have a chance of its coming back to the old value and of recovering what they have lost, one-fifth of such recovery. I do not think that such a proposal as that can be defended on the ground that it is just. I always find when I want evidence, whether it be in favour of our views on the question of licensing or whether it be in favour of our views on such a question as this, that I get very good evidence by studying the speeches of the leaders of the party opposite who have passed away, and who, I think, would turn in their graves if they saw the propositions, which are sometimes put to this House. I have an extract here from a speech of the late Sir William Harcourt, who, I am sure, would be surprised at the proposals now

  1743
  made by the Government. In that speech he said:—
  "I am content to assume that a man's right to land depends upon the same principle as your right to the coat on your back, namely, that you have paid for it."
  I do not think I want better evidence of what Liberal opinion of the value of property in land was some thirty-five years ago.
  We have also Mr. Fawcett's opinion on the question whether land should or should not be treated in the same way as other property. He says: "If we purchase a house, a factory, or a ship, we purchase with the chance of gain, and why with regard to land should the purchaser have all the risk of loss and none of the chance of gain? If thirty years ago £100,000 had been invested in agricultural land, and if at the same time another £100,000 had been invested in such first-class securities as railway, banking or water or gas shares, it can scarcely be doubted that the latter investment, if made with ordinary judgment, would at the present time have a very much larger increment of value than the shares in the land. The increase in the value of the shares would have taken place quite independently of any effort or skill on the part of the owner, and therefore it may be argued why should this unearned increment remain as private property if the unearned increment of the value of land is to be appropriated by the State?" There are innumerable quotations one could make from eminent authority showing the injustice and the absurdity of trying to separate these two forms of property. A tax like this, of course, arises from the idea that there is a monopoly in land, in spite of the fact that there are over a million landowners in England alone, and that land is freely bought and sold every day, and would be more freely bought and sold if it were not for the constant attempts to overtax land and even to impose, as you do in this particular Budget, an increased cost on the transfer and conveyance of land.
  But when you get to the question of the injustice you must consider also the anomalous condition in which identical pieces of land are likely to be treated under these proposals. The late Lord Bramwell quoted this as an instance of an injustice which was likely to arise, and I quote it for the purpose of drawing a deduction beyond that which he had in mind. He says: "A man has three pieces of land of the same size, situation and value. On one he builds
  1744
  a house at a cost of £1,000 to live in. On the second he builds a house at a cost of £1,000 and lets it at a rack rent of £65, putting the annual value of the land at £15, the other £50 being the interest on his expenditure. The third he lets to a tenant at £5 a year for 50 years on the terms that the tenant shall lay out £1,000 on building a house. The landowner in this last case gives up £10 a year because he will have the house at the end of the 50 years, and the tenant is willing to build the house and give it up at the end of 50 years, because for those 50 years he will have the land for £5 a year, although it is worth £10 more. Can any human being give a reason why any one of those three houses, or the owners of benefits in respect of them, should pay more taxes or rent than the other?" That is a very striking instance of the injustices that were likely to arise under the proposals which were then in contemplation. But what is likely to arise now? A definite proposal which is contained in the Resolution—the unearned increment in the case of the first house in which the man lives will be based on the amount for which he lets the other two houses, which are identical, for the purposes of our argument.
  The first house is let for £65 a year; the site of the second is let for £5 a year on condition that the tenant builds the house. We will assume in both cases that the lease is 50 years, and that they fall in together. In the case of the house which is let at a rack rent the lease falls in, and we will say that he renews the lease of that house, and he is able to let the house for £100. The other site on which the building tenant has erected a house, being in the same condition in every respect, is also let for £100. You have then this position, that in the case of one the rent at which he let3 the site at goes up from £65 to £100, when in the other case the rent goes up from £5 to £100, and then you propose to appropriate for the purposes of the State one-tenth of the increase of the lease. In the one case you will appropriate one-tenth of £35 a year, or the difference between £65 and £100, and in the other case one-tenth of £95, or the difference between £5 and £100. As you will have two plots of land standing side by side identical in every condition, with a house on each of the same value, and yet in the one case you propose to extract from the owner of the property on the renewal of his lease a sum very nearly three times as great as you do from the other property. Surely there is an anomaly which was not con-

  1745
  templated, and which I imagine will form the subject of very considerable explanation.
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir W. Robson): May I ask the hon. Member are these conditions existing before the passing of the Act, or after the Act comes into force?
  Mr. J. F. MASON: I do not see the difference myself. I should say after the Act comes into force, but it seems to me so far as I can see it would have the same effect in both cases. That may not be the case, but I assume that these houses are built after the passing of the Act; or it applies whether they are built before or after, the Resolution is a duty on the value of any benefit accruing to a lessor by reason of the determination of a lease at the rate of one pound for every £10 of that value. That applies to the renewal of a lease which is current now. Suppose for the sake of my argument the owner of the land had carried out the transaction described 20 years ago, and those leases fell in, in 30 years' time it seems to me that what I have described would take place exactly under the Resolution now before the House. In the one case the State will appropriate one-tenth of £35 a year capitalised, and in the other case one-tenth of £95 a year capitalised for two plots of land identical in value and condition. Of course, I acknowledge we may not well understand exactly what is contemplated, and as the matter is of a novel kind, we naturally require a very considerable amount of explanation to enable us to understand what is really contemplated. I do not think, of course, that the Resolution on the Paper indicates the whole scale, but it seems to me, from what we do know of the proposal, and from what we can judge without any further explanation than we have had, that these proposals are faced immediately by obvious difficulties and injustices, which, if they are to grow, if they are to be law, must necessarily be very serious. I admit that a great deal of the difficulty of this form of taxation, in fact the whole of it, arises from the idea of what I have heard described as the monopoly of land—giving to the land qualities other than those which pertain to other forms of property. So far as I am concerned, I see no reason whatever for contending that there is such a monopoly as is described. There is not the least difficulty in parting with land, other than the fact that legislation is making the conveyance of it more and more difficult every
  1746
  year. I mentioned in the beginning of my remarks the question whether you can make land cheaper.
  I have no doubt that all hon. Members, interested in this Question will have read with very great interest the argument put forward by the hon. Member for Preston in the article which he wrote in the "Fortnightly Review" some months ago, in which he showed most conclusively that what stands in the way of building in this country, and in the way of working the Housing Act, is, not the land at all, but capital. If you get capital 1 per cent. cheaper than you do now it would be of far greater importance to the whole building industry and other industries than would be the case if you got the land for nothing, instead of at a high price. Here is capital which stands-in the way of building, which stands in the way of industrial progress, which stands in the way of the progress of this country altogether; and it is the dearness of capital which apparently hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House desire to see carried further and further. If they paid more attention to making capital cheap than to this fantastic suggestion of getting land expropriated for the benefit of the State, I think such a proposal as that of making capital cheaper would do far more for the objects they have in view than any proposals they can put forward on the subject of land taxation.
  Mr. DUNDAS WHITE: I listened with very great interest to the views put forward by the hon. Member for Windsor, and I should like to express my thorough agreement in what he said at the commencement of his speech, that this was a complete innovation and a most important step. I would remind him, however, that it is not quite a complete innovation, because something of the same principle was adopted in the Land Values (Scotland) Bill, which was before this House this Session and last Session as well, and in previous Sessions. I notice that a great part of the hon. Member's argument was directed to criticising this Resolution, and to drawing a distinction between land and other forms of property. On that I hope I may be allowed to say just a word or two. The fundamental distinction, I take it, between land—using the word land in its general sense to cover the natural resources of the land—is that the land is there naturally, while other things are more or less the result of industry. I myself do not use the phrase which he

  1747
  adopted about the monopoly of land. It is a phrase which is not very clear to my mind. A peculiar feature of the land is that in any country, upon any given area, the supply of land is a fixed quantity, and the total supply of land cannot be increased. On the other hand, if you take other forms of property they can, in fact, be increased indefinitely. In another part of the hon. Member's argument he said he did not see how, if you tax the land, you would not increase its price in the same way as when you tax other things you will increase their price. May I say how very pleased I am to hear that argument from hon. Members opposite—the recognition that the tax on any produced article will eventually fall on the consumer.
  Mr. MASON: I did not sa it would increase the price; I said it would not make it cheaper.
  Mr. DUNDAS WHITE: I thought the lion. Member drew no distinction between the two. I myself can draw very little economic distinction between preventing the land becoming cheaper and making it dearer; it seems to me that the one merges into the other. In any case, I quite agree with the hon. Member that if we tax articles of production we increase the cost as they reach the consumer, and so tend to prevent their becoming cheaper, but as a matter of fact make them dearer. If you take the case of land you have rather different circumstances. In the case of other properties the common supply can be increased to meet the demand. In the case of land it cannot. Here is your land a fixed quantity. If this land is taxed on its market value, whether it is used or not, the result will be to bring a considerable quantity of unused land into the market. By doing that we will increase the available supply, and bring the available supply more nearly to the total supply, and, by increasing the supply, the tendency will be to reduce the price rather than to increase it.
  The hon. Member spoke of the speculative character of this proposal, and would not anticipate what the results would be. We are not asked to anticipate what the results are to be. The simple question is, What is the market value of the land as it stands? And any purchaser, taking into consideration the market value of that land, simply considers what he will give for it and the possible uses to which it may be put. We have heard about the difficulty of valuing land apart from build-
  1748
  ing. We hear a good deal about that when these proposals are made, but the fact is that has been done for many years in many parts of the world. If you take New Zealand, it is done practically throughout that country; it is done in many parts of the Australian Colonies. We have had a great many suggestions about fiscal reform, and in connection with it we have heard a great deal about Germany. I would point out that this system of valuing to which I refer is in practice in German towns, and now it is proposed to apply it on a wider scale in Germany. In fact, these proposals have more or less a family resemblance to some of the proposals carried into effect in Germany, and I venture to think, whether we are to have the German fiscal system or not, we will do very well to follow her example in this respect. As regards the value of undeveloped minerals, however speculative it may be, I fancy what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has in view is the market value of the undeveloped minerals, and if the conditions are such as have been referred to, and if it be believed that the minerals would not pay to work them, then the market value of the undeveloped mineral land would be nothing at all, and consequently it would have to pay no taxes whatever. I was rather interested to hear the argument about land being put up for building, and that it could not always get purchasers. I would like to ask the hon. Member whether in that case the landowner put on a reserve price or not? A most important point that, because generally when I analyse suggestions of that kind I have always invariably found that there were plenty of purchasers to bid, but that the reserve price was too high, the reserve price being kept up until the respective purchasers would give a larger sum. That is an instance of the holding back of the natural resources which tells disastrously on the whole realm of industry, and that is one of the things which I fancy the Chancellor of the Exchequer hopes by his Budget scheme in some measure to help and prevent.
  Something has been said about the cost of valuation. I must say I am surprised at the cost of valuation being objected to. I did not think myself that the cost would be anything very considerable. Those who have objections to this system of land valuation continually give us figures themselves. The hon. Member for Preston has given us figures of what they estimate to be the land value of the United Kingdom.

  1749
  It seemed to me that they always put it far too low. When we who hold different views admit there are no satisfactory data, and want satisfactory data, then the people who have supplied data for their purposes object to that valuation being made. I have never been able to grasp that. I believe a valuation could be made, and made very simply. If I might make a suggestion, the Government might do a great deal worse than follow the example of Scotland in our Valuation Act of 1854, and ask the owner of the land to value the land himself. He never finds any difficulty in fixing the reserve price, and that might help him to arrive at what he considers the market value to mean. I quite sympathise with what was said about the purchasing value. I do not suggest it could be done in the Budget, but in the larger scheme. I would quite fall in with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Windsor, but the other way about. I would suggest that the owner should be asked to state the land value, and that the community should have the power in exercising the right of compulsory purchase of taking it at his own valuation. I think that would be valuable in many ways. I think to no small extent some of the other Budget proposals may act and interact in a somewhat similar way. After careful consideration, I support this Motion, not merely on account of the individual resolution, but as well of the knowledge that they will act and interact with the other. I do not propose to go into the other cases which the hon. Member put forward for this reason, that he seemed to assume that the actual value would betaken. I may possibly be wrong. I took him to suggest that that would be the basis. I do not know whether that will be the basis or not. One cannot go into the question until one sees the precise proposal of the Finance Bill.
  I was particularly interested to hear what he said about the late Sir William Harcourt. I would like to remind him that, besides the saying which he quoted, there were other sayings of Sir William Harcourt bearing more directly on the taxation of land values. I believe that Sir William Harcourt expressed the view that, if he had had further opportunities, he would have dealt with the question which has now been dealt with by his successor in office. The suggestion seems to be made that what we want is cheap capital, not cheap land, that land is cheap enough. Anybody who thinks that land is cheap enough can easily assure himself of that delusion by trying to buy some. I may
  1750
  say that cure has been most effective in some of our Scottish localities, where the people are taking a great interest in local self-government. I content myself in giving the hon. Member two cases. The first case is that of a very growing district not far from Glasgow. The population was increasing and wanted some land for a school. They wanted about an acre of land. They got it. I got these figures in the House myself last Session. That land was rated at an annual value of £3 10s., and for that agricultural land, which was rated and taxed as agricultural, they had to pay 920 years' purchase on that annual value. I should like to give him one other instance of a case of Greenock. In the neighbourhood of Greenock land was wanted for a torpedo depot in connection with the torpedo works of the Government. That land, if my memory serves me right, was about 12 acres at a rateable value of £11 8s.
  Now Greenock is an overcrowded centre where they cannot expand, because they cannot get land at a price which would make it commercially favourable to build. It is a place where employment has been bad, and where they want fresh opportunities of earning a livelihood. Here the Government was starting a torpedo factory, and how much they had to give for that land? The First Lord of the Admiralty told us they had to give £27,000, or 2,450 years' purchase on the rateable value. It may be the hon. Member does not think the price too high. I do not say the price was too high. Far be it from me to suggest that; but I do say that the valuation was far too low. I think if we adopt this principle of market value that is laid down in this we will see prices and valuations put on a more equitable and juster basis than they are now. There is not merely the difficulty of obtaining land at a fair price, but sometimes the difficulty of obtaining it at all. I know a place where people are crowded, where rents are high, and where they cannot build houses because they cannot get the land to build them on, and there again the reform of the housing system or the rating system must be preceded by some measure which will regulate taxation and the market value of the land. When that is effected we will have got some way to solving the problem.
  The hon. Member for Windsor told us how agriculture had been ruined by Free Trade. I do not accept that proposition for a moment. Agriculture has suffered, not because our fiscal system was good,

  1751
  but because our land system was bad. In those days it was even worse than it is now. Security of tenure and an abiding interest in the land for the man who cultivated it were practically unknown. Then, as now, you had the same disadvantages, the difficulty of getting the land, and with every improvement that a man made—be it a farm building, a hay shed, or anything else—up went the rates and taxes, and the more he had to pay. The true way to revive agriculture is not to try and force up the price of agricultural produce by levying taxation, but rather to reform the whole system of rating and taxing landed property, so as, as far as possible, to base rating and taxation on the market value of land alone, and to leave improvements of all kinds rate and tax free. I believe that the future of agriculture lies in the development of Free Trade principles by going behind mere questions of distribution and dealing with questions of production, and I, for one, welcome these proposals in the Budget, because they are the first step towards this great and fundamental reform.
  Sir PHILIP MAGNUS: I feel that I owe some apology to the Committee for intruding in this Debate, but I cannot say that I am an expert on land value, nor, indeed, am I one of those large land owners against whom I believe these Resolutions are levelled. At the same time, the Resolutions involve economic principles of so much importance, and are so difficult to apply to an old country like Great Britain, that it may not be altogether out of place, even for those who are not experts on the Question, to give their opinion as to the probable consequences of their adoption. The last speaker has referred to the fact that these Resolutions are a great innovation on anything which has been done hitherto in regard to taxation. I regret that we have not been able, as was suggested, to take these Resolutions seriatim, as they refer to very different matters; but I propose to limit what I have to say to the first of the three. That alone involves a number of propositions of considerable importance. It proposes: "A duty on any increment value accruing after the said date at the rate of £1 for every full £5 of that value, the duty to be taken on the occasion of the transfer, or the grant of a lease of the land, and on the occasion of the death of any person where the property passing on his death comprises any such land." Another
  1752
  important proposition is contained in the Resolution, namely, that this duty shall be levied "in the case of land belonging to a body corporate or incorporate on such periodical occasions as Parliament may determine." There is no indication in the Resolution as to how often Parliament may determine that, or how frequently valuation of the land may be required to be made in order that this tax may be levied. One would have thought that some further statement might have been included in the Resolution, in order to indicate how often Parliament might determine that this tax is to be levied. The last speaker referred to this measure as a great innovation. It certainly seems to me to merit that description. During the last five or six years we have heard a great deal about fiscal reform, but I think that my right hon. Friend below me, if he were in the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer, would not be likely to introduce any measure of fiscal reform so radical in its tendency, or so different from anything that has been carried out in this country in former times, as this proposal with regard to land values. This Budget, in respect of its proposals for the taxation of land, has been considered by so many persons holding on fiscal questions the same view as hon. Members opposite as leading to the necessity of some other fiscal proposals, that I cannot help expressing some surprise that it should have been brought forward by a Free Trade Government. I had a letter only the day before yesterday from a very strong Free Trader, which concluded with these words: "What a Budget! The oppression of the weak by the strong—it has killed Free Trade." I need scarcely say that the Socialistic legislation included in this Budget and in other Acts of the present Government has so impressed that well-known Free Trade journal, "The Spectator," that it has stated over and over again that the Government by their policy have betrayed the trust they were elected to defend. But it may be said that that is not my business nor the business of the party on this side of the House. I merely wished to express my surprise that Resolutions such as these should have been brought forward by a Government devoted to Free Trade.
  As regards this particular land tax, it seems to me to be a very real innovation. At present no substantial reason has been given why land should be subjected to a special duty different from other property. The hon. Member for Dumbartonshire said

  1753
  that there was no difficulty in assigning reasons for that special treatment, and he remarked that land was natural while other property had to be created. I really cannot see why, because land is natural, and other property has to be created, a difference of this kind should be introduced in the Budget proposals. Why, on that account, are you to take 20 per cent. of a man's property in land and not of his property of other descriptions? What you have to show is some connection between the natural character of land and the duty of the State to tax it, and the artificial character of other property and its right to be free from taxation. The hon. Member only stated the difference without attempting to show any connection between the difference which he described and the difference of treatment to which the Government propose to subject it. The hon. Member for Windsor referred to one of the arguments generally adduced, namely, that this tax is to be imposed on what is called "unearned increment," on the man who has done nothing whatever to help forward the increase in the value of the land, part of which value the Government propose to take. I would ask those who are defending this Resolution to state whether land is the only property that has unearned increment, and whether there are not numerous other kinds of property which equally increase in value without any effort on the part of the owner? Take pictures, works of art, old silver, and all sorts of property of that kind. Do we not find that they go on and increase in value while they lie in the cupboard of their owner without any effort on his part? There is no endeavour in this Budget to raise a tax on unearned increment of that kind. But let me take a more striking instance, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor. What difference can there be shown between these two cases: the man who invests his money in railway shares, which treble in value in the course of a few years, or the man who invests his money in land, which probably will not reach the same position in the same time? We are told that the land is improved owing to external efforts, social changes, to improvements in general conditions. Why is it that Argentine railway stock in the last three or four years is five times as valuable as it was? It certainly is not in any way due to any effort on the part of the fortunate purchaser of the stock. But if a man buys land, and it happens to increase in value owing to causes exactly the same as make other
  1754
  stock increase in value, the Government comes down and says: "We are entitled to take one-fifth of the increment, because we want money"; whereas in the other case they make no such proposals. Supposing the Government is entitled to take that one-fifth of the value, surely everyone must see the injustice of taking a one-fifth portion of one man's property and leaving other people's property of a slightly different kind to go without taxation.
  What I complain of, therefore, in this Resolution is not so much that money or that property is going to be taken by the Government, as the fact that they differentiate between different properties, saying we will take one man's property and leave another man's property alone. That seems to me a grossly unjust measure. The first principle—one of the principles of taxation—is that the burden should fall equally upon all persons. I have referred to one reason. I will refer to others presently. I have referred to one reason assigned for this differential treatment. The last speaker referred to another. He told us he would not use the words "monopoly value." But he told us that land was strictly limited in quantity, whilst other kinds of property could be produced indefinitely. ["Hear, hear."] Hear, hear. Well, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has shown us particularly his use of the word "monopoly." He said somewhere in his Budget speech that land and licences should be considered together. They were both monopolies; they both had monopoly value. I do not go into the relationship, which is very difficult to see, between land and licences, but at any rate they are supposed to be closely associated by the fact that they are both at monopoly value. There is nothing simpler for the ordinary economist to observe than the fact that the amount of land in this world is certainly limited in quantity. It does not need any great perspicuity to recognise that. But there is a little fallacy underlying the statement. When we speak of land or any other commodity being limited in quantity, what we mean is that the quantity of that property which is available in the market is limited, and not the quantity of the property itself. Numbers of other things which are created are limited in quantity. Corn at certain times is limited as to the amount which can be put into the market, and its price is consequently kept up. It is in that sense, and in that sense only, that land is limited The quantity of land which is available louse in this world is by no means limited in

  1755
  the sense in which we are always using the word. There is plenty of land.
  Some ten or twenty thousand years hence that argument may be of some value. It it not at the present time. I venture to think that we are a very long way yet from having reached that position that it can be said that there is any failure in the supply of available land. There is another fallacy underlying this general argument. I am quite willing to admit that the supply of special sites cannot be obtained in as great a quantity as the public might desire. Everybody in the world would like the best site possible. We would all like to live in Park Lane. [Loud cries of "No, no."] The quantity of land in Park Lane is undoubtedly limited. That also applies to other property. The supply of certain sheep is limited, of oxen, horses, and a variety of other things. If it was not limited, one would not pay for one sheep so much as one does—£70 or £80. [An HON. MEMBER: "Or more than that."] Or more than that. All property in that sense is limited. Take the case of old silver. That, of course, is very limited in quantity. We cannot all have old silver on our tables. I might pursue this matter further, but I have no desire to occupy the time of the Committee with this kind of abstract argument in order to show that the arguments on which these Resolutions are based are, to my mind, altogether false. These fallacies ought not to be made the foundation of an important system of taxation. Let me give one very clear reason why land is chosen, and is considered of exceptional importance. It is this—land is visible and accessible. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wants more money and sees parcels of land which have increased tremendously in value. His imagination is inflamed. One hears of cases where land is purchased for a very small sum of money. After a time some railway coming near, or something of that sort, it enormously increases in value. Exceptional cases of this kind exist, but you cannot legislate with regard to exceptional cases of that kind. The reason the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made this differential treatment is not on account of any abstract reason of considering land as different from any other property, but because, as I have said, land is visible and available. Other forms of property to which I refer also illustrate the unearned increment, no less than that of land, which is visible and accessible. It is not easy, however, to
  1756
  find out whether a man's stock or railway shares have increased in value. Therefore, the simplest thing to do was, so to speak, to take possession of portion of the goods in the shop window, because you cannot so readily get the hidden ones behind the counter. And that is the main reason why the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken land as the particular property on which to put a tax, but there is just one other reason why the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been induced to make this differential treatment in land. He has noticed, as we all have noticed, wherever our great landowners who let their land in parcels for building that these have enormously increased in value.
  I must own I always feel a little grateful to those great landowners in London, who are the particular objects, I take it, of the tax of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I often feel when I look at Russell-square, at Bedford-square, Hanover-square, Grosvenor-square, and all those great open places in London that if our land had been dealt with as Members of the other side of the House would wish it, that is, cut it up into little parcels, we never should have had those fine open spaces which are left us owing to the generous way of building pursued by those great landowners 80 or 90 years ago. I think, therefore, we have every reason to be grateful to those large landowners who parcelled out their property upon this generous plan, giving those open spaces, which I do not believe even Gentlemen on the other side of the House would now desire to cover in by small buildings. But what the Chancellor has not seen is this: that in his endeavour to strike at these big landowners he is hitting at the same time hundreds and thousands of small landowners. There are numbers of small landowners who have bought little bits of land and who have invested their savings in little pieces of land which have gone up in value, and it is these small landowners' increments upon their purchases which are to be hit by the Chancellor. Some of the speakers who preceded him dwelt upon certain hard cases which must arise if this Resolution becomes part of the Budget. It is particularly easy indeed to refer to these hard cases. Members who are in favour of this system of taxation are always pointing out such cases as this to which I referred, where a man having made a lucky speculation and obtained land which has greatly increased in value. I would like to put before the Chancellor of the Exchequer a few cases

  1757
  such as this. Take the case of two men, one man has invested his money in deferred shares on a railway, upon which no dividends have been received for many years, and another man, judging by careful observation that a town is likely to be developed in a certain direction, invests his money in a piece of land which increases in value as that town expands. Now, in the one case a man gets the whole of the profit upon his speculation, the other man gets the profit after a certain time; yet from one man's profit one-fifth of the whole is taken, while the other gets off quite free.
  Let me take one other case. There are plenty of land speculators; they buy land and they buy other property with a view to selling it. Is one-fifth of their profit on that land to be taken every time a sale is made? It seems to me that in this case the State is going to enter into a partnership with the land speculator, taking one-fifth of the profit when they succeed, and leaving them to bear the whole loss when they do not succeed. Everyone must know all land speculation does not succeed. One man, as I said, buys a piece of land at one end of the town, thinking that the town is likely to grow in that particular direction; another man, less wise or less thoughtful, buys a piece of land in another direction, believing the town will extend towards his side. One makes a profit and the other makes a loss. If you take 20 per cent. from the man who makes a profit, surely you ought to give something to the man who has made a loss! I mention these cases as indicating the particular unfairness of this proposal. I cannot help thinking that they have not been sufficiently and carefully thought out. I almost venture to think that that scientific thought with which one Member of the Cabinet is very eminently endowed has not been applied to this proposal, and, whilst I thoroughly recognise that in some way or other this money which is required should be found, I think it should so be found as to create no greater injustice or greater anomalies than are present under our existing taxation. There is only one other point I would like to make, and that is with reference to something said by the last speaker. He said we were very fond of imitating Germany, and he advised us to imitate the German system of taxation. I should like to know whether the hon. Gentleman is quite certain as to the taxation of the increment value of land adopted in Ger-
  1758
  many. The Chancellor of the Exchequer also referred to it. I know the Chancellor has been lately travelling in Germany and making very important investigations. We rather wish in this connection that investigations should precede legislation in certain respects rather than follow after. As regards this taxation of land value he made certain investigations. Could he tell, us, or could the hon. Gentleman who spoke last tell us, what is the exact system of taxation of land in existence in Germany? If so, I think it would be found very different from what the hon. Gentleman supposed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer led us to believe in his speech that the taxation of land values was one of the means of increasing Imperial taxation, but it is nothing of the kind, and, so far as I could ascertain, it is a local rate only.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: That is not what I said, if I may be allowed to correct the hon. Member. What I said was that the Conservative party in Germany proposed the increment taxation as an alternative to the proposal of the Government for Imperial taxation. I am quite aware that at the present moment it is only used for local taxation, and, as I say, the Conservative party in Germany proposed it as an alternative for Imperial taxation.
  Sir PHILIP MAGNUS: I am much obliged for the explanation given by the right hon. Gentleman. The essential difference between this system of taxation as it exists in Germany, and as it will exist under these proposals, is that it is in Germany a local rate levied by the local, authority for the purposes of the locality, whereas the Government proposals we are discussing suggest that the money should be taken from the locality and applied to Imperial taxation I shall have a further opportunity of referring to the other two Resolutions included in these proposals at some other time. On this occasion I have limited my remarks to this Resolution, and I have not referred to hundreds of cases of hardship that occur to everybody which will be inflicted by this tax. It is important in imposing a new tax that one does not increase existing anomalies, and it would be better to still further increase the income tax than levy a tax which must create new anomalies and new hardships. No one can deny that very many hardships will be created under these proposals. A person who buys a reversion and pays a certain sum in the hope of securing it ten or 15 years hence with an

  1759
  increased value has to pay a sum equivalent to the reversionary value, and yet by these proposals he will be taxed to the extent of one-fifth part. Unless the Bill which we have not seen contains proposals to remove all these anomalies to which I have referred I shall feel it my duty to vote against it.
  Mr. JAMES TOMKINSON: I have carefully considered the proposals contained in this Resolution, and after calm consideration I have concluded that they are of a very moderate, just, and equitable character. What is the extent of the tax which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to put upon undeveloped land in urban districts in the case of land withheld from the public use? He proposes to impose a tax of one halfpenny in the pound, which, in the case of land worth £500 an acre, comes to exactly £1 0s. 10d. Surely in the case of land which originally had only an agricultural value, and which has risen by no effort of the owner to such a value as £500, to ask for a sum of £1 0s. 10d. each year cannot be called a very drastic or an unjust proposal. I have had experience of land in the neighbourhood of towns. Hon. Members know what enormous advantage is given to a town by throwing the surrounding land upon the market, more especially when the owner makes roads and streets, and puts the land up to auction, not upon lease, but as freeholds. I cordially support the proposal to put a tax upon undeveloped land. I have in my hand a printed circular from the Dulwich College Estate governors, but I think that the fears of the authors of this circular are unfounded. The fourth paragraph of the circular states that the land differs from the land which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has in mind, because, far from being withheld from the market, it is advertised as being available for building purposes. I imagine these proposals will not apply to that land. [An OPPOSITION MEMBER: "Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer say so?"]
  With regard to the tax upon ungotten minerals, I do not think a great deal will be gained out of that, because it will be an extremely difficult thing to assess. Moreover, there is not the same inducement by a tax to push forward the development of existing minerals as there is to bring land into the market for public use. I do not think there is the same inducement or the same good results to be obtained
  1760
  by stimulating undeveloped minerals as by bringing land into the market. Owners of minerals are glad to have those minerals worked, and we are working out our coal at the rate of one million tons every day for five days in the week. The hon. Member who has just spoken deprecated the idea that land could be differentiated from other kinds of property in regard to unearned increment. Surely it is recognised that land differs from other kinds of property. Pictures and old silver are property which is not a necessity to anyone, and society is not injured by their being held by other people, but to hold land which is wanted in the market is a distinct injury to society. Can any hon. Member support the principle which obtains in the instance given by my hon. Friend, in which fabulous sums were exacted for land which had previously only an agricultural value. I remember a case given last year of a small piece of land amounting to three-quarters of an acre, situated not even in a village but in the country between two villages, and this particular piece of land was wanted for a school because it was the most convenient place to serve both villages. It was part of the estate of an immensely large proprietor, and its value was 30s. per acre; and yet, when that three-quarters of an acre was required for a village school, the price asked for it was £730.
  Is it not obvious either that the land was grossly underrated or grossly overpriced? If this valuation should show that there should be a very drastic change in the rating value the result would be the best that could possibly be imagined? I have always held that the weakest part in the land question is the possession of estates in which the unearned increment has grown to a large extent. It surely cannot be to the interests of landlords to hold to their utmost rights. There is a strip of land in the most valuable part of London some three miles long and one mile wide, which is practically owned by three or four landlords. It is not in their own interests that great landlords should object to this tax. They should voluntarily welcome a change in the law, and that would be to their own interests. What does the State do for them? It gives them peaceable possession of their land. It legalises their contracts and enforces them when necessary, and secures their devolution after death. Surely the State which secures to the landlords these advantages has the right to impose a tax on the land when they are alive or when they pass

  1761
  away. I think it is extremely unwise for the landlords to resist the moderate reform which is proposed by the Budget.
  Sir HENRY CRAIK: I noticed with what deep sympathy the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down spoke of the difficulty of Dulwich College. He trusted that all would be well with that institution. It was easy for the hon. Member to say that that great educational institution, which deals well with its tenants and with the public, and which is a liberal landlord, should be satisfied with his easy expression that he trusted that the proposals of the Budget would not be quite as ill as the authorities of the college showed in a printed paper in our hands that they would be. Evidently the hon. Gentleman himself is trampled upon in some respects by this Budget. He finds perhaps that the taxation on ungotten minerals is not quite to his advantage, and he hopes that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will reconsider his proposals with regard to ungotten minerals. He then went on to say that the great landowners of this country—those who have held the land for generations—would do well to pay a ransom. I must confess that I never owned or never hope to hold a single share in a brewery or a single yard of land. I think I shall never pay a super-tax on my income, and I believe that my death duties will be a negligible quantity; but I hate this Budget as heartily as anybody hates it. I ask you only to look first of all at the process by which this Budget has been carried out. For two or three Sessions we have heard a great deal about a Land Valuation Bill. We have been told that it did not mean that there was to be further taxation on land, but that it was desirable to learn the rateable value of land. It meant simply that the rateable value of land was to be ascertained. It was defended in various points by the Members of the Treasury Bench and by Members of the Administration in another place. They were all ready to sail in that stream, over which the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Advocate were divided as to the way in which the current had flown. Indeed, the proposals of the Lord Advocate were designated by the Lord Chancellor as unnecessary and as amounting to an insult to the Government. There is no Land Valuation Bill. What was a necessary preliminary has been abandoned. The cart has been put before the horse, and we are asked to put a tax on land values before we know what the
  1762
  valuation of land is, while the different Members of the Government have diametrically altered their opinions, which they expressed before Parliament, as to the objects which will be ultimately obtained by this Land Bill. We have the present proposal of the Government. It is a triumph for that crusade which the Lord Advocate has separately carried out. He has brought the Cabinet to be his followers. I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is not here to utter that theory, which he has propounded all over the country, but that he is obliged to go to the sacrosanct in Scotland, when amid prayers, the singing of hymns, and the reading of Scriptures he can proceed to set forth his political opinions with respect to land. The right hon. Gentlemen and his colleagues may like that method of advancing their political views, but in me and in many hon. Members of this House I am sure it creates nothing but a feeling of profound loathing.
  How do you propose that your valuation, the Bill for which you have abandoned, is to be carried out? The right hon. Gentleman says you are to leave the valuation to the owner himself. No one knows better than the right hon. Gentleman that he is placing upon the owner a task of almost unexampled difficulty. I know myself, from long experience, how difficult it has been to value the proper amount to be paid for sites to be acquired under compulsory powers for schools. I know how the verdicts of experts upon that question have differed. But we are to leave it entirely to the owner, with all the thousand and one doubts and difficulties that will spring up around his feet to lay this assessment upon himself. And, remember, the right hon. Gentleman tells us there is to be a sword of Damocles hanging over the owner, as if the inspector or emissary of the right hon. Gentleman who is to follow afterwards comes to a different conclusion, and finds that some element of value has not been included, if he finds that possibly a larger selling value could be obtained for the land, then the arrears are to be payable, and although the owner may have used his best judgment and even obtained the best expert advice before fixing the valuation, he may be called upon to pay arrears for years, and in the end may find himself in the bankruptcy court. Is that justice? Is that sound finance? Is it even commonsense in business? Take another step in the process of the right hon. Gentleman. I am not a Member for Glasgow, but I happen to be a native of that city, and to

  1763
  be a good deal connected with it. I have followed with interest the agitation for the rating of land values from its inception. Be it remembered it was in the City Council of Glasgow that it was first brought forward. I thought the council were mistaken in their action. I fought and opposed them, but what does the City Council now find? Under this proposal of the right hon. Gentleman not only is the rateable value to be taken away from Glasgow—that is absurd enough—but behind all that it is to be snatched into the pockets of the right hon. Gentleman for his henroost schemes. Those municipalities which invented the tax, which performed the missionary work of spreading this enlightened tax throughout the country, are now to be the only people taxed, while the rest of the country is to be free. They are to contribute the money to Imperial taxation, while the whole of the land outside their boundaries is to be perfectly free from the necessity of finding a source of rating which is to relieve all those who have erected buildings on the land. They are now to be placed in a position of inferiority to the rest of the country. They are to substitute the rating of land values for a rate on the buildings, and they are to find that they have a new tax laid upon them on building values from which the rest of the country is to escape. What is the financial basis of the right hon. Gentleman's scheme? Was there ever such a mad financial scheme invented? Surely the first principle of taxation is that you shall provide a broad, certain, regular, and continuous foundation. But what are you doing in this case? You are depending on a thousand and one casual things—on death, transfer of property, termination of leases, and various other things—the merest casualties and contingencies which you cannot count upon from year to year. That is to be the basis of this great new movement! That is to be the beginning of the new fiscal movement for which the right hon. Gentleman is making himself responsible!
  It is hardly worth while occupying the time of the Committee by dwelling upon the endless absurdities that are bound to arise, but I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman's attention to one particular point. In Scotland we have as a common method of land tenure 19 years' leases. Suppose in the course of such a lease the value of the land rapidly rises, as it is very likely to do, it being probably market garden land. The owner cannot
  1764
  get one penny more for the land during the continuation of the lease. His interest in it may be only a life interest, and it may come to an end before the expiration of the lease. Who, I should like to know, is to pay the ½d. upon the capital value which is found to have increased during the continuance of the lease? The owner, as I have said, gets no value, and his interest may expire before the end of the lease. The leaseholder pays his rent, and he gets no value at the end of it. How, then, is the right hon. Gentleman going to collect a tax from parties who cannot derive the smallest possible benefit from the increased value of the land? The right hon. Gentleman is making much of the revenue of the country dependent on the accident of the existence of leases! This is a specimen of the financial basis and of the fairness on which this Budget depends. What is the justice upon which this taxation rests? What is the principle upon which you can defend the distinction between land and other properties? The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade said there was a complete distinction between the profits made on lands and profits made on railway shares, and therefore that they should not pay the same tax. Really, was ever such an argument put forward by a rational man? Do hon. Members fancy when they put £100 into the Canadian Pacific Railway, they themselves are not making their way over rocky mountains, or through icy regions, or that when they invest in the mines in South Africa they are not descending into the bowels of the earth and endeavouring to get the riches of the soil! We all of us, whether we put our money in lands or shares, are equally passive agents, and we have no more control in the one case than in the other. I say that we have a right to our profits in both cases, but not in one case more than another. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues the other day were the guests of the Royal Academy, within whose walls some of their presentments are hung. Supposing my right hon. Friend, or some of his colleagues, detected nascent genius in some of the pictures there and treated them as an investment. Suppose they found that they were correct in detecting this nascent genius, and found within a few years that the prices of the pictures produced by it had risen to a very high price. Would they be prepared to surrender those profits to the Exchequer or to a future Chancellor of Exchequer. Take, also, the case of a

  1765
  publisher, who has invested a considerable sum of money in the masterpieces of some of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues on the Treasury Bench. Supposing he found that copyright had risen in value, although it might have fallen, and the publisher might find himself a loser. But, supposing the publisher found himself a gainer by this happy discernment of the genius of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues, would he say that he must be prepared to surrender one-fifth of his profit? Would he not think that the discernment which enabled him to foresee this rise in price was money which he had a fair right to be paid, just as a man who succeeds in developing land by his ability and foresight, which enables him to appreciate the value of it, is entitled to his profits?
  The real reason of the right hon. Gentleman's action is perfectly plain, and it ought to be stated. The real reason is this: that land is a property which cannot escape from you, and which you can lay hold of most easily, and which is most open to your predatory instincts. The principle upon which the right hon. Gentleman has based his Budget is a very simple one, and it is exactly the principle upon which the huntsman bloods his hounds. You have aroused the instinct of these hunters. Do you think it will stop simply with the taking away of large portions of that part of the property of the country which is most closely connected with its traditions, with its history, and with all the responsibilities attaching to it? You will soon come to the turn of the small investors, who have gained their savings by hard thrift, and who will in turn be the object of these hounds which the right hon. Gentleman has blooded. I remember that during the inquiry as to old age pensions, I brought before the President of the Board of Trade the case of a couple who held between them £1,030 in Consols, but who were not deemed eligible for a pension. If that couple had invested their £1,030 in land and it had happened to rise, instead of it being a question of giving them a pension, you would have taken one-fifth part of that profit away. Is that reason, is it common-sense, is it based upon ordinary principles of justice? We have heard of the hardship that would be done to many educational endowments doing good work by the incidence of this taxation, but I wish to call attention to a much larger aspect of this question. This Budget is not merely to raise money, it is to produce a vast social change. ["Hear,
  1766
  hear."] Hon. Members opposite cheer that doctrine, and accept it, and we have had some expression of opinion as to that from these Benches and from those. The hon. Member for Blackburn and the hon. Member for Salford both referred to history as a defence for this. The hon. Member for Salford told us that he was prepared to defend the basis of the Budget upon history and to find an example and a sound foundation for it in history. He wanted us to take it upon his ipse dixit, but I must confess that the mere declaration of the hon. Member is not quite enough. I do not read history in exactly the same way as he does, but if we are to appeal to history is it not just as well that the appeal should be sustained? The hon. Member for Salford told us that history would justify all that was in this Budget of the right hon. Gentleman and that there were plenty of precedents upon which its justice might be defended. The hon. Member for Blackburn, on the other hand, told us that all the wrongs had been done by history, and that the right hon. Gentleman's Budget was the one which was paying a debt of some 400 millions which had been rolled up by the landowners. Therefore that rather goes against the contention of the hon. Member for Salford. But the hon. Member for Salford said something more. He told us that this Budget was going to be the correction of the present system of government, which was a plutocracy. On what ground he advanced that I do not know, but apparently a plutocracy is a very good thing for the hon. Member for Salford, because he told us that it forced him to live according to the methods of the much richer men with whom he was bound to associate. I am sorry for the hon. Gentleman if he descends to that level of humanity. I should have thought that it was not a proud boast for a literary man of the present day to say that he was bound to emulate the practice of snobbery by living according to the dictates and customs of richer men.
  But is this particular part of the Budget going to help you destroy the plutocracy? There was nothing that struck me more in the whole course of this Debate than some words uttered this afternoon by the hon. and learned Member for Louth. He said this is a capitalists' Budget. You will not tax those who have vast sums of money who can escape from you, and who can elude your grasp, and who will look with contempt upon the small diminution that you

  1767
  can make. This Budget is, on the contrary, fixing its fangs chiefly on that part of property which is entwined with the history of England, which is closely connected with the traditions of England, and which to anyone who has studied the history of her country appears most surely as that part of property which has recognised, on the whole, its responsibility better than any other. I know there have been erring, faulty, selfish, grasping landowners. In what corner of society, in what part of the nation, will you not find such men? But any man who maintains that on the whole the landowners of England have not done their duty to the country, have not risen to their responsibility, and have not as an actual matter of business obtained a smaller return from their property than any other class, is either wilfully prejudiced or is ignorant of the history of the social economy of his country. You are doing in this Budget—I speak as one with no possible interest whatever or connection with the land—the worst evil you could to the general interests of the country, and many of the poorer classes. You are seizing upon that part of property which cannot escape from you, and which is most subject to your depredation. You are demanding your pound of flesh, but you are demanding it without any of those conditions which Portia laid upon Shylock, and when you have drawn that blood, do you think plutocracy will not be all the stronger in this country, and will not ride rough-shod over the poorer classes of the country? Whom are you replacing for the great landowners? You are putting yourselves in the power of speculative builders.
  Mr. E. G. PRETYMAN: A fortnight nearly has now elapsed since the Chancellor of the Exchequer laid these proposals for entirely novel taxes before the House, and I had rather hoped that this discussion might have been avoided by the right hon. Gentleman telling us that he had found these proposals impracticable, because so far as I have been able to discover amongst practical men—I say advisedly amongst practical men—so far as the discussions on this question of land values in all its aspects is concerned both inside the House and out of it, I think I am not wrong in describing them as academic discussions, and many very important principles have been raised which are extremely difficult to follow, and which deal with various classes of property in various aspects, and which no doubt are
  1768
  extremely interesting from the social and philosophic point of view; but here we have to deal with a definite, concrete proposal for imposing taxation in the Budget of the year which will affect an enormous amount of valuable property by no means all possessed by rich men upon whom you can afford to make experiments. I quite admit it might be legitimate to make a doubtful experiment on some one whom you felt sure you could not hurt, but the real burden of this land taxation is not going to fall upon the great properties which have such resources in different directions that the mere varying of a halfpenny in the pound or paying some of these new taxes will comparatively easily be borne by their owners. It is really going to fall on those people who have land and have no other resources, and who will have to pay the tax before they realise the value of their land, and who may have no resources whatever to meet it. I do not believe it to be possible even at this stage for the Committee to adequately debate these most important and entirely novel suggestions until we have had a great deal more information on them than we have now. We really do not know where we stand.
  I should like to say a few words on the question which has been referred to in every speech on both sides of the House on this Resolution, namely, the difference which is suggested as between land and licences and other forms of property. We are told that land and licences differ from other forms of property in that they are a monopoly. I think if the right hon. Gentleman's proposals are all carried they will have a monopoly of taxation, or very nearly. Do hon. Members who talk about the position of land as differing from other forms of property take into account the taxation which land bears already and the different forms of taxes which it bears? I think perhaps it will not be wasting the time of the Committee if I enumerate them. You have the land tax, which, remember, lies upon the land only, but was originally assessed upon all other forms of personal property, all of which have escaped from it, and which now falls upon the land, and land only. Therefore in that sense land differs from all other property in that it is alone bearing a tax which was originally assessed on property of all forms and kinds. Then we have the increment property tax, in itself a heavy burden, which has arisen out of the discussion the other night, and as was admitted, and I acknow-

  1769
  ledge that the right hon. Gentleman has shown a great desire to consider this question on the actual income than upon land, and to try and meet us upon it—but it is admitted that the income tax upon land does fall much more heavily proportionately on the actual income than upon other forms of property in many cases, and on agricultural land practically always. Then we have the death duties, which are levied upon the same assessment as the income tax, and, therefore, fall in the same proportion upon land as they do upon other forms of property, and with this added hardship that the land is not divisible to pay the duty. You cannot pay the duty out of the land without realising it at ruinous loss. Then it is admitted on all hands that the burden of rates falls upon the owners of land more heavily than upon any other class of property and upon the occupiers of land in all forms. Then we have the conveyance duty, the mortgage duty, the reconveyance stamp, and the house duty. I have enumerated six or eight taxes, all of which come upon land, and which, where they fall on other classes of property as well, fall less heavily than on land. Now, the right hon. Gentleman comes and proposes to add four more forms of taxation to fall only on land, apparently on the principle that it is not taxed enough.
  I say that from the purely practical standpoint, apart from the theoretical standpoint, when a man has money to spend and is going to use that money to his own advantage in any commercial purpose land is dealt with in the market like any other commodity. There may be a theoretical difference, but there is no practical difference whatever, and we are dealing here with a practical matter, namely, the imposition of a tax. The right hon. Gentleman's proposed taxes are all based on a valuation, and I wish to put one question to him which goes to the root of the whole matter. I wish to ask him—what is his unit of valuation? Unless he can tell us that it is absolutely impossible for anybody who has got land which is to be valued, and which is to be subject to this increment tax in particular, to know how the tax is going to fall upon him. Is the unit of value ownership? Is it the estate? If it is the estate, what follows? A man has a large estate of, say, 5,000 acres—I am giving now what the right hon. Gentleman told us when he introduced the Budget—and on that estate there are two or three hundred acres of building land adjoining a town.
  1770
  But the whole value of the estate, including the building land, is much below £50 per acre. I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that where the value of the land is less than £50 per acre it is not to be subject to this tax. If you take as the unit of ownership for valuation the estate in the aggregate is worth less than £50 per acre over all, so that the estate will not be subject to this tax at all. [Cries of "No."] Yes, that is so, if the unit is ownership. That is incontestible. But take two suppositions: If the unit of ownership is to be the unit, and if the right hon. Gentleman's limit of £50 per acre is to obtain, then the big man who has a large estate with some building land in the corner will never be touched at all, but the small man who has bought two or three acres of land out of his savings which is all building land will be hit heavily under the unit of ownership. Then are you going to take the unit of the parish? If you do that, you will get into the same difficulty. In many parishes just a corner of the land is building land.
  Are you going to take occupation as the unit? If so, the same difficulty will arise in connection with occupation, and your average value over the whole area will be less than £50 in the case of large occupation, but small occupation will be hit. Supposing you take the smallest unit you can imagine, the unit of the field. Let us suppose a 20-acre field of building land adjoining a town, and let us suppose that it is agreed by the right hon. Gentleman, the valuer, and everybody concerned that the value is £300 per acre. On one side of that field, as almost invariably happens in such cases, there is a road, and that is the part which will be sold first. It may be 10 or 12 years before the whole of the 20 acres will be sold, but a small piece, amounting to a quarter of an acre in the corner is sold, say, at £600 per acre. On what basis does the right hon. Gentleman propose to proceed? That does not show that the whole value of the field is more or less than £300 per acre. The fact is that on this basis of valuation the value you put on a hereditament which is owned by one person to-day is one unit, and you are proposing to value it not when it passes at death, but when it is broken up in pieces not at the will of the sellers but at the will of the purchaser. With due deference to hon. Gentlemen who say that land is different from everything else, I say that the owner of building sites is in the same position as a draper who has a piece of cloth to sell. He cuts off the piece

  1771
  his customer requires. The price is regulated by the demand, and the owner sells what the customer asks for, and until you know what your customer is going to ask for you do not know what the unit of valuation will be. There is no possible means of knowing what your unit of valuation is going to be until you bring the value to the test which I have indicated. The right hon. Gentleman's basis is that when a piece of land is sold to-morrow, it is that price which is to be compared with the value to-day. By what process does the right hon. Gentleman propose to arrive to-day at the value of a piece of land which is going to be sold in the future and of which he does not know the area? If he cannot make that clear I think the whole case falls to the ground, not on the ground of equity, but on the ground of practicability, because it is quite impossible to impose a tax in that form. Another very important point arises in this connection out of an interruption which was made by the Attorney-General when my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor was addressing the Committee. My hon. Friend was giving an instance of the hardship which would occur in the case of two leases falling in under different conditions. One would be liable to the increment tax and the other would not. The hon. and learned Gentleman interrupted, and asked whether in the case in point my hon. Friend was considering a lease created before the passing of the Finance Bill or after it. That was rather a curious interruption. Does that indicate that the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not propose to impose this tax on reversions in the case of leases granted prior to the passing of the Finance Bill, because that is a very important point? The right hon. Gentleman has not indicated whether the tax touches such leases or not, but the answer to that question affects the argument a great deal.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I do not think it would be possible for me to carry on a discussion by means of question and answer across the Table in regard to a matter or this kind. I have taken a note of the hon. Gentleman's question, and I will give an answer, but I think it would be very difficult to put it in the form of a short reply across the Table.
  Mr. PRETYMAN: I do not wish for a moment to press the hon. Gentleman for a reply now, but I asked the question as I did not wish to waste the time of the Com-
  1772
  mittee in dealing with a hardship which would immediately disappear if the right hon. Gentleman said that he did not propose to apply the tax in the case of reversions of lease where leases were granted prior to the passing of this particular Bill. But in the absence of any guidance on that point I suppose I am bound to assume that there is nothing whatever in the words of this Resolution which indicates that there is going to be any exception of that kind at all. Therefore I am bound to assume that these particular cases, whether the lease was granted prior to this Act or not, would be subject to this tax. I can imagine no greater hardship, because it is known, and I am quite certain that the right hon. Gentleman must have had the obvious fact put before him by his advisers, that there has been a very large fall, amounting in many cases to 30 or 40 per cent. in the value of urban property, particularly around London, in the course of the last 20 or 30 years.
  That is an acknowledged fact. I can give a concrete case, which is one merely illustrating innumerable others. It is the case of a man who purchased a long lease of a house in Elvaston-place. He paid £4,400 for the lease in the year 1888. He purchased the freehold some years later for £320, and spent £1,500 on landlord's improvements to the house. That brings the total purchase price to him to something over £6,000. He used to let that house for £325. It is now let at £175, and the owner is told that if he desires to sell it, as he does, that the most he can hope to get is £2,700 or £2,800. But at present he cannot get a purchaser, and I do not think anyone is likely to get a purchaser for real property until the matter of taxes of the right hon. Gentleman is cleared up. The whole estate market is disorganised, and the value of property is decreased all over the country. The particular hardship is this. Here is a man who bought property at a certain value. For 20 or 30 years that property declines in value, and he finds himself with a property worth half what he gave for it. Then the right hon. Gentleman says: "This is the 30th of April, 1909, I am going to take the value of your property now, and if your property increases in value to something approaching what you gave for it 30 years ago, I am going to have one-fifth of that increase." Is that justice or equity in any sense? We think that the right hon. Gentleman desires to do justice, but if he tries to give exemption from these

  1773
  taxes in all cases in which we can show that there is injustice then the whole case will fall to the ground, and there will be so many exceptions that all you will get out of these taxes will be a mere fraction of the lot, and a disturbance of trade will be caused throughout the country for the minimum result to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and you will require an army of officials to investigate the cases. Is the Treasury to set up a department, which is to go inquiring into the morality and equity of every private transaction in regard to realty from one end of the country to the other, and refer the result of the investigation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is then to consider whether there is or is not in this particular case any moral ground for exacting the tax on the full value which has been fixed by this House? We cannot have taxes raised on that basis.
  Again, I will take another case—there is nothing like concrete cases—a case which actually exists in regard to this proposal as to mines. In this case there is a poor clergyman whose total income is £140 a year. His wife has a one-seventh share in a coal mine with a mortgage upon it of £10,000, and she is just able, out of the proceeds of the coal mine, and only just able by pinching and saving in every possible particular, to pay the interest on the mortgage with absolutely nothing to spare. She has gone on doing so for this reason, that there is below the seam which is now being worked, two other seams which are not being worked, but which there is a prospect of being worked very shortly. For years the poor owner of that seventh share has been pinching and saving in the hope that there will be provision for her children when these two seams are worked. But she has absolutely no resources whatever to meet the heavy tax which the right hon. Gentleman now proposes to put upon those minerals because they are un-gotten. She is only too anxious that those minerals should be gotten; and it is not her fault that they are not gotten. If this tax is imposed in the form suggested, she will therefore be forced to go into the market and sell that seventh share, and it will not sell probably for the £10,000 mortgage upon it. Her property is so small that it is exempted from all the other taxes which have existed for years, yet the right hon. Gentleman, under these proposals, would force this lady to sell her property, and she would not have one penny of provision for her children. That
  1774
  cannot be a fair tax which has incidence of this description.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: Is she lessee?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: No; she is the freehold owner of a seventh share, with a mortgage of £10,000 upon it. I can give the right hon. Gentleman all the particulars.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: I will take it from you. I only wanted to know.
  Mr. PRETYMAN: There is another aspect of the question in regard to the municipalities. It has been pointed out several times what the position of the municipalities would be when the valuations on which they may levy a rate are to be given as the valuation on which the tax is to be taken away from the district for the Imperial Exchequer. I want to add this point: It is obvious that the tax is to be taken on realty, on all land both built upon and unbuilt upon, and I take it that the land is to be valued apart from the buildings upon it, and the land immediately adjoining the town and the land built upon in the town, are both to bear this tax which is to be drawn from the town and brought to the Imperial Exchequer. It is obvious that the assessment of the value of property in the town will be decreased at least by the amount which is withdrawn from the communities for the benefit of the Imperial Exchequer. The assessments will fall, and therefore the municipalities instead of getting a benefit will actually have their rateable value reduced, and each of these communities will find their resources less than they were before. I do not believe that even at this moment practical men who are intimately connected, and have been intimately connected all their lives, with land in the form of urban land can yet foresee all the consequences of this proposed taxation on a great novel principle like this. We have hon. Gentlemen on the other side who tell us that this principle is adopted by Germany and by other countries. We have not yet had any evidence before us, and so far as I know there is no documentary evidence to show us a single tax that has ever been proposed in any country exactly in the form of the taxes proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. We have rating taxes and we have local rates imposed upon land, but that is a wholly different matter. But there is a proposal in Germany, and a proposal only; and I think it is a proposal which rather lends itself

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  to our argument than that of the hon. Gentleman opposite. What is it for? It is a proposal in lieu of death duties.
  I notice a certain tendency in hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House. Here we have eight different forms of land taxes, which I have enumerated, different forms of imposts on land. Hon Gentlemen opposite take out all of these and deal with each of them as if they were the only tax on land. They hunt round the universe and find in one country somewhere, anywhere, that particular tax which is often the only tax imposed on land in that country, and that happens to be a little higher than that particular tax in this country. They therefore claim that occupiers of land in this country are become a smaller burden than somewhere else. They not only do that, but they proceed to redress the grievance by levelling up the tax to the higher figure. The consequence is that we who own land in this country will find ourselves in the delightful position of having about eight different land taxes, each on a higher scale than any similar taxes in any other country in the world. That is a burden which cannot be borne.
  From the financial standpoint the right hon. Gentleman has to raise a great revenue, and so far as I am aware in all history, I do not profess to be such a deep student of finance as the right hon. Gentleman, but, so far as I have any acquaintance with the history of finance, it has been that all the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors acted on the principle good work by the incidence of this taxa-posing taxes for which you hope to obtain a present and increasing revenue you will not impose those taxes upon failing industries. Here we have two industries specially singled out for taxation, licensing and land, the liquor trade and land, both of which, speaking purely on financial grounds, are declining industries. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Hon. Gentlemen say no, but which do they refer to? [HON. MEMBERS: "Land."] They say the land. That is the matter we are debating.
  I suppose hon. Gentlemen are of opinion that the land, that the value of the land in this country and the income derived from land in this country is increasing the income in proportion to that derived from other forms of property in this country. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Oh, they are not, then my contention is correct. That is all that I claim. Here we are pro-
  1776
  posing to raise taxes for Imperial purposes, for old age pensions and the Navy on these suggested two industries. Here we have a great industrial community. We have a community whose population has grown enormously and of which the enormously greater proportion is engaged in industry and commerce. The soldiers of industries are all to be given old age pensions, at which we rejoice, but two trades, and two failing trades, are picked out to pay the pensions for the whole of the rest of the community.
  Mr. PHILIP MORRELL: Would the hon. Gentleman contend that the ownership of land is an industry?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: If he did my day's work sometimes he would admit it. I can assure the hon. Gentleman from personal experience, if I may venture to say so, that the ownership of land, if the owner attends to his duties and responsibilities, is certainly an industry, and an industry requiring as much close attention and, I think, requiring as many business qualities and as much capacity as any other industry in the country. I really should hardly have supposed that the hon. Gentleman could ask such a question. This tax, which is to be imposed for Imperial purposes, is to be placed upon an industry, the income derived from which is steadily falling in proportion to the whole income of the country. The percentage which the income derived from rent bore to the gross income of the country was in 1814 34 per cent., in 1851 18¼ per cent., in 1880 12 per cent., and in 1906 5¾ per cent., so that there you have an industry the profits from which are falling continuously in proportion to the wealth of the community, and in the interests of the community as a whole—that is, the industry selected upon which to pile four new taxes, in addition to the heavy burdens it already bears. These particular taxes are so novel, so intricate, so difficult, and the consequences may be so serious, that I feel that the right hon. Gentleman would have been far wiser if he had confined himself in the first instance to one tax in a tentative form, and had seen the effect of it before he proceeded further.
  Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE: Which?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: They are all so dangerous, I do not like any of them. I think the right hon. Gentleman might have invented something which would have been less mischievous than any of them. There is another new principle involved

  1777
  in this proposal, and a very important one, namely, that you are to take a particular owner of property and tax his property before there is any realised value whatever to tax. The inwardness of that is that that is where you get the poor man. If the owner is a rich man, with great and varied resources, and you tax one particular portion of his possessions before he has realised anything from it, he will be able from his other resources to find the money to pay the tax, and he will be able to continue to hold the property. But if you apply the principle to a poor man who owns only the particuler class of property from which the tax is demanded, having no other resource from which he can meet your exactions, what can he do except be ruined or part with the property? And to whom would he part with it? To the rich man. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] Is that the object of hon. Gentlemen opposite? I know the hon. Member who says "Hear, hear" knows something about the subject, and he understands what this proposal will mean.
  What will be the position, under these taxes, of land associations? If there is one agency which, perhaps excepting the great friendly societies, has done more than any other for the working men and artisans in our great towns, it is the agency of building and freehold land societies. They have purchased hundreds of thousands of acres which they have divided up among their numbers, and upon which each member has a habit of building a pair of houses. The theory I have heard expressed by hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway is that of a citizen purchasing a piece of land from a building society, of building a house upon it and living in it. That is not quite the fact. I have some experience of the matter. It invariably happens that an artisan who happens to be of a saving disposition, a hard working man, who saves up £300 or £400, and buys a bit of land, does not build one house. [LABOUR cries of dissent.] Yes, almost invariably. It is a fact. [Cries of "No, no."] It is a fact well known to me. I hope hon. Gentlemen will not contradict me if they do not know it to be a fact, because I know it to be done. I can point right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway to hundreds of pairs of houses. I find that working men are just as good business men as others. They know perfectly well that it is far cheaper to build a pair of houses than a single house. That is almost invariable. The working man
  1778
  builds a pair of houses. He lives in the one and lets the other. There are thousands—tens of thousands of such cases. These men will, I suppose, escape realty for the house they live in, and be taxed in the case of the other house.
  What about their building society? What is the practical method of operation of these building societies? They go to an adjoining owner of land and they buy, say, 20 or 30 acres of land, which they gradually dispose of, a few acres at a time, among their members. Their great object, and the means by which they live, is this increment value. Now the right hon. Gentleman is coming down upon them, and he will say: I value that land at £500 an acre; but when they come to sell that land in the course of the next five or six years, if they sell it to their members, above that price of £500, I shall come down and take one-fifth of the increment value. I do not think that proposal will be popular among the saving working men of the country. The whole process of taxation would be so monstrously unfair that there will be perpetual cases of properties identical in value dealt with according to the whim of the purchaser in different ways. Few building leases are bought outright. There are many ways in which real property is dealt with in this country—by carrying approximately in one form or another, an equal division, or an approximately equal division, of value between owner and occupier, lessor and lessee. The right hon. Gentleman comes down and proposes an arbitrary form of taxation, which in some cases will strike the property, and in other cases will not. There is no reasoned proposal before us. We are not told why the man who leases his property should be taxed, and the man who sells it should not be.
  Another point is this: That these different means of dealing with realty vary enormously in different parts of the country. You have a fashion in one district for selling outright. You have a fashion in Scotland of feu. You have another fashion in another district. It all comes more or less to the same in the end. There is very little difference in the actual result to lessor or lessee. But you will find the house in one case leasehold; in the other freehold. In the one case the right hon. Gentleman proposes to come down and exact a big tax; in the other case there will be no tax at all. It is a pure lottery. Really it is impossible—absolutely impossible—for us to debate these matters. They may be lightly debated from an ethical and

  1779
  social point of view by this House, but they are matters which largely concern tens of thousands of the people of this country.
  We must have as soon as possible some clear statement which will remove the uncertainties and anxieties which are evidenced by the innumerable letters we receive. I do not know who advised the right hon. Gentleman in this matter, but I am quite certain of this, that as far as I can judge no responsible business firm which deals in land and which understands land would support the proposals which the right hon. Gentleman is making. Surely his advisers when dealing with such complicated matters as the ownership of land, involving such enormous interests so far-reaching and so delicate, and with which the whole investment of capital in this country is bound up, it is obvious ought, before proposals of this kind were introduced into this House, to have given them most careful and complete consideration. They ought to have been thoroughly digested, and they ought to have borne evidence of having been thought out in every particular. I venture to add that in a case of this kind they ought to have been preceded by a written statement, showing exactly what these proposals were and their effects upon different kinds of property. They ought to have borne evidence of that clear thinking in advance of which the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War is so fond. I am quite sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have done well to have consulted the Secretary of State for War, and if he had done so I am convinced the right hon. Gentleman, with his great knowledge of land transactions, would have advised him that it would have been better for the estate market if before these proposals were launched some definite, clear statement such as I have suggested was issued. I hope what the right hon. Gentleman states to-night will take the place of such a statement and will give us some clear explanation of those fantastic proposals which are so alarming the country.
  The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. Haldane): After the compliment which the hon. and gallant Member has paid me, I feel I cannot but rise if only for a few minutes. I should have been glad to have pursued matters at once into those clear regions to which the hon. and gallant Member has alluded, but he has acted upon the advice of the Eastern sage, and he had "muddied the wells of inquiry with the stick of precaution." He has con-
  1780
  jured up so many difficulties, so many imaginary cases. [OPPOSITION cries of "Oh!"] I have got to make good what I am staying—that it is almost impossible to bring the Debate back to the point at which it should be kept, if we are to make any progress. I listened with the greatest pleasure to the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. He is always acute, and he has always a way of putting things which is his own. I am not unfamiliar with the case he has made. There was a time once before when it was my duty not exactly to stand beside but to stand up to defend a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the hon. and gallant Member then made a speech almost exactly the same upon the death duties, and upon the Bill brought in by Lord St. Aldwyn to amend the law when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The hon. and gallant Member was one of Lord St. Aldwyn's principal assailants, as I was one of his defenders. I could reconstruct the speech of the hon. and gallant Member on that occasion. We had the same phrases, the same bogies, the same things conjured up, and indeed, matters were carried a little further, because the hon. and gallant Member assailed another Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, and complained of the way taxation was laid on in the form of income tax on agricultural land. He assailed the measure associated with the name of Sir Robert Peel, but we are remote from all this now that the death duties are an accomplished fact, and the right hon. Gentleman was absorbed into a Government which took full advantage of the death duties while they existed. Really the hon. and gallant Member in his speeches ought not to take quite so comprehensive a line. If we had listened to what he said to-night we should have had no death duties, and we should go back a good deal upon Sir Robert Peel's income tax. But my right hon. Friend is not proposing to aggravate that state of things under Sir Robert Peel's Act. I have always thought that the owner of agricultural land was a person very hardly dealt with. I know there are great deductions which have to come from his nominal income before he puts anything into his pocket, and so far as I have been able to observe it is rarely, if he is a really good landlord, that he puts much into his pocket at all. But we are not dealing with agricultural land. My right hon. Friend has made it plain that we are dealing with quite another kind of land. We

  1781
  are dealing with land, the revenue from which arises as the result of congestion or movement of the population, and with the demands which the vicinity of great communities create. That is the main case which is dealt with by these resolutions.
  Let me just test one or two of the propositions of my hon. and gallant Friend. He said that at the beginning of this century the proportion which the rate on land bears to the rest of the national revenue from property was 34 per cent., and that it had diminished now to something like 5¾ per cent. Well, has it diminished? Surely everybody knows that the explanation of the figures of the hon. and gallant Member is the enormous increase in other kinds of wealth in this country, and everybody must realise that if you take urban values—I am not talking of anything that may be affected by the price of corn, but of the values due to increased population and the pressure of population upon the land in or about the vicinity of great cities—they have enormously increased during the last century. For instance, can anyone say that the land on which London stands is not of enormously more value than it was years ago?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: I have the actual figures of the gross capital value of realty subject to estate duty in 1901, and it was £105,996,000; and in 1907–8 it was £85,100,000 on more estates.
  Mr. HALDANE: That does not explain the variation between the proportion of 5¾ per cent.
  Mr. PRETYMAN: It is an actual fall.
  Mr. HALDANE: The hon. and gallant Member is taking a period, and a very recent period, with an interval of two or three years, and five years hence, perhaps, under the beneficent influence of Tariff Reform, the value of land may have risen, and then where will the hon. and gallant Member be? If taxes upon corn bring up the value of land, what will be the position of the hon. and gallant Member when he has to explain what he has said this evening? But what I wish to deal with is not the generalities which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has indulged in, but the taxes indicated in the Resolution. Let me ask the attention of the Committee to what we are doing. We are not adopting a Bill, but certain very general Resolutions which are necessary to allow us to bring in the Bill.
  1782
  The Resolutions do not go into details. They cannot do. They are merely the authority to bring in a change in a Bill of this kind. It is quite true, as the hon. and gallant Member says, and I entirely agree with him, that it is difficult to debate this Question in matters so general. We can on the second reading of the Bill deal with the proposals which are embodied in the three Resolutions on the Paper. One Resolution is in three parts. What are the three proposals? What are the objections which the hon. and gallant Member has made? The first objection was that we have not answered the question, What is the unit of value? The second was that the proposal was one of which we had no experience in regard to its working, and the third had reference to ungotten minerals. Let me point out to the Committee what the principle is which underlies these three propositions. It is to levy a duty on what we believe the estate would realise. It is not a duty on what the owners have not got, but on what they have got. Bearing that in mind, let me turn to the objections—made in good faith, but with a want of attention to the fact that we are only dealing with resolutions to enable the Bill to be brought in, embodying these propositions. I should be inclined to accept the criticism that there was something in the Resolutions that was inconsistent with the language itself, but the duty is payable only when the increment value is realised. In every one of these cases what is taken is the duty on property actually received in cash or upon estates which pass on death. The valuation takes place as it does today for the purpose of death duties, and no one has made a more minute study of the subject than the hon. and gallant Member himself. What I ask is: If there is any injustice in taking a percentage on a piece of land the value of which is due to a rise in the price of land? What I ask is this, Is there any injustice in taking a percentage on that class of property? The hon. and gallant Member says this is a new thing. I am astonished at his making that statement. The system has been a great success, and it is familiar in other parts of the world.
  Sir P. MAGNUS: Is it not a rate rather than a tax abroad?
  Mr. HALDANE: My hon. Friend knows as well as I do that on the Continent the distinction between rates and taxes is not the same as in this country, and that the

  1783
  revenue is collected in a different fashion. There are taxes or rates—accordingly as you choose to label them—collected in areas which are much larger than our ordinary areas of taxation for purposes which with us would be purposes of Imperial taxation. They are collected in large districts for purposes which in this country would be provided for by Imperial taxation. I quite agree that they are not collected over the whole country and that they are collected locally, and in many cases by municipalities, but I read in a paper only the other day that a foreign Government was considering with great satisfaction the good prospects which these taxes afforded of an extension of Imperial revenue. I have shown that in the case of transfer, or what is the same thing, the grant of a lease for a consideration, you are simply taking the proposed duty out of the profit made. If there is no profit you do not take any duty.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: But the right hon. Gentleman said he was taking it on realised profit. What is the realised profit when an estate changes hands on death and has to pay death duty?
  Mr. HALDANE: I divided the case into two, and I said that in the case of property passing on death the principle was exactly and precisely the same as the principle of the death duties, which were in full force under the right hon. Gentleman himself as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and constituted a cherished instrument in the hands of the Conservative party. In the other two cases—the transfer or grant of a lease—you take it on the profit received. Has the hon. Member never heard of a fine paid on the grant of a lease, or increased rent? Does he suppose that in 999 cases out of 1,000 the landlord grants the lease from motives of benevolence? The principle we are going upon is, no profit or no increment, no tax. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about a loss?"]
  I come now to the second principle, which is that the duty shall be levied on the value of any benefit accruing to a lessor by reason of the termination of a lease. There again the intention is to levy the duty simply upon profit, and when the Bill is printed and circulated hon. Members will see the machinery by which that is to be worked out. But as I have stated the principle is: No profit, no tax. I come to the third case, which is the annual duty on capital site value, and the question of the hon. and gallant Gentle-
  1784
  man does not arise. That is a duty which is levied generally without respect to who is the owner of the land. It is perfectly plain what it is in the case of sale; it is perfectly plain what it is in the case of death duties. [What is the unit?"] Really, when you are transferring a piece of land surely that transaction itself furnishes the unit, and you see what you transfer by your deed.
  Mr. PRETYMAN: My point was the increment value not in the case of passing by death, but in the case of passing by sale, when what was sold was only part of the original unit value, and where there was no uniform value over the whole unit.
  Mr. HALDANE: The principle of the Bill is that whatever you chose to sell if you make a profit the duty is levied on the profit. The hon. and gallant Gentleman will find that there is machinery to deal with all the cases of hardship of which he speaks in the Bill itself, but the principle is perfectly clear as a general proposition that when you sell anything the duty is levied on the profit. Difficult cases are bound to arise, and upon the hypothesis that these may arise, we have put provisions to deal with them in the Bill itself, and it is impossible to discuss a matter of this kind without putting before the hon. Members the clause in which that machinery is embodied. We are not discussing the legislation, but asking for leave to bring in a Bill. I believe we are really very much at one. Hon. Members opposite say, "We cannot understand your proposal because we have not seen the Bill," and we reply, "Very well, then, let us bring in the Bill." I do not think I have put the case which is the real case between us in an unreasonable way, and I hope that before long the House will let us proceed a step further towards the sensible course of bringing in the Bill.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman give us the information about the leaseholder? I thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself was going to reply to my hon. and gallant Friend, who put a case about leases granted before the passing of the Act. I understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that the reply could not be given across the Table, but that a reply should be given to my hon. and gallant Friend. The hon. and gallant Gentleman also put the case of minerals.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: The hon. and gallant Gentleman, the Member for Chelmsford, referred to the case of building societies and endeavoured to make it appear that it was customary for members of those societies to build two or more houses, one of which they inhabited personally, and the other of which they let. By way of proof of that he pointed to the undoubted fact that it was seldom that a single cottage was built by these societies. But he forgot that whilst building societies build these houses in pairs they are sold singly to individual members, who live side by side. Then he also told us that one hundred years ago the income for rent in this country bore the proportion of 34 per cent. to the total income, whereas now the proportion of income due to rent had fallen to 5¾ per cent. I presume in both cases the hon. and gallant Gentleman was referring to rent from agricultural land?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: From all land.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: How can the hon. and gallant Gentleman distinguish the income from urban land from the building upon it? I want to know on what he bases his statement?
  Mr. PRETYMAN: The rents on all land, urban and rural, the whole of the rents under Schedule A of the land of the country.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: I am afraid the hon. and gallant Gentleman has not examined the schedules as carefully as he ought. May I point out that in those days—that is, in 1817—the total amount of the taxes paid by the landed interests represented 70 per cent. of the whole, whereas in 1891 the percentage had gone down to less than 15 per cent., so that the proportion of the tax now being paid by the landed interest bears a smaller relation to the whole than it did at the period to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman referred.
  VISCOUNT HELMSLEY: Was that all agricultural land or all land?
  Mr. KEIR HARDIE: All land. The later figures I have not got, but there is no reason to assume that the reduction which has been steadily going on for 100 years, and the proportion of taxes paid for land is not still continuing, and when we remember that under the auspices of the party on this side when in office a relief of nearly £2,000,000 a year was given to land under the provisions of the Agricul-
  1786
  tural Eating Act, I think my argument is sound and substantial.
  Then the hon. Member for the University of London endeavoured to draw a parallel between the increase in value of old pictures, old silver and similar articles, but he forgot that the increase in the value of these objects is not due to anything for which the community is responsible. It is mainly due to the vanity of American millionaires who, having accumulated at the expense of the community more money than they know how to dispose of, seek to outbid each other in acquiring articles concerning the artistic value of which they have not the faintest appreciation. They simply seek to gratify their vanity. The value of the unearned increment of land—and here I join issue with my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, and with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition—differs from the unearned increment accruing to all other sections of the community. As I understood my hon. Friend opposite in his former speeches, and the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in his speech on the Budget on the opening day, their argument amounted to this, that every section of the community is receiving some unearned advantage. The agricultural labourer whose wages have gone up is to that extent benefiting, not as the result of his own labours, but as the result of the general improvement accruing to the community. That, I submit, is a case of a totally different kind from that of the unearned increment accruing to landlords. The labourer is performing his share of the nation's work. The landlord qua landlord may be contributing nothing whatever to the usefulness of the community, but his share accrues to him just the same as if he did. The hon. and gallant Gentleman who represents Chelmsford spoke of land owning as a profession. [An HON. MEMBER: "An industry."] Yes, an industry. I am afraid, if I may say so without disrespect, that he was confounding the ownership of land with the management of land. They are not the same thing, and there is no actual relationship between the one and the other. For every landlord who manages his own land and acts as his own estate agent there must be a score who hire others to perform those duties, and the gentlemen themselves occupy no higher position in life than that described by Carlyle long ago as mere receivers of rent. It is these men whom the Budget will hit

  1787
  most heavily. Where it can be shown that any increment in the value of land accrues from the expenditure of either labour or capital on the part of the landlord, this tax does not fall upon him, but where the increment is due either to public improvements, to the accumulation of population, or to the establishment of new industries—matters to which the landlord qua landlord has contributed nothing beyond allowing the use of his land—then the tax will fall, and the tax should fall.
  It is said that the case of Germany is different from our own—that there the tax upon values is a rate, and not a tax. If that will make it any more sweet to the landlords I am sure that the Government will be only too glad to make arrangements to suit their convenience. In Germany the municipalities, and to some extent the State, tax land values. In the Reichstag, as has been pointed out, it has been suggested that a land tax—presumably on the lands where a tax is already imposed for local purposes—should be imposed, and, therefore, the difference between Germany and ourselves in this respect appears to be that whilst we begin with the National Exchequer and will ultimately work down towards local rates, they commence from the local rates and are working up towards the National Exchequer. If hon. Gentlemen on this side assume that this is the last they are going to hear of it, either for national or for local rating purposes, they have sadly misread the signs of the times. One thing that has accrued from this Debate has given myself and my colleagues a great deal of satisfaction. We are told that this Budget represents Socialism, and because it represents Socialism therefore it must be condemned. All this talk about Socialism in connection with the Budget is tending to rob that term of many of its terrors. It is popularising the use of the word. When the nation realises that Socialism means putting a tax upon surplus wealth, and thereby relieving the poverty of the poor, a good many will support Socialism who are to-day doubtful about it, as you shall find out. The hon. Member for Aberdeen University waxed very indignant because the Lord Advocate (from the pulpit of a Nonconformist chapel) had dared to support these land taxes. But evidently, in his indignation, the hon. Gentleman forgot that the Lord Advocate, like himself, is a Scotchman, and is therefore familiar with his Bible, and it is possible that the text he preached from was the one so often quoted, in which the
  1788
  prophet declared, speaking in the name of the Lord, "The land is mine, and shall not be sold for ever." If the land of the country had all along borne its proportion of taxation, the burden, both upon industry and upon labour, would have been much lighter than it is to-day. Let me give one concrete illustration of how the tax referred to in paragraph 1 of the Resolution would operate in London. The figures I am going to quote are from the report of a speech of a former Member of this House, Mr. White, delivered at the annual meeting of the London Reform Union. In the year 1876 the rating value of London was £20,000,000. But in 1906 it had increased to £43,000,000—a rise of £23,000,000 in rating value in 30 years. The value of the land during those 20 years had increased, according to my authority, by about £9,000,000, and the value of buildings and other improvements by £14,000,000. Had this tax been in operation from 1870 to 1906 the land upon which alone London is built would have been contributing £1,800,000 a year towards either local or Imperial taxes. It is said that this is Socialism, and therefore predatory. May I remind those who make that assumption that nearly the whole of this increase of the rateable value of land, presumably its letting value, is due to municipal sources, the making of roads, the making of streets, improving the drainage, running out municipal trams, providing public parks and open spaces, and generally improving the amenities of the City, all of which is done at the public cost by the municipality, and is therefore a form of Socialism. The increment in value is due to these works and improvements, and when it is proposed that part of this increment, namely, 20 per cent. of it, shall be acquired for the benefit of those whose expenditure has created it, then it is called Socialism. But there is one point of the Resolution upon which I desire some special information from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or whoever speaks next, on behalf of the Government. In part III. of the Resolution it sets forth that an annual duty is to be paid at the rate of ½d. per £ of the value in the case of land for buildings or other purposes, not being developed, and on the capital value of the ungotten minerals. This is one of the points on which I hope the Budget Bill, when it sees the light, will afford us more explanation than the Resolution does at the present time. I confess that as the Resolution is worded it looks as though it might operate in a

  1789
  way that would be seriously injurious to persons who have capital invested in existing mines, as well as to the great body of working miners. If the tax is to be levied on unleased and on ungotten minerals, the tendency will be to force a sale on the part of poor landlords. In so far as that may be necessary for the public good, as undoubtedly in the case of building societies, it is a matter for grave consideration whether it would work out advantageously in the case of minerals.
  Let me put the Committee in possession of one or two facts bearing upon this Question. Assume that the tax upon minerals will cause development of the coal fields now lying unworked. That would mean the employment of considerable extra capital. It would also mean the employment of a large number of extra miners. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] An hon. Gentleman opposite says "Hear, hear." He has not followed out the argument to its logical conclusion. What would be the result? At the present time there are more mines sunk and more miners employed at work than employment can be found for. That is to say, the demand for coal at the present time falls far short of the potential supply. If you multiply the means of mining you multiply the possibility of an increased output, and you increase the competition and make it more difficult for existing mines to pay, and increase the difficulty of colliers getting their pay. The effect, therefore, it may have, does not hit me. I am trying to point out that without any advantage a great deal of injury might be done if this tax operates in the way I fear it will. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants revenue then a tax upon leased minerals will achieve his object. One halfpenny on the ton on all output will provide him with a sum equal to what he will obtain in the operation of this tax. Tax all minerals leased. There are dead rents, way leaves, heir leaves, water leaves, and so on. Tax them by all means. I know the case that could be made out showing the necessity of those taxes as a means of compelling landowners to make mineral fields that are now being held back for a rise in the market productive. I do not say that as a final word on the subject. I put it forward for consideration. I hope that the Bill when we see it will show that some provision has been made for meeting the special set of facts to which I have referred.
  So far as the general principle of this Resolution is concerned it is difficult to conceive how so much apparent indigna-
  1790
  tion and opposition has been worked up towards it. We on these Benches are often accused of seeking to legislate in the interests of one class of the community. We are often accused of it and we do not deny it. If anything could justify class legislation it surely is the poverty of the very poor. It is for those who seek special legislation, but the special pleas that are now being put forward are not for the relief of poverty nor for the uplifting of those who are downtrodden, but for the preservation of class interest and of unearned wealth which is the product of the toil and the expenditure of the brain and muscle of the general community. All that is being claimed is that a comparatively small proportion of that which accrues and which is not due to any exertions of their own, or any risks they have undertaken shall be secured for the use of the community. Because of that, we on these Benches will support the Resolution before the House, hoping, believing, and expecting that it is the forerunner of many similar Resolutions which will come before the House in days to come. If this Budget had done nothing else than unmask the Tariff Reform movement, and compel it to face the public in its true character, that in itself would have been of great value. Hitherto Tariff Reform has been for the protection of trade. That is dropped. It is no longer for the protection of trade; it is for the production of revenue. Tariff Reform is now standing out in all its nakedness as a device to extort more from the labouring poor in order to protect the interests of the rich.
  Whereupon Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report progress, and ask leave to sit again"—[Mr. Harold Cox]—put, and agreed to.
  Resolutions to be reported to-morrow; Committee also report progress; to sit again to-morrow.
  And, it being after half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, in pursuance of the Standing Order.
  The House adjourned at Twenty-four minutes before Twelve o'clock.

  Vaccination without Parents' Consent.
  Vaccination without Parents' Consent.
  Rural Doctors and the Petrol Tax.
  Rural Doctors and the Petrol Tax.
  Colonial Government Bonds.
  Colonial Government Bonds.
  Barrel Licence.
  Barrel Licence.
  Deaths under Anæsthetics.
  Deaths under Anæsthetics.
  Free Vintner's Privileges.
  Free Vintner's Privileges.
  Junior Students (Scotland).
  Junior Students (Scotland).
  Post Office (Unestablished Employés).
  Post Office (Unestablished Employés).
ALLIANCE AND DUBLIN CONSUMERS GAS BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
NORTH METROPOLITAN ELECTRIC POWER SUPPLY BILL.
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
WAKEFIELD CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE WATER BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
THAMES TUNNEL (NORTH AND SOUTH WOOLWICH) BILL.
Report from the Select Committee that the Committee had not proceeded with the consideration of the Bill the opposition thereto having been withdrawn; read, and ordered to lie on the Table: The orders made on April 27 last discharged, and Bill committed.
RISCA URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
Report from the Select Committee, That the Committee had not proceeded with the consideration of the Bill the opposition thereto having been withdrawn; read, and ordered to lie on the Table: The orders made on March 2 and 22 last discharged, and Bill committed.
SOUTHPORT AND LYTHAM TRAMROAD (ABANDONMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
Report from the Select Committee, That the Committee had not proceeded with the consideration of the Bill the opposition thereto having been withdrawn; read, and ordered to lie or the Table: The orders made on March 2 and April 26 last discharged, and Bill committed.
ALEXANDRA (NEWPORT AND SOUTH WALES) DOCKS AND RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.] RIO TINTO COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
LITTLEHAMPTON GAS BILL.
Read 3a with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
RAILWAY RATES AND CHARGES (PROVISIONAL ORDER (WESTON, CLEVEDON, AND PORTISHEAD LIGHT RAILWAYS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons.
YORK TOWN AND BLACKWATER GAS (ELECTRIC LIGHTING, &c.) BILL. GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL. ALDERSHOT GAS AND WATER BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and referred to the Examiners.
WIRRAL RAILWAY (EXTENSION OF TIME) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.
ANGLO-ARGENTINE TRAMWAYS COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
RAILWAY RATES AND CHARGES PROVISIONAL ORDER (WESTON, CLEVEDON, AND PORTISHEAD LIGHT RAILWAYS) BILL.
Read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 52.)
REGISTRATION OF FIRMS BILL. [H.L.]
A Bill for the Registration of Firms and, Persons carrying on business under Trade Names—Was presented by The Lord Brassey; read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a on Tuesday the 18th instant. (No. 53.)
HOPS (No. 2) BILL. [H.L.]
A Bill to prohibit the use of hop substitutes in brewing, and the importation of hops except in bags properly marked—Was presented by the Lord Pentland (for the Earl Carrington); read 1a, and to be printed. (No. 54.)

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS (QUALIFICATION OF CLERGYMEN) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee, read.
Moved, That the House do resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Monkswell.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF ONSLOW in the Chair.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEESDoes the noble Lord propose to move any Amendment?
LORD MONKSWELLWith regard to the Amendment standing in my name on the Paper to insert a new clause providing that the Bill shall not apply to Scotland or Ireland, I may explain that I propose to exclude Scotland on the advice of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and I exclude Ireland—
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEESI beg the noble Lord's pardon. From a private communication I understood that the noble Lord did not propose to move his Amendment at this stage.
LORD MONKSWELLMy suggestion is that I should be allowed to insert the Amendment on the Third Reading, so that your Lordships may not be troubled with the Report Stage of the Bill. But if the Lord Chairman will put the first clause, I will explain my Amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEESI am afraid that if the Bill is amended to-day we shall have to have the Report Stage.
LORD MONKSWELLI am entirely in the hands of your Lordships. But if no noble Lord objects, I propose to let the Bill go through Committee to-day without Amendment and to move on Third Reading my Amendment excluding Scotland and Ireland from the operation of the Bill.
Bill reported without Amendment: Standing Committee negatived, and Bill to be read 3a to-morrow.

ELECTRIC LIGHTING ACTS (AMENDMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELLMy Lords, in moving the Third Reading of
864
this Bill I think I ought to allude to a circumstance which arose on the last stage. Your Lordships will recollect that the Lord Chairman proved an Amendment to Clause 5, and that the noble Marquess opposite—Lord Salisbury—in saying that he thought Lord Onslow's Amendment might be withdrawn, asked for an undertaking from me that the Board of Trade would pursue a certain course. As I said at the time, the matter had not arisen before I came to the House, and not having plenipotentiary powers I was unable to deal with it. But since then I have consulted my right hon. friend, and I am authorised to say, on behalf of the Board of Trade, that in the case of any applications being made to them under subsection (1) of Clause 5 they will carefully consider all the circumstances of the case before giving their consent, and in particular will endeavour to prevent any extravagant speculation on the part of local authorities which might injuriously affect the interests of ratepayers or consumers of electricity within their district. I hope that will meet the point raised by the noble Marquess.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a—(Lord Hamilton of Dalzell.)
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF ONSLOW)My Lords, as far as local authorities are concerned the statement which the noble Lord has just made is perfectly satisfactory; but I would like to point out that the clause authorises any undertaker, whether local company or private company. Now a private company might obtain powers to supply a village with electricity while all the time it might have the intention at the back of its mind, or it might even possess a contract in its pocket, to supply a great railway company with electricity for the whole course of the line. It is in regard to that sort of thing that we require the Board of Trade to exercise vigilance. It is just as necessary to keep a vigilant eye upon private undertakers as it is upon local authorities, and I hope the noble Lord will convey this fact to the officials of the Board of Trade. So far as my Department are concerned, we are anxious to see that private companies or even individuals do not get extensive powers granted to them by the Board of Trade for purposes which, perhaps, would not be-sanctioned if the extent to which they

865
intended to make use of the powers were known.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYMy Lords, I desire to express, on my own behalf, thanks to the noble Lord for the courteous way in which he has followed the suggestion I ventured to make on the last stage of the Bill. I am bound to say that I was more interested in the question of restraining undue zeal on the part of a local authority than of a private company, but no doubt what my noble friend who has just sat down has said is true, that it is advisable that the Board of Trade should exercise vigilance in the case of a private undertaker just as in the case of a public undertaker. I think I speak on behalf of many noble Lords who sit on this side of the House when I say that we were specially interested on the last occasion in preventing undue speculation on the part of local authorities by which the ratepayers' credit and the ratepayers' money might be prejudiced; and we desired, therefore, to have a formal assurance on the part of the President of the Board of Trade that the Board would exercise great vigilance in the matter. I am much obliged to the noble Lord for the statement he has made.
On Question, Bill read 3a.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEESMy Lords, I am sure your Lordships will hear with regret that the noble Lord in whose name an Amendment stands on the Paper and who has taken great interest in this Bill (Lord Avebury), is prevented from being present this evening owing to sudden family bereavement. I am not, of course, responsible for the Amendment which the noble Lord has drafted, but inasmuch as it was framed to meet some objections which I took to the undefined nature of the word "contractor," and, I think, to a great extent does so, I have pleasure, in the absence of the noble Lord, in moving his Amendment, and I hope His Majesty's Government will agree to it.
Amendment moved—
"In Clause 24, page 13, line 18, after the word 'places,' to insert the words 'The expression
866
"contractor" shall mean any person company or firm habitually engaged in the carrying out of contracts pertaining to the supplying fixing repairing and removing of wires and appliances to be used for the consumption of electrical energy.'"—(The Earl of Onslow.)
LORD HAMILTON OF DALZELLMy Lords, I should like to join with the noble Earl in expressing regret at the cause which prevents the noble Lord in whose name this Amendment stands from being in his place to-day. I have only to say that the Board of Trade accept this Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

THE WHITSUNTIDE RECESS.
EARL CAWDORI should like to ask the noble Earl the Leader of the House whether he can give your Lordships any information with respect to the Whitsuntide Recess.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY of STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE)Before I answer the question put to me by the noble Earl, I hope he will allow me to express my regret that the noble Marquess who leads the Opposition is not in his place. We all hope that he will not be long kept away from our deliberations. As regards the Whitsuntide recess, it is common knowledge, I think, that we may be kept somewhat later in the year than we were last year, and in those circumstances we may fairly claim, and I think it would be in consonance with the general sense of the House to suggest, a somewhat longer adjournment than usual at Whitsuntide. Therefore, if your Lordships agree, we should propose that the House should adjourn after its sitting on Thursday, May 27, and that it should meet again on Wednesday, June 23.
House adjourned at a quarter before Five o'clock, till Tomorrow, a quarter-past Four o'clock.